Reading gives actress’s life meaning
READING is a key that unlocks myriad doors of experiences, fantasy, imagination, knowledge and inspiration that we often take completely for granted, until confronted by the harsh reality of someone who has been shut out, excluded, denied access to the power and pleasure that reading and writing offers.
Actress and motivational speaker Regina Mary Ndlovu spent 12 years at a private primary school, Sunbase, in Zambia, and at a public high school, Elethu Themba in Eikenhof in South Africa, but ended up not being able to read a word.
Regina was born with albinism, which is a defect in the gene responsible for producing melanin, the pigment that gives human skin, hair and eyes their colour. Albinism causes the absence of melanin production and results in people born with albinism to have impaired and weak eyesight as well as very pale skin and hair.
At the time of Regina’s birth in 1989, there was great ignorance by medical staff and the community about albinism. After her birth, the nurse asked her mother “if the father was a white man”. Her parents loved her and treated her normally, but she was bullied and teased at school. Children would spit into their shirts when she walked past, a superstitious practice falsely believed to prevent themselves from having a child born with albinism
Teachers failed to pick up that her shortsightedness meant she could not see the blackboard.
She recalls: “When I said ‘Mam I can’t see’, the teacher told me to stop disturbing the class.”
Teachers told her mother she was slow and should be put in a school for children with special needs, but her mother believed that as long as she worked hard to pay for her daughter to be in a private school, the teachers would take care of her.
But this was not the case as the teachers were ignorant and intolerant, ill-prepared to assist a child who suffered because she could not see the blackboard.
Regina says parents need to be more vigilant as they entrust too much in the hands of teachers who often diminish and damage children’s spirits as opposed to nurturing them.
Regina was also traumatised by prejudice and stigmatisation towards her because of the way she looked.
“I didn’t understand who I was and what was wrong with me. People called me ugly names.”
She was sexually abused by adults twice by the time she turned 12. A pall of shame and frustration shadowed her because she was silenced and not able to voice her anger at this abuse and was not able to read and write like other children.
In addition, she was taunted, teased and treated with disdain by her classmates and teachers. This abuse and negativity took its toll and Regina attempted suicide several times. At the age of 17 she was admitted to a mental asylum for two weeks as she was seen as a danger to society.
Determined to become an actress and have a voice, Regina developed a keen ear and memorised information she heard. She taught herself to recognise words from watching English subtitles on music videos.
She joined the Duma Ndlovu Academy at the Johannesburg theatre and created and acted in her autobiographical play about her personal struggles titled Mary, Mary, Mary, My Voice. She met actress Pamela Nomvete and plucked up the courage to tell her she could not read. Nomvete forced her to be honest about this and to take up literacy classes. Serendipitously, a member of the audience at her play introduced her to engineering company Jones and Wagner, who were offering bursaries.
Regina convinced the bursary panel to sponsor her to learn how to read and write after opening up and telling her story.
At the age of 26, Regina was booked into a lodge in Rustenburg for four days a week with a personal tutor who continued teaching Regina even after the bursary was used up.
Finally holding that precious key to reading changed Regina’s life. “Finally life had meaning for me. It gave me a purpose in life.”
That purpose led Regina to assist children in her group Dynamite Dynamic Explosion, which she runs from her garage in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg. Her aim is to assist children who like her are not heard, teaching them to find their self-worth, voice and identity. Now that she has the precious key to access the wider world that books offer, the one book that Regina is dying to read is the autobiography of her mentor, Pamela Nomvete, titled Dancing to the Beat of the Drum.
Regina can be contacted on 071 465 3732 for motivational talks at schools.
For more information about the Nal’ibali reading-for-enjoyment campaign, as well as reading tips and stories in a range of South African languages, visit www.nalibali.org , www.nalibali. or find them on Facebook and Twitter: nalibaliSA.
Nal’ibali is driven by PRAESA, 2015 laureate of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award for children’s literature and reading promotion. Nal’ibali is sponsored by Volkswagen South Africa and the DG Murray Trust.