Mental Illness: How I Escaped My Straightjacket

By Achilles du Preez

This book tells the remarkable story of Achilles du Preezs life. Despite the dire predictions of the psychiatrists treating him, he has recovered to become rehabilitated as a fully functioning member of the community. He emigrated from South Africa in 1999 to live in the United Kingdom, where he registered as a dentist, pursuing a special interest in orthodontics, until his retirement. He now lives in Eastleigh, Hampshire, where he spends his time writing and studying music.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524681302

Achilles du Preez

BRUCE VENTER was born in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1951. Educated in South Africa, he went on to study dentistry at the University of the Witwatersrand. After a year of compulsory military service working for the Medical Corps in Simonstown, he entered private practice in South Africa. In the late 1970s at the age of 27 he was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia.

Book preview

Chapter 2

No gunpowder ingredients

Alan and I spent every day we could, occupied with our own adventures. As we grew older, we ventured further afield on our bicycles. At some time in the past there had been an active, working brickfield, not far from home. A boundary of tall gum trees marked the start of the abandoned brickfields. We used our bicycles to ride there along the many paths which we used as race tracks. On our explorations we found deep depressions, where the clay had been taken out to produce bricks. These had since been filled by the rains forming pools and lakes. In other parts coco-pans still remained, parked on their miniature rails. This was great, a real train set for us to play with. Many hours were spent trying to move these heavy coco-pans along their rails. Alas, most tracks were on inclines, hardly any were flat. But try we did. In the end we gave up as they were too heavy to move and we weren’t familiar with them to know how to disengage their brakes. Instead we preferred to canoe on the artificial lakes caused by deeper digging.

With the help of our garden boys, we knocked together corrugated tin roofing to make these canoes. Some of the boys were Nyasas with experience of Lake Nyasa, in the country of their birth and where their wives and families still lived. They tried to teach us how to make them watertight, but unlike those canoes in their home country, made from hollowed trees felled for the purpose, all we had to use for tools were stones to hammer the edges together, certainly not ideal to make any waterborne craft watertight.

Would we end up sinking? The worrying thoughts faded as we struggled to get into the canoes. They did not hold our weight, as we tried to balance in them. Thoughts of sinking crossed my mind. We ventured out from the shore, but the waterline rose along the sides of the canoe, flooding them while we tried and tried to get them to float. I felt anxious. No one knew where we were. If things went wrong we would not be missed until dinnertime. Alan could not swim while I had bad memories of trying to learn. After many useless attempts to keep the gunwales from flooding, we gave up in disgust. Our objective of reaching the secluded islands in the middle of the lakes remained unfulfilled.

The banks of the lakes being of sticky clay, each time we struggled to get the canoes to hold us, we were covered in clay. Our plans did not work. Then we had to wash the mud off our clothes and dry them, so that no one would wise up to where we had been. We even tried to use the abundant clay to make the canoes watertight, but it just washed away.

After that failure we turned to our more reliable bicycles. For a long time we and the bikes were almost inseparable. We explored wherever a path led. Riding high out of the saddle, standing up on the pedals, we could see above the tall elephant grass, whereas standing on the ground the elephant grass reached over our heads. By contrast, in the school playgrounds we had a confined feeling, a feeling of being fenced in, so unlike that which we had on our bicycles, where we could see above the tall elephant grass, not ringed in by it.

At school, free in the afternoons, we would run along these paths stopping now and then to make elephant traps, as we called them. We would tie two clumps of grass across a path and then chase other children along them, especially the girls, waiting for the traps to trip them up. That was great fun! These games were much more enjoyable than the organised sports activities that the teachers had in mind for us.

One day Alan was given a kite as a present. This fired our imaginations. We decided we would go into business as weather forecasters. Our idea was to fly the kite high, as we’d seen in pictures in our encyclopaedias, and then from those heights, take readings of the necessary data to make our local forecasts. Our problems were not centred on the inaccuracy of forecasting. No, instead we were completely unable to get the kite to fly. After the kite crashed, we tried to build our own, using many different designs. We had an endless supply of reeds growing in a drain that cut through our property from the old railway line behind the house. We were not successful, no matter how many we made.

