Zolile Machi and his family, in Durban’s Kwa Mashu township, had been caring for a cousin believed to have Aids. He describes how life changed when he arrived, and when he left
A cousin from the South Coast arrived on our doorstep the other evening. He was carrying a huge but almost empty black Nike sports bag. Inside he had two pairs of expensive pants, three shirts, some t- shirts, a toothbrush and a face cloth.
His face was dark and he had become as thin as a mosquito. He had difficulty breathing, so he could barely speak. He just slumped down on the sofa. My mother was there, so he kept on saying to her, “I’m dying, auntie! I’m dying!” He mumbled something about a landlord where he had been staying, who told him to go away to his relatives because he was so ill. My mother was shocked to see him in such a state. Time and again, she asked what was eating him up. He did not answer. I was pissed off.
He said he had been to the clinic the day before, and it was not for the first time. An injection, some syrup in a bottle and a few tablets did not seem to make him feel better. For three days he couldn’t eat. Each time he tried to eat, the food was just flushed down the hole there. My mother made him corn porridge with sugar, he refused milk, and she forced him to finish it all. Then he went to bed.
For days my younger brother, who was studying for his grade 10 exams, was annoyed. It happens that, in between violent coughing, my cousin snores so loud you wake up thinking there’s a bulldozer in the house. My brother eventually chose to leave the bedroom and sleep on the floor in the living room.
My eldest sister hasn’t found a job since graduating from technikon two years ago, the middle sister lost her job at a pharmacy and has a two-month-old infant, and the youngest sister is pregnant.
It being the middle of the month when my cousin arrived, there was very little of anything to eat. He had a lot of special dietary requirements. As the sole designated breadwinner, I was cross. I get through each month on a hand-to-mouth basis, I can hardly afford to buy an extra two dozen eggs, and my grocery list has never included fruit, yogurt or fish.
Meanwhile my cousin’s condition became worse. His stomach was always running blood. It appeared as if he had lost his mind, unable to remember what day it was. He always had a hearing problem, but now it was worse. His eyes were shifty, so that he always looked scared, and so he decided to hide himself away in the bedroom. He spent his days sleeping, or sitting on top of the bed staring into space. He would not talk about what, if he knew at all, he was suffering from.
Ours is the only family my cousin knows in Kwa Mashu. He’s 30, has an engineering diploma and worked for years as a Telkom technician. He has a bright 12-year-old daughter. He lost his job because of drink, although now he’s quit drinking and smoking. Recently he had been working for a Telkom subcontractor, until he became ill, and was fired.
My mother spoke to other women from her church about her nephew’s condition. One of the aunties gave her some tablets, stolen by a tenant at her house from a clinic where he works. On the evening when he was given the tablets, my cousin took all six at one go. It was an act of desperation, not of attempted suicide, but to find a cure. He was trying anything, from inserting syringes full of traditional medicine up his anus to drinking some concoctions, perhaps only making his diarrhoea worse.
Somehow, the tablets worked wonders. The next morning, nine days after his arrival, he looked well. He woke up early, packed his bag, prepared lunch and announced he was leaving. “Where to?” my mother asked. “Are you going back to the South Coast?” He said he was going back to Umlazi, and asked for bus fare. He left cracking jokes and looking good in his fine clothes. He did not leave a forwarding address.
It’s been weeks since he went away. Instead of being relieved, I became even more worried. I always wonder about what condition we are going to see him in next time, in person or in a coffin. As a family we now all asked each other, “What if?”
Certainly, we were not born yesterday. We have been to enough funerals where no tears are shed by the family, where the family and the chosen speakers become defensive about the cause of death, and the ritual of seeing the body is skipped. The funeral service itself, after being swiftly arranged after the person died, lasts hardly two hours. Once the funeral is over, it is likely that the dead person will never be mentioned again in polite conversations.