The Blessings of Braamfischerville

A short story by Sharon Wakeford, a guest contributor to the CN&CO blog. More than that, a coach, walker of the Camino, deep thinker, passionate human and all round inspiring person.

Saturday 20 March 2021. 22 months since we last ventured to Lwandle’s house in Braamfischerville. 27 kilometres from our home in Parkwood, to the far west of Johannesburg, to the far reaches of Soweto. A seemingly insignificant distance in kilometres, but a journey deep into the breadth and blessings held in Braamfischerville’s dusty brown palms and generously open heart. [1]

We wind our way out of the quiet, leafy green of the suburbs, and onto the appropriately called ‘Long Street’ with its mish-mash of second-hand furniture shops, that spill their tatty contents onto equally long passages of pavement; past hardware stores, second-hand car dealerships, and corner cafés, past small grey patchworks of houses, to where Long Street’s own suburbia seeps into a less defined space, where rectangles of stumpy apartment blocks intersperse themselves among the soulless sprawl of Industria’s factories, and somewhat down-at-heel commercial enterprises.

A left turn and we’re onto Main Reef Road, a road built in the 1880s to join the goldmines and towns of the so-called Witwatersrand, a lengthy 94.7 km stripe between Springs in the east and Randfontein in the west. A road that reputedly was built “through the blood, sweat and toil of Afrikaners as part of a public works programme”.

This road forms the longest stretch of our journey to Lwandle’s house. Certainly not a carriageway that carries any felt sense of its former glory, of the energy of an emerging city, a city edging towards a boom. Instead, the felt sense spreading over my skin, of depletion and depression, years of slow decay, and an accompanying loss of life-force and livelihoods.

Further and further we progress down Main Reef Road’s double lane. Six brick houses, maybe once ‘railway houses’ stand forlorn and forgotten among the low bush alongside the road. Simply skeletons – windows, doors, roofs long stripped off, put to use elsewhere.

“In 100 metres at the roundabout, take the first exit”, declares the voice of Google Maps. It’s hard to say which is more incongruous – “the roundabout” – such an English expression, and so totally misplaced here in the sparse, scrubby surrounds of the West Rand, a million miles from a motorway or Ring Road; or, calling the loose structure in front of us a “roundabout”. Even with local eyes, some imagination is needed to see a circle, where side roads of varying size and smoothness, messily merge into Main Reef Road.

As instructed, we take the first exit onto a narrow snaking stripe of tar. A single lane in each direction, shouldered by alternate patches of barren orange ground, and bushes and reeds that have crept thirstily away from the orange, and towards the tar road. On the left, a big brown mound with patches of green – trees planted in an attempt to ‘re-green’ the brown. An unsuccessful attempt, instead, the mine dump another reminder of a different time, of an industry once so dominant and dominating, now diminished. The silent dead dump, a striking contrast to the noise and energy of the sea of pedestrians making their way along the snaking spine, heading home after their Saturday morning work.

The downhearted Main Reef Road, now a distant and distanced memory, as the skinny snake straightens and acquires a wide dusty pavement on each side. Both ‘snake’ and sides teeming with people and cars. Activity and aliveness. Everyone eking out possibilities. Everywhere a service offered or something being sold – a small pyramid of tyres, a table of vegetables, chicken wings sizzling on a half-barrel braai, a chair and an electric razor attached to a length of lead that constitutes a street-side salon, car washing and servicing.

We carefully navigate the thumping pulse of people and possibility and are brought to a stop at a metal barrier that crosses half the road. We weave our way around it, threading through cars, minibus taxis, and pedestrians, and around another barrier. The pedestrian tide surges up a small rise and towards a large orange rectangle. Two teams of perfectly kitted-out players stand bounded within the neat white lines. The smooth orange and clear white lines more reminiscent of the clay courts of Roland Garros than the chosen site for a soccer match. But maybe it isn’t about choices, but rather about what’s possible in the here and now of Soweto. Not a blade of grass of any tone or texture available, but simply this flat burnt-orange empty expanse. Sufficient on which to play the ‘beautiful game’.

Another few kilometres further and we’re now into the heart of Braamfischerville, a suburb of formal and informal housing at the far edge of Soweto.

“In 50 metres your destination will be on the right”.

Indeed, this looks familiar, from our previous trip, 22 months before, albeit that time’s arrival was towards twilight. A row of cars lines the left side of the street, further confirmation, we believe, of our destination having been reached.