At about this time I had my first experience with tobacco, one of the main cash crops of Southern Rhodesia. Alan and I stole a cheroot from his grandfather, Gramps Campbell, who lived in a caravan alongside their house. Alan and I got such a hiding when discovered, that I never again did I lift a cigarette to my lips. Well done, Gramps Campbell.

The girls in my life started with one of our neighbour’s daughters. When I was four years old we locked ourselves in our toilet to discover that true, as we thought, we were different underneath our clothes. When I was twelve, these not so innocent girls, dared me to hang from a door frame. I jumped up to win, but that wasn’t the end! In an undignified manner they stripped me of my trousers, much to my embarrassment. I did not talk to the girls again after that humiliation. I decided it was safer playing with Alan.

As a result of an incident involving a game of Cowboys and Indians, using ‘live ammo’ shot from our pellet guns, I received an injury under my right eye, onto the bone protecting my eye ball. Our pellets were made from wax, which Alan and I cast for the purpose, expecting them to be unable to harm us, even if we achieved direct hits on each other, our intended targets. This injury brought our parents’ wrath down upon us; a much worse fate we thought, than the injuries themselves. At the time I did not realise how lucky I had been to avoid, perhaps, the loss of an eye.

I remember Auntie Julie, Alan’s mother, as being a sweet woman with large pendulous breasts. She bore my staring eyes unswervingly, seemingly with love and understanding, as I am sure she meant, with her whole, huge heart. She could never scold us for long before we were up to our old tricks again. But we still shot at each others legs. I got a direct hit on my knee. It stung like all hell! It was only then that we forgot about each other as Indians or enemies. The next time our prime target changed from one another, to the birds. Instead we became the cowboys and the birds on the telephone wires were our new Indians.

Andie was the first of our neighbours to buy a TV. We watched The Magnificent Seven many times as it was broadcast repeatedly, along with other Westerns featuring John Wayne. We at home never had our own TV until we moved to South Africa, where TV broadcasting only started in 1976. This delay was caused by the suspicion the Nationalist government had of outside influences. Later a ‘more enlightened’ attitude was adopted, believing it might actually benefit the country, if they censored TV, instead of banning it outright. If they controlled the broadcasting it could be an important means of influencing the peoples’ political views. For the first few years after TV came to South Africa, all we were able to watch was undersea footage of the Jacques Cousteau films of his voyages of discovery in the great oceans of the world and news acceptable to the government.

My parents did not want our neighbours influence on me to be too great. Andie was an artisan, a builder, who had different ambitions for his son than my parents had for me. They wanted me to matriculate and have the opportunity to obtain a University education as they had done and which they valued. However, what the Andie’s family lacked in formal education, they made up for in the warmth and love they gave to all. I learned early that there was more to people than education alone.

I enjoyed my seven years in junior school, especially during the latter part, when I was given the role of showing the school films at our Saturday morning matinee shows where we were allowed to run them for entertainment. Among the films I showed were Westerns which we borrowed from the American Embassy library. We also borrowed educational newsreels and travel logs, along with countless other documentaries and cartoons. We produced a wealth of interesting Saturday extra-curricular entertainment.

One American influence on me was my love of baseball. We played as often as possible. I hated soccer. Cricket balls hurt my hands when I tried to catch them. But in baseball, the mitts caught the ball painlessly and with much more ease. A clever American invention, I thought, appealing to my idea of constructive use of the mind to overcome problems, producing good solutions, not simply changing rules. Alan and I played baseball, using Andie’s large mitts, in their open front garden. Sometimes our home runs were a result of the ball ending up on the inside of the house windows, shattering them. That would end the game.

