A Look into My Life — Chapter One

I was born more than forty years ago in a little town called Lubumbashi, in Congo. It was a quiet, peaceful place where most people worked either for the mining company or the railway.

Yvette Kauswa, my mother, was twenty-eight years old when she gave birth to me. It was the second time she had gone through the terrible ordeal of delivering a baby. The previous year, she had given birth to a stillborn little girl.

She was under tremendous pressure to leave the hospital immediately because she had received news that her rival, her husband's first wife, was on her way there. The first wife's intentions were unclear, but everybody knew it was better to avoid a confrontation between the two women.

I have a picture from that day in which Mother is holding me outside the SNCC hospital, waiting for her friend to collect her. She looks tired, worried and somewhat upset. Like all babies, I look oblivious to the drama unfolding around me, an innocent victim of grown-ups' shenanigans.

The first years of my life were sheltered, and I remember little of that blessed period. My earliest memory is of one of my aunts carrying me on her back one night, taking me from one place to another.

When I turned three, I was sent to preschool. Life was good. I was surrounded by love, laughter and luxury, and I had not yet noticed that one key component of a child's life was missing, namely my father.

Mother was the centre of my world, and my thoughts revolved around her. Every weekday at five in the afternoon, I stood outside our house and scrutinised the horizon until I saw her svelte, elegant silhouette walking towards me.

I would run to her, and when we met, I buried my face in her clothes. Even today, I remember her unique perfume, which lingered on her clothes and in her bedroom long after she was gone, reminding me how much I had lost.

I was, and would remain, her only child.

I completed three years of preschool, where we learnt colouring, singing, counting and cutting with scissors. Then I entered primary school, where great shame awaited me.

If my earliest memory is vague, my first humiliation is precise and burning. It occurred on my first day of primary school and would haunt my thoughts for years.

That morning, the children who had never attended preschool were astonished to find themselves alone among so many strangers. They looked around in fear, unable to suppress a sense of utter betrayal, the impression that their parents had abandoned them there.

The solemnity of the place whispered to them that this was not a place for pure fun. An important task, larger than themselves, had to be accomplished there.

Some children cried, while others stood shocked and watched them. Yet the initial chaos lasted only a moment. Children are resilient and flexible, and friendships soon began forming through the curtain of tears. As soon as the bell rang for the first break, they rushed outside to play as though they had always known one another.

I remained in the classroom because I had inaugurated that memorable day by peeing in my shorts.

A woman I did not know, who I later learnt was Mother's friend, took me to the bathroom and cleaned me up. My little heart was mortified. I stood motionless, wondering why this ignominy had befallen me when I was so far from my loved ones.

I do not remember anyone mocking me, but I was wounded nonetheless. My greatest fear was that I would soil myself many more times because I was not prepared to use the school toilets.

They were vile. A persistent odour of piss, faeces and insecticide emanated from them and spread through the courtyard, each smell competing with the others for supremacy.

More than disgust, however, it was my extreme shyness that prevented me from asking permission to relieve myself in such a foreign place, surrounded by people I had never met. How could I perform such an intimate act, even in a tiny booth enclosed by thin walls, while children ran in and out, laughing, screaming and playing?

It took me a long time to set foot in those toilets. I did not go into the bush either, as I later discovered some children did, because I found that even worse than using a filthy toilet.

I simply learnt to avoid food and drink before school. While I was there, I neither ate nor drank.