Affrican Immigrant
I keep asking myself two questions. Would my life have bin better if I were South African of whatever race, or even a white guy living in South Africa as opposed to being a black non-South African? Invariably the answer that comes to mind is a resounding “YES.” If I were South African, I would not have felt the need to be selfish. If I were white, Home Affairs would have expedited my residency application, and the loss of the one woman I ever loved would not have been. You of course already know the end – I lost her. But I sense you are dying to hear how it all began and the details that led to our end? Read on…
The NGO I work for recruited me, Tinaye Musonza, from Oxford. I couldn’t be happier. I’d always wanted to get a job to bring me back to the continent, where my fellow Africans would look at me as one of their own dun good – armed with a Master’s degree but no master attitude. But a few months of living in Jozi & I still seemed to be what I was in England. An immigrant! To the black South Africans I was one of them ‘kwerekweres’ because I allegedly took one of their jobs. I’d think without vocalizing, ‘aren’t I a brother too?’
To the comrade leaders at work who do promotions, I was already filling the BEE headcount without having to rise any higher. I knew I’d hit the glass ceiling in my middle-management post. I thought I’d been recruited from Oxford because of marketability as an African speaking to other Africans as well as for my brains but suddenly I wasn’t good enough. The most frustrating bit was seeing young little expatriates from the ‘Mother Country’ getting promoted over me. Who said racism didn’t exist in NGOs?
Other immigrants had the benefit of escaping in their work or having a salary that they could sufficiently utilize to give themselves little vacations and weekends treats of a glass of single malt but not me. I no longer had job satisfaction – neither from the love for my job nor from the pay (or was that peanuts?) I earned in salary. I found myself having to forget about my dream nurtured in Oxford of being the African that would join hands with other like minded Africans to save the continent from plagues and poverty on an international platform. Hate is too soft a word for what I now felt about my job although I continued joking with my colleagues and seniors as expected. I wanted to quit but I worried. If I quit, I’d no longer have a work permit.
That would mean my going back to Zimbabwe and I could not, would not, go back there. Only a fool would go there while the rest of the country is escaping. There had to be a way that I could stay in South Africa but with a job that gave credit to the academic training I received without reducing me to a yes-man to a bunch of white people. Then I had what I thought was a brainwave. Last time I read the stats, apparently South African women work 26% harder than their men. I was willing to work hard. I was not bad looking either with my six foot frame and chocolate complexion. That made me a catch for South African women. I would marry one of them, get my residency, and eventual citizenship.
I see you are judging me for being mercenary. How easy it is for you to do. You are probably South African, white, or both. I never planned to hurt anyone. All I wanted was a fair chance to earn an honest living in a country that I love but had the misfortune of not being born in. I decided on the girl in reception, Grace. I had seen the way she looked at me. The way she lingered when she brought me papers to sign for petty cash. Sure, she was not the brightest girl in the world, most of these Sasco females are all beauty and mush for brains but then, who needs conversation? I’d marry. Get S.African residency. Quit crap civil society. And get a job that paid me well 4my experience. I may be an immigrant but I am also African. If I couldn’t make it on this continent where cud I? That was my thought process then.
I had not contended on meeting Silindile. Grace and I had been dating for a while. The sex was good. The conversation was expectedly dull. Whenever she came to ‘sleep’ at my Braam flat, I had perfected the art of feigning sleep after sex. That boring. Marriage to her would be a tedious affair but I knew, with a good job, I could always get lost in my work so long as I paid the bills and bought her a six pack of Smirnoff Spin on the weekends. Then one Friday I took myself to Fuel Café for lunch. Grace had a doctor’s appointment or something so I was lucky not to have to sit with her. As I sat in Fuel waiting for my food reading M&G, I felt, rather than saw, someone standing over me trying to get my attention.
It was a woman. Not the prettiest woman in the world, but stylish. ‘Hi, would you mind if I browsed through your Mail & Guardian while you eat?’ she asked confidently.
I smiled at her, ‘Now that’s the lamest pick up line I’ve ever got. Why not just ask me whether u can join me because you don’t want to eat alone?’ I asked back still smiling.
She laughed. She had a beautiful laugh and a set of teeth that told either of years with braces and a good dentist or may be just good genes, ‘trust me if I were picking you up you would know but since I hate eating alone and I’m just getting out of hospital and need normal conversation, I will join you.’ Hospital? She did not look sick and looked too educated to be a nurse.
