Sala Kakuhle

Within a few days of arriving a little over a month ago, the office was buzzing with a weird, somberness wafting through the air.  It was the kind of tension you could cut with a butter knife.

“The baby died,” Mandisa says, somewhat apathetically, considering the subject.

Mxolisi, also known as Glad, interestingly enough, is a member of the special Randomized Control Trial, or GOAL Trial, team.  It was Glad’s wife who had given birth to a baby on the past Friday evening, and by the time the weekend was up, the baby had passed away.  I had not been here for even a week, but I was already involved in something as intimate of a matter as the death of a colleague’s child.  I hadn’t even met Glad at this point, but I pitched in 20 Rand to offset any costs that the family incurred just like everyone else in the office.  After the pot was collected, work returned to normal.  Now, a month later, and even a week after the fact, you’d see Glad around the office, working as usual with a big smile on his face, living up to his name.

A two weeks ago, Claire and I inquired about going to Addo on Saturday for the Skillz Core intervention that we do there every weekend.  One of the CPCs Ntombi tells us that we aren’t going, and upon asking why not, we receive a very nonchalant, seemingly perchance explanation, “One of the coaches hung himself.”

This threw me for a loop.  We work alongside a company in Addo, and we trained ten of their employees to be Grassroot Soccer coaches so that they could deliver programs to youth in that community.  One of those ten, apparently due to both relationship and family struggles, decided to take his own life.

Without delving too far into the situation, I’ve had this existential argument looming around my head as death seemed to be brushed off pretty easily in these situations.  This may not actually be true, and the two situations may just be too far removed for me to know the real repercussions of death.  These two incidents may also be outliers, as I know that Ntombi, the same person who brushed off the suicide, is traveling several hours this weekend to attend a ceremony for a mourning relative.  I have yet to grasp how to appropriately discuss death here, and I don’t quite know how people deal with saying goodbye.

On the topic of bidding farewell, two weeks ago, our exceptionally kind and loving Site Coordinator, Pumeza, resigned.  The abrupt departure was shocking, and it really struck a chord with a lot of the staff members who have been touched by Pumeza’s warm heart for the past three years.  Hell, I had only been here for a month and already considered Sisi Pumeza my South African mother. We made a big hoorah out of her leaving, some tears were shed, and we even surprised her with a farewell braai at the intern house on her last day.  It restored some hope in me that goodbyes are not always uneventful and swept under the rug. 

Sorry for the somber post, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.  Very soon, I will be posting an update about a bunch of fun and light-hearted things that have happened like being in the first Color Run on the African continent and petting baby lions!  Get pumped!