Accra - Mbabane - Mthatha - now first year at UCT

 

FIRST YEAR - PART 1

It has been a while between drinks hasn't it. I have been meaning to recount these tales for a while but being back in Cape Town for the past few months strengthened the desire. I was fortunate enough to turn 50 during this time and honoured to celebrate with so many people from all of life's stages. Nine weeks later I still look back at the room and feel nothing but humility…emotional really, that you would take time out of your day, for some even more than a day, to come and hang. What truly made it special was that my day ones were there, my dear 80-year-old folks and my siblings. They say it takes a village to raise a child but it sure takes one to get a guy to 50, so thank you.

As previously mentioned, Garth, Philip and I had planned to go to the University of Cape Town (UCT) to study accounting. My matric results weren't as great as I would have hoped. My father was of the inclination that I should be a doctor, in my mind I was like, dude, when someone vomits, I vomit too, I hate needles, in what world am I going to be a doctor? But alas I went along with it anyway. He managed to get me an interview at UNITRA (University of Transkei). The interview went well until I was asked what I would do when I qualify, to which I answered: then I will go overseas. Honest, yes. What I should have said at that time, absolutely not. Oh well. No medicine at UNITRA for me. DRAT (sarcasm). And so began the wait , Rhodes…accepted, Natal…accepted, Wits…accepted. Damn. Still no UCT.

December went by. I continued working at La Piazza and packing shelves at SPAR. The most significant thing I did during this period was pierce my ear, I was done with school, damnit. It didn't go down so well at home but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Along came January. I had all but made peace with UCT not being in my future, when one early afternoon…ring ring went the phone. The guy on the other end said his name was Derrick. I know no such human, I thought. He spun me a story about UCT and an academic support programme (ASP) for promising black students. I was convinced one of my mates was pulling a prank and I told him as much. He said: no, it's Derrick Msibi, I doubt he will remember this conversation, you have been accepted to UCT. I had no words.

I had a wee bit of convincing to do because going to UCT was going to be a financial stretch. Fortunately the course I was initially going to do, Information Systems, wasn't taught at UNITRA, so the bulk of my fees would be subsidised and the folks had to cover the rest. Little did I know that even that was a stretch… I was child number three at varsity at this point. Bless you guys. But as pops gleefully reminds us, this investment has been better than Bitcoin. I was set to leave a short few weeks after that call because the ASP was designed to give us a head start and ensure we had every chance to succeed.

Before leaving home, pops said something that has sat with me ever since: "All I have for you is your first degree." I can't remember the rest of the conversation but that was all I needed. Getting into UCT was honestly a dream come true and I was dead set on not turning it into a nightmare , for myself or my folks.

I packed all my possessions into a suitcase. My prized possessions: my sapo… you ain't clean until you wash with a sapo, that's my story and I will stick to it FOREVER, a Walkman, a discman and a handful of tapes. Coolehighharmony of course, Tevin Campbell's I'm Ready, Sade's Love Deluxe, Jodeci's Diary of a Mad Band and MJ's Dangerous. No collection was complete without that album. Before then I had only been to Cape Town once, if you could even call it that. Two years prior we had driven down in Uncle P's Ford Sierra, seven of us, for US visa interviews (there were delusions of Princeton at one stage, I even had the forms). We arrived at night, had the interviews the next day, and by the day after we were back on the road to Mthatha. And now here I was, still 17 years old, never truly left home, never had to fend for myself, about to board a Translux bus and travel over 1200km from my safe space. Daunting, yes. But overwhelmingly exciting.

Fortunately, at the end of that solo bus trip, were the wonderful Uncle Kofi and Auntie Milicent Clarke. Compared to Mthatha, Cape Town was HUGE. Everything seemed far. So many people. I was so grateful to spend a few days with the Clarkes, such great humans to this day. I stayed with them for a couple of weeks before res opened.

During the application process we had been asked which residence we wanted. I knew nothing about any of them, but my 'big brother' Jacob Hinson had already been at UCT for two years and was head of house at Glen Res, nothing had changed from his days as UHS head boy, just continuing to lay down the marker for the rest of us to follow. I selected Glen too. At least I had someone to guide me if needed.

Glendower Residence (Glen Res), was once the majestic Glendower Hotel. You could see it had presence. Large rooms with en-suite bathrooms, which none of the other residences had, to my knowledge. I was to share with a gentleman called Ross Holland. I remember being eager to meet this Ross. Days passed, orientation week arrived, people started flowing into res, and I found myself asking everyone who walked through who I thought might fit the bill: are you Ross?

Finally, I met him. A kind soul from Great Brak who attended George High School and was studying Environmental Studies, I didn’t even know such a thing even existed. Quiet guy, a gem of a human who loved his guitar. We got on extremely well and I cannot even recall us having a quarrel. I roomed with Ross for the whole of 1994.

I was grateful to have a roommate that year because in 1994 I went under the knife for the first time. I'd been wearing slippers and would often pass guys playing basketball on the way home from lectures, naturally I'd join , I loved sport, any sport , and I had been trying to dunk barefoot. Dumb move. The price was to be paid in months to come, and for the rest of my life it seems. I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee at Kingsbury Hospital. Still on painkillers after waking up, vitals fine, I hopped back to res on my crutches via my trusted chariot, the ‘Mowbreee Kaap’ minibus taxi. Ross was a stud during this time. I was handless on crutches, so he would bring me food and just sit and talk rubbish with me for a while. Good man.

First year res was a fascinating experience because I really got to meet a range of people. Glen Res was mixed, much like Umtata High School, so I formed friendships across the board. But it was here that I began to understand the truth of what South Africa really was. Very few people interacted across racial lines initially. I remember being asked by one of my darker friends: "Yaw, how do you talk to white people like that?" It had never been a thing for me, at UHS we judged people on character, on the contents of their soul, not their melanin. Such fond memories of that res though. My favourite character was Rosie from Fedics, our caterers, who made sure I was well fed at all times. We had a games room with a pool table, and many an hour was lost in there. This room was where most of the bonding happened across racial lines. We shared a canteen with College House next door, wild humans, but interesting. As part of their initiation, they would shave their heads and on one evening during the week they would run naked from res to the police station and back. 2 friends once got so hammered he fell out of the window of a bus (separate times). Fortunately they lived to tell the tale.

Across the road was a residence for a teachers' training college, where my classmates Eleanor and Kakra stayed. I visited often , there were girls, lots of them. Mind you I was still ridiculously geeky at this point, so I could do nothing but steal a gaze and a smile here and there. And visit as often as possible.

MORE TO FOLLOW…