When I was growing up, I took my health and strength for granted. I never for a moment stopped to think, hey, what a gift I have. But I did have a gift. I was strong, sporty, agile. Children mostly always are, aren't they? They bounce through life unstoppable, eating and drinking whatever they want and, it seems, getting away with it.
But that's not how life works. We don't get away with anything. What we do in our childhood will affect who we are in our adulthood; what we eat and how we live in our twenties will affect who we are in our forties; and how we love ourselves in our forties will affect our wellbeing in our sixties. If you abuse yourself when you are young, you will pay the price when you are older.
I got married when I was 23 after a lifetime hiking, running and playing every sport I could. I was naturally athletic. But I had gone to a mainstream school and diet was not high on my priority list. After school, I studied further and partied with everyone else. When you are 18, 19 and 20 you don't think about your body as a wellness machine because you're too busy abusing it with alcohol and coffee. Those late nights cramming for exams with your old friend coffee...those weekends spent dancing through the night and falling into bed at 5am. Not good.
I qualified as a journalist and went on to work for a community newspaper and then a weight loss company, writing its weight loss success stories, as well as various health articles. I loved that; and that was when the health bug first took a nip at me, as a cheeky Jack Russell might do to get your attention. While working for that company, a highly successful business which has transformed thousands of women's - and men's - lives over half a century, I was expected to weigh in each week, and to eat according to the principles of the programme - which I did, happily. And I lost weight and felt amazing for the first time in my life.
I got married and fell pregnant at the age of 26. I went on to have five more children. We moved to Mozambique when my husband was offered a job in the port city of Beira, in 2012. Here, we lived in four different house over five years. During this time, we lived on white bread and coffee. The food in Beira was expensive and poor quality. Beira is in central Mozambique, and Mozambique as everyone should know by now, was severely affected by civil war and unrest for many, many years. The people there are poor, and dirty, and sick a lot. There is very little there in terms of nourishment and we had to make do; and it took its toll.
Beira was where my husband first got sick. He came home from a ship one day and coughed. And just like that I knew he was sick. It wasn't a cold, or just a cough. It was a fungus, we believe, which grew in his lungs like mould does in a house - once it finds a lovely damp in which to nestle, it bubbles up and makes everyone sick. We didn't know what was wrong with him; and like an idiot, he self-medicated with prednisone, a cortisone which in Mozambique, you can buy over the counter. It fascinates me, this; how in Mozambique you can't paint your house without a licence or ride your bicycle without a permit; but you can buy drugs over the counter as if you were buying coke. That's Mozambique for you -
When we living in a flat at that stage. Quite a nice flat. With an ocean view - sort of; and a lovely breeze that would pick up in the afternoon and cool the verandah, which semi-wrapped around the flat, which was an upstairs abode. We'd sit on that verandah in the mornings with our coffee and watch the birds in the aviary in the garden below us. That aviary was full of birds and breeding guinea pigs galore - I'm sure our neighbours were eating those little pigs; but we were never able to establish the facts.
But I digress. At around the same time that John got sick, I also fell ill. I woke up one morning with sore joints - I had to hobble to the bathroom for a wee, and hobble back again. Truly, a picture of health. Then I started to get headaches and my hair started falling out. I was still breastfeeding our baby girl Keren. In a panic I ordered Jordan Rubin's (whose books I had been reading) Garden Of Health green powder in capsule form, from the States, and when it arrived much, much later, I started popping these little capsules with the faith of a mustard seed - if they cost so much they must work! And they did. But they didn't heal me; they simply gave me a glimpse of my old strength and energy. I knew I would have much work to do to get well again.
My eyes at that stage were battling. They would glaze over every so often with a kaleidoscope of colours, like an unwelcome rainbow, blinding me for a few minutes while I'd try to shake it off and see properly. I thought I had a brain tumour. So on our next trip back to South Africa, I made an appointment with an optometrist for an eye check. We were staying in a small Free State town for the night, at a bed and breakfast. That night after the checkup, I went back to this B&B with John and the children. In the middle of the night I had a strange dream which woke me up. I sat up, looked up and felt my eyes spin around in their sockets and settle back down again. And when I looked around, I could see perfectly. And never again did I experience any problems with my eyes. It was a surreal experience, and I had to wonder if God's hand had touched my eyes and body that night and healed me.
