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Listen to thisI have been clearing out the rockery over the past few weekends. It used to be completely overtaken by brambles, their growth so thick and stubborn that there was no way to walk among the rocks, let alone to see what else might grow there, given the chance. In the past year we have been relentless in cutting them back, again and again and again, digging up and out their gnarled, bulbous roots. Bit by bit, leaf by leaf it seems other shrubs have appeared, at first only the most sturdy and confident ones, almost defiant in their new shoots, and oh, so beautiful. The more dried-out prickly bramble cuttings I clear, the deeper I dig for them, the more rocks I lift to trace and pull at the rope-like bramble root, the more I discover. Although I wear thick gloves, and am armed with a severe pair of secateurs, the bramble thorns get in and under my skin – bruising, scratching, burning, ripping. This weekend I have been noticing how many ferns there are. I love these plants, for their gentle determination to claim their space. Most of them look fragile and delicate, yet I also consider what it takes to survive in the place they come from, and not simply shrivel up, dry out and be no more. Most of them seem to be growing out of cracks between rocks, pushing their way out of the dark into the light. I want to take special care of them and nurture them in a way the other plants do not seem to need. I want to see them grow big and strong and spread out.
Yesterday it occurred to me that this might be a helpful way of reflecting on Nonduduso, a 12 year-old girl who died on Wednesday. I make no claims to having known her well and no assumptions about knowing much of her short life. All I do know is that she died on Wednesday, in hospital and probably alone, because no-one really cared that much.
The first time I went to see her “family" she was squatting over a tiny twig and stick fire, stirring a pot of water with a few cabbage leaves in it. She was crying softly and would only look through us, making no contact. She seemed beyond reach. The physical environment was one of disrepair, filth, and abandonment. The place was empty also of any human feeling, care or connectedness.
On that first visit we took Nonduduso to the local school to have her enrolled, organise a school uniform and settle the fees. None of this seemed to touch her in any way. How long she attended that school no-one knows.
We would return bringing food and also some clothes for her. Once her little emaciated body was covered in scabies scars. She became more and more ghost-like. Another time a group of leering, half-naked adolescent boys hovered around the rondavel, and when she started crying her grandmother simply laughed. At that point we took her from that place then and there, and she spent some time staying with one of the project “volunteers" who said that Nonduduso vomited a lot and cried.
When her mother started to get too sick to take care of her, Nonduduso had been sent to her maternal grandmother’s “home" where we had first found her, because she was not wanted at the homestead of her maternal grandfather. In the latter homestead there was a step-grandmother, and a group of boys obviously well cared for and adored. The step-grandmother was hard and hostile, the grandfather cautious to appear appeasing when we went to meet them and find out why Nonduduso was not welcome there. After her mother died, she returned here briefly, only to be asked to leave soon after. It was like she was an untouchable, an outcast, and I wonder (even if no-one else did) if her mother ever loved her. Yes, it was difficult to like this girl. She appeared so removed, so inaccessible, so utterly an island unto herself, she never smiled, and seldom spoke. This must have been the only way she knew how to survive.
By the second to last time I saw her, the light in her eyes was not even dim any longer, it was out, and she haunted me in the way that she had become a walking dead person among the living. There was nothing of life left in her. Her left ankle was swollen, and it was clear that the life force was beginning to drain out of her organs. I had a strong impulse to take her home, but we took her to the hospital instead. A diagnosis was made, kwashiorkor (a serious malnutrition-related condition). I hope I shall always remember that moment sitting on a hard bench on the children's ward, three hours after we first arrived at the hospital, while the nurses completed the paperwork. She started half-dozing leaning against the wall, and when it seemed she no longer had the strength to keep herself upright, she curled into a ball, and lay down in my lap. Not a single word passed between us. At that moment I felt unspeakable remorse at not simply having taken her home with me. I still feel that. Not because I could have saved her life, but merely to have offered a temporary safe, warm shelter.
Both her ankles were swollen the last time I saw her, at yet another place with some or other distant relative, in a homestead full of round, laughing children, animals of all shapes and sizes, a shebeen, and huge pots of something cooking on the fire. Nonduduso was sitting, alone, on the side of the rondavel where there was no hustle and bustle, hunched over a plate of stew and pap, and she barely acknowledged us. Shuffling her food around on the plate, we watched her eat a few tiny spoonfuls, mere morsels. The rest she placed untouched inside a cupboard. She really was not with us any longer. Two weeks later she was dead.
As I continue to work in the rockery, I will think of her – her outer life, the armour she wore bramble-like, enduring, rooting deep and menacing. Her vulnerability like the shyness of a fern hidden within the rocks, the tenderness of a new shoot on a stick long brittle. Work it, create space, nurture and take care, heal so that you may live. I am so sorry that this was not for her.
For you Nonduduso, whose name means “to care for":
May you now be at peace.
May you now be free from pain and suffering.
May you now be free.
This feature: Katrien Auf de Heyde (2004). Nonduduso... the girl who died because no-one cared enough. Child and Youth Care Vol. 22 No. 5 May 2004 pp.8-9
