Hemming - Scatterlings: A Tapestry of Afri-Expat Tales

ScatterlingsA Tapestry
of Afri-Expat Tales

Eve Hemming

Copyright 2013 by Eve Hemming.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4836-4229-1

Ebook 978-1-4836-4230-7

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.

Rev. date: 06/20/2013

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CONTENTS

For my beloved Ant, and to our cherished familyKate and Nick, Justin and Lisa, Paul and Staceyand grandchildren Toni, Gabrielle, Emma, Dylan, Daniel and Aliyah. You are the centre of my world.

There are two great days in a persons life

The day we are born

And the day we discover why.

William Barclaytheologian (1907-1978)

On Joy and Sorrow

Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter
arises was oftentimes with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper the sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain

Y ou know who you are! My own beloved 3-D family and my online family who held me up through thick and thin.

To my beloved husband, Ant, who had to live the journey with a wife manically burning the candle and eating, sleeping, dreaming this book

To my mentors who believed in me.

To Carol Champ who morphed my book cover design into a reality.

To my Emma and Dylan for the gorgeous tree designs for the book cover.

For Lisa and my Toni and Gabi for your treasured poems.

To all the renowned writers and wonderful contributors (too many to name individually), who bravely shared their articles and personal stories.

Without you, there simply would not have been this book! You made it

To Kerry Engelbrecht, for your editing support and empathetic identification, and to my publishers for your patience!

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires. Kahlil Gibran

The tapestry of life stitched together by a unifying knowledge manifested from joy.

Bill Levacy

I never in my wildest dreams thought that Id be writing this book. Of course part of me wishes I never had to, while half of me is glad that I am. As a child I had dreams about being an authoress, much as most imaginative children love to fantasise about achieving possibly the impossible. It was perhaps sparked by Anne Franks diary, but of course like any idealistic child, my book wouldnt require me to be in hiding behind a bookcase for an inimitable period, finally to die a terrible death in a concentration camp. Mine would surely be a happy-ever-after-after story.

Someone once asked me how my stories germinate. I replied, Something triggers an idea, like a seed that suddenly ripens and sends out a little shoot. After that it grows into a robust bean stalk. One can never create an authentic story. It creates itself. One cant lie in the bath contemplating ones navel and beseech the words to flash across the bathroom tiles, or lie under a tree squinting at sunrays through filigreed leaves, waiting with miserable hope.

Ideas for my stories and for this book have often popped into my head at the most inopportune moment, like when Im idling in a traffic jam or in the process of falling asleep. I simply think, Oh . I hope I dont lose that light-bulb thought before I can scribble it down.

When creating and typing ones story, one takes the hand-scribbled notes of reminders of ones past, together with the moments when one actually indulged oneself to have me time to write. These snippets then start to cohere. And as one writes, ones own life and the world around are happening in parallel to ones written life. As John Lennon said, Life is what happens to you, while youre busy making other plans.

My story is not an autobiography, but rather holds some snippets about my life from which, like a wash-line, I can hang up some embellishments, thoughts, philosophies, memories and some of my published articles with colourful pegs to form a wash-line of my life world.

If one has not had an extraordinary life, WHICH I HAVENT, it lacks the lustre to engage the reader. For people are in essence voyeurs. Thus, it is more the thoughts hanging from each peg, that create the imagery, and they in turn create the flesh and the bones of ones story. For in the end, a story is a gathering of words on a page. And there are thousands of permutations of how to paste the words into a coherent journey. But a journey doesnt have to have a timeline. It can wend its way back and forth to yesterday, to tomorrow and back to today. Because a story is just the thoughts of the mind. And the mind is never static. In Scatterlings ... my story and others stories, thoughts and contributions are interwoven to offer you a tapestry of tales.

Scatterlings has become a well-known word in South Africa; its popularity amplified by Johnny Cleggs Scatterlings of Africa , a song that today can still evoke me to cry

And we are scatterlings of Africa

On a journey to the stars

Far below we leave forever

Dreams of what we were

(Lyrics from Johnny Cleggs Scatterlings of Africa .)

A scatterling is defined as someone with no fixed abode. In many ways migrants are like scatterlingsgenetically scattered into Southern Africa by our forbearers, to then become globally scattered. In essence like vagabondswith memories fuelled by a pulsating heart in Africa, intermeshed with a three-dimensional existence of adapting, morphing and residing elsewhere.

It is the word that best defines me. I never ever feel entirely complete and wonder if I ever will feel totally whole again. Oh, there are moments, like family reunions. But generally speaking I feel as though there is a schism of my soul, as though I have agnosia, wherein I cannot draw myself as a total entity, but with arms, legs, head, heart, soul severed, flailing and disconnected.

I more than ever feel as though I breathe for my cherished husband, children, children-in-law and their children, and that my purpose in life is to love them unconditionally. Nothing else has quite the same tangible substance in my soul anymore. Maybe that is the beauty, tragedy and paradox of emigrating. When one is away from some of the people one most loves, possibly only then is one truly able to know the depths of ones own love for them. It is in bearing our children that my husband and I have a purpose. Of course this isnt exclusively accuratewe have had the purpose of contributing to society too, having both worked to serve the South African community for the major part of our lives. But, now in the aftermath of emigration, the lights of passion for my family burn brighter, the pain for those afar cuts deeper and the joy of those close by is greater. Everything else loses an element of its patina. Things that were important have faded into a paler washed-out hue.

Ive previously written about the world being a merry-go-round. I conjure up the image of the steel-eyed, nostril-flared, colourfully adorned horses, rhythmically yet monotonously moving in a never-ending circular motion, mounted by laughing, innocent children. The childrens futures are unbeknown to them they start on that merry-go-round not asking or wondering where their life journey will take them. Will they remain on the merry-go-round or will they climb off it to fly to unknown realms?

Why a tapestry of tales you may wonder? With a surname Hemming, it seemed apt and humoured me. The tales could figuratively be hemmed together to create a rich, multi-hued rainbow tapestry that would be reminiscent of some of the rainbow nations peoples lives. Also because the sense of collectivity has always strongly resonated for me. The idea of sharing a potpourri of many lives made my heart pound louder. I had listened to peoples stories, but here was a chance to chronicle them into the textile of colours, textures, patterns and designs to make the fabric that much richer.