(Journ) The Bones of History

This was a project for my Writing and Editing class. The assignment was to immerse ourselves in a particular path through Grahamstown and find something to write about along the way. Being my grim self, I chose to go investigate Makana's cemeteries in search of the settlers' physical history. 

The sun is harsh on the faces of the settlers.

Father, mother and little girl look into it, stony eyes invulnerable to the inexorable rays. Voluminous skirts and worn boots find root in a mottled stone plinth, in which a plaque announces the sculptor, Ivan Mitford-Barberton, and the date of construction – 1969.

The statue is surrounded by huge, hulking stones. A way off is the monument building – a huge light brown and grey exercise in rectangles and concrete. A half-hidden monolith proclaims the precinct as a national monument, celebrating the achievements of the 1820 British settlers.

There is another monument in Grahamstown that honours the region’s settlers. I only notice this one after I had driven beyond the Cathedral and visited two cemeteries in search of the places that literally hold Grahamstown’s past.

This second monument is on an uneven patch of grass, across the road from a childcare centre and surrounded by colourful colonial-style houses and new developments. It was built in the shade of the same trees whose leaves anoint the broken graves of its subjects.

The true settlers are afforded more shade in Grahamstown Cemetery than the generic statue on the hill. The three graves in one plot – two big and one small – are much more poignant than the expressionless faces of stone and the landscape of twisting trees and gnarled stone is more forgiving on the eye than the harsh silhouettes on top of the hill.

I would not mind being buried here. Barring vandalism and neglect, or perhaps because of it, the cemetery is more wistful than the dwellings of the more recently interred. Its broken fence and creaking gates are painted a light, sky blue, and the windswept graveyard bends and breaks to march of at least a century. The graves themselves are old and older, none completely intact, and they face all directions. Wherever I step, I feel like I am treading on someone’s bones.

This old and decayed place is more removed from death than Makana’s other cemeteries. It is in the middle of a living, breathing community. Makana Municipality Cemetery, in contrast, is at the top of another slope, on the unpaved road into which Fitzroy Street unravels. The landscape is bare, and graves, new and newer, stretch over a flat, treeless expanse. Roads within the cemetery cut them into blocks, and a wicked wind whips at the crooked tin and stone grave markers. These are the newly dead, and the landscape is the future home of the dying. It is much more oppressive, much ranker with the idea of death and loss.

It does not take long for me to return to the pretty cemetery, where I discover the second monument.

As I take pictures of the rough stone block, a little girl in the yard of Jack and Jill Day Care waves me over. She poses and giggles. Her friends rush to the lens, smiles pointed, “cheese!” playfully exclaimed through missing teeth.

As I pack away my camera and return to the monument on the hill, I cannot help but wonder in which cemetery they will be buried.

(JOURN) Turning tragedy into charity: How monks make a difference

In 1998, three little boys, ages two to three, were playing on the train tracks on the outskirts of Grahamstown.

It is a natural place to play. Giant trees run along the tracks, which rise and dip over the rollicking hills surrounding Grahamstown. Sunlight dapples the earth, its cheerful light skimming over scrubland, valleys and rusting iron lines. With the cool breeze rushing between slopes and murmuring in the dry leaves of the poplar trees, the freedom of playing unsupervised must have been a delight.

These three boys were hit by a train. Only one survived.

Immeasurable though the sorrow caused by this event may be, it seems only natural that the monks from the nearby monastery found a vocation through its tragedy. When the unnamed boys were hit on the train tracks near the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, the priory realised that God had called them to the area for a purpose.

The monastery is set into one of the huge hills just outside of Grahamstown, and is part of the Order of the Holy Cross, a brotherhood of Anglican Benedictine monasteries founded in New York in 1884.

It is hard to imagine a more tranquil setting for a monastery. Its clustered black buildings are set into one of these colossal hills and one can almost imagine the green pastures mentioned in Psalm 23 when one looks out of the panoramic church windows.

For an American order, the monastery is suffused with a distinctly African atmosphere. Thorn bushes, fruit trees and crosses twined out of dried branches dot the sloped landscape, which is typical of the Eastern Cape. The church itself houses a wood-carved Madonna and Son, depicted as a Xhosa woman with her child.

The brotherhood decided to settle in South Africa after they were invited by then archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, in 1989. After being offered a property by the sisters of the Community of the Resurrection of Our Lord, the monastery was established just outside of Grahamstown in 1998.

According to the prior, or head of the local monastery, Brother Timothy Jolley, Benedictine monks don’t have a specific project or ministry.

“Our work if you will, our ministry, is a response to whatever God presents to us,” says Brother Timothy. He speaks with the strange mixture of gravity and jollity one would expect of a monk. His fingers press together in front of his lips and he frowns as his white habit rustles. Grey wisps surround a merry face and his eyes are soft and contemplative. Only his southern American accent and thick old-fashioned spectacles betray the traditional idea of Friar Tuck he embodies.

“These three boys got into danger and into harm’s way because they weren’t supervised,” drawls Brother Timothy pensively. “The parents were working and the person who was supposed to be watching over them didn’t.”

This was the start of the brotherhood’s involvement with the education of children from the area surrounding the monastery. The project, which started with transportation and funds to go to the schools in Grahamstown, became an afterschool homework project, and is now developing into a fully-fledged independent school.

“It grew to the point that we now have about 60 young people, ranging from Gr. R all through to university, whom we support,” says Brother Timothy.

To cope with the increase in pupils and the educational demands these children were facing, the monastery decided to start building a school on their property in 2009. The schoolhouse is currently being constructed on the lip of a hill overlooking the dramatic valley at the foot of the monastery. The brotherhood hopes to start using the schoolhouse in January 2012, and to formally bless the schoolhouse on 4 February 2012.

Until then, students are being taught in some of the monastery’s smaller buildings. The school tries to maintain a low student/teacher ratio (13/1 at present), and supplies students with books, small laptops, lunch and transportation. The students are often taken on fieldtrips to various places of interest, such as the aquarium in Port Elizabeth and game drives in the Grahamstown surrounds.

“It is our job to reflect the issues of injustice to our society, and we do that by living our lives in a different way, by living our lives as just as we can and as accepting as we can,” says Brother Timothy decisively.

He smiles and gives a reassuring nod. There is a satisfaction and contentment about his frame as he finishes telling the story of the monastery. To him, things have come full circle. What was tragedy has become hope and opportunity. What was once an area of strife and sorrow has become a peaceful haven to anyone who wishes to enter it.

Mariyah uMama weThemba.

It means Mary Mother of Hope.







Some of the preschool-age children attending the Holy Cross School at Mariyah uMama weThemba Monastery: