Anniversary of the death of a friend

Four years ago, my friend, Charlene Hollis Lategan, asked me to write a piece about her for submission to a local magazine. The piece was never published. Three years later, she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

I never got the chance to say farewell to her.

On the one-year anniversary of her death (16 June 2007), I wish to publish the article that she so wanted to see in print.Her dearly beloved Bushman artist friend, Vetkat, mentioned in the article, died shortly before Charlene.

The piece was headed CALL ME WOMAN by Barbara Elion.

"It is late at night, New Year’s Eve 2004. Some men are sitting around an open fire on a farm in the Breede River Valley. Charlene, who has been tending the farm for nine years, goes inside to fetch a wrap. She comes back outside and says to her Bushman friend, “Vetkat, I feel so lost. I don’t know what my culture is. Whom do I belong to?”

Next morning, Vetkat, who had come down from Blinkwater to the farm, brings out one of his drawings to show her. Embedded in the picture are some finely drawn praying mantis figures, representative of the Bushmen, and in the centre of the piece is a very large female figure, giving birth to a baby. He gives this drawing to her and then says, “Jy en Belinda moes saam stap, soos ‘Die Skilpad’ deur A.G. Gerinders. Dis nou die tyd van die vrou,” calling on some distant, foggy memory of early schooling.The Bushmen have spoken. The time has come for the women to lead.……………………….

How does a Durban-born young lady, whose adolescent delight once lay in poring over the sophisticated styling of Vogue magazines, get to suffer physical and mental torture under the Somali dictator, President Said Barre, ousted in 1991, and go on, in womanhood, to take the cause of the Bushman artist, Vetkat, close to her heart.

When I think of Charlene, I think of a sylph in a faraway land, forever in her prime, forever airborne. How does one get to know a woman? By what she wears and does? Through her many loves? Through her pain, through her sacrifice?

In 1971, in a fusty girls’ school gymnasium in Sea Point, Charlene Hollis was the only young lady on the matric dance committee to volunteer climbing the extended ladder to secure the planets with a staple-gun onto their orbits in the Universe. In that year our friendship took root. I was the co-convener of the dance committee. Although I was 2½ years younger than her, it was left to me to direct the show, to decide how the Universe was to be arranged. Charlene was every schoolgirl’s envy. Long of limb, golden-haired, softly spoken, she was well on her way to capturing the heart of the local prince. But when I saw her bravely tiptoeing on the highest rung, smeared in paint, making practical suggestions that the rest of us had no clue about, I knew she was destined to step into the unknown.

1971 was the year of George Harrison’s anthem 'My Sweet Lord'. It was the year that the Robben Island prisoners achieved more humane conditions for themselves. And on the mainland the city authorities renamed District Six “Zonnebloem” in an effort to mask their apartheid crime of forced removals. It was the year in which Charlene, supporting protesting students from the University of Cape Town, was tear-gassed by police on the steps of St George’s Cathedral.

Fast-forward to 1974. Charlene was at art school studying photography; I was bumbling my way through a BA degree. Her arty set provided an interesting contrast to my academic friends. We used to get up to interesting mischief together, arranging soft-focus nude photo shoots for visiting French photographers, exploring the interiors of yachts at the club, which became her home from home over the next two years, and visiting galleries and bookshops.

Fast-forward to 1976. I spend six months travelling between Israel, the UK and Europe. I arrive back in Cape Town two days before the start of the Soweto uprising. A brick is thrown at my windscreen as I drive along the Mill Street Bridge.

During my sojourn Charlene sets off on the journey of her dreams: sailing a yacht via the Seychelles with her new boyfriend and three other crewmates to its destination in Malta. They reach the Seychelles after making a fateful stop on the idyllic isle of Juan de Nova, situated in the channel between Madagascar and Moçambique, where they find some French legionnaires on the deserted beaches. Darkness rules over Africa. Their yacht, Julie 11, blown off course by a cyclone, runs aground on the horn of Africa, some 100 kms north of a secret Russian missile “installation”. What follows is an 8-month traumatic ordeal marked by torture, imprisonment, a public trial and the demand for a 24-year sentence for the crew and death for the skipper. Because a note is smuggled out of the jail, word gets out to the international press, which puts maximum pressure on the Somali president to exercise clemency. Ultimately freed, Charlene sadly leaves behind Marium, a pious Somali fellow prisoner, whose life and gift (taken some months later) fills her mind’s eye to this day.

It is now 1978. Charlene returns to Cape Town after spending some months with the London Daily Mail journalist who had arranged their release from Somalia. The summer is warm. All things are possible. She goes for a job interview with a famous local photographer, Ginger Odes, whose long-time friend was due to arrive from New York that night. The man in question was Barry Lategan, the internationally renowned, South African-born photographer who made Twiggy famous in the 1960s. He is arriving in Cape Town to take photos for his series on trees.Barry, who happens to be Charlene’s fourth cousin, invites her out for dinner. I offer to lend her my lavender silver-shot shirt for the occasion. Barry, smitten by his younger relative, showers her letterbox with all manner of communications. And then he leaves for New York, but not before making plans with Fairlady’s then fashion editor, Sydney Baker, to shoot a spread for the magazine on the Greek islands.

