A child wonders why long-lost father wants to be back in her life
Reconnecting was awkward and painful
I do not know for sure the point at which you first made contact with my mother, but I became aware of it from her in 1994 when I was in Standard 4.
I gather from my mother that you made the first contact. You worked at the then head office of the Bophuthatswana department of education in Mafikeng.
The academic results of the Standard 4 children, the then final year of primary school, were centralised and accessed at the head office.
My mother thinks that you must have tracked down my results and noticed that I was the best performer in my school, and decided that perhaps it was a good time to make contact.
I do not know for sure that my mother’s version of the story that you contacted her because I was intelligent is true, but it made perfect sense to me.
How else could I, a 12-yearold girl who is just starting to figure out what is going on with her body, make sense of your disappearance and return after all those years?
I sometimes asked myself if you would have disappeared forever if you had not found out I was intelligent.
I would ask myself why you thought I was unacceptable, unlovable, otherwise. Had I been dumb or average could you have come back?
In 1995, then in Standard 5 at middle school and turning 13, my school had a trip to Mafikeng; the trip was to be my first physical contact with you since I was about four years old.
I had not met you throughout much of my childhood and my primary schooling. The day we met, I didn’t know how to feel, act or be around you.
You came to pick me up from the host school. When you arrived and I finally met you, my heart skipped a beat, not with the joy of finally meeting you, but more out of fear of who you were, and why you had come for me. I started to wonder whether you would bring me back in time so that I didn’t miss the bus back to Thaba Nchu. The thought of missing the bus rushed through my mind, almost putting me into a panic. Anyone who has been around you knows that you are generally a very quiet and private person. Sometimes a person can break their own mind trying to figure out what you are thinking. Now imagine what went on in the mind of my 13year-old self when you were quiet.
You must have muttered a few things to me but I don’t remember. I was too anxious to be in the presence of the one man with whom I should have learnt how to be comfortable with myself.
You took me to Molopo Sun. After we entered a restaurant there, you pulled a chair out for me. I don’t know whether this was out of politeness or whether I looked too paralysed to not know what to do.
Nonetheless I appreciated the gesture, no one had ever done that for me before.
When it was time to order, you asked me what I would like to have.
Although I was hungry, I didn’t want to embarrass myself by eating in front of you. I opted to order just a drink instead.
I never quite understood why I felt that I didn’t want to eat in front of you.
Perhaps I needed to be perfect in front of you.
I could not, for example, have food stuck in my teeth, or chew inappropriately. All I knew was that, as much as I was hungry, I didn’t have an appetite.
This is an extract from Disa Mogashana's autobiography Unfathered, published by Evera Publishing