Man-to-Man with Dr. Musa Manzi (Part 2)

This is the second part of the interview I did with Dr. Musa Manzi. I sat with him in early July in his laboratory at Wits University where he is a lecturer. Musa is a geophysicist as well as a guardian to his 2 nieces, the daughters of his late sister. You can catch up on Part 1 of this interview here.

Musa, can we move on to 2004 when you lost both your mom and sister in a very short space of time and the decision to become your nieces’ guardian? Can you take us through that? Was that an easy decision to make? Is it just something you simply had to do or did you really have to think hard about the fact that you were now going to be a guardian or a parent?

It was a very complex situation. I don’t know why I did some of the things I did then, even though they turned out really well. It was a win-win situation.

So that year I used to go home regularly because my mom was sick. Both my brother and sister weren’t home, but the girls, my sister’s daughters, were staying with my mom. Things were tough. But I had Christian friends who would go check on my mom. They even went as far as trying to build her a house because I couldn’t afford to. They were trying to give her some shelter.

When I would go down to Durban, it was really emotional. That year was just painful. A lot was going on and when you think that your mother is going to die at some stage, you don’t want to accept that. Especially when your mom has worked so hard. You don’t want to lose that person because you have that hope that they will see you achieve good things in life. You don’t want them to only experience the pain. You want them to be part of your success too.

You know, my mother never had a good life. She always fought for us to have a decent living. Even when she was sick, she would still go to work earning that R300 to support us. I remember when I was still at Wits, she would even deposit R50. And I would withdraw R20 from the bank and buy bread. At that time I was approaching my third year and I was thinking that after finishing my degree, everything is going to be fine.

So this particular Friday morning, I woke up and didn’t feel like doing anything. So I took a taxi to Durban. When I got home, my mother was sick. So I forced her to go to the hospital. I called an ambulance late at night, at around 9 or 10. You know how old people are – they always say they want to die at home. It was very emotional.

So I took her to the hospital and we got to the government hospital and it was full. There were no beds available, so they couldn’t admit her. We had to wait till morning, sitting on a bench like this because we didn’t have transport to go back home.

That night, changed my mind-set about life. I remember it as though it happened this morning because I was holding her the whole night. She couldn’t sit upright, and she also couldn’t sit still. I had to hold her. And the only money I had in my pocket was R10, so I asked one of the nurses to buy chips and that was the only thing I could afford to feed my mother.

At the same time, one thing I learned was men can do so much if they put their hearts to it, particularly things that are considered to be “women’s jobs”. I sat there carrying my mother like that and seeing all the nurses not helping at all. Not even offering to do anything for me. That was the turning point for me on why people do things if they don’t want to help people. It’s all about money, but not about helping people.

They were just sitting there having coffee and laughing while my mother was crying – the whole night. You would think it should be a default response for them, as females, to offer help to a man struggling with his mother. But not a single one of them offered help. Things like, “oh, can I take her to the bathroom?”, no. I did those things myself. I took her to the bathroom.

You know, it was very emotional. My mother was complaining the whole night. She was saying to me “I didn’t want to be taken to the hospital in the first place”. And I had forced her. She said to me that she knew how bad these hospitals are and she just wanted to die at home.

In the morning, which was a Saturday, the doctor came at 9. My mother now had to go for x-rays. At this point, we are both exhausted. We had spent the whole night sitting on a bench. With no blanket. She had been sitting on my lap. So I was also tired.

Before the x-rays, she had to go for a shower. They showed me where the shower was. And I showered her. She was now sitting on a wheelchair. And I bathed her. To me, that was…….. . That day I knew my mom’s nakedness because I had to bathe her. I mean, she had given birth to me, but now roles have changed, I'm now the parent and she’s the child. And to me that was very emotional, at the same time very painful. But I knew it was worth it because as a man, a young man, I was thinking – my mother has done a lot for me, so I know I can do this! I know it’s the right thing to do because she’s my parent.

Then a nurse knocked on the door and said “are you done?”. Again, that said a lot to me. No-one willingly helped, not even to bathe my mother. Then she went for X-rays. So when she was doing the x-rays, the doctor said I could wait outside. The idea was that she was going to have x-rays done and we would go home thereafter as there was no bed available for her.

That was again very painful that I would have to leave her at home as I needed to come back to Wits. But by God’s grace one of the nurses came and said “are you Musa Manzi?” She then said to me that she had good news for me – someone had just been discharged meaning my mother could now be admitted.

So I said to the nurse, I’d like to see where she would be placed because if it’s not a good place, I prefer taking her back home. So I walked into the ward just looking around and checking. I was very exhausted because I had not slept. And I had been holding my mother all night and she had been complaining about not wanting to come to the hospital in the first place. It was a bit heavy for me.

So I walked in there and as I was looking around the ward and checking where the nurse was preparing what would be my mother’s bed, someone called out my name. And they also said, “my brother!” That turned out to be my sister! In the same ward!! Remember, my sister had disappeared and we didn’t know where she was.