Some months later, Charlene receives an invitation to join the shoot. Barry proposes to Charlene in the house of his best friend, Sulaiman Allie, in the Bo-Kaap. She promises to be his “woman for all seasons”.

Fast forward to May 1979. I am sitting in the staff room of Harold Cressy High School, browsing through the Cape Times when I come across a photo of Barry and Charlene taken on their wedding day. The caption reads that the couple intends spending their honeymoon on the island of Santorini. She is wearing black trousers and Barry’s navy blazer, an interesting outfit for a young bride. They have swapped white shirts for the occasion.

It is 1988. Charlene is in Cape Town with her young son, Dylan, to take care of her dying mother. Her hair is still golden and fluffy, her eyes a deep and piercing blue. We meet at a house in Green Point where she is staying, temporarily, with a motley crew of characters. There are interesting artifacts everywhere. Everyone in the house seems transient. She continues to speak of Marium.

A while later I hear via the grapevine that she has divorced, that she has given birth to a lovely daughter and is living semi-alone in MacGregor. An old school friend then lets me know that Charlene is involved in organic farming in the Breede River valley.

Our paths do not cross for many, many years.

And then one day I bump into her inside a shopping centre. She is accompanied by a turban-haired woman whom she introduces as Belinda. She speaks of Belinda’s book, Kalahari Rainsong, co-written with Elana Bregine of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, but the details go over my head. I hand her my business card and two days later she calls and we arrange to meet.
Her eyes once again have a faraway look. I am not wrong. Excitedly she tells me of the promise that she has made to Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper and his wife Belinda to accompany them on their journey to America in September 2004. Belinda, who is not a Bushman by birth, has joined the Khomani clan via marriage. Oom Dawid, the leader of the Khomani clan, the last of 35 traditionally living San Bushmen, had previously privately told Rupert Isaacson, author of 'The Healing Land', that, as a result of a dream, he wished to go to America to publicise the plight of the Kalahari Bushmen from the threat of diamond mining and cattle ranching. He also wished to meet with and learn from the Native American leaders and shamans who, too, had been hounded off their lands and, above all, to take a look at, in his words, “the power center: the place from which everything happens – America.”

Charlene volunteers to assist the vulnerable travellers with the logistics of getting to the United States. She feels that great things would transpire as a result of the trip. On her return, she tells me with much joy in her eyes that The Gathering 2004: An Alliance of Elders, Shamans and Wisdom-keepers, organized by the non-profit organization, Journey to the Heart, at Big Bear in California, was the highlight of the trip. This NGO is dedicated to promoting cross-cultural awareness and the formation of collaborative partnerships with people of diverse teachings and spiritual traditions based on the principle of spiritual ecology. At The Gathering 2004, a few hundred people came together to share their stories, myths and healing traditions and ceremonies. There she had the honour of meeting a most fascinating and inspiring gathering of wise individuals who came as representatives of the world’s indigenous peoples, including Grandmother Deena Metzger, a story-teller and healer from California. Deena works closely with Mandaza, otherwise known as Augustine Kandemwa, a healer and shaman from Zimbabwe. Other wise women at the gathering were Grandmother Pauline Tangiora of the Maoris, who, incidentally, returned to New York to intercede on the Bushmen’s behalf at the United Nations Indigenous People’s Forum. Charlene also made a close connection with Anank Nunink Nunkai, a Shaur Uwishin from the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador. Zechariah, a Venda, with a Ph.D in Linguistics from the University of Stellenbosch was also at the meeting as was Vuzamazulu Credo Mutwa’s assistant, Virginia Rathele. Adding to the intercultural healing circle were Ash Dargan, a gifted musician from the Larrika tribe of Australia’s Northern Territory, Melvin Betsellie, a sundancer of the Dine as well as Mayan and Inca healers.

When I ask Charlene why the trip had been such an initiation for her, she tells me that all her travels around the world have taught her, conclusively, that all truth is held in the telling of stories. She walks around with a copy of Deena Metzger’s book 'Entering the Ghost River', a book filled with insights that I have come to know myself.

Once a young woman with her eye on the horizon, in adulthood Charlene embraces the here, the now, and the earth that supports our rhythms and longevity.Right now her commitment lies in promoting Vetkat Regopstaan Kruiper’s authentic Bushman art.Our paths continue to cross at intervals in a gently undulating spiral. We understand each other so much better than we did back then. One for all and all for one - the connections run deep. It is now time for the women…." © Barbara Elion

I miss your presence, Charlene. You are not forgotten.
draft
4:58:00 AM
by barbarae
Delete
1 – 1 of 1