I was pursued by a few bullies at my junior School. My solution was to ambush one of them. When he thought he had me cornered I pulled a penknife on him in self defence. He fled and I was free of bullying. I took my rightful place and given respect in all my school activities from then on. No one heard about the solution and I think the perpetrator would not have given away our secret.

Of my life during those years, I remember the joy and the heartbreak connected to music. My music education started when Mary, my Godmother, presented me with my first classical record, ‘The Waltz of the Flowers’. I continued thereafter listening to Uncle Clive’s classical music collection. He shared my bedroom for a spell while he flew as a pilot for Central African Airways. I remember Bizet’s ‘Carmen,’ which had an important influence on me, evoking my initial love for the music produced by an orchestra, especially that featuring the clarinet.

At primary school we were encouraged to play an instrument. I had been given a recorder for no apparent reason. However, my music teacher did not understand the particular problems I encountered playing it. I wanted to play well, struggling to follow her instructions, but my little finger was not long enough to reach the furthest hole. I did not realise until years later, that I had small hands and the length of my fingers was the problem, instead I accepted her conclusion, that I was a dunce. I developed a long lasting feeling of being a failure at music. I never pursued my desire to play again until my late fifties, when I took up the clarinet enabling me to express my need to study, perform, play and create music, which had lain dormant inside me for all those years, too many to remember. Until then I used to whistle and sing, out of tune, so I was told, which further dented my self-worth.

After my Godmother, Mary, and Uncle Clive introduced me to classical music, Andie, Alan’s father, in contrast, introduced me to pop music. Clive also collected jazz records, not surprisingly, I now love most genres of music.

Apart from our music teacher, all the other teachers at my junior School were supportive towards me, treating me with kindness and respect. I vividly remember an elderly lady teacher who took a great interest in me and encouraged my every effort. I spent a year with each of my teachers but I remember her best. She encouraged me in many of my activities not just the single class that I attended with her.

When attending junior school, I used to cycle there and back on my bicycle each day. The school lay far away at the bottom of a long hill, an easy ride in the morning. The tiring part was at the end of the day, cycling up the hill.

I spent most of my pocket money on spearmints, which I sucked to refresh myself for the uphill ride home, holding them inside my cheeks for a long time until they dissolved. I eventually gave up this habit, after being warned about dental decay by Clive’s wife. He had married since leaving our home. She was the first to give me insight into health issues. Having trained as a nurse, she told me that we could get fluoride to strengthen our teeth by swallowing a little of our toothpaste each time we brushed our teeth. Whatever she said, I did miss my spearmints. I still love spearmint tea and even prefer spearmint flavoured toothpaste but I don’t like peppermint at all, finding the vapour too strong for my nose.

My mother’s younger brother, Ronald, lived in California and taught at Stanford University as a professor of nuclear physics. I remember his visit; I sat beside him on our garden swing enthralled in conversation, drinking in every word during those few precious moments I had alone with him. I would not have the opportunity again so was bitterly disappointed when Mom interrupted us to stop him from teaching me how to make my own gunpowder. However, he left me with a chemistry set to do my own experiments. Unfortunately there were no gunpowder ingredients in the box. He also gave me a book about soap bubbles which I devoured from cover to cover and treasured for many years until it was lost during one of our moves.

Chapter 3

Am I going to die?

When I was ten years old, Dad suffered a severe heart attack brought on when he lit up a cigarette after a period of not smoking. He had been advised to watch his diet and give up smoking after a previous less severe heart attack. This time a protracted stay at St Christopher’s Hospital was not enough. On his return home, Dad was advised to take a three month period of sick leave in order to recover fully. That usually meant a holiday at the coast in South Africa for most Rhodesians, as it was felt that a return to low altitude would be helpful. We lived at an altitude is 1483 metres (4865 feet).

After that single puff, he never smoked again.

