Reflecting on childhood memories

The childhood memories of the women reveal aspects of their experience of this period of their past. Significantly, the recollections demonstrate a link between their past and present life experiences, including their AIDS narrative. As discussed earlier (see 3.2.2), memory provides us with a biographical record and enables us to understand and react appropriately to the changing and unfolding experiences.

5.4.1.1 Unpleasant memories

As noted earlier, the underlying theme in the women’s story is life-long suffering inextricably linked to the women’s past. To continue with 77-year-old Nonceba’s biographical interpretation, she makes an explicit connection between her deprived childhood and her present circumstances:

I grew up as an orphan. I was not raised by my mother because she passed away.

My aunt raised me up and I was herding cattle and all those things. I was treated like their little servant, until the day I got married. Yes, I got married. Now even this poor eye sight is a result of the journey I have travelled. Yewh, I was treated like a slave. I was the eldest in that household. I was not allowed to go out and socialise with my friends at dance halls. My aunt used to tell me that I could only start going out when my young cousins were old enough so that they too could come with me. I was given a lot of chores to do while the children of the house hardly did anything of substance. One day I got fed-up with horrible treatment and moved to my father’s family.

Nonceba, 77 years old, Grahamstown

For Nonceba, being worked as a ‘little servant’ in her childhood sets a pattern of difficulties in her lifeworld discussed in 5.4 above. It is for this reason that she equates her biographical history with her present day suffering: “even this poor eyesight is a

result of the journey I have travelled”. The others also allude to the connection between past deprivation and their dire present. The HIV positive granddaughter Palisa illustrates this when she pins her lack of desire to have children, not on HIV/AIDS, but on life-long poverty:

I have struggled all my life. I can not afford to look after a child. Nobody can help me do this. Yes, I can say my life is a mess because I can’t afford anything since I don’t have money. My grandmother is the only person looking after me because she is getting pension money. Nobody cares for me.

Palisa, 21 years old, Grahamstown

Palisa’s grandmother, the sole breadwinner for most of her life, compares her life trajectory to that of her mother’s:

I can see that I am also similar to my mother, because there is nobody to help here in the house. I am staying with them and they are unable to help me. I am responsible for everything in this house. It does not bother me, but it would bother me if there was somebody else working in this family, but there is nobody else who belongs to this family, it is just us.

Nomaindia, 83 years old, Grahamstown

By using this comparison, she grounds her present circumstances in her mother’s history.

Thus, confirming the observation that being born in a poverty-stricken household is a key to long term trend for chronic poverty (May, 1998: 35). This view on intergenerational poverty is shared by Zintle, 23 years old, who continues to experience the grandmother’s and mother’s poverty. She nonetheless hopes to break this trend:

I know that my family is poor and that I am the only one with a Matric education, but I love my people. I will do everything in my power to help uplift this family.

This is my biggest wish and prayer to God – to enable me to grow old so that I can take care of my family.

Zintle, 23 years old, Grahamstown

5.4.1.2 Pleasant memories

It would be unfair to the women not to write about their pleasant childhood memories. Even though these seem few in between the deluge of bad memories, all the

women do hold a pleasant memory of their childhood. Both grandmothers remember having more than enough to eat:

We used to keep food. We would even put it on top of the table and cover it because you knew that nobody would touch your food. The next day when you want to eat it, it would be sour and you would have to throw it away. I would say it was better in the olden days. Times were better than what I am experiencing now.

Nomaindia, 83 years old, Grahamstown

For the grandmother with a flair for telling a captivating story, she spanned a whole range of ‘good times’, including plenty to eat:

For me, I think it was much better when I was growing up when compared to what I am seeing now, because we didn’t lack anything when we were growing up. For example, we did not buy things like firewood, paraffin and all that because we lived on a farm. But now you have to buy even my nail, everything. If you don’t have then you don’t have it, you can’t go next door to ask for salt because they will tell you that they don’t have it. We used to attend those traditional ceremonies. They used to be our parties. We used to enjoy ourselves.

You would come back and sleep and eat sour milk. We used to harvest in the fields and we would feed on the produce from the fields. Then we started working in the pineapple fields. I don’t think there is even a single thing that I can say was bad when I was growing up, because we used to enjoy everything that we did. We used to enjoy even fighting with each other in the fields, so there wasn’t any bad thing.

Nonceba, 77 years old, Grahamstown

Equally, their daughters talked about nice childhood memories:

It was nice when I was growing up. There were parties we used to go to and we would dance and dance at those parties. It was fun then and we didn’t have fights.

If you had a disagreement with someone, you would disagree and it would end there immediately after that. It was nice.

Lulama, 48 years old, Grahamstown

It was nice when I was growing up because I was happy. There wasn’t anything bothering me. I was happy because I was living with my parents, and my mother raised me well.

Ntombi, 46 years old, Grahamstown

A major shift from their mothers’ happy childhood memories for the daughters is food.

For this generation, there are a number of reasons why there was an absence of recalled narratives on ‘plenty’ to eat. For me, two interpretations spring to mind. First, the daughters may not have had ‘plenty’ to eat as their mothers did. This suggestion is based on the politically and economically troubling period of their childhood, as discussed in Chapter 1. Second, the daughters’ definition of happy childhood memories is different from those of their mothers. For the daughters, food is taken for granted and does not constitute pleasant memories. Similarly, their daughters make no mention of ‘plenty to eat’ in their recollection of happy childhood memories:

When I was young we used to have a lot of good times in the house. We are a close-knit family and we shared everything we had. My grandmother used to tell us Xhosa bedtime stories which were very nice.

Zintle, 23 years old, Grahamstown

I grew up well. I used to play with the other children and my grandmother treated me well and took good care of me.

Palisa, 21 years old, Grahamstown

A common theme running through the pleasant memories of the two granddaughters is the love and care received from their grandmothers.