Global Citizen: Celebrating Humanity

By Olga Legoale and Mndebele

He who sleeps with a full stomach while neighbours are sleeping on pangs of hunger is not one of us.

This book is fictional based on a true story. It is about an African girl who grew up in South Africa and went through a lot of adversities in her lifetime and emerged triumphantly as a global citizen.

The book has several chapters with titles like One-Woman Army; Jordan, the Land of John the Baptist, Pre-rainbow Reawakening; Little Girl Rebels against Traditional Healer and many more.

It has several black and white illustrations of various photographs snapped from around the globe.

Ntokozo grows up against all odds to become a globetrotting tourist. The illustrations in the book are real places that she visited in her insatiable quest to understand other people and their special various cultures.

In both picture and narration, the reader is transported from South Africa to various countries in the Middle East, Far East and beyond through the eye of the main character.

The book clearly illustrates what it means to cross the bridge of ignorance and poverty.

The fictional main character in the book is the authors persona.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453571927

Olga Legoale

The author Athalia Olga Legoale/Mndebele is a professional nurse specialised in critical care nursing. She was born and brought up in South Africa as the one and only child of her parents. Global Citizen is her first novel. The novel is based on true-life experiences of the author although some names and places have been changed for the sake of privacy. The author first travelled to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for employment in 1999. Between 2000 and 2010, she visited several countries for cultural exchange and insatiable curiosity to study at close range the emerging global human face. Over the years, the author has been actively involved in writing short stories and essays that she never initiated publishing. Olga currently resides and works in Eastern Saudi Arabia – Khobar City.

Book preview

GLOBAL CITIZEN

CELEBRATING HUMANITY

OLGA LEGOALE/Mndebele

Copyright © 2010 by Olga Legoale/Mndebele.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010913252

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4535-7191-0

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4535-7190-3

ISBN:   Ebook   978-1-4535-7192-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

[e-mail]

300059

CONTENTS

Chapter 1    One-Woman Army

Chapter 2    Dark Moments—Arise and Shine

Chapter 3    Bundle of Joy and Hope

Chapter 4    Brave Woman and the Demolishing Man

Chapter 5    Little Princess Blossoms

Chapter 6    Light on the Other Side of the Tunnel

Chapter 7    Granny Gone Forever

Chapter 8    Pre-rainbow Reawakening

Chapter 9    Epilepsy

Chapter 10    Little Girl Rebels against Traditional Healer

Chapter 11    Girls in Boarding School

Chapter 12    Crossroads

Chapter 13    Dedication and Devotion

Chapter 14    Million-Dollar Job

Chapter 15    Tapping on Heaven’s Door

Chapter 16    The Honey Bee

Chapter 17    Meek Lamb and Vicious Lion Become Friends

Chapter 18    A Nation Labour to Motherhood

Chapter 19    Strong Irreversible Winds of Change

Chapter 20    New Realities Are Poles Apart—Going Global

Chapter 21    Sweet Africa like No Other

Chapter 22    Dubai, the Beautiful Desert

Chapter 23    Egypt, Land of the Pharaohs

Chapter 24    The Beauty of Thailand

Chapter 25    Korea, the Demilitarised Zone

Chapter 26    China, Monument of Greatness

Chapter 27    Japan, Land of Technology

Chapter 28    Turkey—Asia Meets Europe

Chapter 29    Shanghai, Beijing

Chapter 30    Vibrant Hong Kong

Chapter 31    Jordan, the Land of John the Baptist

Chapter 32    Everything Happens for a Reason

Chapter 33    Turning Point

Chapter 34    Angel of Life

Chapter 35    Post-Apartheid Era

Chapter 36    Conclusion

Prologue

For many years, Ntokozo lived mysterious, exciting and eventful life. She eventually gave herself the nickname ‘Ms Drama Queen’ and it fitted most of the berserk circumstances she sometimes stumbled upon in her lifetime.

In her susceptible existence, she constantly found herself involved in the most archaic scenarios whereby she encounters a lot of ups and downs. Most events that she stumbled upon during her vulnerable years as a growing up citizen will forever be stored safely in her core and psyche.