Turned out she was a doctor working in Joburg Hosiptal’s surgical ward. The chicken salad I had that day was the best I’d ever eaten at Fuel and I remember, to this day, every word I had with Silindile in conversation. Summary: single, house in Melville, 3 months younger than me, only child of a dead father and a dermatologist mother staying in Foruways (had never heard of a black dermatologist before then!), and, we had a mutual friend who once worked with me, ‘So in some way that probably makes us friends,’ she said smiling. There were a lot of things I wanted to be to this woman but friendship was the least of them. I was already picturing myself rubbing her feet after a long day of curing Jozi’s sick folk. I wanted it all with her. She looked at me with a glint in her eye, ‘Not that I am not enjoying our conversation or anything but have you also finished work like me or you just have an extra long lunch?’
I hit my forehead with my hand after glancing at the time on my cellphone. ‘Geez thanks, and I have a meeting in 20 minutes. Listen, would it be alright if I called and we go for a drink?’ I asked as I stood up. Silindile took my phone and punched in her number, her smile melting me and making me wonder whether I would be able to walk out without falling. ‘you can call me but you’d have to bring the drinks to me. I am a homebody after ward visits. As I walked out she yelled, ‘Oh. And I drink Castle.’ I smiled inwardly. A beer woman? She had just added a quality of non-pretension to her list of pluses. Cupid, that blind bow-boy, had finally got me. I whispered a silent thanks to my ancestors. Immediately after the meeting, I called Silindile.
‘I know this will make me sound like an anxious schoolboy and may make me lose some points but may I come and see you this evening?’
I heard her draw her breath over the phone as she answered, ‘And I know I’m supposed to sound coy and say, ‘I’ll think about it Tinaye’ but what the hell. I’ll sms u directions,’ she said laughing. How did she manage to make my ordinary name sound so musical, I wondered as I packed up? When I arrived at her place, a twelve pack of Castle in a plastic bag in one hand, and a potted plant I’d picked up for her in another, I was nervous. Would she like it?
She looked at me and smiled as she took the plant with a –for-me look on her face. ‘Now that’s original Mr. Musonza. I’ve got flowers before but no man has ever had the wisdom to realize that blooms die and plants last longer. Thank you.’
Point to Tinaye. ‘See why u need to hang out with me more?’ I answered attempting to be brash. I would get her a whole flower shop to have her look at me for the rest of my life the way she was looking at me then.
As I sat down in her living room, I felt very domesticated. I loved the picture we made.Before I could get comfortable she handed me a beer saying, ‘you make the fire and braai, and I will make the pap.’
I looked at her with mock shock on my face, ‘Uhhm doc, excuse you? This is the first time I am visiting your house and already you are making me work?’
‘Hey, figured I might as well make you work the first time in case you never come to my house again. Besides, there is no better way to make a person feel at home than to get them cooking and cleaning.’
I looked at her with what I am sure was a cheesy grin and said, ‘Men do not like bossy women.’ She answered coyly, ‘and yet I get the feeling u r going to tell me that I can boss u around anytime.’ I wanted so badly to kiss her then. I didn’t. I should’ve bin telling myself to slow down but I did not. I kept thinking to myself that I had already wasted enough time not having met this woman all those months ago since arriving in Joburg. We drank, ate, talked, and I even washed the dishes after dinner. Whatever love portion she had put in my food was working like a charm because I’d never dun that in any woman’s house except my mother’s. That first night was magical. No. We never made love.
What we did do was spend the whole night talking and having beers. I wanted to know everything about this woman. I wanted to know when she lost her first tooth, her mother’s maiden name, her favourite Xmas present – I mean, everything. 4 the first time in my working life, I switched off my cell. Nothing was more important than giving this woman 101% of my attention (and then of course I also didn’t want to run the risk of Grace calling and asking where I was). I spent the rest of my weekend at her house, wearing her sweats and only leaving for my house on Sunday because she was going to work.
Monday brought me back to earth with a thud. I was always in the office and so too was Grace. She came to my office and asked, ‘I came to your house during the weekend and called u the whole weekend and your phone was off, where were you?’
Oh God. She was nagging and I hadn’t even asked her to marry me yet. In fact, the way my weekend had looked, I might not have to but I had to see where things were going with Sli first so I couldn’t yet afford to burn my bridges.
‘Sorry luv. One of my friends from Pretoria was in town for a meeting. After work he convinced me to go to his place. I thought I’d go there briefly but there was so much booze I just stayed there for the weekend. Did we have plans I forgot about?’ I asked planting a fleeting kiss on her lips.
‘Are you sure you were not with another woman?’ she asked still suspicious in spite of my kiss.
I wondered what she knew. Had someone seen me talking to Sli? I was not going to let her fish info out of me though. I’d stick to the first golden rule of a cheating man. Admit nothing.
I feigned hurt. ‘You really think that about me?’ Then I played every cheating man’s trump card. Offence as the best form of defence, ‘Look. I trusted that you had gone to the doctor on Friday although you could have been with one of your old boyfriends so why can’t you trust that I was where I said I was?’