Dad also decided to live on a cash basis, no longer having to worry about accounts. He bought a four-berth caravan to take the family on an extended three month holiday, touring the coast of South Africa. We took it easy driving each day, stopping overnight to make camp, eating and sleeping, then moving off early the next day. We decided to first stay for a period on the Natal south coast, where Dad had spent his childhood years. We were able to briefly meet his father, still living and working close by, but separated from Granny du Preez.

During the time in Natal, I vividly remember the waters being churned up, coming alive with fish, that were being forced ashore by other predatory fish. This was the famed sardine run which originated in the cold waters off the Southern Cape, on the Agulhas Banks, and eventually ended in the warm Indian ocean off Natal. People of all races rushed into the water, where in the shallows, carrying buckets and any other containers, they scooped out as many sardines as they could. This happened like Dad remembered it with his mother, who later cleaned and pickled the fish. We were unable to do that in our caravan.

While parked here Dad took us to see the house they had lived in. On driving past the house, the garden gate swung open as if in a sign of welcome. He remembered oiling that same teak garden gate many times to preserve it from the sea air.

We continued driving south via the Transkei to where Granny and Grandpa James lived. Granny had run a kindergarten for preschool children. She started it to augment their income to pay for her children’s education. In the days when Grandpa (twenty-four years older than Granny) had joined the Cape Civil Service there had been no provision for a widow’s pension. Grandpa had been most upset when, with three young children to rear, he was given early retirement at fifty-five years of age by the Government of the day. He believed he was not in favour as an English speaker, and a magistrate, who had drawn attention to a whole Coloured township having to survive on water supplied by a single tap. During World War II, he had wanted to enlist, but at sixty-five years of age he was turned away, instead he came out of retirement to act as Clerk of the Court to relieve a younger man to serve in the army. It proved how capable he was after ten years of unnecessary retirement, as he called it.

We parked the caravan in their driveway and stayed for six weeks. Again we did many day trips out seeing Mom’s old haunts and those from the times when Mom and Dad were courting.

That was the last time we saw Grandpa. He died a month later at the age of eighty-six, having lived to see us all. I listened to a story he remembered from his childhood days, Why the monkey had a red flannel on its tail, but because he was ill we where ushered out before he could finish the story. He was born in India. I believe it was an elephant that was supposed to have tramped on the monkey’s tail, so that the poor monkey had to go to school wearing the red flannel bandage. The monkey was teased by his fellow scholars.

Grandpa had been confined to bed for three years because of a weak heart. At the time, bed rest was thought to be the only help, sadly, the opposite is true. He eventually died from bowel cancer.

From there we drove down the Garden Route to the Western Cape. We chose to park the caravan at a camping site, which turned out to be one of the best stops of the whole holiday. I enjoyed harvesting mud worms for bait when the tide was out, thereby exposing the muddy lagoon flats. Dad took us to fish from rocky outcrops. There were also other beautiful seaside drives and beaches to visit. Being ten years old this all made a deep impression upon me. Mom and Dad made some good friends during our long stay.

Then on we moved, south again, to Cape Town. There we stayed at a caravan park. From there I walked with a Coloured fisherman through the neck in the mountain, over a broad sand dune, which lay between the mountain and adjoining rise. There we fished off a long rocky promontory. Wherever we tried fishing we were successful.

On our way home from Cape Town we had travelled about 50 miles, when our car blew a head gasket, forcing us to make an unscheduled stop while the car was being repaired.

From there it was a long haul to visit Granny du Preez and Dad’s Aunt Wilhelmina in the Orange Free State. Later we reached a town on the Valsch River, our destination for the night. We set up camp beside the river. It was a lovely park-like setting. It even had a swing on a rope dangling across the river. This swing soon became the most popular attraction for me and Felicity, especially with Dad to give a good push, carrying us high over the water. We had to have turn after turn, again and again. After a long summer evening beside the river, Mom and Dad had to drag us reluctantly off to bed.

