I’M MORE THAN MY SCARS
This dad from George won’t let the growths that cover his face and body define him
HE LOOKS you full in the eye, almost as if he’s challenging you to look away. Melvin Maxim is used to people averting their gaze when they see him – or staring at him when they think he isn’t looking. The 42-year-old dad from George in the Western Cape has a condition where keloids – overgrown scar tissue – hang like clusters of dates on either side of his friendly face.
The growths people can see are only the half of it, he says – the keloids on his back, chest and shoulders are hidden from view by his clothing.
“They bother me,” he admits.
“I have to sleep on my stomach because the keloids on my back are more painful than those on my face. Keloids are itchy.”
Then Melvin smiles and his friendly eyes and wide grin are engaging and make you forget his affliction.
“I’ve never cared about how I look, what I see in the mirror,” he says.
“I just want to help other people to accept themselves, no matter how they look.
“I have kids at home. I can’t sit inside and wither away. I have to be an example to them. They need to learn you have to face the world and do the best with what you have. You have to climb your mountain.”
FOR the past 23 years Melvin has worked as a carpenter, making everything from kitchen cabinets to furniture. “I love to create things,” he says. “I’m not a handsome man but, damn, my hands can make beautiful things. You could say I’m full of myself but that’s okay. When people walk into my workshop they must go, ‘Wow!’”
The front yard of Melvin’s home is filled with bright flowers that tumble over the fence. He calls his daughters “my flowers” too and three of them – Danelle (18), Denisha (16) and Mel-vonique (5) – pose proudly along
‘I CAN’T SIT INSIDE AND WITHER AWAY. I HAVE TO BE AN EXAMPLE TO MY KIDS’
side their dad for a picture.
The girls’ half-brother, Meldino (20), and halfsister, Rendoline (12), aren’t at home when YOU visits the family. Melvin recently celebrated his birthday and his friends arranged a potluck party nearby. Like his children, people in the community have long stopped looking at what’s on the surface when they see Melvin. The growths began when Melvin was a teenager. Initially they were put down to teenage acne that had got out of hand, but the growths kept getting bigger.
In 2005 he went under the knife to remove some of the keloids and the doctor explained the growths formed as a result of a misunderstanding between the skin and the brain.
“If you get hurt, your skin tells your brain there’s an injury,” Melvin explains. “The brain then instructs the body to produce collagen. ‘Repair, repair, repair’.
“But if the brain doesn’t get the message that the job is done, the body keeps producing collagen.”
And that excess collagen results in the growths. Melvin is an expert in his condition and will tell anyone who cares to listen that it isn’t contagious – it’s genetic.
“My mom had a keloid on her breastbone when she was stabbed with a knife. Her name was Nellie Maxim and she passed away at 63 of kidney failure.
“My dad, Johannes, passed away in 2022, a year after my mom. I suspect he had a broken heart. He probably wanted to join her.
“Like my mom, he had a strong personality. He was very strict. He was a bus driver, like I used to be. My dad said you have to know both sides of life and you have to use your brain and your hands.
“He taught me carpentry, how to build and chisel. He was proud of me and turned a blind eye to my appearance.”
MELVIN was a bus driver in George for 18 months but lost his job because people didn’t want to ride in his vehicle. “Maybe they were afraid my condition is contagious. Who knows?”
But one passenger wasn’t put off at all. Nadine Magerman (32) got to know the man who ferried her about town in a bus and saw the person behind the keloids.
They’ve been married for 12 years. “She and her family looked beyond my face and saw inside me,” he says.
Melvin would like to drive buses or taxis again. “I drive very well,” he says.
“I’ve grown 10 skins. I don’t get hurt easily anymore. People will look at me, it doesn’t matter. If my condition was contagious, why am I still the only one around here with keloids? You can put two and two together.”
His keloids don’t define him, Melvin says. “I’ve lived with them for 26 years. There’s a lot more to me than my growths.”