This book is partly fiction based on a true story. Some characters and places have been changed for the sake of confidentiality.

The book Global Citizen transcends four generations. The tale revolves around the protagonist, Ntokozo, a girl whose great-grandmother went through many adversities in the hands of the old regime in South Africa. However still muddled throughout her own traumatic and exciting life to shape the life of her great-granddaughter Ntokozo. The writer portrays Ntokozo like her great grandma experiencing many vexing and thrilling trials in her lifespan too.

Unlike her Grandma who lived her entire life in farms and townships, Ntokozo grows against all odds to become a globetrotting citizen and thus the title of the book, ‘Global Citizen’.

Throughout the trials little Ntokozo encounters she constantly remembers her great-grandma’s teachings. Her great-grandma always taught her that through perseverance, tolerance and dedication humanity could ascend the highest mountain or deepest valley in this universe triumphantly.

Dedication

Dedications to my late dad Paulos Mndebele, a father who wanted the best for me and was always there throughout his lifetime, even on his dying bed still encouraging me to go on and be the best that I could be.

Special dedications to my late great-grandma Sara Mashabela/De Jaar, who actually brought me up and, during her lifetime, narrated most of the events in a very precise logical order. All information gathered from great-grandma Sara helped a lot in facilitating all the unforgettable, exciting, and outrageous memories on paper.

A Very Special Dedication

I dedicate this book to Aunt Nelly Dula Mabika Mashile, the lady who actually facilitated a great deal in all the information in the book and was of great assistance in grooming and shaping me to be what I am today from an early age. I truly and honestly appreciate all the time she spent reading through this book, and providing me with some of the most valuable information about the sequence of events in some chapters.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Najib Shaaban for having shared valuable ideas, facilitated many of the editorial contributions, and offered sound advices. If it were not for his encouragement and support, I would not have had the strength to finish this book. He has been a great inspiration and a strong driving force behind my writing.

Prologue

A pregnant mind is truly a cherishable phenomenon. Ntokozo has been pregnant for some time and has been trying to conceal the pregnancy, but it was not very realistic in view of the fact that the baby was growing bigger and bigger, and her belly was bulging by day.

There came a point and time in her life when the pregnancy started haunting her. She could not veil it to the prying public eyes any more. She made up her mind to visit a doctor who was very bemused after his efficient physical examination. The doctor without more ado explicitly explained to her the perils of keeping a baby that was overdue. The one and only advice he gave her was to opt for an urgent Caesarean Section if she really wanted to deliver her baby alive. He clearly illuminated all the life threats she could encounter if she waited longer for a normal delivery. With all the explications from the doctor, Ntokozo was incredibly devastated; just the thought of an operation scared her to bits, sending baffling chills to her spine.

Initially, going for an operation was not on Ntokozo’s charts all she hoped for originally was a normal uncomplicated delivery, but unfortunately, the lucky card was not on her side.

After the realistic, chilling doctor’s explanation, Ntokozo was compelled to opt for an elective Caesarean Section that very same day; there was no two ways about it.

As the competent, good-looking theatre nurse on that lingering day wheeled her to the operating rooms on a very noisy gurney through the long, silent hospital corridors, she was extremely apprehensive and terrified.

As Ntokozo lay on the hard steel freezing operating table, she was gazing at the colossal lights. The operating room was daunting and huge. The colossal lights seemed to have been changing colours in front of her and she could slightly hear soft voices from the compassionate theatre personnel in the locale. Ntokozo unexpectedly experienced a sensation of serenity and contentment within herself for having taken that great step of opting for a Caesarean Section. With a faint agreeable nodding beam, she slowly closed her heavily sedated eyes and dozed off to a deep sleep due to the profound anaesthetic gases already administered on her.

Yes! Ntokozo was about to deliver her first precious baby. A baby she contemplated over a long period to nurture.

Waking up from the deep forty winks of anaesthetic sedation besides her laid her adoring precious book. An end artefact of a stimulated pregnant mind, and the recovery of an extensive haunted era.

