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

it would cost me. But I think this is where it began.
    One of the masks Msizi wore when he was in the mood for teasing was that of male chauvinist. He knew that Mary-Anne and I, and many others, would get our hackles up when he started to push gender roles, demanding we bring the men food and wash their clothes like proper African women. He took great pleasure in telling us that in traditional homes, the wife would bring the husband’s food to him on her knees and then she and the children would eat only after he had eaten his fill. While I knew he was winding us up, the nostalgic look on his face had me a little worried. I later learnt that he and his brothers had done all the work in his home, with both his parents being absent most of the time, so it was not a nostalgia for what he had experienced, but perhaps the one that all men have for the good old days when men were men and women were women. I, however, had no longing for such a time, so Msizi would need to get his own food from the kitchen.
    Meanwhile, preparations were well under way for a ten-day mission in Eshowe, a small rural town up the north coast from Durban. The mission was run by a full team this time, not just the trainees as it had been at Brettonwood. We would hold rallies in the community hall, services each night in a large marquee on the football oval in the centre of town, bible studies, prayer meetings and youth meetings. We would be working with a coalition of local churches to host the mission, as they would be responsible for the follow up once it was over. Our organisation ran many such events across southern Africa on a regular basis and had been preparing for this event for almost a year. It was very exciting for me to be part of it, especially with David, the centre’s founder, being the keynote speaker. He was currently dividing his time between peace talks in Pietermaritzburg, the Eshowe mission and his many other speaking commitments across the country.
    Mary-Anne and I took a break from preparations to visit friends at a local technical high school called Plessislaer, which was located on the edge of Edendale, adjacent to the city’s industrial area. Surrounded by high brick walls topped with razor wire, the school looked more like a prison than an institute of learning. We pulled up at the steel gates and went to speak to security. To my surprise, the process felt strangely familiar, somewhat like a border post, as we filled in copious forms to allow us entry to the school. The official stamped memorandum read:
    Visit by:
    1. Miss M.A van Heerden
    2. Miss S. Blackburn
    Please allow SCM member D.S Sithole–ID 2862 to meet and accompany them to the meeting in C-28.
    Signed P. Zondi
    We were required to keep this document on us at all times. Our friends told us that the security was designed to keep the township violence out. Many parents had sent their sons to the school from rural areas and were very aware of the violence in the city, and in Pietermaritzburg in particular; the security was seen as a necessary precaution. My cynical mind wondered whether such measures also kept these young men in, so they could not be influenced by local community groups that were powerfully lobbying against the apartheid government. What I was beginning to learn was that within the black community in South Africa there was not one homogeneous view of the world and how best to live in it. There were diverse views, depending on where you lived, what church you went to and whose company you kept. What was also interesting was that, despite the white community’s insistence that there were substantial tribal divides, I was yet to get a sense of that. The divisions seemed to be elsewhere.
    In the week before the mission, I took some time out to meet with other local organisations, including World Vision, to explore work options in South Africa. While I was still interested in Tanzania, South Africa continued to grow as a possibility in