Lucky 4: WAS IT ALL FUN HAVING LUCKY?

Lucky 4: WAS IT ALL FUN HAVING LUCKY?

Not always.

Lenadri, our oldest daughter, thought she made it big time when the drum major of the school band asked her for a date.

Drum majors are so elected because they are handsome, have an upright posture, and they practice twirling the baton for hours because they think they are handsome, have good posture and might be elected drum majors.

It goes without saying that they are unusually arrogant individuals. And like for all arrogant individuals, girls think they are worth getting as boyfriends – but maybe I am only a simple jealous father believing that any boy who would think my daughters consider him to be great is an arrogant individual.

Lenadri’s relationship with the drum major was developing quite well when he suddenly announced that he was not willing to go out with a girl who has a kaffir living at her home.

Lenadri took this very well announcing that she did not want to talk to anyone who calls her brother a kaffir; a very mature view for a smitten Grade 6 girl!

The church was not as simple an issue.

We are members of the Afrikaans NG Kerk.

The church professed to be non-racial even before the country legalised non-racism, or rather un-legalised racism.

So that it could say that it is non-racist in a country where racism is legalised, the church had split itself into two: the church itself and the ‘missionary church’. The latter basically being black dominees (preachers), and their black congregation.

One would have thought that missionary work implies leaving one’s country to travel afar to countries where there are heathens among whom one can carry out missionary work. But the Afrikaans church did show concern for the local heathens, black people, and did missionary work among them on Sunday afternoons. Even if they were converted they remained in the missionary church rather than graduate to the main church.

Most parishes also had a ‘special service’ for maids, to demonstrate how they were spreading the word of God in the local community. (And, of course how liberal they were in their views of racism.)

This ‘maids’ service’ was never held at the same time as the main service (09h00 or 10h00), but around 15h00. This would allow the maids to clean the houses while their employers were at church, and then when the employers were having their afternoon sleep, the maids could go to church.

They did not come to the church itself, but rather just the church hall – I have not yet figured out the reason for this, other than that God shifted between the Church building and the Church hall during lunch time. It might also be that there are two Gods, one in the main church building and one who lives in the church hall. The NG Kerk never explained this to me.

The afternoon session for the maids was not conducted by the dominee, he had done his work that morning. It was generally conducted by one of the elders on a rotational basis, and comprised hymn singing. Presumably the ‘church hall God’ preferred music to sermons.

My friend Eon Smit – who is a professor, and therefore should know about these things – told me the joke of a non-white entering the white NG Kerk one Sunday during the sermon. Two of the deacons stood up to evict him, whereupon a great voice boomed through the church: “Don’t worry my son, I have not been allowed in there either”.

As Lucky increasingly stayed with us over weekends, we asked him to accompany us to church.

This raised eyebrows. Obviously one would expect this to happen, his was the only black face in church, other than the cleaning staff. But the cleaning staff was not there when the congregation was in the church. The cleaning staff went to the church hall in the afternoon with the rest of the people of colour.

Charl, like any Grade 2 child, did not really enjoy being woken on Sunday, forced into his Sunday best, marched off to a one-hour sermon that taxes grown-ups’ concentration, and then being herded into Sunday School for another hour while the grown-ups go home to recover from the sermon.

When Lucky started to live with us more-or-less full-time we approached the dominee to explain our problem: We had become ‘parentis in locus’ and are bringing this child to church as part of our responsibilities; but we had no official sanctioning of this, nor had the child been baptised, nor is he attending Sunday School – being a ‘visitor’. We told him we felt people were looking at us a bit funny, and would like to have an official directive from the church council that this was ‘OK’. We also asked if they would allow Lucky into the Sunday School.

The official answer was that the dominee saw nothing wrong with this, but that ‘some of his church councilors thought that some of the members of the congregation might have a problem’.

The standard run-around: Nobody would say ‘yes’, blaming everyone else for potentially being offended, whilst they largely meant they themselves would be offended.

One route open to us would have been to simply take Lucky to church, and then allow an issue to develop. However, we felt that we were not raising Lucky as a political statement. We did not want to take him to church to make a statement.

In any case we did not choose Lucky, he sort of chose us. He came to us and there was no one to give him back to. So we could not really claim that we were very liberal, or very Christian like for that matter, in raising him.

This left us in a very peculiar situation every Sunday morning: Forcing an unwilling Charl to go to Church, and telling a willing Lucky to stay home. Very difficult to explain to Charl why he couldn’t stay at home, like Lucky; and even more difficult to explain to Lucky why he couldn’t go to church, like Charl.

Fortunately a nearby congregation resolved the issue for us - Florida Afrikaans NG Kerk. We told friends about the ‘church problem’, who told the dominee at this church; he invited us to bring Lucky to the Sunday School.