She was surprised as only a non-too bright girl would be. She certainly hadn’t expected what I was throwing at her.
‘no of course I trust you. it’s just that I was talking to my cousin during the weekend and you Zimbabwean guys are famous for being charmzas and then dumping women,’ she responded.
‘And would this b the cousin who was chaperoning us on our first date?’
She looked at me stupidly, ‘but we had no chaperone on our first date.’
Damn. The weekend with Sli had totally messed me up. I’d forgotten how most witticisms went over Grace’s head. I simplified it for her.
‘Listen. I’d appreciate it if u kept our relationship between us, but now, I have some work I really need to catch up on so let’s talk later. ‘kay?’ I said dismissively.
I had won.
She looked at me apologetically and said, ‘Look Tinaye, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to…’
I didn’t allow her to finish. ‘That’s alright Grace. Just let me get back to work. I knew she’d probably spend all the minutes in reception that she wasn’t talking on the phone or playing solitaire trying to figure out how to make it up to me. I didn’t care. I just wanted to work and may be later, talk to Sli.
The next few weeks saw me too busy with work to spend time with Grace while I always found myself driving to Melville every night that Sli was off-duty. Of course I always made sure, but for being busy, that I acted as normal as possible with Grace. She was really cool about it, telling me she’d important news to tell me but that it cud wait till I was less busy.
Four weeks is whirlwind romance, you will all say, but when you find ‘The One’ as I had with Sli, you want to make sure you waste no time away from her. It came about then that, after shopping for a ring and when I was about to have a very public breakup with Grace at a restaurant, I found out what her news was.
As we received our starters I began, hoping that we wouldn’t have to go through all three courses, ‘Listen love, I’ve something important to tell you.’
She interrupted, ‘No wait. I’ve something to tell you that I can’t keep to myself any longer.’ Oh God. I was going to have to listen to her tell me that she’d told her mother about me and hear how much she loved me before dumping her. I felt like a cad. But may be that’d be easiest. After she told me she loved me, I could tell her that unfortunately, although she was a beautiful girl, I wasn’t feeling the same way and could we just be friends? What came from her was worse than I had expected.
‘Tinaye sweetie. Remember when I went to the doctor so many Fridays ago?’
OK this was not taking the direction I’d hoped the conversation would start from but I nodded my head patiently, ‘yes?’
She took out one of those hospital plastic thingies from her handbag and handed it to me while saying, ‘it’s six weeks this week.’
‘What the hell is six wks this week?’ I asked dreading the answer.
She rolled her eyes, probably already practicing her role as long-suffering partner to the father of her first born, ‘We are having a baby silly. I’m six weeks pregnant. Isn’t that exciting?’
Exciting? Anything but that. I got this sinking feeling in my stomach. Sure, I wanted to be a parent but goddammit, this was the wrong woman. I started thinking that God must be Zimbabwean.
Only a Zimbabwean God could have such a twisted sense of humour. I had to feign excitement because Grace looked so happy. Suddenly the chicken wings I was eating tasted like sandpaper. Not that I have ever tasted sandpaper mind you, but I just assumed that’s what sandpaper probably tasted like. I dropped a disappointed Grace at her place using outstanding work as an excuse and went on to my place to think things through. I tossed and turned that whole night but the only solution that came to me was the one that I did not want. And yet what could I do? Grace was having my baby and seemed excited about it. I was going to be a father, I needed to take responsibility and do the right thing. What would my parents say if I left the mother of my unborn child for something as inexplicable, as arbitrary as a soul mate?
Sure, Grace would never be the great wife that Sli could have been to me, would never match the wonderful company but, if I needed good conversation, there would always be my male friends. I knew too that Grace would never give Sli and I peace if I left her. Knowing her the way I did, I knew she was one of those women who would start talking about religion and how she felt that abortion was terrible if I suggested a termination. The type who clearly forgot their religion when they were having premarital sex but would remember it when convenient to get what they want. You know the type. And when the child was born she would take me to Maintenance Court and get her family to come and see me so I can pay damages, forgetting that she was the one who chose to have the baby and my life was the one damaged by the unplanned baby. And I couldn’t be sure about Sli.
Would she want to be married to a man who was coming into the relationship with excess baggage? She was independent. She might turn down my proposal when she found out I had not been forthright in spite of all our lengthy midnight talks. Sli was a feminist. She was the type that would bow out, pained, but trying to leave with her dignity intact. I would then lose both women and my chance of getting my papers as I had initially wanted. Sli, I was certain, would not want to spend the rest of her life with the liar and the deceiver that I was. So I would do the pragmatic thing. I would break up with the one woman I had ever loved and propose to the one who was carrying my child.