“I thought Lwandle said only a few family members and friends. This looks like a big party.” Dearly Beloved’s Covid-anxiety gathers momentum as we observe not just the cars, but the two large circles of closely-packed people eating in the yard across the street from where we have parked.

“Come on” I say, picking up the Woolies’ shopping bag with the cool-drink and chips, before hooking my mask over my ears, and heading towards the house.

“I’m really not sure about this, I don’t see anyone with a mask.”

“Well, people are eating, that’s probably why they’re unmasked”, my reply as I continue across the street, eager to join the festivities.

“Hello, hello, hello everyone.” We greet those seated outside and move into the house in search of Lwandle, through another circle of guests and into a small lounge, and an even more tightly-seated huddle of old women on two couches. In the tiny middle, an octogenarian with a mischievous grin wiggles her hips and shoulders, holding in one hand what I assume to be a shot of brandy. I greet the ‘gogo’[2] with a toothy grin and match her movements. “Good party”, I say as we make our way into the kitchen, the last outpost for finding Lwandle.

Some curious looks from the women washing dishes and stirring large pots of food in the compact kitchen. “Lwandle, we’re looking for Lwandle.” Heads shake in our direction.

“You don’t know Lwandle?” I ask.

More headshaking.

“Mbali?”, Beloved enquires, “do you know Mbali?” Mbali, Lwandle’s daughter who lives full-time in ‘Braamfisch’ as it’s called by the locals, and therefore more likely to be known, than Lwandle, only resident on weekends and holidays, when she’s off from her weekday live-in work.

“Mbali”, a nod and a smile from one of the pot-stirrers, “I’ll show you”.

We retrace our steps past the elders. “Wrong party”, we laugh. “If ours isn’t so good, we’ll come back to yours”, I joke.

We thread our way back through more circles and follow our ‘guide’ onto the street. “Goodbye everyone, enjoy the party”.

“It’s okay, you can just point out the house.”

“No no, I’ll walk with you”, her smile insists. 30 steps down the road she stops, points out “Mbali’s house”.

“Siyabonga ma”, we thank her as she turns back towards her party.

The gate opens and we’re greeted by Khetha, instantly recognisable not just from his broad beam, but from the stream of welcoming words – a similarly fast flow that greeted us nearly two years before, when we visited Lwandle’s house, that time to attend a ceremony. Lwandle’s ‘returning’ ceremony – a ritual she was required to perform before being able and allowed to re-integrate into her life and living in Braamfischerville and beyond, after her nine-months of Sangoma training in rural Mpumalanga, 350 kms away.

Today, also a ceremony, but not on the same scale or level of intensity – no drums, no slaughtering, no community of Sangomas who made the four-hour trip with her, to bring their voices and bear witness to the transitioning. That ceremony, a much deeper and wider rite and ritual, a loudly drummed and fervently danced honouring of the ancestors, as Lwandle returned to her home and family. This time, a lower key, lower decibel affair – Lwandle’s return to her house, not from another province, but from the outbuildings in which she and her family had been staying for the past 18 months, a period of construction in which she converted her three-roomed home, into a three- bedroomed house. But, as before, a return that required an honouring of the ancestors. A ritual conducted the previous night – and today, a “small party” Lwandle said, to celebrate she and her family returning to residence in the main house. And, for Beloved and I, a return to the rich tapestries and teachings of Braamfischerville.

A brief respite from Khetha’s stream of consciousness as we walk around to greet everyone. Unlike the party along the road, this is, as promised, a small gathering. Lwandle, her oldest daughter, Pinky, (older sister to Mbali), Lwandle’s nephew and his girlfriend named Dudu, and her grandchildren, with the exception of her treasured grandson, Ti’amo, who is attending Saturday school for ‘clever children’.

Lwandle shows us towards a side door of the house, warning us to keep our distance from Rex, the fierce beige dog straining against his metal chain. He’s not usually tied up, she explains, just now, for our safety, because “he’s not used to white people”.

We step into what is essentially a new house. We marvel at the wonder of what Lwandle has achieved, what she has built over these long 18 months. I feel both immensely proud and deeply humbled by her achievement, for her dedication and determination, for the ‘little-bit, little-bit’ progress she has made, the way it is for so many women of this country and this continent.

