Charou Chick from Phoenix

📷 Caitlin Moses

A colleague from work asked what I would be doing for the Heritage Day long weekend that we celebrate in South Africa. “Braai-ing?” he asked.

Pffffft braai-ing.

To which I replied, “What colour am I? I will be cooking Cornish chicken curry on an outside fire!”

Before the woke folk come and call me out about some of the words and terminology I will be using here, let me assure you that nothing I write here is untrue or exaggerated. It’s history. If you want to make or change history, feel free to. This-this is my story. I greet you Namaste and may the Lord bless you and keep you as you leave my page!

I am neither black nor white. I have a lineage that started in India. For those who are reading and perhaps didn’t know this, on 16 November 1860, some of the first Indian indentured labourers arrived on the shores of Port Natal. They were men, women and children, who were not free. Indentured was just a fancy word to cover the real status of these people who left Madras on the SS Truro, hopeful yet ignorant that the life they were leaving was not going to be any better here. Please consider reading the fabulous Joanne Joseph’s brilliant novel called ‘Children of Sugarcane’. A delightful work of ‘faction’, where she has woven facts of South African Indian history in a beautifully written, unforgettable story. Available at all leading bookstores and Amazon too!

My grandfather arrived at some stage, from India, as a child. The story my cousins tell, is that he was just playing at the docks and got swooped up with the people at the docks in India, while they were being processed to board the ship. They were bound for Port Natal and his family was left behind in India. We have no idea of his family history, so there’s a whole generation we have never met or interacted with. Make no mistake that he didn’t arrive here and enjoy the rights and privileges our children do. He was put to work.

Fast forward to his adult life and he, for some reason, which I acknowledge as the providence of God, was moved from the sugar cane fields and started working in the home of some local people. He became a butler of sorts. He met and married my grandmother, Rathnavelli.

By this time, he was introduced to Christ and Christianity and his name was changed to Adigadu Andrew. We have no idea what his original name was. When the green Identity Documents became the recognized form of identification, that’s the name that was recorded there. He had a fake birthday because no-one had any formal documentation from India for him. My mother told the story of a lampstand that was passed down to her by him, that was given to him by the family he worked for. They were kind people who would often give him food to take home to his big family, around 9 children. Jam on bread. For them, that was a feast. My grandfather, like many Indians of that time, made his home in Magazine Barracks.

That lampstand occupies a prime spot in my study. It is a constant reminder of the hard work and perseverance of the line I come from.

Between 1911 and 1917 indentured labour finally came to an end. Then 1948 rolled around and apartheid reared its head. Talk about a double whammy.

My grandfather, along with the other Indians who had occupied the prime land where the Magazine Barracks was situated were unceremoniously moved out to Chatsworth and Phoenix, when the Group Areas Act was enacted. My cousins, who are older than I am, felt the full brunt of apartheid. From beatings to expulsion from school to imprisonment. They fought valiantly for the cause, for their families and countless others to be free from apartheid. They are sterling examples of the tenacity and fortuitous nature of the generations that eventually broke free.

Despite the hard work of the people who have gone before, we have not escaped the long-lasting effects of the system that held us captive for so long. I once worked in a job where I was asked why I didn’t wear a red dot, despite me already telling people that I was a Christian. Caitlin was once asked by her classmates why she was coming to a Christian school, because she was Indian, so she shouldn’t be there. I was once passed over for a job and was told, in writing, that too many Indian women had already been appointed. My children have been told by educators that eating roti for lunch is bad for them and it will form balls of dough in their tummies and make them sick. We are sometimes too brown for the place we live in and sometimes not brown enough for other areas.

There are some things we have lost along the way. It wasn’t just apartheid that separated us. Religion and different religious beliefs blasted a hole into the fabric of the Indian community. We lost our ties to Indian music. When Indians started converting to Christianity, anything remotely associated with Indian beliefs was relegated as being 'ungodly'. The distinction between culture and religion was not explored and we were taught that Indian music was always a prayer or a chant in honour of a deity embraced by the Hindu religion. Hence, it should never be played in a Christian home and certainly not a stye that you should pursue learning. I wish I could go back and tell those missionaries, in a fake British accent, “What poppycock!!”

I’m not Indian or Christian. I’m both. I am secure in who I am - an Indian Christian.

We stopped learning how to make traditional dishes, because these dishes were presented as offerings to gods during Hindu prayers and rituals. We lost our ability to speak Hindi and Tamil at school, because, this was not the language of Christ. Schools at that time were being built by missionaries who had been sent to the South African shores to convert the heathens.

The most common word I know is ‘jaldi’ which means quick or quickly. I give an instruction to my kids and then its jaldi, jaldi, jaldi. Of course, I know Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, because it’s one of our most beloved movies, and was probably the most listened to song in my home, until Desi Girl came along.

Here's some things that are true as I navigate life as an Indian, a product of indentured labour and apartheid. If you come to my home, I know you will be expecting some curry and rice and you can be sure you will not be served anything other than something authentically Indian.

Samoosa’s are and will always be my downfall and the reason I can’t fit into my new jumpsuit!

📷Lynn Pillay

Sweetmeats. Ahhhhh the inexplicable joy of biting into a piece of burfee or jalebi and just acknowledging it as delicious morsels fit for royalty.

My children no longer care what their educators say about one of our staples. Getting roti for lunch is a luxury and if some samoosas are thrown in as a snack, they are the envy of the school. I’m pretty sure Kelsie might attempt to make some money of it and sell it.

Roland’s song that he composed for me is a prime example of how beautifully passionate, elegant and mystical Indian music is.

https://youtu.be/Zy681ce-Jss?si=CxE3WvWb1q0d7UMJ

My very pronounced Indian accent, is my badge of honour. Expressing myself with an occasional “aayhoo or aiyho” is not uncommon. Reverting to street slang that I learned growing up in Phoenix when I see another Indian person is an informal hug, subtly saying, “Hey-we are the same kind!”

“What kind, how you chooning me? Pull into the pozi for some chows, came way gazi!"

Wearing traditional Indian clothes, (despite my ridiculously short hair) has me strutting about with pride.

There’s one of two ways to live this life after having been exposed to the history of indentured labour and apartheid. Be bitter and pass on that bitterness to our children or embrace the momentous privilege we have had to see the change that has come. Has everything changed? Absolutely not. Are we still fighting the wrongs of the past? Definitely.

I do choose to see the providence I mentioned earlier on. The providence of God. That He already knew which family I would be born into. He knew why I was placed within the borders of a beautiful South Africa, with dazzling mountain ranges, beautiful coastlines and majestic animals.

He knows how He will use me to impact and help those affected by our colourful history. My favourite quote is by one of the stalwarts, Mahatma Ghandi. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”.

You can do it.

One last thing. You have the bunny chow because of the charou’s from Natal. You’re welcome!!

📷Joslynne Naicker

PS #Coca-Cola - the official drink for any curry or biryani!