Apartheid - it's a question of black and white

I was brought up to be kind, to go to church regularly and to confess my sins every Saturday so that I could receive God on Sunday. Born in Madagascar in the '50's I lived the first six years of my life with predominantly black people. They were my friends, and they were also my servants. We had a cook, a gardener and two young women who cleaned our house and washed clothes. They have all disappeared into the mental mists of time except for our cook, Antoine. I loved him with all my heart and he loved me as though I was his own daughter. I'm sure he's long dead now, but he lives on in my mind. Antoine would leave his home before daybreak every morning and walk many miles to reach our house. He had three formal meals to serve each day - that seems to have been de rigueur for most French colonialists living on the island at that time. Antoine would shop at the open-air market every day, then stand in the swelteringly hot kitchen and prepare perfectly cooked roasts, light flans and whatever else was on his menu for the day. I loved the days Antoine cooked roast beef. He'd prick the meat and stuff plump cloves of garlic in all the holes before putting it into the blazing coal oven. After the meat had spat and sizzled for a while, he'd pull out the roast and pour some of the fragrant juices into a cup and hand it to me. If I close my eyes I can still taste that juice, the oil and blood, the salt and pepper, and, oh, the garlic - all mingled together to make the best broth I've ever tasted. One day my mom and my aunt pooled their money and bought him a bicycle. It was a girl's bike but Antoine didn't care. Cycling to and from our house saved him a lot of time that he could now spend with his own family. He worked from sunrise to after sunset seven days a week, and sometimes if my parents went to a movie he'd volunteer to look after me and my brother. We did crazy things and Antoine would take the blame, stoically shrugging his shoulders and smiling. Then he'd cycle home in the pitch blackness of night, through endless rice paddies, dodging deep potholes in the mud roads and be back at work in our kitchen at daybreak, brewing coffee and baking croissants for breakfast, resplendent in his freshly washed and starched white tunic. You probably think we were a wealthy family, living off the sweat of our servants. To the contrary, we had very little money and my parents sacrificed a lot to pay for our numerous servants - without those jobs their families would starve. In 1956 we flew to South Africa to begin our new lives in the land of milk and honey. Madagascar's natives were getting restless and wanted their country for themselves. I hated South Africa. I couldn't speak either of the official languages and my first day at school was spent crying in the corner of the classroom. The teachers couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them. When my father came to collect us that first afternoon, he was met by two very miserable kids. He bought us ice creams and sweets and then we walked home. Mom had prepared a feast to celebrate our first day at school - roast beef, mash potatoes followed by a vanilla flan. I cried even more, for my beloved Antoine, my best friend in the world. Walking to school the next morning, I glanced up at my dad. Tears were silently streaming down his face and this, strangely, made me feel a little stronger. All our friends were now white kids and we weren't allowed to talk to anyone who was black. Totally confusing, but I had enough of my own problems so I didn't question my parents too much when they said we had to follow the laws of the country. I did wonder, though, why there weren't any black kids in my school - I mean, they could be there, couldn't they, and talk only to each other, right? I later found out they had their own schools and was told that was a good thing. As years passed I fell into an acceptance that there was a great divide between black and white and the only time I spoke to a black person was when I needed something done. I accepted it when I was told that they were inferior to whites - and that the black folks knew that, and they, too, accepted it. I accepted that we rode on different buses, shopped at different stores, entered rooms through different doors, and sat on different benches in the park - "white" benches were placed under shady trees and "black" benches were on the outskirts of the park, placed on dry sand with no protective shady trees. If a black nanny was in the park looking after a white kid, she was allowed to sit in the shade, but on the grass, not the bench. We had a full-time maid, Emily, who lived in a small room in our backyard. She had a husband and kids, but she lived alone, as was the law. Once in a while her husband would come to visit her, always during the day. He was a miner and lived in a nice enough compound near a gold mine. He had a comfortable cot in a huge dormitory which he shared with two dozen or so other miners. He had to be back at the compound before dark. Once a year he and Emily would both go home to visit their children who were looked after by their extended family. Emily invariably came back pregnant. She would have her child, whom she would keep with her until the next time she went home; then she would leave the infant with her other children and come back alone. Emily diligently saved her money and bought whatever was needed for her own home. When she went home, usually for the whole of December, she'd be loaded down with misshapen cardboard boxes tied with string, an odd chair, and pieces of plastic piping. My dad drove her to the train station. She would sit in the back of the car, of course. The station was divided into two distinct sections and she'd trudge to the black section and buy a ticket home. No sleeper compartments, just uncomfortable wooden benches crammed together for a journey that lasted more than two days. Both my parents had full-time jobs so we needed a replacement and usually Emily would organize one before she left. It never worked out because Emily feared for her job and never properly trained the replacement maid, and so my mother usually landed up firing her, and we would look after ourselves for that time. In my late teens I began to see the unfairness of what was happening in South Africa, especially how SA had changed me, as a person. I found myself ignoring black people, and even worse, when they were around, I totally expected them to not understand whatever it was we were talking about - as though they were unable to make sense of anything. There were times I didn't even see them standing there - except for Emily. I loved her, and over time I got to know about her family, and how sad she was when her youngest child died suddenly and she couldn't be there. She cried for days and my mother cooked her tasty stews and sustaining soups. But her husband wasn't allowed to stay overnight to comfort her, so she spent many a lonely night in her tiny room, on her single bed. We knew she was in pain, but we also realized that their reactions were totally different from us white folks, and she'd get over it, sooner or later- hopefully sooner. Thankfully my outlook changed as I matured, and I had friends of all denominations and colors. When we discussed the political situation in the country, they never criticized me for my color or the privileged lifestyle I led. They accepted me for who I was - and that has been the biggest life lesson I learned - acceptance of people for who they are and not because of color, religion, sex, sexual orientation and all the other crap we tend to look at. Then Black South Africans began to make themselves heard - they rioted and the police tried to stifle their complaints, but over time the world sat up and took notice and realized that there was more than gold and diamonds in this complex country. There were human lives, people who had feelings, who loved and hated, just like everybody else, and whose dignity had been completely obliterated by the boer afrikaaners' regime. But I'm not going to go into that right now - my purpose for writing this is to acknowledge all those people who touched my life, who molded me for better or worse, those people who loved me unconditionally and who were part of my life, who looked after me and wiped away my tears when I should have been wiping away theirs; who comforted me when I should have comforted them and told them that I was sorry that their lives were so dreadful and full of hurt. I love and honor you all - especially you, Antoine and Emily.