Because, unlike the smooth surface of the soccer pitch, the economic playing field of this complicated land, is anything but level. Disparities of opportunity and income that make it immeasurably harder for black and brown hands to build, than for white ones. But not an iota of bitterness from Lwandle, or more accurately perhaps, not one that I have detected over the long and slow period of the building project – not just the multiple months of assembling brick and mortar, but the years of struggle to secure savings and the all-important title deed. A struggle which in this moment, sees the same hands offering me a plate of stampmielies and dombolo,[3] and the same, plus chicken to Beloved. Food that provides a different terrain and textures for our pale fingertips, as we sit on white plastic chairs, that like us, at some point in time, made the journey from Parkwood.

How truly blessed we are to be in this yard, to be in this minute, marking this milestone. But even more so, to be again in the broader embrace of Braamfischerville and all it has opened to us since that pounding, pulsing ceremony in 2019. An opening of our hearts and minds to a form of African spirituality, to the words and wisdom of the ancestors, that Lwandle has shared with us.

I finish my lunch. I need to move my limbs, and have a breather from Khetha’s language. His topics of telling know no bounds, his delivery, knows no variation. I need some peaks and troughs, a change of pitch and pace, or simply silence. I slip myself out of the plastic chair, to seek out Lwandle’s lower tone and tempo. I pass by her practice room. Her room, not like mine with its wide windows and double doors, its smooth beige walls from which the two quietly bold Rothkos in their black frames and Beloved’s hand-painted red and white lighthouse keep watch over the two matching teal chairs. Her room darkened, just a door that lets a little light in, naked concrete walls, a single woven prayer mat, slightly off-centre, held within the gaze of a large bird’s nest attached by a string to the roof. A nest that in the veld would have given home to a bird, and now provides a ‘home’ for Lwandle’s ancestors. Neighbouring the mat, a bookcase, on which an irregular army of glass and plastic bottles holds assorted herbs, leaves, roots, and dried plants.

Her practice room and mine, outwardly so ‘other’ from each other, but inwardly so similar. Both sites of story, of connection and presence, of deep listening and speaking, of questions asked, of interpretations offered. Mine offered from my unseen toolkit of coaching techniques, models, and distinctions; hers, offered from the seen contents of the jars, one or two or three ingredients, alone or in combination as guided by the unseen but spoken wisdom of the ancestors. Both of us drawing on the learning that lives in what we have been taught, and the blending of that learning, with our own intuition and life experience; both of us concerned with the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of the people who enter our rooms.

I nod a silent acknowledgement to Lwandle’s room and its riches, and continue on, around the corner to the far room of the outbuildings, in which I find Lwandle in slow seated presence. On the low-to-the-ground green couch alongside Lwandle, sits Dudu, and opposite them on the room’s only chair, Lwandle’s daughter, Pinky. I hover in the small space between couch and chair, not being able, in this time of social-distancing, to squish myself onto the couch. My eyes find their way to the red and white beads around Dudu’s neck and the thin blue strands that wrap themselves around her wrists and ankles. Beads that since Lwandle’s homecoming ceremony, have become part of my seeing, and part of my being.

“Are you also a Sangoma?” I ask.

“Yes, I am a Sangoma like Lwandle. And I remember you from that night”. Dudu answers through big brown twinkly eyes. I grin, so happy to remember that night, and happy to be remembered.

I extend my left arm in front of me, bringing my own string of beads into Dudu’s line of sight. I tell the story of my 50th birthday: my own ceremony, to celebrate not a homecoming, but the coming of a significant age. I tell of the white beads and the snake patterned African cloth that Lwandle presented to me, as a birthday gift. I tell of the great gift of the story of her Sangoma journey, that Lwandle shared with the twenty-something of us seated in that suburban celebratory circle. A story that took me and many others to places we had not visited before. I tell Dudu how this strand of beads has journeyed with me every step, since Lwandle buttoned them onto my wrist[4], on her return to work, and on the eve of my departure for Europe – so that I could carry a small, yet deeply significant part of Africa, of her, with me, as I travelled in far off lands. I tell of snaked-patterned cloth, a cloth that, given my irrational fear of snakes, challenged me greatly – to keep my eyes open, to see what I found hard to see. A snake once befriended, a cloth could then become part of the centre of many circle processes that I have led since that day; a cloth that in turn, has become a safe container for many other stories.

“I was wondering where you’d gotten to”, Dearly Beloved’s words on entering the small room.

“I’m just catching up with Dudu, she was at Lwandle’s returning ceremony and she’s also a Sangoma”, I explain.

