Ngiyabonga kakhulu bhuti wami. Ungadinwa nkokheli.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of the manuscript (THE UNVEILING) which I began composing after my brother-in-law crushed my mother's tombstone,a day after its unveiling. In this version, I present uncle Mdelwa (real name uncle Mafika Hlongwane) as the one I bought a tombstone for. When the book gets published,you will love the character of my late uncle Mafika .Granny was proud of him for buying her a stove: "Uncle Mdelwa was a very neat man. Yes,a very clean man. We all knew that. Everybody spoke of how much he took care of himself, of his image. He cherished his daily bath. After his hard day work removing gigantic stones,he'd pour volumes of water into my granny’s big zinc bath. The base of the legendary bath had over the years accumulated rust at its bottom and a few holes.This base always had to be patched with blue Sunlight soap to prevent the water from seeping out.He would stand in it with his two feet and scrub his private parts.With a piece of stone,he'd clean the front part of his body. I was almost always besides him. He would ask me to clean his back with the red sack of oranges. I had not grown tall enough, and could not reach his body and shoulders if he was standing. He would thus contract his legs and squeeze himself in the bath. His knees, which had suddenly been elevated to his chin supported his head as he moved forwards creating space for me to move my hands on his back. These were the moments when he would sing a few of the Soul Brother’s hits. The group was his favourite and he had collected a number of their L.P. records. When he sang these songs during his daily refreshing bath occasions, my neat uncle would repeatedly clap his hands in merriment. The bath encounters introduced me to the history of the numerous intersecting deep black scars on his back. He told me to ignore the scars on his back and to concentrate on scrubbing. I was never able to pass these black crossings without taking notice of them. They always grabbed my attention. They were just too many, and I often thought I was going to hurt my uncle if I confronted these scars directly, by force, and with the rough red orange sack. My uncle was not happy – I was not performing the task he had assigned me. He would remove the sack from me, to illustrate his demand, telling me the wounds had healed, and that those were only dead scars. He would scrub himself hard, and I experienced the pain, which he swore no longer troubled him. He would realise I was focusing on the scars, and with questions in my head. My uncle was a smart man. He read a book closed, efunda incwadi ivaliwe as my granny would retort. Uncle Mdelwa could read between the lines. There were many intertwined lines on his back, and he read them one by one, with precision and detail. The scars which had turned black on his back and buttocks had extraordinary biographies. Sometimes he would make reference to scars on his head which were covered by his hair. He knew the map to the scars on his head so well. It took no time at all for him to locate them. He would split his hair and lead my hand to touch the scars. The histories of the scars always terrified me. He provided so much detail about those who wrote scars on his head, back, and buttocks. The names were not easy to remember, but many of the authors of the scars by the sjambok were the Boer farmers and their children, the "Baases" and "Klein Baases" he worked for at the farms in his youth. He told me he pitied us children of the day because we were so fragile we would not withstand hardships which had produced the real man in him. He was worried that the new homeland of Kangwane in Dundonald without the constant sjambok beatings was spoiling us and producing weaklings of men. I was too weak and would not have survived a day on those farms, he thought. My uncle said so many things,and I missed some details as I enacted in my own head the pain he must have endured in his days as a child at the farms..." TO BE CONTINUED ...

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Grateful to witness my son Sizo grow. Last born &the only boy who comes after 3 girls.He turned 16 this year.I remind him to be appreciative that he still has me and his mom as I lost my mom when I turned 16. Enjoying every moment watching him today as he contests in gymnastics.