The next morning we were all up early to be on our way. Mom was making the beds, while Dad was away in the shower. He had told me not to drag my feet but to get there immediately. I reluctantly followed him, but at the entrance I hesitated. I had a strange feeling, Where was Felicity? Was she in trouble? I hadn’t realised she had wondered off alone to explore the exciting swing of the night before.

This time, alone, she couldn’t quite reach the wooden handle dangling from the rope. She tried to reach out towards it but with her eyes on the handle, she ignored the weakness of the soft grass and muddy soil of the bank, held together only by roots of the willow tree. The bank gave way under her weight. She overbalanced, slipped into the deep, dark, muddy river.

Am I going to die?, she thought, as she bobbed to the surface, her long flaxen hair floating out like a halo around her head. It seemed she went limp with fright and panic, or was it that she was resigned to her fate? She couldn’t cry out in alarm, her heavy clothes, now soaked with water, weighed her down with her head beneath the water level.

In my restless wanderings away from the shower I looked towards the river and felt drawn to it. I noticed a strange cartwheel of weed, which only on closer inspection did I realise someone was in trouble. The cartwheel of weed turned out to be a halo of Felicity’s long hair. It struck me: this is my sister, do something! I carefully wedged my left foot between the roots on the river bank and gingerly lowered myself into the dark, cold water, floating my body out into the deeper water. The stream was gradually taking Felicity further away out of my grasp. It was no good trying to catch onto her body, which was moving off too far. I had only one option, to catch and pull at her hair. Like reeling in a heavy fish, she reluctantly stopped moving away in the stream, but I had difficulty bringing her closer to me. I let go of my last handhold I was using to grip the roots of the bank. Now using both hands I took a firmer grip of her slippery hair. I managed ever so slowly to bring her towards me and more importantly to the river bank.

After a long time of seemingly useless struggling to reach her, her limp body began to thrash with the pain I caused from pulling at her hair. Her thrashing threatened to overturn all I had accomplished in bringing her closer inshore. Nothing would entice me to let her go now. I could feel my feet were tiring and beginning to pull away from where I had been gripping the tree roots but I refused to let this thwart my determination to bring her towards me. As I brought her closer to the bank, out of the strong current that flowed in the middle of the river, the pressure on my feet eased somewhat. With one fortunate flail her arm hit mine and I managed to hold it tight in my grasp. I eventually held her body in my arms and glimpsed her face through the muddy waters with her long hair streaking across it.

With superhuman effort, I lifted Felicity out of the water, safely onto the river bank to prevent her from slipping back in. She began to vomit copious amounts of water. I pulled her back to the caravan to Mom, where Felicity continued the unpleasant painful vomiting, coughing up gallons of water. At last she cried out, tears pouring down her face, adding to the muddy water she had already vomited up. I felt immensely relieved when I heard her cry out again. I hardly realised I had saved her from a sure fate of drowning, I had saved her life. We all hugged one another tightly and left as soon as we could.

Once we resumed our journey, in the safety of our own car with the trusty caravan hitched behind, Dad led a prayer in thanks to God for me being able to save Felicity. We never stopped again, continuing overnight, until the early hours of the next morning when we arrived back at Achillesfield, a few days before Christmas.

This family experience cemented us together. The whole experience of our holiday brought our family into a close knit group as nothing else could have. This unity endured through all later ups and downs.

All too soon it was time for Dad to return to work.

Chapter 4

Reputation as a rebel

My happy childhood years ended in 1962 when I finished junior school and could not continue alongside my school friends at the local High School. Evidently that school prepared pupils for O-levels only, but my parents wanted me to Matriculate, as they had done, hoping I might achieve a university entrance level. At the age of twelve in 1963 I was taken thousands of miles south, to attend Kings College. Dad had done teacher training there, while he was a student at University. Both Mom and Dad knew the city well and chose this historic Eastern Cape, 1820 frontier city with its Cathedral, famous schools and University as a suitable setting to continue my education.