I hadn’t actually remembered Dudu from that night, as being one of Lwandle’s ‘Sangoma sisters’, who had accompanied her by minibus taxi from Mpumalanga; or as a member of her local community who had come to welcome her home. It was difficult to remember who was who, and who was there, because the same yard in which we had just eaten lunch, had on that night, been a bright and busy patchwork of women and men in their ceremonial clothes, and the space between them punctuated with big, equally brightly ‘dressed’ drums.

Another passage of companionable conversation in the back room, including more about beads, and a string of brightly-coloured glass beads passing from Beloved’s wrist to Dudu’s, to take up residence next to her Sangoma beads. Dudu was delighted with the gift and said that whenever she looked at them, she’d think of Dee. So now, both Beloved and I, happy to be remembered.

Time, we said for us to be heading home. Lwandle, Dudu, and Pinky roused themselves from their seats and we five formed a small, slow tide washing its way past the outbuildings and through the yard toward the front gate.

“Let’s take a picture together before we go”, I say.

We stand somewhat regally, side by side, constrained by Covid, from a closer clustering that would be more reflective of the warmth and connection being carried between us. We stand, three generations of women and one boy child. Opposite us, Khetha, who acts as photographer – snapping as many photos as sentences he is wont to speak. Diagonally behind Khetha, a big blue drum rests idly against the wall.

“Ah Lwandle, please will you play it for us”, the excited child within me pleads, “it will be so great if you’ll play”.

Lwandle, ever low-key, doesn’t say anything, but positions herself on a plastic chair, draws the drum close, and secures it between her knees. In each hand, a piece of black plastic pipe, maybe a piece of plumbing in a previous life, that now serves as a drumstick. Boom, boom, boom, crisp loud beating booms out. Slow, spaced, rhythmic. Boom, boom, boom. The slow tempo gains speed and momentum. Beloved spontaneously begins to dance, stamping up brown dust. Me, a very happy spectator, immersed in the sounds and sight of these two women of my heart.

Beloved backs away and comes to rest. Dudu and I come forward, find the rhythm of the drum, and fall into an unconventional two-step. Two beats of the left foot, two of the right. Left-left, right-right, our feet keep time with Lwandle’s hands. Without warning, Lwandle stops. Stillness. Dudu takes the drum, the beating resumes. Lwandle and I now dance the ‘two-step’, some moves added. We rotate our hips, bend at the knees, get ourselves lower to the ground and more fully into the dance. Silence, an abrupt end to the beat and beating. Lwandle and I bring ourselves to a staggering stop.

“Hey good dancing,” a wide smile stretches across Dudu’s lips and plays around her eyes.

I laugh, energy and joy oozing out of me. I slap myself on the bottom. “It’s good for dancing, this bum.” A bottom I have always considered to be on the generous side, more African in its shape and proportions than Caucasian.

We all catch our breath, a calm descends. And into the quiet, Lwandle’s voice sounds out, a prayer-like quality in her even tone and timbre. A reaching towards, a gap being bridged. A pause, and the return to silence. Suddenly, Lwandle in a different voice. A guttural, growling reverberates through her whole being. Words not from her, but through her. Words, I believe, uttered on behalf of her ancestor. A message offered on this day, at this time. I don’t know the meaning but it does not matter. It is more than enough to hear, to hold, and to be held in this moment, in this magic, in the depth of this blessing of Braamfischerville. I stand humbled and honoured.

Lwandle recovers her breath, returns to her less vocal way of being. Our tide re-forms, and laps towards the gate, towards our leaving. No hugs goodbye, but grateful thanks spoken with words and eyes and energy. To Khetha, Beloved and I both, place the balls of our hands under our chins and extend our open palms and outstretched fingers towards him – ‘thank-you’ in sign language, the sign he taught us, amongst his great many sentences and stories, what now feels like many hours ago.

Greetings given, we head out the gate and into the car. A careful U-turn in the heavily-peopled street, slowly past the row of parked cars. We smile and wave to the people taking pictures. “We found our party” I call out. Our smiles and waves reciprocated.

We make our way back through the pulsating streets, past the soccer pitch still at play, past the street-side shisa nyamas with their sizzling meat, past the hairdressers, the fruit and vegetable stalls, the random tables of sweets and cigarettes, the towers of tyres. The bustle and busyness begin to taper, a drop in the decibels as we wind our way on the long snaking entrance road, fewer people now at this later hour. Onward, past the long-useless Durban Deep mine dump and back onto Main Reef Road. Quiet now outside the car, Beloved and I similarly quiet inside the car.

