Friends Beyond Borders: Thabisile’s Journey of Motherhood in Soweto
The streets of Soweto are filled with life and death. The sound of children running around and playing games overshadows the endless trash, dead rats, and burning smoke. In this atmosphere, I met Amaza – or Zaza, as I like to call her – when she was playing alone nearby the school I am staying at. As I approached her, she was hitting sticks on the ground and singing a song in Zulu. She looked at me without any hesitation, and said, “Hi, I’m Amaza! Do you want to sing with me?” From that moment on, we were friends, never failing to sing in the midst of the gloom of Soweto.
As I continued to see Amaza day after day, I eventually found out that she lives in a home down the street from the school. One day, she invited me to her home – a room in the midst of a beaten home surrounded by metal shacks. Inside the room, I met her mother and her grandmother. After singing and playing in the yard, I decided to sit down with her mother, Thabisile, and recorded this conversation.
Thabisile is a mother to all. After first arriving in their cramped room, she stopped everything she was doing and asked, “My son, do you want anything to drink or eat? I can make something real quick for you.” Her warmth was welcoming, and her presence no longer made this your room or my yard but rather our home, where everyone – from friend to American visitor – is welcome. I eventually found out how this stemmed from Thabisile’s experience being a mother. She said, “I have a child, which is Amaza. So I was eighteen when I had a child, and I was still in school – doing grade twelve when I had a child. So it was a bit difficult and all that. So, the reason it was difficult was because I was pregnant and I had to study, you know. And also, I was a little bit embarrassed going to school with a big belly. But I got used to it because my mother was there and my mother encouraged me a lot. She fell in love with my child before she was born.”
After having Amaza, who is now six years old, Thabisile told me that she was desperate to find a job in order to provide for Amaza, especially since Amaza’s father was not present. In the process, she said, “I wanted something that will make me happy.” Upon being unable to find a job, she started to volunteer at the Nkanyezi Stimulation Centre, a school for children with autism and cerebral palsy. Thabisile described the experience by saying, “I saw the kids. I played with them. They were so welcoming.” After months of volunteering, Thabisile thought, “You know what, I wouldn’t mind doing this for the rest of my life… teaching… it’s something I want to do.” As a result, she approached Ms. Tshabalala, the head of the Nkanyezi Centre, and together, they found a class that Thabisile could enroll in to certify her to work at similar schools for disabled and challenged students. Now, Thabisile works at another local school for children with cerebral palsy. She now works as an assistant, and while she is still looking to become a school teacher, she enjoys every day of her work. “I fell in love with kids. These children might be different in some ways, but you need to understand these kids in some way. They love to play and be understood.”
Diving deeper into Thabisile’s life story, she explained that things were not always easy growing up. After struggling to articulate her childhood, she read me a poem she had written titled, “A Trillion Miles Away.” After reading the moving poem, she told me, “In 2005, my father went to prison. Now, I had to go see him. I had to stay with one parent. This was the situation.” From this experience, she wrote this poem, explaining the challenges she faced watching her father go off to prison. “My father felt like a trillion miles away. We had to use a train to go to see him. People used to know him and now the dignity was jeopardized. When you are in prison, it is something else.”
Thabisile told me that one of the most difficult experiences was seeing her father for the first time. As she said, “Visiting my father the first time… it was very very difficult. There was this glass window between us. It was very very difficult. It was one of the reasons I’d rather stay away from crime because I’d rather stay away from prison.” In the end, it has impacted her and the way she sees life. “The family had to suffer from it. He suffered in prison, but those he left behind suffered more.”
In the midst of these difficulties, Thabisile looks forward to the future. She said, “I want Amaza to have a strong group of friends. I also want Amaza to be my friend. I know some of the things she won’t be able to talk to me with about so I hope she has friends to love her too.” I find her friendship so warm and so loving, and I see this reflected in her relationship with Amaza and in her work with children. As she concluded, “Seeing a child improve, whether at home or at work… it just makes me so happy.”
My time spent with Thabisile has made me reflect on my experience as a whole in Soweto. In the end, I have found it difficult to be with the people of Soweto and ask them questions about life when I do not quite fully understand myself yet. While many of my experiences have been depressing and overwhelming, this journey has motivated me to continue to dive deeper into a sense of self. During my first two trips to Soweto in 2014 and 2015 through my former high school, Bellarmine College Preparatory, I only stayed for one week each trip, and I found it easy to romanticize the community and joy within Soweto. This trip, with more time, I have come to face the reality of the daily struggles that everyone faces here. It has gone well beyond the general kindness that was expressed to an American visiting Soweto for one week. It has been such an honor to be surrounded by the joy of people like Thabisile and Amaza, yet their daily struggles weigh heavy on my heart. I have found it difficult articulating my time in Soweto, but in the midst of this frustration, I have had an incredible experience, and I hope to challenge all those following this journey to experience it themselves – to go out to the margins of our society – whether it is visiting Soweto or simply saying hi to the homeless person at the local shopping center and ask: Am I becoming friends with those on the margins?