Dijk / Cheryl Themba

a boy called Hope
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-906582-49-4
Verlag: Aurora Metro Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

Themba grows up dreaming of becoming a football star. One day he leaves the village and travels with his sister to the city in search of their mother. Life is a struggle and Themba has to grow up fast. A lucky break gives him the chance to train as a footballer and play professionally - but Themba has a secret - should he tell the truth about his HIV and risk everything he's ever dreamed of?

                                                      -

won an IBBY award - Best Book for Young People.

Karin Chubb was Shortlisted for the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation for a unique award celebrating the high quality and diversity of translated fiction for young readers.

The book was also made into an award-winning film.

Books, Teens and Magazines

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Pride magazine

Spling onliner

The Sunday Independent

Durning Library teenage reading group

Books, Teens and Magazines

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dijk, Lutz van

Cheryl, Robson

Weitere Mitwirkende

Karin, Chubb

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1

Kwishawa

In the shower

The hard spray of the shower hits my head. Drops scatter. Most of the hot cascade streams over my shoulders, washing soap and foam off my back and belly. My eyes are half closed. The steam smells of chlorine and soap. Deep breaths gradually restore calm. Most of my muscles are still knotted from the effort of the game, a dull ache in my right arm and shoulder, a reminder of the bruises I collected in a fall just after half-time. I don’t think it’s serious.

From the entrance to the team showers I hear Andile call my name. He’s already dressed, but there is excitement in his voice, “Themba, come on, move it! The Boss is waiting for you to say congratulations! And all those jokers from the TV - they won’t get another goal like that in a long time!” And he adds with a friendly grin, “They all want you, only you … Man, have you seen the chicks out there, waiting for autographs at the exit? Today you can have whatever you want, Themba!”

Andile Khumalo is much older than me. He’s got to be around twenty-five. He’s the star mid-fielder for Bafana Bafana1, and not in the least jealous. He’s really happy for me. When I joined the national football team four months ago, he pulled me aside after the first or second training session and said in his brotherly way, “Lumka – watch it, bra’! They just want to try you out but if it doesn’t all work out real cool then they’ll dump you. That’s usually how it goes. Football isn’t really a game – it’s all about money, lots of hard cash. You’re only worth as much as your last star performance here.”

Andile is from the Eastern Cape, like me. But he is not from the country. He comes from iMonti, or East London as the white people say. iMonti is a coastal town with a big harbour and it’s even got its own airport. Me and Nomtha – the most important person in my life – fled from a poor little village about two hundred kilometres north of iMonti. It’s up in the hills of Qunu, and it’s famous because Nelson Mandela was born there, in the village of Mvezo on the Mbashe River. There is even a museum in his honour.

But that’s about all there is. Most of the roads are still not tarmacked and many people live in huts built of straw and clay. They try to scrape a living from the poor soil along with all the cows, goats and sheep that are grazing there. Andile never stops teasing me about that: “You come from Qunu? Where on earth did you find a place to play football? It’s all hills without a single level field … I suppose you had to change over at half-time, first running up hill to shoot and then running down after the ball, hey?”

“Kanye-kanye – exactly!” I laugh in reply. If only he knew. But even then I don’t admit that we only had goal posts made from long branches, and that none of us had any shoes, let alone toks.

All that seems like a hundred years ago. My life with Nomtha in our village in Qunu: Barely ten homes, most of them oorontabile, traditional round huts, scattered over four hills and across two valleys. We were born there, Nomtha, my sister, who is two years younger, and me. The first thing I can remember was the scent of my mother’s skin, and the soft, warm blanket in which she tied us to her back. I can remember the feel of strong grass and damp earth under my bare feet; the scary sounds in the night when the storm battered the thatch on the roof – followed by the calm of early morning, when Mama was the first to get up and break dry twigs to start the fire. Nomtha usually woke up after me. I loved watching her sleep, even then; her long dark lashes, her delicate face with full lips and soft cheeks. Nomtha – she is everything to me, my entire family, at least what there is left of my family since we have left Uncle Luthando and Grandfather, and Mama lies dying.