The Johannesburg city skyline suggests itself in the distance, a skyline not usually seen from this direction, from the far west, not usually seen at this time of the day. The autumn light and dusk give it a grainy texture, a sepia-like quality, but not just brown and white, rather a range of colours, layers, and densities. Some colours and layers deep, rich, distinguishable, and obvious to the eye, others more subtle, nuanced, sensed rather than seen. Something rich and layered like our experience of the afternoon, and beyond the afternoon, our experience of the journey we have travelled with Lwandle over the past two years. Two years, a small proportion of the 13 years Lwandle and I have travelled together, and an even smaller proportion of Beloved and Lwandle’s 23-year journey. Two years however, of great depth and deepening.

As the distance between us and Braamfischerville grows, so does my melancholy. Not just the leaving of this moment, but a much bigger leaving – our decision to leave Johannesburg, to move to Cape Town. For me, a returning, after 28 years in Joburg, to return to my own elders and ancestors. And in this physical leaving, a much more dislodging emotional and relational leaving. Leaving this city and its unsung and often unacknowledged offering – the energy and vibrancy it holds, a different level of involvement in Africa, its somewhat more integrated way of being. Leaving the city that has given a home to me, and a home to experiences like these, on this day and others. Leaving Lwandle. A dull ache closes in around my heart. An ache that I cannot will away, but have to sit in, and honour all that lies behind and within it.

The familiar rattle and squeak of the garage door. Home. Engine off, but my emotions still running, albeit at reduced revs. A few hours of continuing discombobulation.

Later that night, a settling. My own ritual. No drums or dancing, instead incense, stillness, and silence in my office sanctuary. To begin, I give thanks for everything this day has been. Thanks spoken out loud into my soundless office. Then into meditation, connecting to ‘the wisdom within’. My way different to Lwandle’s way – hers a standing, high-volume intensity – mine, a sedate, seated stillness. Different in its ‘outer’, but not in its ‘inner’. Both she and I, connecting to another wisdom, another source of inspiration and meaning, the alignment of body, soul, and spirit. Again, into my focus, the vastly different worlds we live in, yet the strikingly similar ways we live in these worlds, in our practice to connect to places of wealth and wisdom, to connect to places of spirit and soul beyond our selves.

I end my meditation and musings with a cupped-hand-clap. A gesture I have come to know, since first witnessing it on the night of Lwandle’s returning ceremony. A night of a great many cupped-hand- claps. A gesture accompanied by the words: “thokoza gogo”, which I learn is a Zulu greeting to the ancestors”. An acknowledgment, a thank-you. The night of Lwandle’s returning, repeated thanks given to the ancestors.

Over the muted sound of my own hands clapping, my words “thokoza gogo”. Again, I cup and clap and greet the ‘gogo’, (the grandmother as representative of the ancestors). I acknowledge and thank her for all the blessings that have been bestowed, in Braamfischerville, and way beyond, in our daily being – in the love and the learning the ancestors have supported; and with this, how they have enabled Lwandle, Beloved, and I to be beaded together in a way much different, much deeper, and more fully seen than before. Thokoza gogo.

I feel at peace.

A note about my meaning-making.

I am not holding myself up as having any great knowledge of African spirituality or the being and doing of a Sangoma. What I have written is based on my own experience and interpretations, on knowledge and information Lwandle has shared with me, in response to my questions and curiosities. Knowledge and information which although hers, is still subject to my own interpretation and understanding.  Furthermore, there are many different African spiritual and Sangoma traditions, each of which would easily differ in their practices and accordingly differ from how they are in the stories I have told.

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[1] Braamfischerville is named after Braam Fischer, a lawyer of Afrikaner descent, and who defended many anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela at the 1963-1964 Rivonia treason trial, that led to Mandela’s life sentence for sabotage.

[2] ‘Gogo’ being Zulu for ‘grandmother’.

[3] Stampmielies are made from samp, an African food consisting of dried corn kernels that have been pounded and chopped. It is cooked with water, salt and butter and is served on its own or with gravy, beans, or meat. Dombolo is traditional South African steamed bread.

[4] Lwandle had sewed a button onto the one end of the strand, and a created a loop for the button on the other end, and joined the two, once the beads were positioned around my wrist.