Andiswa Mdlangathi
Uncharted
Paintings, 2022
"I remember the day we left our homes, abruptly, without a second to wonder if there are things, we can carry that we might need on our uncharted journey; which with no precedence or confirmed destination we still took, running through the bushed forests. Having abandoned our lives and homes we walked, desperately in search of newer pastures, we headed towards the direction of need. The place we found, a refugee camp, named Buffalo, temporarily acted as our salvation and in it we saw the chance to finally escape the looming perils left behind. A refugee camp is truly a tough place to live, but despite all of that, we did, hard as it was, we survived. Surviving the heavy disparities between men and women, the misogyny, and blatant degradation of human lite. The camp however was able to offer me a lite and when it closed down, my brother chose the road home, and I chose to continue seeking a new lite with my husband.”
“I spent many passing days thinking about the naked girls crossing the cold, crocodile filled rivers, that after a trialling journey, stood there as if to keep them away from the liberation they need or the ones they love. They have journeyed far with the hopes of changing the lives they live, like me, they were walking towards the same glittering hope. The abandoned wife Refugee who savoured the lives of the hope city, sent, without her discretion, searching for her "aunty", who gracefully taught her how to remain in the city and to continue to savour the flavour of chance, but like all in the world, the cost is always too much and often, the cost means losing a piece of you. Even without the pieces that complete her she valiantly fought as she sought out the better life, she left her home for.”
“I used to wonder, if she ever saw the bright shining cross atop of the building. A place, rather the church is supposedly a safe haven for those who are in need, providing them with shelter and food. Perhaps when she walked the foreign streets, she saw the shining cross and it gave her hope that, maybe, there are still places out there for her, that there is a life after all. Though the sanctuary is by no means the most comfortable or safest place one might wish for, or live for an extended period of time. Having opened its doors to everyone who is need, it became a haven and with the many people flooding into it, it eventually suffered and was unable to sustain an environment that meets the basic requirements that are necessary for human health. With more people flooding into the church, the faster it degraded to a point of almost complete ruin. There are those who still see the beacon as hope, the faithful, who believe that what they have is enough.”
“The woman, who like many of us fell prey to the promises of safe passage from route keepers, who drag us from our homelands to destitute with false promises, thrown into an unknown world where you are grouped off like outcasts, unwanted intruders, unaccepted and hated; suffering the wrath and contempt, your only crime, searching for a life that is better. With nothing to their belonging and no idea of where she is, she starts the long walk to find all that she had to seek and all that she was promised. Her road, an obstacle, her existence, unrecognised.”
These women’s stories were sourced from the book by Loren B. Landau & Tanya Pampalone (eds). 2018. I Want to Go Home Forever: Stories of Becoming and Belonging in South Africa’s Great Metropolis. New York: NYU Press.