Navigate: Through A - Dense Forest

By Buti Kulwane

Navigating through a dense forest is a phrase chosen by Buti Kulwane to describe the manner in which he experienced the first two decades of his life. He decided to write about his own life following an observation of the resilience in some of the young people he came across in his work.

The book was inspired by the people he served as an AIDS and trauma counsellor and when he managed a CBO for terminally ill adults and orphaned children. Many of the clients he came across, the orphaned children in particular, overcame difficulties in their lives. He observed positive changes in their lives but found it difficult to attribute them to external interventions. The inner strength of people enabled them to respond positively to counselling and care. He embarked on a journey to uncover the role played by the brain in responding to counselling, care and support. Chapter two is therefore dedicated to the human brain as he reveals the lessons he learnt on the functioning of the organ.

Chapter three contains information on his mother’s maternal and paternal great grandparents and the influence they may have had on the evolution of his family. He starts telling his life story from the fourth chapter onwards, from inception until completion of his studies at Wits University. His life experiences were like navigating through a dense forest inhabited by dangerous and poisonous creatures, but he came out alive. He concludes by saying that a higher power was always there by his side to guide and protect him.

Buti is convinced that his life was scripted long before he was conceived. He therefore has no reason to doubt God’s influence. His wisdom and resilience are indeed gifts from the One who created him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Buti Kulwane
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005231996

Book preview

Navigate

- Through A -

Dense Forest

Buti Kulwane

Copyright © 2020 Buti Kulwane

Published by Buti Kulwane Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2020

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 any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Buti Kulwane using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Lorna King for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

Buti Kulwane

[e-mail]

Table of Contents

About the Author

1. Religion Psychology and Work Experience

2. Lessons on what the Brain Does for Us

3. The Earlier Generations

4. The First Few Years of My Existence

5. Life at Boekenhout and the Sudden Return to Ga-Rankuwa Zone Two

6. Kgaugelo Middle School and Ga-Rankuwa Zone 16

7. Modiri High School and the Move to Mothotlung

8. University of the Witwatersrand in the Final Years of Apartheid Rule

9. Lessons Learnt during the First Two Decades of my Life

References

About the Author

For most of his childhood Buti lived in the township of Ga-Rankuwa on the north western side of Pretoria. After matriculation at the Modiri Secondary School he went to the Wits University where he completed a Bachelor’s degree. He went back to the same institution to complete a Master of Management degree in public and development management.

He worked for the South African Council for Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Transvaal Provincial Administration, AngloGold Ashanti Mining Company and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. He is currently employed by the Department of Social Development where he coordinates the anti-trafficking in persons programme.

It was his work experiences in Carletonville which inspired the decision to write about his childhood. During the 17 years in Carletonville, Buti worked as a mine social worker, manager of the Carletonville Home and Community Based Care and also as the manager of the AngloGold Ashanti HIV/AIDS Workplace Programme. He counselled HIV patients and victims of traumatic mine accidents. He was also exposed to working with bedridden AIDS patients and orphaned children at the Carletonville Home and Community Based Care. The reaction of patients to physical and emotional care and the resilience displayed by orphaned children in child-headed households encouraged him to look back into his own upbringing to discover whether he was also resilient to overcome the hardships posed by poverty and growing up in violent communities of the apartheid era.

Buti was about two years old when his mother met a young man who later became his stepfather. He was 27 years old when he met his biological father for the first time. He is now married to Nthabiseng and they have two teenage children, a daughter and a son. The family lives in the suburb of Wilropark on the western side of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Chapter 1

Religion Psychology and Work Experience

I have often asked myself the question, who am I, and in all the conversations I have had with myself the dominant topic has always been about my identity. In my interactions with other people I sometimes found myself unconsciously searching for my own identity within them. From the moment I became conscious of my existence and my surroundings, my mind has questioned the way things were and how I fit into the puzzle. What is right and wrong for me, and what am I supposed to do to adjust and be comfortable in this seemingly crazy world I find myself in? I think 95% of the time I never verbalised my questions and concerns as these were to be answered by myself.

In my search for the answers I observed what other people were doing and when I felt comfortable with the way they approached things, then I concluded that it was the best way to deal with specific situations and challenges. The consequences of the choices and behaviour of people around me always dictated the manner in which I would approach particular stages of my development. The lives of all the people I came across in my entire life have therefore contributed – either positively or negatively – to the person I became.

My guess is that experiences of many people are more or less similar to mine, but the difference is that a small fraction of people tend to take every little experience very seriously while others pay more attention to the most important areas in life. My conclusion is that I fall into the former, serious personality category, and that has sometimes been the source of my unhappiness in life. I seem to be too much of a perfectionist and sometimes unnecessarily hard on myself. If I just lived for today and hoped for tomorrow, I think I would be happier – but that is unfortunately not me. The conditions I grew up in and my personal experiences as a child and adult have all shaped the person I became. For a long time I was haunted by the wish to look at my life experiences in a psycho-social theoretical manner. In other words, how my interactions with others and the socio-economic conditions conspired to create the person I am.

Religion is the first societal institution a child is introduced to outside of their nuclear and extended families. Parents rush to have their newborn children baptised and introduced into the church, but only a few children can recall their baptism because most were still babies who did not know what was happening to them. Both my children cried as if the priest was taking out the demons that were possessing them before baptismal, and I suspect I may have cried because of the type of person I am. I was also baptised as a baby and both my grandmother and mother tried hard to keep me in the church during my childhood. Their efforts seemed futile when I began to question the value of religion in my life, but later on those efforts paid off when I realised that one is a spiritual being and has some kind of a vessel that requires spiritual filling at all times.

In my unending quest to find my spiritual self, I once pondered, after attending the Sunday morning mass on March 30, 2014, about the reasons why God put me on this earth. My wife and I attended the morning mass at St Anthony’s Catholic Church in Randfontein. It was the fourth Sunday of Lent and the day’s scripture readings were about the spiritual sight as opposed to the physical sight, and this was illustrated through God’s choice of David as the king from among the sons of Jesse. Samuel and Jesse thought God would choose one of Jesse’s older sons, but instead it was young David who was chosen. The stronger and well-dressed sons were overlooked for the boyish David. The other reading was that of Jesus helping a man who was born blind to gain his sight, with the Pharisees accusing and dismissing Jesus of being a non-believer by working on the Sabbath. The reading in Ephesians encourages everyone to constantly search for what pleases God while avoiding the works of darkness and exposing them if they are unmasked through the works of light.

I had conflicting feelings of being one of the chosen few while at the same time being a sinner who does not deserve any blessings from the Almighty. The blessings showered upon me are demonstrations that He has and will always be by my side. I therefore have no reason to doubt His love and should take it upon myself to be exemplary in confessing and glorifying His name for others to believe. His grace is indeed amazing as I consider myself not worthy to receive His blessings. The story I am about to share is an indication that I was born lost and blind but now I am found and can clearly see that. Jesus is indeed the light of the world, and those who do not recognise Him – though they see with their physical eyes – will become blind in the darkness of their spiritual pride.

The scripture readings were linked to Psalm 23 and the popular Amazing Grace hymn. I found myself reflecting on my own life experiences from my childhood as I have always grappled with thoughts of reasons why I, on many occasions, felt that God had been merciful to me, even though I have done so many things which He may view as offensive and sinful.

I was in a new job for the past two weeks and had just learnt that my salary would be about one third less than the previous one. Under normal circumstances I would have declined the offer, but I had to accept this job as it was a permanent post after being on better paying temporary contracts for almost five years. I wondered how, as a family, we would cope with such a huge drop in our monthly income. Then I thought about the many financial challenges we had faced previously and managed to overcome. The challenges in my life dated back to my childhood, university days and more recently in the late 1990s when I was studying part-time at the Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management. As a part-time student I travelled from Carletonville to the Parktown campus three times a week, and with the price of petrol always on the increase, I sometimes thought of dropping out. I drove a 1992 VW Citi Golf which got used to running on reserve for more than 100km – and I would sometimes joke that the car could run on the smell of petrol because it never stopped on the many occasions when I thought it would. I persevered, and it paid off as I finally walked away with a Master’s Degree in Public and Development Management.

Since being conceived in the late 1960s, there have been many challenges, and the more I think about them the more I am convinced that God has put me on to this earth for a purpose. I always felt my script was written long before conception, because there has always been a bright light at the end of all the dark tunnels I walked through. Many a time I thought I did not deserve all the mercy and blessings that God showered upon me as I am a weakling who seizes any opportunity to commit sin just for instant gratification. The blessings are indeed signs of His mercy and grace. His grace is indeed amazing as I consider myself a wretch who deserves the worst punishment. I therefore have no reason to doubt that He is a forgiving God who never ceases to show love and mercy to His children.

On March 30, 2014 the parish priest mentioned that God puts us through difficulties only to take us out of them for His and not our glory. We therefore have to always cite our own experiences in glorifying His holy name. It is all the positive and negative experiences of my life that inspired the writing of this book, and it is my wish for each reader to learn from them in their quest to understand how gracious, forgiving and merciful our God is.

Study of psychology and work influence

The search for my true identity went beyond spiritual awakening as it was further influenced by many other factors in my life. I was – as an undergraduate student of psychology and in my professional life as a social work practitioner – exposed to bits and pieces of information on the complex manner in which the human brain functions. I was fascinated by what a human brain has achieved and contributed in the development of technology that has improved the lives of people all over the world. Paradoxically, the same human brain has created weapons of mass destruction for man to destroy himself. Man’s self-destructive tendencies have always been my reminders that God, and not man, created everything and we should always look up to Him for answers to our problems. He gifted us with the brains to take care of ourselves and other living creatures, but we tend to abuse these intellectual gifts. I was therefore compelled to search and understand what goes on in the human’s mind that pushes him to do both good and evil.

