Vicky's Children

Meet Thandile. She is thirteen years old and lives with her five siblings in Khayelitsha township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. She is a quiet, sensitive, loving child who wants to grow up to be a doctor. Thandi's mom, Vicky Ntozini, founded Vicky's Bed and Breakfast, the first business in the townships of Cape Town that sought to make it possible for foreign visitors to experience their culture and rich community spirit.

On my first visit in 2005, I heard Vicky tell the story of watching buses drive through her neighborhood with tourists staring out the windows or snapping pictures, never learning or understanding anything about her, her family and her friends. She had the vision to imagine a business that would not only foster cross-cultural exchange but provide income for her family. From its beginning in 1998, her tiny B&B hosted many visitors from across the globe. It thrived and expanded to two stories, inspiring many other inns and tourist enterprises in the townships of Cape Town. She also raised money from her guests to enrich the lives of the local children by providing outings to places like Robben Island as rewards for doing well in school and to fund small gifts for them at Christmas time.

My son David and his then girlfriend now wife, Katie, decided to spend Christmas at Vicky's in 2003, one of the first years of her celebration for the neighborhood children. Dave was visiting Katie for the holidays while she was in Cape Town on a work assignment. He packed a Santa hat to create some cheer for her and ended up being conscripted to play Father Christmas and distribute Vicky's gifts for the township children. They spent the holidays getting to know Vicky and her family; strong bonds of friendship and mutual inspiration were formed. The photographs from those days show very tall, very white Dave and Katie with small brown bodies in their arms, on their backs, always close. If you blow up the photo above and look closely, you can see that in the picture on my iPad, there is another picture inside the larger one, from that Christmas with Dave holding three-year-old Thandi.

The larger picture on the iPad was taken when I visited Vicky in the fall of 2010. I brought love and financial support from me and my family for Vicky and her family and for the Khayelitsha children she was continuing to mentor. I showed her pictures of Dave, Katie and their two children, and gave her copies of photos Katie had sent along from that Christmas that they still display in their home. She called out to the children playing nearby and they crowded her small living room to see themselves, squealing and laughing, and saying "It's Dave! It's Katie! Hey that's me!" Vicky reciprocated by showing me a framed photo collage on her living room wall that included a picture of Dave in the Santa hat.

Two years later, on November 21, 2012, Vicky was brutally murdered. Allegedly by her husband, in their home. With the children present. The shock waves from this horrific event moved through the family, into the Khayelitsha neighborhood, through the tourism community in Cape Town, and out across the world to Vicky's many friends and former B&B guests. When we heard the news, our family felt deep grief. Dave and Katie had always planned to return to Khayelitsha and bring their children to teach them about that community and the foundation of love on which they were basing their own family. I was planning another visit for this fall, again bringing love and support.

A couple of weeks ago, with a heavy heart, I went to Khayelitsha to see Vicky's kids. How do you express condolences to a family of young people and children, ages 23 to 7, who have experienced that level of tragedy? They lost their mother in the most gruesome way imaginable, in front of their eyes, allegedly at the hands of their father. No family with all the advantages, with every possible benefit of personal and cultural support, could be expected to cope well with that horror. This family has none of those. Leaving aside the fact that they are essentially orphans, they've lost their stable home environment; they've lost their primary income; they've lost their role models and their source of daily support and guidance. I did what I had already planned to do - I brought school supplies, groceries, and money from my family. I brought pictures and a small gift for Thandi. I brought my love and concern and that of my family. It all felt like so little. The gaping maw of their need is enormous and my offerings so tiny.

The people I know in the US and in Cape Town who have been keeping up with how the family is doing have recently been experiencing some communication and cultural barriers with the extended family. It has become difficult to find out what the children need and how to get support to them. Sandy, who is seventeen, the second to oldest and clearly in charge of the household now, efficiently unpacked and stored the groceries. She gently but firmly denied the children's desire to dive into the sweet treats included along with the bags of maize flour, sugar and other staples. I could tell a lot about how Vicky had parented those kids as I saw how the little ones asked only with their eyes and accepted her refusal with uncomplaining obedience. She took some of the money and immediately left to go down the street to pay the electric bill because their lights were about to be turned off.

