On Gratitude

Siteki, Swaziland
27/05/09
20:00

Early one morning in a borrowed truck, my friend Anna Zwane and I, ventured out through the mist laden African scrub. We were in search of three poor but eminently courageous Grandmothers (Gogo’s).

Each of these Gogo’s had experienced deep, life altering suffering. They had watched the ones whom they had given life to, die unspeakable deaths in the callous, unyielding arms of HIV. As each one died, they left behind their own children, a legacy of lonely hands and feet to add to the river of tears that ebbs and flows across every tender curve of the Lebombo mountains.

For a spoilt westerner like me it is hard to imagine the depth of strength that lives within Gogo Josephine, Gogo Alvina and Gogo Dlamini. Frail, unemployed and barely able to look after themselves, they did not hesitate in taking into their care each and every one of their orphaned grandchildren.

In Gogo Josephine’s house there are now twelve little ones. With Gogo Dlamini there are thirteen, and Gogo Alvina has twenty children whom she is supporting.

Earlier that day Anna and I went to the local grocery store, with three scribbled shopping lists in hand which read: Five kilograms of peanuts; Another five of sugar; Ten kilograms of rice; Fifty kilograms of cornsoya meal; A kilo of soap; Ten white candles; Five grey storm blankets.

Anna, who is a matron at the Good Shepherd hospital, explained that our gifts would last each family a grand total of two weeks.

When we reached her house, it seemed that Josephine was waiting for someone. Walking stick in hand she sat silently outside her crumbling home. Her sight almost completely gone. Her beautiful brown face deeply wrinkled from the stream of love and tears which had flowed mingled down for so many years. Hers was the gentle unheralded wisdom which only comes from the washing of clothes, the harvesting of maize and the feeding of little mouths. There was dignity in her presence.

We explained why we had come: How amazed we were by her courage, endurance and love; That we had a small token to share with her; A trifle really; Not even the faintest shadow of what she really deserved.

She looked at us, not seeing us and seeing us at the same time.

And she began to weep.

“Can I touch them?” She asked in tender Si-Swati.


One by one I held out the inanimate objects for her to hold.
I watched as she caressed them, adored them, enfolded them in her love.

The long green bar of soap held softly to her face like the hand of a gentle lover.

The bag of cornsoya meal embraced like the shoulders of a child.

And that dull, grey storm blanket touched with a reverence and love which I’m sure a storm blanket is not used to.

She began to pray: “Siyabonga, Siyabonga, Siyabonga”

“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.”

Inspite of myself I couldn’t help but wonder how she could be so grateful?

Josephine who had lost everything. Her husband, her children, her mobility, her vision.

Why would she, of all people, fall down at the altar of her life and cry ‘thank you’? For a bar of soap, for a portion of rice, for a dull, grey storm blanket.

And yet, as she prayed and talked to us about her life I realised that for Josephine gratitude was not a choice.

Gratitude was a way. Through broken mornings and wounded middays. Through unexpected storms and the blinding dark.

Within a landscape of tears, her life was a painted thank you,

Meister Eckharts once said “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is thank you. That will be enough.”

As I looked at her face, lined in pain and gratefulness, I knew that it was.