Chapter 1

ONE-WOMAN ARMY

Great-grandma Sarah grew up on a farm in Pretoria, working as a domestic servant for the De Jaars’, an extraordinarily rich white family in South Africa during the apartheid era. The De Jaars’ family owned a gigantic expansive piece of land. They took Great-grandma Sara under their wings at a premature age from her parents. Her parents had worked for many years on that same farm, by then were incredibly old, and could not cope to any further extent with the increasing workload of the farm. It was a common practice among white settler farmers those years in South Africa to replace overworked old farm labourers with their young, energetic naive offspring replacing one generation after the other and serving the same family tree.

Labourers of both sexes, mostly young and bouncy, worked long hours in the fields of the De Jaars for exceedingly low wages. Farm labourers were tilling, growing, and harvesting diverse types of crops—wheat, grains, and sugar canes—at different seasons of the year, despite the fact that they were taking care of their master’s livestock. Summer and winter never made a difference. Labourers had to work under the most unpleasant weather conditions, like rainy, misty, or extremely hot weathers without complaining; they had no option in any case.

Huge, remarkably green, eye-catching fruit trees boarded the entire farm of the De Jaars, producing immense dissimilar fruits all year round depending on the season. The diverse fruit trees planted systematically had narrow fissure divisions. A huge, flourishing, striking vegetable garden a few metres away fully complemented those green-leaved luxuriant trees. The vegetable garden produced multiplicity of vegetables depending on the season. Labourers harvested hefty round onions, long thick yellow glittery carrots, bright red shiny ideal tomatoes, green fresh herbs and a variety of countless vegetables.

At the main entrance of the farm, a glossy enormous windmill supplying water for up—keeping of the farm could evidently be spotted from afar.

The backyard of Mr De Jaar’s farm was an enduring home to farm labourers provided for by their master at no extra cost. The badly constructed workers mud brick and tin roofing quarters with dusty grimy floors had no terrazzo. All bedrooms had miniature-stilted wooden windows on the sides with obvious gaps in between, sliding slightly to one side. A bit of sunshine penetrated through those window gaps daytime, and at night, the emission of moon rays passed through the same gaps. The windows had no glass panels at all.

The labourers shabbily furnished bedrooms had old chairs, amateurish self-made impassive wooden tables and spiral spring beds positioned on four big, empty, twenty-five-litre metal containers carefully crammed with soil to the brim for supplementing in balancing the beds. The huge, grungy common kitchen consisted of an old, hackneyed coal stove placed in one corner of the kitchen and an old overused table placed on the other end. During summer rainy days, and on sporadically extremely freezing winter nights meals were prepared on the dilapidated stove.

Daytime young farm labourers attended school for only six hours. Every morning the effervescent, young farm girls and boys shared their daily mandatory routine duties dedicatedly.

An elderly supervisor appointed by Mr De Jaar was obliged to divide the school-going-aged boys into two working groups every morning. He was compelled to supervise them throughout their sunrise assigned tasks. The one group of boys he formed, milked cows, and then placed that freshly wringed milk in huge silver-plated urn buckets. They consequently herded the cows jointly with the entire livestock for grazing in the open meadows for the day after milking them. The other group of boys collected eggs from the myriad chicken nests. They then washed and painstakingly packed those eggs in crates. Mr De Jaar transported the eggs later in the day to the city of Pretoria.

Driving daily with Mr De Jaar to the city of Pretoria was a compulsory, privileged task for two elderly men, who had worked all their lives in the farm and had displayed a sense of responsibility to their duties over the years. Every morning two chosen trusted elderly employees of Mr De Jaar delivered milk and eggs to different dairy outlets in the city on credit. At the end of each calendar month, the two elderly in charge men were compelled to collect all outstanding credit incurred throughout the month from dairy outlets.

Two women among the countless grown-up female labourers consigned on weekly bases prepared and served meals to the entire squad working in the farm daily. Meals were prepared on open fire, made out of dried goat and cow droppings. Giant-sized iron cast pots called drie voet potte were used for cooking. The word drie voet potte is derived from Afrikaans, meaning three-legged stand pots.

