MAKOMAN

Voorstelling foto

Oh! Makoman oe Makoman ie Makomani! I remember you as if you stand here before me in brought daylight, today. Your whithered arm and hand ... your thin sinewy body and most of all your laughter.

I remember I once walked over the mountain with my father.  I walked down the valley and over the next mountain just to stand at the great plain beyond the two mountains where you made your home. I walked with my father into your hut and I saw with my own green eyes the stripped bare earth, and the ashes of a small fire. That is how you lived on that great plane on the other side of the two mountains. That is where you eeked out your meagre existence.

  

My father loved you and spoke your language. He told me many stories about your great courage, your endurance, your faithfulness, your unquenchable human spirit.  My father told me the story of how you once fell into the fire during an epileptic fit. How your wife found you there with your left arm burning. I looked at your withered left arm I visualise that SCENE and feel UNBEARABLE pain.  O Makoman!

My father told me the story of the time he wanted to borrow a vehicle from his cousin. He needed a vehicle to take my mother to the midwife.  She was due to give birth to her first child.  My father told me how you ran next to the horse all the way to Draaikraal - because you had to bring the horse back.  My father told me that his cousin declined his offer once the two of you  arrived and how you and him had to turn around empty handed.  My father told me how you ran next to the horse all the back home again - next to the horse.  How you did not stop - how  you never complained. O Makoman!

When I look at you and think of you Makoman I honour your courage, your endurance your unquenchable human spirit and I thank you for showing me what it means to be human and alive! Your suffering ignited a light in me ... a torch that shines to show me the way!

Oh! Makoman, Oh! Makoman Oh! Makoman Ke monna yo mobotse!