Throughout this journey I had been trying to conceive again. We'd been on the road for years; my health wasn't great; it was extremely stressful travelling the 2000km between Mozambique and South Africa via Zimbabwe every six weeks for five years. It was an exhausting experience during which I continued to breastfeed our small children and home school on the hoof - doing without the materials I needed or the safe space to really be productive. I was always without everything I needed, which for me, was energy depleting and heart-wearying. You know what it's like when you are trying to do a good job but you don't have the tools you need to do that job with excellence? For me, a person who thrives best in order and not chaos, it was quite hellish, I must say. I felt like a joker - never able to take my position as teacher too seriously; and always, I felt, letting my kids down.
In January 2017, John was transferred back to South Africa. We packed up and headed home for good. John at that stage was super ill. We arrived back in the Cape, where we were to spend three months while he completed offshore training in Mosselbay, a stunning seaside village in the southern Cape. I loved Mosselbay. We'd stayed there before we left for Mozambique many years prior and it was so good to be back. We stayed out of the town this time though, in a place called Leeuhoek, a quaint mountain hamlet. Here I continued to homeschool while John travelled in and out of Mosselbay. He was battling to breathe, and was blue around the mouth; so I sent him to a specialist in nearby George, who told him he had emphysema - a deadly lung disease often caused by smoking - and would need to live on cortisone for the rest of his life. Can you imagine the impact that sentence had on a young man who was in the prime of his life? John was a fitness fanatic - always had been. He had always run, cycled, hiked, surfed, kayaked. Emphysema? Impossible.
Months later we returned to our Drakensberg home where John's parents had moved in following his dad's forced retirement from the gold mines in west Africa. Due to his father's age of 65, he was no longer eligible for a work visa and had been laid off. In the months that followed, his parents' situation had deteriorated and we had offered them our home in the Berg to spend their retirement years. So they sold their house in the Free State to John's brother and his wife, and moved to our property, expecting to be left in peace to start a new life. Months later, we were there, too. Please note that this was not my decision, to lump ourselves on his parents. It was John's insistence, even though I advised him against the folly of forcing ourselves on two older people who didn't want an instant family in the mix. They were trying to pick up their lives and start fresh.
Nevertheless we arrived 'home' late one afternoon, two vehicles, six children, and two mini ponies. John's mother could hardly greet us, and had made a delicious soup dinner - for herself and her hubby; just not for us. They didn't want us there. Then, John had to leave for India for two months for further training in the offshore industry. He left me with them. It was horrible. And we didn't get along. They had a different agenda to ours. They were trying to get a foot up again, networking and socialising. We were quiet and wanted to stay quiet.
One day in those two months, I travelled to Durban to visit my parents. While gone for two or three nights, John's parents moved off the farm to a cottage on their friends' property, closer to the mountains. They didn't give warning they were leaving - they just left.
And that was the last time we ever spoke to John's father. He (supposedly) committed suicide three months later. The night we heard, we were sitting down to dinner, when the phone rang. John's policy was to never answer the phone while eating. But that evening the phone rang and rang and eventually I asked him to answer it. John's brother was on the phone. He told John that their father had shot himself and asked if we could please go across to his mother. None of us will ever forget that evening. Ever. We went across to where his mother was staying, to be met by the police and the chaos of death.
While the children stayed with John's mom's friends next door, John and I helped his mother clean the aftermath of a violent death. It was gruesome. Then we all went home. Shortly after that, I had a miscarriage, and John sold our farm to a couple I can only describe as The Adams Family...
The story of the farm...
We had no intention of selling the farm. We'd built it up from the ground with the help of my parents, and various benefactors. Our vision from the start had been that it would be a 'base' - for us, and for others. I had always pictured children running around that farm and in a dream I'd seen little gumboots lined up against the front door. Before the 'shed' was built, we'd stayed in a caravan. I was pregnant with our fourth baby, and John's uncle had arrived to help us with the building. We had an outdoor shower, which was surrounded by a flimsy selection of poles. Sunshine or snow, I would have to brave the great outdoors and the frigid air to shower. It was never a relaxing affair because you never knew who was watching you. And there were occasions when I was watched! One evening I showered early. As I navigated my way across the dirt back to my 'van', I looked across the valley and there was a white sedan parked there. I'd seen it before several times. It was always parked there in the afternoon. And I suddenly realised that I was being watched - and that it wasn't the first time! Good for them, I thought rebelliously. I hope they got a good eyeful! After being discovered though, they never came back. I was considering doing a jig for them - but I don't suppose it would have been that impressive! I was pregnant and large - and not the most graceful.
Anyway, we eventually moved into the shed and gave the caravan to a friend to sell. The shed became our home and we slowly, over the years built it up into a family home we all loved. We later built a rondavel, with a thatched roof, which become
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