*‘Afrikaans’ is a language that originated from Dutch, a bit of Malay, Khoisan, and a few other local native dialects. Afrikaans was widely spoken by settlers who emigrated from Netherlands to South Africa in the 16th centaury. More or less ninety percent of the language comprises of Dutch terminologies. Afrikaans is up to date still a living language widely spoken in some parts of the Southern hemisphere of Africa.

Assigned cooks of that week had a contractual obligation of serving meals on time irrespective of dreadful weather conditions—like freezing and raining. Mr De Jaar the farm owner accepted no excuses from cooks for meals not served on time. The chefs of the week had to ensure that every farm employee got a fair and equal portion of whatever food served for the day.

For breakfast, labourers had slap pap with modest brown sugar. The Afrikaans-speaking population of South Africa call soft porridge ‘slap pap’. If by any chance there was excess milk left from the master’s kraal after the boys had finished putting milk in the huge urns, the chefs incorporated the remaining milk on top of the porridge. Otherwise, if there was no milk chefs’ added only sugar in the porridge served. The tedious ‘slap pap breakfast’ depending on the availability from the fields was alternated with mealies, amadumbe or sweet potatoes. Mealie—refers to corn in Afrikaans. A term commonly used in South Africa.

‘Amadumbe’ is a Zulu term for cocoyam. Cocoyam or ‘amadumbe’ are indigenous edible tuber wild African exotic potatoes resembling sweet potatoes, rich in iron, calcium, phosphate, and vitamin C. These wild greyish potatoes have a flavourless taste and are grown traditionally all year round as a nourishing crop in most parts of the African continent. Amadumbe are easy to sow due to their capability of surviving even in shocking dearth weathers in some parts of the African continent.

Cooking ‘amadumbe’, mealies, and sweet potatoes was effortless those days. Chefs steamed those dishes in plain water until done. They then served those delicacies still stifling hot in their actual skins. Labourers thereafter consumed the mealies or amadumbe without a care in the world, sprinkling a tad of salt for an enhanced flavour as they masticated on their sacred meal. The sweet potatoes were different in the sense that it required no salt or spice sprinkling. Labourers voraciously gobbled their sweet potatoes straight away from the pot without any salt-sprinkling efforts. The dyed-in-the-wool labourers relied on water to wash their heavy starchy amadumbe, sweet potatoes, or mealies down.

Every evening, exhausted labourers were served their famous dish of ‘umngcushu’ alternating it with ‘mealie pap’ for dinner. Umngcushu is a dish prepared out of roughly grinded dried corn kernels mixed with dried brown beans and onions, flavoured with a pinch of salt and chilli for an enhanced flavour. The famous umngcushu had to simmer for long hours on fire due to the hard, dried mealie kernels and beans.

‘Mealie pap’ is a traditional form of smooth porridge cooked out of finely grinded corn meal called ‘Mealie Meal’ in South Africa. The word pap originated from an Afrikaans term taken from Dutch vocabulary, meaning porridge or ‘gruel’. Up to date, ‘Maize Meal Pap’ is eaten in many countries but only categorized differently. For instance in East Africa, they call Mealie Pap ‘Ugali’, in Zimbabwe they call it ‘Sadza’ or ‘Isitwatwa’, and in Zambia and Malawi it is called ‘Sima’. Phaletshe is a common word used by Botswana citizens, Akumu is a widely used term in Nigeria, and Banku is a famous term in most West African countries. The main difference between other continents and ‘African pap’ is that for example in America they call Mealie Meal ‘Corn Meal’, and their way of cooking is poles apart in contrast with the African way of cooking. Americans use white corn meal adding butter, onion with countless spices in preparing pap and its termed ‘Grits’. In North Italy, they call their Mielie Pap ‘Polenta’. In ancient times, Italians classified ‘Polenta’ as peasants’ menu. With change of times, ‘Polenta’ became one of the most popular meals in most Italian, Mexican and several western country restaurants. The latest trend of cooking Polenta is to enrich it with mushroom sauces, adding different toppings like various vegetables with different types of cheese into the basic mixture. South Austrians eat their Polenta as a breakfast meal. They sprinkle sugar on top of the already cooked Polenta, besides they have other various unique traditional ways of preparing their breakfast Polenta. They add from simple honey to countless sweet delicacies on top of their breakfast Polenta. In Bosnia, they call their pap Puru and in Turkey, they call it Mihlama. Some oriental countries like India add Maize Meal to flour when preparing some of their delicious Rotis like ‘Masala makai roti.’ They mix the ‘Mealie Meal and flour ‘with water when preparing roti. ‘Masala makai roti’ is delicious flat Indian spicy bread served with different oriental curry dishes.