My interest in the functioning of the brain started in my second-year neuropsychology class when I wrote an essay on the movement of a drop of blood in the brain. I had to explain the person’s behaviour each time the drop reached certain parts of the brain. I could feel the information was flowing as I visualised how my subject behaved as a result of the blood flowing into specific parts of the brain. I was so absorbed in the essay, and was confident it was the best I had ever written since starting at Wits University. It was sadly the first and the last essay in which I obtained 80% and the lecturer wrote An excellent essay on the cover page. I learnt there were five of us who obtained 80% on that essay, and even though I did not know who the other four were, I knew it would be very difficult for me to maintain the standard as I did not belong in that league. I enjoyed researching material for the essay and in the process discovered information I found to be very interesting. This influenced my decision to take psychology as the second major course with the hope of pursuing the field after completing my bachelor’s degree. Unfortunately my final mark of 58% in the third year was not sufficient to secure a place in the honours class of psychology, however, I celebrated the fact that I had completed my three-year bachelor’s degree in record time.

For a while my interest in the power of the human brain seemed to dissipate as I realised I did not have what it took to be a psychologist – until the beginning of the 21st century when I worked in the field of HIV and AIDS. In the early 1990s I was involved in post-test counselling of mineworkers who tested HIV+. At that time there was no treatment or cure for AIDS, but I was reluctant to tell my patients they were going to die of the disease, and would spend countless hours trying to motivate and instil some hope in them. I was not sure if I was doing the right thing, but kept going as I seemed to be the only hope for the infected mineworkers. At that time I was in my early 20s and my spirituality was still shallow, but I found myself tapping into religion whenever it was convenient to do so. As someone whose faith was doubtful, I can say that I abused Christianity because I knew deep down I was not sure about what I was saying. After all, a social worker helps a person to help themselves and if their strength is in religion then the professional should encourage them to hang on to their faith. To my surprise I was also beginning to accept that religion was having a huge influence in my life as the many sessions I was having with my patients compelled me to reflect on my own personal life. The efforts to help others were at the same time transforming me as I searched in the Bible for answers to their challenges.

Literature on HIV progression emphasised that living positively with the virus may help prolong a person’s life – and that infected people should accept their HIV+ status, eat well, exercise and practice safe sex by always wearing a condom when engaging in sexual intercourse. Unprotected sex may result in reinfection or passing the virus on to others. Reinfection would speed up progression of the disease as the viral load would increase and the CD4 count drop to levels that would make the person susceptible to opportunistic infections. Patients were also encouraged to report any ailments as soon as possible because their compromised immune system could deteriorate further when exposed to minor illnesses.

I sometimes felt we were just trying to help our patients die with dignity. We would also invite AIDS activists – many of whom were living with HIV and had publically disclosed their status – to address the mineworkers. Their message was always that of accepting one’s HIV+ status and living positively with the virus. Many of these activists were healthy and strong and I sometimes doubted they were telling us the truth about their status. Only a handful of my patients continued to live longer, and the health condition of many would rapidly deteriorate before they died. I found myself mourning the deaths of people who, under normal circumstances, I would not have known if it was not for HIV/AIDS. Many others ceased to be productive workers as a result of their deteriorating health and were repatriated by the mines to die at their rural homes. I was part of the repatriation team, having to ensure officials treated them with the dignity they deserved. Just like death, the repatriation had a disturbing effect on me as I knew the person was literally going home to die.

However, the condition of some repatriated patients would surprise everyone as they would defy the odds by improving and returning to the mines to seek re-employment. Emotional support of family and friends was also cited as one of the contributing factors to positive living of some of the patients. In addition to preventing the spread of HIV we were also dealing with the stigma which individuals experienced soon after finding out and disclosing their status to other people. Social stigma exacerbated the situation as it pushed some into isolation and made others vengeful by behaving recklessly with multiple sexual partners and purposely spreading the virus. I realised that the person’s mind has something to do with an individual’s ability or inability to defy the odds and live longer with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Once again I found myself asking questions like what happens in a person’s brain that enables them to accept their HIV+ status and decide to live positively with this deadly virus which is hell-bent on destroying their bodies.

Some of those who disclosed their status in public reported that they had established relationships with the virus occupying their bodies and were communicating with it on a regular basis. How can you talk to a virus that is invisible? Are you not talking to yourself and expressing your wish to live longer? Let’s say, for example, the virus listens, don’t you think this smart virus will be happy to speed up the process of destroying your body as that is its sole reason for its existence? I refer to HIV as a smart virus following the quote from Brian Brink who described it as follows in the Preface to World Economic Forum report titled Business and HIV/AIDS: Commitment and Action?

"A very smart virus. It attacks human weakness, both biological and behavioural. It targets the core of our human defences – the immune system. It infiltrates through the most secret route – our human sexuality and sexual behaviour. It exploits the power imbalance of human gender and exposes the weakness of relationships in our society. Unlike SARS, it is covert and insidious in its operation, taking an average of 8 to 10 years before manifesting as a disease with 100% mortality if untreated. Humans are quite complacent about small changes over a long period of time. We are much more adept at responding to crises than planning for the long term. That is why SARS failed and HIV continues to thrive."

In my efforts to answer the above questions which I was meant to ask infected individuals, I realised there could be some chemical reaction in the person’s brain that is triggered by his or her positive attitude, which in turn has a positive impact on their