A Little Gypsy is Born…
Today 25 years ago my sister Gypsy was born. Seven years ago she was killed in a car accident along with my mother and step-father. I was 9 years old when she was born. This is the story of her birth as I experienced it on that day: Our mother went into labour on a Sunday morning in the warmth of November 1989. We were getting ready to drive to Cape Town anyway as my sister Kate and I stayed with our grandparents in Constantia during the week so that we could go to school. Since our mother was in no state to drive, our step-father, who we called Baas (it was his nickname since childhood) took the driver’s seat. We left Droëland, our farm near Ceres, driving slowly over the rocks, so as not aggravate our mother’s labour pains. We got to the first gate at Bloubank when our mother suddenly remembered that she’d left her birthing book behind. She insisted that Baas turn the Nissan Langley around so that she could go and get it. He did it, grumbling and when we got back to our little labourer’s cottage, our mother rushed into the house. Frau Züllig, our mother’s former teacher and friend from her days at a Swiss finishing school, was visiting for three months and was busy sweeping the kitchen floor when my mother rushed in. “I’ve come for my birthing book,” our mother panted, “I’ve forgotten how to breathe!” Once back on the road, the drive was slow and tiring. Kate and I sat quietly on the grey back seats of the car, watching our mother sighing and breathing and moaning softly to herself, lifting herself up onto her arms when the pains became extreme. The car felt hot and dusty. Arriving in Cape Town after three hours was like a breath of fresh sea air. It was cool and overcast. It was lush and green after the sandy dryness of Droëland. Everything seemed to go in slow motion. Our mother moaning softly to herself in labour. The pedestrians in shorts and T-shirts, going about their business, oblivious to the happenings in the car. We arrived at Mowbray Maternity hospital and our mother was admitted into the labour ward. Kate and I were told to sit in the waiting room. We felt sad and cheated at being locked out of that sacred space of giving birth. Were we not, after all, not also her children? Of her womb? Why was Baas was allowed in with her? We’ve known her longer than he has… We did not have to wait long. The birth was quick. Kate and I were allowed in after our sister was born. The baby was tiny and wrinkly and pink and she lay between our mother’s large brown breasts, eyes closed with a hospital towel draped over her. Kate and I sat on either side of our mother and looked at this new member of the family. “After the long drive to get here, you should call her Gypsy!” the doctor joked. Kate asked the nurse what the IV drip was. I felt embarrassed at Kate asking but the nurse commented on how good it was that Kate had asked. The nurse then took the baby from our mother and inviting Kate and I along, she carried the newborn to another room. There we watched her wash and dry and weigh our vulnerable little sister. We watched the nurse examine her and check all her reflexes and then put a disposable nappy and some clothes on her. When she was returned to our mother, we were told that Baas would take us to our grandparents. We felt sad leaving our mother and this new creature that was our sister and we wept quietly the entire way to our grandparents. Baas dropped us off at the top of the driveway of our grandparents’ home and we walked down the long lonesome...
Read MoreDroëland – In Memory of my Mother
My mother, Carol Kathleen Ehrhardt, was born in Athlone in December 1950. In 1958, under the Apartheid government’s Population Registration Act, her family were reclassified ‘white’ and moved to a white residential area. My grandfather was a brilliant businessman, and in his ‘new life’ he quickly became a millionaire, enabling him to drive a Rolls Royce, travel the world first class and send his children to the best white schools. My mother always resented this new way of life. When she was eighteen, she saw her parents’ offer to send her to finishing school in Switzerland as a way of escaping her identity as a ‘white’ South African. She lived in Switzerland for twenty years, studying for a doctorate in psychology and working as a social worker. In 1979, the year before my birth, she chose to be reclassified ‘coloured’. My younger sister and I grew up with her songs and stories of home, surrounded by the snowy mountains of Switzerland. We moved back to South Africa in 1988 and my mother went in search of her lost ‘coloured’ family. She met my stepfather, who was trading in scrap metal and picking buchu in the mountains for a living. Together they bought the farm Droeland (Droeland literally means ‘Dry Land’), outside Ceres, and had two daughters. Their dream was to have a piece of land that would be both a sanctuary and a place of emancipation for the coloured people of South Africa. My mother began to work with the farm workers, an oppressed and largely illiterate community. She became a counsellor to them and a dispenser of medicine. She held church services with them, buried them and delivered their babies by candlelight. ‘Droeland’ is the story of the first baby my mother ever delivered on the farm. After that, pregnant women in the community chose not to go to hospital to give birth; instead they sent for her, trusting her able hands and soothing words. On 26 May 2007, my mother, my stepfather and my seventeen-year-old sister, Gypsy, were killed in an accident on Michell’s Pass, outside Ceres. It is to my mother that I dedicate this story, because I miss her so. * It is the middle of winter and the middle of the night. The wind moans and rain rips through the sky, stinging the windscreen, making it impossible to see. My mother drives slowly along the farm road. The bakkie (pick up truck) bumps and rattles over the rocks.Streams have turned to torrents of water, nearly impassable, and mud splatters the windscreen. She is driving down to one of the farm labourer’s cottages, where Hester is in labour. She has her little enamel saucepan with her and the knitting cotton she bought back in Switzerland in the 1980s. She also has black bags, towels, baby clothes, needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. Hester is Willem Prins’s wife. She is twenty-three, small and pretty, with high-cheekboned Bushman features. She had arrived a week earlier from Sutherland, heavily pregnant and travelling on a donkiekar(donkey cart) with her husband. My mother drives into Ou Vloer (Old Floor), the bottom part of Droeland, the part which dips into the Klein Karoo. She continues through the gateposts and past the dam, full now from the rains. She stops next to the little clay house with its lone pomegranate bush, grabs her bag of goods and the saucepan, and dashes through the rain. Willem Prins opens the door looking nervous. “Naand Mevrou.” (“Evening Madam.”) He lets her in. Inside the little house it is snug and warm and clean....
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