Mandela and apartheid.

This is what a black South African classroom looked liked during apartheid.                                                

While in prison on Robben Island, Mandela had to wear short pants to remind him he was a "boy" while white prisoners wore long pants.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Building a house

Volunteers flex their house-building muscles! 

Excerpt from Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive: Chapter Twelve

NKOSI’S HAVEN

"My name is Nkosi Johnson.  I live in Johannesburg, South Africa.  I am eleven years old, and I have full-blown AIDS.  I was born HIV-positive.”

On Tuesday, Paul and I along with the duffel bag of medicine accompanied Humphrey to Nkosi's Haven, an AIDS clinic for infants and children.  Humphrey sat on Nkosi's board and believed this was the best home for the medicines.

Xolani Nkosi was born into poverty in a township outside of Johannesburg on February 4, 1989.  Like many black children he never knew his father.  His mother, Nonthalanthla Daphne Nkosi was told by a doctor she had ingculaza, Zulu for AIDS. She had been infected and impregnated by the father, giving her and Xolani a death sentence.  At birth, the doctor gave Nkosi a life expectancy of less than a year.  When others learned of their dreaded curse, Daphne and her baby were treated as outcastes by their family and neighbors.

The face of AIDS then was of homosexual males with many God fearing and non-God fearing people believing it was something victims brought upon themselves.  Ignorance is often the fertile soil for breeding righteousness.  The first white woman to openly declare she had AIDS in South Africa was found beheaded in Cape Town.  The reality of the AIDS pandemic was just beginning to unveil the truth, especially amongst women and amongst heterosexual, God fearing adults.  When Nkosi began to beat the odds and turned one, Nelson Mandela had beaten the odds and was set free from prison.

Gail Johnson was born in 1948 in Port Elizabeth during the roar of the merging flames of the Afrikaners grasp on the South African government and formal apartheid.  She was the result of a one night, whirlwind romance where the passion of the flesh overwhelmed the rational mind.  Her single mother gave Gail up for adoption before she was born and Gail entered the world an orphan.  It was short lived when Gail was adopted by Jeff and Jesse Roberts within weeks.  Jeff was a banking executive, Jesse a house wife, they both had English roots and were not Afrikaners.  Gail was bundled up and moved into a comfortable middle class home in Cradock, where some of the worst atrocities of apartheid occurred.

Gail had a sister, Colleen, who Jeff and Jesse had adopted three years prior.  Jeff’s job moved him often and the family relocated from town to town.  While living in Potchefstroom, once the Afrikaner capital of their first republic, Gail was enrolled in a private all-girls school.  Gail's personality was high strung.  She questioned things and broke rules.  Her family was relocated and Gail was left behind as a border.  Gail hated the school and felt imprisoned, writing her parents and pleading for them to bring her home.  They brought her home to Pietersburg, enrolled her in Capricorn High School and again, when her father was transferred, she was left as a border.  This time she excelled and became a student leader until she was caught smoking and was punished with the removal of her leadership position.  She graduated and rejoined her family in Pietermaritzburg.

Her home life, especially with her mother was strained.  Gail was just about to turn eighteen, preferred to dress one way and her mother preferred she dressed more conservatively.  Gail said, "We were like two bulls in a China shop."  Her parents didn't like her choice of friends especially with young men and Gail had the habit of staying out past curfew.  For all intents and purposes, Gail was a pretty typical teenager.

The history and atmosphere of Pietermaritzburg was one of Afrikaner legend magnified and born into religious myth.  Here, the Boer and Afrikaner Church of the Vow was built which celebrated the battle of Blood River.  Here, Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off a train for refusing to give up his paid first class seat to a white and spent the night in a deserted railway station in anguish over his situation.  When dawn arrived, Gandhi had decided he’d stay in South Africa and fight against racism and for the rights of his people, Indians.  Here, Mark Twain attended the funeral for Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon after he was killed by Zulus.  Here, Nelson Mandela made his first court appearance as an attorney and just outside of town was arrested and started his long incarceration.  Here, Nelson Mandela, commonly loved and referred to as “Madiba,” his Xhosa clan name would deliver his last speech as President of South Africa.

Colleen left first and headed for the lights of the big city, Johannesburg.  Gail stayed behind, working in a local bank which her father had arranged.  However, Gail said she had enough of her condescending mother, the status quo lifestyle her parents lived and she had enough of Pietermaritzburg.  When she was twenty, Gail boarded a bus, never looked back and landed an entry level job at a luxury hotel in Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River.  She worked the front desk and as a young, attractive red headed torch with dark penetrating eyes, she greeted guests and lived in the staff dormitory.