My Family Life!

My Parent’s Life

My Dad stayed in Joburg because he was working, and he had no choice because we were still young and we needed support and all the stuff to go to school. My dad was a really good father, he was always taking us around with his car and to visit our grandparents – both my mom’s and his parents – we were so happy around him.

Things changed when in 1994 my dad had an affair. Our relationship started to break apart from there. He slowly stopped coming home and he failed to support us. We started to starve and went to school without shoes, without even a piece of bread in our mouths. It got worse and worse; my mom was trying every day to contact him, and she would go up and down trying to get him back. My mother came from a family where her father tried so hard to provide, and now in her marriage she had to experience going to the neighbors asking for food so we could have something to eat. And in the midst of this, she was pregnant with her last child, who is now twelve. Because of pain and depression my mother ended up being mentally disturbed, but she was able to see it coming before it started. Here is the story: she woke me up in the middle of the night, around twelve o’clock; she said she had a dream. In the dream, a giant man wearing white clothes came to her and he said he knew everything that was going on with my dad trying to abandon her and that he would help her out. My mom believed him; he asked her to burn her church uniform, and my mom did that; he said to go to your brothers and sisters and pray for them, and she did that with respect – unaware that the spirit of darkness was attacking her. This strange man ended up sending her to kill the whole family because he said they caused my father to turn away from home. My mom started to suspect something, but she was so frightened, that although usually she slept alone in her room, in those days she asked us to sleep with her because the man used to appear every night and threaten her. During this time, my sister and I were so young, so she called my grandmother to live with us finally. It helped to be with an old person because she was able to notice that my mom was losing her mind and becoming more arrogant too. So they took her to the hospital where she was treated, and has been doing well ever since. And after a couple months, she gave birth to a lovely sister – and the intelligent one – Sonto.

But my father didn’t show up at all. After my mom came back from the hospital, she was so stressed. So she used to wake up early in the morning and go to her parent’s home, and stay there until evening, then come home just to sleep. I became responsible for my sister and myself. We were all by ourselves and we had no food in that time. My girl friend helped us by saving her lunch for us, or sometimes, when my neighbor’s chickens were laying eggs, we would steal those eggs and make food. Although we were sinning by doing that, we had no other option. So, rather than dying of hunger, we chose to live like that.

We lived like that almost four years – I think I was 9-12 years and my sister was 6-9 years old. My mom tried very hard to get a hold of my father, but there was no response from him, so she decided to arrest him for lack of child support. The situation got better for a while because he was under arrest, but he did well for six months and then he started again. But still, my mom was persistent and constant in prayer. I started to hate my father, but my mom has always encouraged us to trust in God and to love our father. I learned from her to believe in prayer and to be patient, really believing in God – that He would bring light into my dad’s heart, and for him to see how painful it was to know that our father is alive but lacking to support us.