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Great news, Lord. I found out from Nyasha that there are rumors that the nurses are going on strike. That means no elective surgeries, because there’ll be no nurses to assist. Which means Thursday afternoons are free. This has to be a miracle! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
My God, my God, why have You abandoned me? I have cried desperately for help, but still it does not come. During the day I call to You, my God, but You do not answer; I call at night, but get no rest. But You are enthroned as the Holy One, the One whom Israel praises. Our ancestors put their trust in You; they trusted You and You saved them. They called to You and escaped from danger; they trusted You and were not disappointed.
But I am no longer a human being; I am a worm, despised and scorned by everyone! All who see me jeer at me; they stick out their tongues and shake their heads. “You relied on the Lord,” they say. “Why doesn’t He save you? If the Lord likes you, why doesn’t He help you?”
Psalm 22:1–8
I certified two patients dead this morning. I felt nothing. I tried forcing myself to pause, to stop, to acknowledge. But nothing came. I even tried doing the sign of the cross, but nothing stirred within me.
Maybe I’m just PMS-ing.
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Next month I start my Obstetrics & Gynecology rotation with a call. I feel nothing but dread for the hours I will be spending sucking dead babies out of little girls’ vaginas. I hate the Obstetrics & Gynecology staff. I hate the environment, I hate the smells. The nurses there are mean and cruel, especially to the foreign patients. They call them dirt. They shout at them for coming in the middle of the night without antenatal books. They ask them why they fill up our wards. They look at the scabs on their legs, smack their lips, and remark, “You see this one? You can tell she jumped the border only just yesterday.”
They scrunch up their noses when they examine them. They laugh at their names. They speak to them in Sesotho, isiXhosa, isiZulu, even though they know they can’t understand.
And then there’s me, standing there, smiling sheepishly. “Don’t worry, they’re just joking,” I try to reassure them when I’m alone with them in the examination room. I can see in their eyes that they know I’m lying. So I say nothing more.
I’m afraid of the Obstetrics & Gynecology nurses. If I reprimand them I’ll create hell for myself in that department for the duration of my rotation. And possibly beyond. So instead of telling them that what they’re doing is wrong, and possibly illegal, I do nothing.
I’m a coward. If this were apartheid, I’d be one of those quiet white people who just stood by and watched it happen.
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I tell Ma about the kidney dish that still has Slegs Blankes engraved into it, that the nurses keep for foreign patients. I tell her how appalling it is that we’ve become the very thing we fought so long and hard to destroy. Ma says she doesn’t blame the nurses. She’s watched their movies, and foreigners can hide their magic in anything.
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What is it inside of us that makes us so evil? And how do we become better? Why are we capable of so much harm and badness? How do we change? And stay changed?
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Nyasha says her group of new intern doctors all have weaves. Twelve girls as black as night, with mops of plastic on their heads. She is annoyed.
“Stupid girls. Book smart, but stupid. They can tell you the nerve that innervates the stapedius muscle, but they can’t see the foolishness in walking around with heaps of self-hatred on their heads.”
She wants me to get involved.
“Why don’t you tell them, Chaba? These are your sisters, your South African sisters. Maybe if you speak to them, you can put some sense into their heads.”
I say nothing, so she continues. “We know we hate ourselves as black people. That we know. But now we’re exposing ourselves to white people, too. Now we are exposing this dark stain of self-hatred on our race. We’re giving them evidence that we are indeed a foolish, self-loathing people. A thing to be pitied. How much do those weaves cost? These girls have only been working a few months and already they’re enriching the industries that strive to oppress us instead of building our communities.”
Her tirade continues, and she seems not bothered by my obvious disinterest.
“Now I must keep these dreadlocks, even though they wear my head down, even though I’ve grown tired of them, because one of us, some of us, must have pride. We can’t all walk around like mad people. If aliens were to come from Mars, what would they make of us, Chaba?”
Nyasha wants to fight, fight, fight. She hates white people and blames them for everything. Maybe she’s right, maybe they are to blame. But it is what it is. What’s happened has happened. We can’t go back, and we certainly can’t change who we are to try to avenge the past. She says we black South Africans are too nice, too accommodating, too soft. “Weak” and “pathetic” are the words she uses to describe us.
“We need to stop bending over backward, breaking our backs to make them feel comfortable, welcome, safe. Put a white man in charge and he’ll only serve his own interests.”
Maybe, Nyasha, maybe that’s true, but maybe it isn’t. And maybe, Nyasha, we need to remember that this world is fallen. There are wars we will never win, and maybe the end game is not to triumph over fleeting kingdoms in this life, but to conquer the battle for eternity.
Of course she scoffs when I say things like that.
“Why does your god make it so hard for us to love him, Chaba? Why play these
