Holding Up the Sky by Sandy Blackburn-Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

choice. We left after almost an hour of African hospitality and drove through to the beachside suburb where Mary-Anne’s brother lived. That evening, we rattled around in the large house overlooking the water and again I was struck by the contrasts that South Africa presented and how my choice of friends took me regularly from one extreme to the other.
    We arrived in Cape Town later the next day and drove up the West Coast towards Porterville where Mary-Anne’s mother and stepfather lived. He was the local GP and had his surgery in their sprawling colonial-style home. Over dinner, they quizzed us about the work we were doing in ’Maritzburg. I noticed that they were completely unfazed when Mary-Anne arrived with her two friends, without mentioning the colour of one of the guests they were to have in their home. I wondered if Mary-Anne had been surprising them in this way for years, so they had come to expect it, but I was still taken aback that a white couple of their generation was so open-minded. Aside from visiting her parents, Mary-Anne had also wanted to come and swap cars. Up until this point, she had been using one of the family cars, but it appeared to be causing some problems. She explained to her mother that it was the same colour as the yellow cars the police used in the townships and when she arrived to visit friends, she often found them climbing over the back fence to get away. Her mother also took this piece of information in her stride and offered her a respectable metallic green car instead.
    We spent two full and fabulous days in the magical city of Cape Town before heading back to Grahamstown. We had dropped Msizi off in Rini before heading into town to fetch Gary. After enjoying Jacques and Margie’s hospitality over lunch, we drove back out to Rini to find Msizi. After waiting outside the empty house for about twenty minutes, we decided to fill up with petrol to save some time. As we turned out of the township onto the road into town, an army personnel transport, known as a kasper, spotted us and chased us into town. They hauled us out of the car and questioned us about our business in the township. They doubted our story of fetching a friend, not a common scenario in such a divided country, and warned us of the violent nature of townships and how we were putting our lives at risk. We thanked them for their concern, filled up and headed right back to Rini. They tailed us all the way, with two soldiers carrying automatic weapons perched on the top of the tank-like vehicle. Thankfully, Msizi was home by this time, so he threw his things into the car and we left, waving to his mother as we did.
    I would return to Cape Town many times, but only this once would I be here with Msizi. As we had done throughout the trip, Msizi and I snatched moments to talk and be together, enjoying the time away from our busy lives at the Nonsuch Road.
    Back at the centre, we continued to keep our relationship to ourselves though finding time together was difficult, living in a community as we did. I was also struggling with the way Msizi treated me in public. In private he was tender and appreciative; however, in public he was distant and would at times run me down with his teasing. I oscillated between thinking I needed to get a thicker skin and wondering whether he enjoyed the arrangement, turning his emotions off and on. In hindsight, the secrecy itself became the higher calling to which everything else, including my sense of wellbeing, was sacrificed. However, in an effort to ft in, I went along with it without question, something I would do many times in the future.
    This emerging habit of accommodation would not serve me well. My desire to cause no further injury to those who had been badly injured meant that I opened myself up to being taken for granted and, sometimes, used, whether purposefully or not. As this was the first time I had compromised my own needs, even in a small way, I could not yet see what