Mealie pap in the farm of Mr De Jaar was one of the most standard meals served for labourers. Mealie pap was served with various savouries, from green leafy vegetables called ‘morogo’ in ‘Sotho’ to chicken feet better known as Addidas in some Far Eastern countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and so forth. The term used among most native South Africans for chicken feet up to date is Runaways. Cow and sheep tripe, trotters and heads were also served with mealie pap. In the Mexican cuisine menus,—‘cow head stew ‘is famously known as ‘Cabeza’. Cabeza is a word taken from Spanish, meaning head. Up to this day, sheep head stew is termed ‘Half skop’. Half skop is a common mumbo jumbo term used amongst some South Africans especially those residing in Gauteng region and surroundings, up to date. The term ‘kop’ originated from Afrikaans, meaning head. Most of those adequately prepared savories in Mr. De Jaar’s farm were usually well spiced with all sorts of curries and chili.

According to Great-grandma Sara, Mr De Jaar was the one and only farm settler well known during those thorny years to be generous and caring towards his employees in those Pretoria farms’ vicinity. He provided two healthy, decent meal rations per day for each labourer as part of their salary packages and was giving each one of them a day off every payday in discrepancy to his counter farm owners, who granted only one lousy meal, and offering one day off per annum for their workers.

The meal package Mr. De Jaar provided his employees with comprised of breakfast that was served at five o’clock on the dot without failure every morning. Dinner was served at six o’clock after the labourers’ long, extensive tough working day in the fields. No extra supplementary meals in between were provided. Farm labourers had to device some means for survival during the day; mostly they survived on fruits from the hefty trees in the farm.

The rest of the elderly female labourers not assigned for preparation of meals for that week started working in the fields early in the morning immediately after their heavy breakfast.

Young girls made turns in doing laundry of their master and his family. Some had to wash, while others did the ironing before going to school briefly for six hours. The young school going age girls joined their elderly parents in the fields for the rest of the day after their brief classes.

Grown-up men and women worked all day long in the fields with no break time worth talking about. Masters in most South African farms during those tough years considered any labourer above fourteen grown-up. Life in numerous farms was hard-hitting, but labourers were all the way incredibly dedicated and docile to their respective masters.

In the farm of Baas De Jaar once a month, on a specific Sunday, labourers had tea with added raw brown sugar and ‘Amagwinya’ or ‘vetkoek’. Fine white sugar was strictly reserved for masters of those years. ‘Vetkoek’ in Afrikaans or ‘Amagwinya’ in Zulu are flour dough balls deep-fried in extremely hot cooking oil. According to Mr De Jaar, the once-a-month ‘vetkoek’ and tea was a special breakfast treat for the workers’ all month long hard work in the fields.

It was routine in the De Jaars’ farm for female labourers to wake up early in morning on the ‘vetkoek day’ to help in frying the ‘lekker vetkoek’. Each worker in the farm always looked forward with enthusiasm to the tea and ‘Amagwinya’ day breaking the daily ‘amadumbe’ and ‘slap pap’ monotonous breakfast. ‘Lekker’ refers to tasty in Afrikaans.

Chicken, vegetables and rice, wolfing down with ‘Red Cool Aid drink’ tagged along with custard and jelly as desserts, was an out of ordinary meal served farm workers only on special occasions like Christmas day, or whenever their honourable master got a new baby in his family or when one of the trusted farm workers was getting married.

According to majority