My Community Life!

My Life in Community

I was fourteen years old when I started learning about adolescence, and seeing my friends start to engage themselves into things like drugs, boys, etc. I sat down at home one day looking at the situation – and all the suffering and the hard painful upbringing – and it’s full of anger. I wish to be something else, so that I could look after my mom, and give her everything she could want, to bring the joy into her life that she never experienced in her marriage. So I decided to make boundaries and put distance between nasty things and myself. I didn’t want to mess up my life. I remember one day writing my first letter to God:

The key words were asking God to give me:

1) Strength

2) Protection

3) Values

4) Strong character

5) Right desires

God is so faithful! That year, I joined a team of girls (who are all virgins) and went with them to a Zulu Tribal Celebration. This is where all the Zulu girls – also known as Zulu maidens – come together at the Enyokeni Zulu Royal Palace every year to celebrate the Umkhosi Womhlanga (known as the Reed Dance); this promotes the purity of virgins amongst girls in KwaZulu Natal. The reason it’s called the Reed Dance is because during the dance, the Zulu girls fetch the reeds from the river and bring them to the royal palace to the king. It is during this dance that most kings choose their wives. But I was not there to be chosen; this is a Zulu custom that has been carried out for years now, helping girls preserve their virginity until they get married. The purpose of the Reed Dance is to allow Zulu maidens to meet their king and mingle with the princesses while delivering reed sticks. Every girl must pass a virginity test to attend. The king uses this occasion to address a wide ranging number of issues, more recently focusing on AIDS. I attended this celebration until 2003. I was in grade twelve at that time, and I was the leader of the girls in my community.