My memories of boarding school have receded and become broken but I do remember those parts which stood out because of their attachment to emotional events, personalities, friendships, bullying or struggles, where I tried to interpret the world as I saw it unfold as a teenager. Against that lay the stable background of the solid brick and mortar realities of the classrooms, dormitories and buildings of the school itself.

When I moved to boarding school, I was taken to be fitted out with the school uniform at the local school’s department store. Mom and Dad opened an account with the store as well as at a chemist, where we were able to buy other odds and ends.

At school I had no understanding of the value of money, barter was more to the fore. All my fellow scholars were frequently sent tuck boxes by their parents and families living on wealthy farms in the Karoo and outlying regions. Some of them received their tuck as often as twice a week, the most prized were biltong and droëwors, dried and spiced beef or game fillets, like jerky, and cured sausages, usually made from secret family recipes with many different spices and other ingredients. These farm delicacies included droë (dried) apricot rolls, known as meebos, as well as other dried fruit rolls. Some of the boys shared their tuck with those who had none; most boys did not share, though it was often used as leverage to get other things in exchange. A barter system existed, where we could do things in return for their tuck, even getting us to do homework for them. We co-operated and went to a lot of trouble to get prize tuck from whatever source we could.

Though the school was a Methodist Church School, a few of us attended evening confirmation classes at the Anglican Cathedral. On our way home we took advantage of our time away from the dormitories. We stopped off to buy loaves of bread with a little butter, which was also sold at the bakery. We hollowed out the loaf and placed the butter in the warm cavity, waiting for it to melt. We then gobbled down the crusty bread as we slowly ambled our way back to school. We looked forward to this weekly treat much more than to the boring confirmation classes, putting up with them just to partake of our treat.

Some of our other activities included Cadets where I excelled in marksmanship. Despite sometimes fainting when we stood on parade in the heat for a long time, I enjoyed these activities. I particularly remember the cadet band during Remembrance Day Parades each year with the cornet player, performing ‘The Last Post’. His playing always brought a lump to my throat, even though at the time the significance of the commemoration meant nothing to me. This visceral reaction came from his excellent rendition.

One of my friends at Kings had shown me how to play the Euphonium, but I found it too ticklish to buzz my lips to produce the right sound. I could not achieve the required note or keep it up for the necessary length of time. Despite his patience, nothing materialised from his tuition. We did this in an upstairs room in the school’s peaceful library.

My interest then turned to the same library’s countless books, many of them leather bound. I found Shakespeare’s plays and started to read them systematically. I enjoyed hiding away from playing sport and parading with the other cadets. I was meant to have been practicing music, not reading books. Though I did enjoy the reading, it was only a cursory perusal. Not much remained in my memory, except that I was struck at how many of our everyday sayings and idioms went back to Shakespeare’s writings. I also tried to read a copy of Chaucer, but found it unfathomable. Though never formally diagnosed, I suffer from a form of dyslexia, which has made reading a formidable task all my life.

Those of us who lived far distant from school would be booked en masse in rail carriages dedicated to those who had to go to one particular destination. My trip took five days and five nights. We, at private schools, went home for three holidays each year, whereas the government schools had four shorter holidays.

The main route took us through a rail junction. This station was a favourite stop for local ginger beer. It came in tall bottles with ginger floating in the delicious liquid refreshment, sealed with a cork stopper. We all had Swiss army knives, which proved to be handy tools for doing almost anything including opening these bottles. We threw the empties out of the carriage windows, aiming for the railway sleepers. They shattered dramatically, well worth any telling off by members of the public if they ever tried to stop us. However, most bottles missed the teak sleepers, smashing on the gravel of the railway track.

From the junction the train would go via Mafeking and then head north towards the Rhodesian border at Victoria Falls. There the line would branch off to Salisbury, as I did on my first trip, or continue north to Zambia, which later became my destination, after Dad started to work in Zambia.

On my 14th birthday, during my July holiday, Mom and Dad gave me an ultra-thin, Swiss, wrist watch. It was one of my most prized possessions. Dad had a similar one. They were