Having made my decision, I recall how I lay in bed crying over a lost love.
I did not relish what I had to do the next day.
I have tried a million times but I cannot delete that last day with Sli from my memory. Sometime while lying on my bed thinking, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, it was already the day that I resented. I got up, washed my face, and made my way to Sli, who I knew had a day off. I called my office, pleading a headache (there were semblances of it in my heartache) and made my way to Sli, still in the same clothes I had been wearing the day before. When I got to her place and buzzed her, she opened up for me with a smile that quickly faded on seeing how I was dressed.
‘And now? Has something happened?’ she asked in that quintessentially South African manner of asking a question before even greeting when something appears amiss.
I leaned over and kissed. Her. ‘I am fine if you are fine too my dear. I could use some coffee though,’ I said avoiding her eyes and walking into her kitchen to put on the kettle that almost always had water in it.
She shrugged then joined me in the kitchen as I made coffee for both of us. I was really going to miss this. I guess she soon dismissed the way I was dressed because soon she was chattering away about the latest politics of big hospitals.
May be it was selfish of me to do what I did but we did. We made love that that day. Many times over. During that time, all worries about Grace were erased form memory and it was just me and the woman I loved, spending quality time together. But I could no longer delay it and as the sun set with the rays touching parts of her face and making her look more beautiful that I had ever perceived her to be while she lay on my chest, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my heart and decided I could not deceive her anymore even for my own selfish reasons.
‘Babe?’ I said softly. Her eyes were closed and I was not sure whether she was awake or asleep or even, should she be awake, whether this was really the right time to tell her.
Alas, I could not escape because she instantly became alert. ‘Babes.’ She responded.
I held my breath then exhaled, wanting to tell her everything in a rush. ‘I have something important to tell you,’ I begun.
She looked at me with so much love in her eyes and before I could continue she said, ‘yes, I will.’
‘Yes you will what?’ I asked confused.
She smiled sweetly, ‘yes my dearest sweetest Tinaye, I will marry you.’
Whoo, what the hell had given her the idea.? Sure I had wanted to propose to her 24 hours prior but now? I tried to ask, , ‘but…’ I tried to put in a word in unfortunately she went on, ‘Sorry to spoil your moment but I really have never believed in the whole marriage thing until you came along and now…well now you have come to me with a ring box in your pocket and I can’t pretend I don’t know what you are about to say anymore although I did try to hold myself back the whole day from when I first felt it as I was taking of your pants.’
Fuck! I had to put a close to this real fast. It sounded brutal and I felt like a grade A arsehole but how the hell was I going to explain that yes, the ring initially had been meant for her but that due to circumstances with some other woman, I could no longer propose to her.
I stood up and started picking up my clothes while saying in as casual a voice as possible, ‘the ring is not for you. It’s for another woman.’
She looked at me with a look that highlighted certainty that I was teasing her and asked, ‘for another woman to do what?’
I sat on the bed and looked at her, ‘No really Sli. I am asking another woman to marry me. The ring is truly not for you.’
In that one moment I saw her face crumble just before she yelled in agony,
The face that had looked beautiful suddenly turned terribly ugly but only for a moment. I watched her eyes start watering just before she started whispering with more vehemence than I have ever heard a woman use, ‘Get out of my house Tinaye. Right now. Out.’ She said as if instructing astray dog out from the house. She walked me out silently and just before she closed the door to me she said, ‘I have no idea what you were playing at and what explanations you may have but I don’t want to know. I never want to see you or hear from you ever again and if I bump into you in this little Johannesburg of ours, don’t look at me with recognition but walk on because from this moment forth, you are dead to me.’ Those last words were brutal to someone who had loved her, who still loved her as much as I did. I would have done anything to erase her pain but what could I do? I had a child coming, duty dictated that I do the right thing by the mother of my child. I walked towards my car in the sunset, knowing I would never been the same again. All that I loved, remained in that house.
Grace and I have been married for a year now. I have a better job, thanks to my permit, and I can afford to drown myself in my work to avoid being stuck with my wife at home. The reason I let go of the woman I loved and proposed to Grace – the baby – never materialized. Grace had a miscarriage at six months. And yet now I am stuck with her at least for the next four years (when I can apply for citizenship based on my marriage to her). I find myself thinking of Sli constantly, I have even called her once or twice a week just to hear her voice. It’s childish, may be even psychotic, but hearing her breathy ‘hello’ before I hang up on her always manages to get me through a week with Grace. I have the life I initially thought I wanted and yet too, I don’t really. Sli is not with me. So I ask you again, would my life not have been better if I had been born in South Africa, were white, or both? Would I not have settled into marital bliss with the woman I love?