Roxy, 23, works as a waitress and is supplying some income for the family but she now also has a baby who is living with her grandmother in the Eastern Cape, a rural province far to the east of Cape Town. Malandi, 16, is in high school while also trying to keep the B&B business going, with what I'm guessing is diminishing success. It must be hard for the Cape Town tour operators who used to promote the business to continue to recommend it to their clients when they can't be sure there is food in the house for breakfast. And when the powerful, gracious, charismatic innkeeper is no longer there.

I chatted and laughed with the younger children, drawing them close to me on the couch. Siya, the seven-year-old, has an enormous smile and a small body bursting with energy and eagerness to interact. Lolo is a somewhat solemn boy of 11 who didn't say a lot. He's surrounded by sisters and I wonder how it must be for him without his dad around. I couldn't get enough of touching them and tried to remember they don't really know me. How open and loving they were! They told me about school, their favorite subjects and what they wanted to be when they grew up. With all my heart I want their dreams to come true.

I struggled to find words to convey my feelings for their loss. When I began to ask them how they were, to make space for their sadness, I was surprised to find my own grief for the loss of my friend surging into my throat. I instantly felt the absurdity of my emotion in the face of theirs and managed to keep my composure. They all became solemn right away, giving small nods when Thandi said "It's hard. It's very hard." The enormity of their burden, the horror of their tragedy filled every bit of space in that small room for a long moment. Sandy said they all had to go to court in early November to testify, because they were all witnesses. I looked around at the circle of pairs of huge brown eyes and felt a rush of overwhelming helplessness. I said I couldn't imagine how hard that would be but I knew they would get through it. They would get through it together. I urged them to remember what I thought were the three most important things: to stay together and help each other, to stay in school and get their education, and to remember that there were people like me all over the world who cared about them, that they were not alone. I and my family care and would keep on caring, they had to remember that.

From the moment I left Khayelitsha to today, the memories of those children and that afternoon are never far from the center of my mind and heart. I have thought, talked and dreamt about them. I have grieved for them and, at last, made space for my own grief. Always, I come back to what to do now. I had two intensive conversations with a friend in Cape Town, Lavinia, who is very familiar with the enormous spectrum of South African issues from HIV/AIDS to education to orphans to social justice, you name it. She not only listened with great kindness and generosity but also tried to teach me about the realities of the cultural resources and scarcities. Would they all be better off with their relative in the Eastern Cape? No, the education is abysmal there. What about help from an NGO that serves orphans? Maybe, but there are 2.5 million orphans. Many ideas I thought of depended on the cooperation of the extended family which might prove to be problematic right now. So many dead ends.

There are only a few things I know of so far I can do. I can try to keep up with them via the B&B's email address which the children told me is still working. I can send more money with some friends who will visit Cape Town on the Spring 2014 SAS voyage. I can stay in touch with an American professor who also is working to provide support for the kids and who will be returning with her students to Khayelitsha in June, as she has for years. Lavinia has generously offered to make some inquiries into possible agencies or organizations that might be able to help. Those things are not nothing. But in the face of the enormity of this disaster for these six young people, they feel ridiculously inadequate.

I don't do powerless well. In our conversation, my wise friend Lavinia gave me a gift of compassionate advice. Mother to mother, she reminded me that with our own children, we have had to realize that we can't make the world right for them. We can't fix it so that they don't have pain and hardship, and we have to make our peace with that. Ah, yes, I said, I try to remember but it's hard. She urged me to realize that the same applies to these children. I know Lavinia is right. I can't fix it for them. I can only do the things I can do. And I can hold them in my heart. That's what Vicky did for her children and for the children of Khayelitsha. That's what mothers do for all the world's children. I have to trust that's what she would have wanted me to do for Roxy, Sandy, Malandi, Lolo, Siya and Thandile.

Malandi, 16

Top row L to R: Sandy, 17, Me, Thandili, 13; Bottom row L to R: A cousin, Lolo, 11, Siya, 7