In Bahumi's Shoes For 17Chapters

  Prologue: We don’t choose the kind of parents God gives us, just as we don’t choose to be born into the life we already found ourselves in. It’s either you heal those wounds or they’ll keep reopening and you have to pour some kind of alcohol or drug over them to get them to close, not even give them enough therapy to heal. Being a 20-year-old woman in South Africa with hopes and dreams, they were taken away from me the minute my mother left and never came back, followed by my father who we laid to rest. This world is cruel, but its honestly how we look at it. Either as a lesson or just pure cruelty. But how can one make it out with no money, and is forced to become a parent to 4 sisters and with no home?   But what life throws at you and you get up is what defines you. I am a rich mess… a rich unfulfilled mess.     My happy teenage hood and varsity life being a regular teen wiped so quickly, but I’d never forget the beginning of everything.   Chapter 1: Hello I’m Bahumi   Pretoria 2013, mid-April. What a hot day, walking down the street of Steve Biko at 13h00 with Jabu and Collins. They were like family, since mine was so small, all I had was 4 sisters. After my father died while I was doing my second year at MEDUNSA, life became so unbalanced, but I was happy most of the time. Jabu is from a good family, ladies melt with his accent when he speaks. His English accent is so rich you could tell his riches from the word ‘Hi’. His mother is Zulu and father is from England, so it wasn’t hard for Jabu to find his inner calling. As for Collins, who is from the furthest side of Limpopo Tzaneen, his Tsonga and his from a rich family too, but its rumoured “no one knows what his father does”. Obviously, it might be something illegal. The mother doesn’t work and his father has always been an absent father, Collins hates talking about him. How I got to have two male best friends is actually a funny story. It was the second hardest week in medicine school and I sat alone in a corner trying to calculate how expensive each textbook cost and how it would feed my four sisters for months. My father tried really hard to provide for us. He was a teacher at our local high school in the Village, Mohlaletsi, based in Skhukhune on the Southern side in Limpopo. He did everything for us and he really tried. After getting divorced from my mother, he paid for almost everything. My mother was a Xhosa woman from the Eastern Cape and after she decided to leave us for a Nigerian man, she hardly came to visit us. I am the oldest of five and at a very young age I hardly remember my mother being there for us or even being nurturing. I finished high school at eighteen years old and was ready for college. I knew immediately what I wanted to pursue a career in. Medicine was something I loved from a young age due to my father who has been living with HIV and AIDS, which he contracted from my mother. As I sat in the corner of the admin lobby calculating how expensive my textbooks are, I had a sharp pelvic pain which alerted me my periods were approaching. I am 19 years old and I know my body, so I quickly rush to the restroom. On my way there, I bump into Collins, who looks fuming as his books come flying all over the floor. As I assist him, he uncomfortably looks at me and warns me with his eyes to signal I’ve ruined my whole floral white dress from behind with blood stains. I quickly drop his books and continue my humiliating walk of shame to the restrooms. What am I to do? I think to myself repeatedly, as I do have my sanitary backup thoughts, but as for a backup dress? No. Cindy, who’s my classmate, who I asked for something to hide my stain. She laughs at me and walks out. As I sneaked up and walked down the hallway, I saw Jabu and he walked by Collins. My guess was they were familiar with each other. Collins noticed me and walked towards me and as I quenched, he asked if I was okay. I told him about my situation and he told me to wait there for ten minutes. Nine minutes later, he returned with size 34 jeans and an extra small white vest from JET. I looked at him in disbelief and just took them and wore them and they fit me like a glove. See, my body is tiny from the waist up and my lower body is curvy and thick, which I took from the Xhosa side of my mother’s. I walked out and Collins couldn’t stop staring at me and Jabu cracked a joke about how thirsty he looked. I’ve never laughed so hard since the tragic death of my father. My sorrow seemed to disappear when I was with those two, so we’ve been inseparable since then. It was the warmth and comfortability and the fact that they were the first male relationships I’ve ever had and felt security, that kept our friendship. No one was above anyone. 2013 the 12th of May, it has been two years since my father has been placed in his grave and walking down the street of Steve Biko in Pretoria, making my way to our campus, I got a call. That call changed my entire life and what I thought I believed in. “Good afternoon am I speaking to Bahumi Mampuru?” Speaking, I responded.  “This is detective Hlomla speaking, calling from Jane Furse Hospital” Yes I responded. “Your sisters Lehumo, Basetsana, and Dineo have been in an accident on the high way from a school trip…” Yes, I responded and I felt my heart two seconds away from exploding. “They didn’t make it, I called your mother but she said she doesn’t know either of the children am taking about so I figured I’d call the eldest daughter, I got your numbers from your sister Karabo.” My heart is pounding and I can’t walk anymore I felt frozen and my hands are shaking hysterically. Where is my remaining sister? I mean where is Karabo I asked in panic? “She is here with us at the hospital.” I didn’t know how to get there. I don’t have money. What am I going to do? I responded in panic. He hanged up. Collins and Jabu looked at me with worry. They didn’t bother asking me what was wrong. Jabu immediately took out his phone and called his driver to come pick us up. The driver arrived within 35 minutes. That was the longest 35 minutes of my life, which felt like a whole lifetime. I was annoyed, I was confused, I was angry at the whole universe. Why does tragedy follow me? Don’t I deserve peace? I am asking myself questions I know no one but God has answers to. But where is he? That God, where is he? I am numb, am not living anymore, I felt like I am a walking mess. I haven’t spoken a word since the phone call.     Lehumo was my youngest and brightest of all my sisters. She was 8 years old and I was practically her role model. I was her mother. I was raised after mom left. Basetsana was the second born of my sisters. She was 17 years old and she was my photocopy. She looked identical to me. Those that look identical to you are definitely the opposite character of you. Basetsana is an outspoken teen, she really did live her life to the fullest at such a young age, I thought to myself as I smiled with one tear dropping down my cheek. She has a voice, when she’s upset she voices it out. I’d call Basetsana my angel as she always stood up for me when no one could understand if we didn’t have meat or anything in the house. Dineo was the third born and she was 14 years old. She just called me the other day. She got her first period and was so excited to share it with me. She was more like me, but yet content. She didn’t even get to have her second cycle. Do you understand she didn’t even get to live her life that further? Karabo is the second-last born of my sisters. She is 12 years old and she is strong. I’ve never met anyone that young who is as strong as she is. As I try to gather my thoughts, nothing hurts more than my mother saying she didn’t know her dead children were still lying warm in a hospital mortuary. The driver arrives and Jabu informs him to drive us to Jane Furse Hospital. As he types it on the GPS, he looks at Jabu in disbelief and Jabu mumbles “DRIVE!”   Another 45 minutes passed and I didn’t say a word, nor had I been asked questions by either Jabu or Collins. That’s how deeply we understand each other. Collins' hands are shaking too and his holding my hand so tight I think my hands almost turned blue. The way I’m so light skinned, one pinch can make me pink for days, one would confuse me for being a mixed race, growing up in Southern Limpopo and my hair as curly and long as I have from behind, one would mistake me for a mixed race. Collins seemed to have my back in my most hard times. When my father passed on, he came and stayed over at a local hotel for three days and he held my hand through everything. My sisters think he has a crush on me. But I think not. He is gorgeous, yes, but it ends there. Collins looks good without trying; he is tall, dark and handsome. He is masculine. He goes to gym often, his eyes are small, he has what we call bedroom eyes and he always has pink lips and a petit nose. His beard under his nose is what drives girls crazy and he always smells good. Collins seems to catch me at my weakest. I have had the longest existing crush on him, but I do not know whether it is love or indeed a crush. Jabu likes making jokes about us, saying we act like we are dating but we’re not and it’s confusing for him. It confuses me too. I have never had a boyfriend, so I wouldn’t know how to act if I had one. Don’t hold back, Collins said as he looked deep into my eyes and he just knew. He knew I had lost someone I loved dearly, he just didn’t know this time I lost three of the only family I had. After my dad died, our aunts literally threw us out of our home. My mother didn’t want anything to do with us. As smart as I was, I knew that day would come, so after finding out my father was living with HIV and AIDS, I assisted my father in applying for an RDP house, as he wasn’t working anymore because he couldn’t and the house was owned by my mother, who wasn’t interested in handing over papers because she was so busy with her life we’d rather be homeless. Life at that very moment was a blur. I started crying on Collins' masculine shoulders. I literally opened up every pain and hurt that had been building up inside me all these years and I just exploded with tears, and I knew then nothing was going to be the same anymore. This was the beginning of the struggle.