So when I walked in and she saw me, my sister had assumed that I had come from Joburg to see her in hospital. She didn’t know that our mother was sick as she had disappeared from home for a while now. To her surprise, I had brought my mother to the hospital. Coincidentally, the bed that was being prepared for my mother was right next to the one my sister was lying on.

My mother also didn’t know that my sister was in hospital because she had disappeared and left the kids. And the night before my mother had been complaining, the whole night, about how my sister had just dropped the kids and disappeared. Little did she know that the following morning they were going to meet in the ward. Not only that, but also that they were going to sleep right next to each other.

So that was a bit…. you know….. I took a pause because my sister asked me – how did you know I was sick. And I was like, I didn’t know you were sick. The nurse is now a bit shocked. She was like, “are you guys related?” And I said to her, this is my sister. And she says, “and the one outside?” I tell her that that’s our mother. I then asked the nurse if they knew this because they were now placing my sister and mother next to each other. And she said, “we didn’t even notice that they had similar surnames. This is the only bed that opened up and that’s why we are placing your mother here”.

So I told my sister that I would be bringing our mother in. My sister was still in shock. And the way she had left home wasn’t good – having left my mother with the 2 kids. So my mom was still upset with my sister. So I walked out to my mother and told her, “We have a surprise here. So you should be strong, don’t fight. We didn’t want you to have a heart-attack”. I briefed her and then took her into the ward.

Before I left for Wits, I spoke to one of the nurses and asked that she please makes sure that they are fine. It was almost exams time. I had to go back to Wits. One of the nurses gave me money, (I think it was a R100) to travel back to Johannesburg and she said to me that she would take care of them. I took a City-to-City bus from Durban to Joburg. I think she kind of liked me because we had spoken a bit. She was one of the nurses that had come in in the morning. So she was nice and very helpful.

So she took my Wits res numbers and told me to concentrate on my exams and that she would call me if anything happened. The following Friday I got a call from her that they had been discharged from the hospital.

Oh okay so you left them on the Saturday morning and came back to Wits?

Yes, so on the next Friday morning that’s when I got a call from the same nurse that they had both been discharged. I didn’t even bother attending lectures that day. I took a taxi home and I got there at around 6 in the evening. I checked on them on how they were doing. My sister was tired. I chatted with her a bit. My mother was still in pain.

I knew I was going to spend the weekend there, so I took a walk checking out my friends and stuff. So when I walked back about 45 minutes later, there were a lot of people at my place - my aunts and other relatives. I didn’t think anything had happened. As I walked in my aunt came to me and she says “okay Musa, as soon as you walked out, your sister passed on”.

I started crying and she was like “you mustn’t cry, you must be very strong, your mother is in pain” because they had been sleeping on the same bed. It was a small house. That was the only bed we had. It was a big bed though, although it was hand-made.

Just after my sister died, they placed her body on the floor. I went in to check on how my mom was doing. Of course she was still in pain, and crying. So there was a disagreement at home about the burial of my sister, because I had proposed that we bury her on Saturday, the following day.

Financially it was going to be better. They all didn’t agree with me because of traditional customs – we had to wait a week and notify other family members. I didn’t want to go through that because it had a lot of financial implications – paying the mortuary for the whole week. And also remember, my mother is still in pain, so we’re still going to spend more money anyway, taking her to hospital and things like that. So I was trying to minimize costs, I didn’t have money anyway. But I didn’t win that battle. She was taken to the mortuary. I think one of the family members volunteered to pay.

I remember the police van came and took her to the mortuary. I had an exam that I had to write on the Monday. I had to come back to Wits as I couldn’t afford to miss that exam. So Saturday morning, I got onto a bus - I don’t remember who gave me the money.

I woke up on Sunday morning, very exhausted, sat on my desk trying to study and all that. Then the phone at res rang. It was my brother. My mother had passed away that morning. 

So that was bad.

I didn’t get to write (the exam) on Monday. That’s where things got bad. Fortunately my cousin Nqobile was around. We were always together everywhere we went. We were emotionally attached because we had gone through so much together.

I remember a couple of guys from His People campus ministry came and gave me money. And they even went down to Durban with me. They dropped me at home and then came back as they also had to prepare for their own exams. So I stayed home the whole week preparing for the funeral.

The funeral came and a month later, I fell ill and was hospitalized. (I think it was the stress).

When I was in hospital, I got a few calls that day of people asking me how I was doing. It was strange because I hardly got such calls. Then I got another call. This time it was my pastor, from home. He prayed for me over the phone, saying that the devil was attacking my family. At that point, he had not heard anything. After that prayer, I felt some peace.

Then that’s when my one cousin who was very close to my heart called and said to me “your brother has been shot this morning at 4 o’clock at Durban Station. So we need to organize for you to come home. But don’t take a bus, we will come fetch you”. 

He organized with his friends and they came and fetched me.

(Part 3 of the interview is next).