*

I never really knew my father. I was four or at the most five when he vanished in the mines around iGoli, the huge city of Johannesburg. He simply never came back to us, not even at Christmas as he’d always done before then. For a long time we kids didn’t know why that was, and we made up all kinds of reasons: Perhaps he wanted to come back but there was an accident in the mine. Perhaps he found a new woman, and started a new family far away from us. From then on my mother never said another word about my father. It almost seemed as though he’d never existed, and for years we had no idea why he’d abandoned us in that tiny village in Qunu. One thing was certain: We never wanted to have anything more to do with Luthando, our uncle. Never ever again.

*

Nomtha’s proper name is Mthawekhaya which in Xhosa means “She who spreads light in the house”. But when she was little, she couldn’t really pronounce her own name, and so we’ve always called her Nomtha…

She’s probably still sitting somewhere out there in the stadium now while all the people are slowly leaving, although I told her exactly how to find the Press Room. But that’s Nomtha – she doesn’t like rooms full of noisy people, and she makes up her own mind about what is good for her, and what isn’t. She’ll wait for me until it’s all over. No matter what happens. No matter what Andile and all the other players of Bafana Bafana have to say. Whether they let me go on playing in their team, or not. She’ll be there at the end of it all.

*

I turn off the hot tap swiftly and hold my breath as the freezing water hits my skin. Then I step out of the shower cubicle, dripping wet and quickly shake my head to get rid of the water in my ears. Andile is still waiting in the doorway. I wonder if he has any idea of what’s about to happen.

“Ndiyeza – I’m coming!” I call out to him as I grab a towel.

He gestures impatiently, but doesn’t move from the spot. While I dry off, he carries on watching me. I pull on my track suit pants and one of our T-shirts. There is no way back now. Not for me.

*

My story begins with Andile and with the three questions he put to me, long before that Press Conference – although I didn’t really know how to answer them. Back then, in the bus, I fumbled around for answers. Although he was incredibly patient, I could tell he was unimpressed. Andile is absolutely the last person I’d ever want to disappoint. Not just because he’s the biggest star in the team, either. It was more because his questions suggested, “Perhaps we can really be friends. You’re not a show-off like the others. I can talk to you about things other than chicks, cars and money (which was the usual level of banter among the team). I’m asking you all this because I want to get to know you, and what you care about.” Those weren’t his exact words – but I think that’s what he meant.

So my story begins with my decision to give Andile an honest answer to his questions. In spite of the fact that it’s a really difficult thing for me to do. And so I’ll try and explain the long journey I made to get to this point… How all of this happened, my whole crazy life up to that moment under the cold shower …

*

We were sitting on a bus after a long day’s training in the Ellis Park Stadium. We’d been preparing for a friendly game against Nigeria, our great rival, and we’d only known each other for about three weeks. It had been a hot day and our coach, Steve, had been working us hard. The bus was taking us back to our training camp along the dark highway. Andile’s face was lit up now and then by the sudden flashes from oncoming headlights. For a while his eyes had been closed and I thought he’d fallen asleep, like others in the team. But then he nudged me gently and, when I turned towards him, he asked: “Themba, what about your ancestors – what do you know?”

Although it was a modern bus with aircon and all that, the engine was so loud I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

“What do you mean? What’s to know?”

He slapped his hand against his forehead, “Man, I am talking about your ancestors! Your grandparents and their parents and that stuff … where you come from! Do you have any idea of all that?”

I was taken aback by his seriousness and mumbled, “What do you mean? I never really got to know my father. And my mother, she’s …” I stopped myself then because I’d never told him about my mother, and I certainly didn’t intend to tell him in the back of a bus, of all places. I cleared my throat nervously and threw the ball back, “Why – what do you know about yours?”

“I dream a lot,” he said, looking straight at me and speaking every word clearly, although he hardly raised his voice. “Last night I dreamed of an old man who seemed vaguely familiar, although I didn’t know his name. He said: ‘Andile, you are my son.’ And in the dream I answered: ‘Impossible! You don’t look anything like my father!’ Then a huge storm broke over us with lightning and thunder. He held me in his arms and whispered, first in Xhosa and then in English: ‘Umfazi uzalela omye … Every person has many children, and all children have many parents …’ ”

“And then – ?”

“Then I woke up, wet through with sweat. My heart was beating like crazy and I could have sworn that the old man was still in the room. But when I put on the light everything was normal. The window was open and it was quiet outside, with not a leaf stirring on the tree.”

Andile looked into my eyes as though he was hoping that I could explain his dream – or maybe contribute something from my own experience of dreams and the ancestors. But nobody ever took me into their arms in my dreams, most definitely...