Pops, dad, father, old guy, Papa....odd fellow who never payed attention to me for most of my life...
This is the man that impregnated my mother. Over the past few months, I have gotten to know him more than I have in the past...17 years!!! It all started when I had a conversation with my mom on the way from the hospital (football injury).
My entire life up until this point has had the smallest ounce of respect for my father. I even went as far as not putting his half of my last name down whenever I wrote my name. If anybody were to call me by that name (Guma), I would get angry and disown it. That has changed in the past couple of years--I have embraced my South African blood, though I still had resentment to my father.
I just could not understand how a grown man could not take the time to talk to his own flesh and blood. Now, what I could understand was him leaving my mother. That makes sense--sometimes relationships dont work out...cool. That does not mean that you leave the child resulting from the relationship, also. Anyway, I have hated my pops forever...until this point.
On our way home from Mercy hospital, my mother and I had a conversation about how my father left. How we got to this discussion, I don't remember...Anywho, she explained in detail how they had broken up. It turns out that my father was cheating on his wife in South Africa, my mother was the one he cheated with (duh). I was the result of this affair. The weird thing about it is that South frican tradition doesnt discorage a man having more than one wife...so his wife want very upset about the "affair". What he didnt tell her about was my birth...and that sent her over the edge.
According to tradition/customs, the first born in America of the tribe was special--very special. She claimed it was a "sin against the ancestors" to not share the brith of me with her. Apparently, she found out about me through a dream. She then called my mother to confirm her suspicions...and she was very correct. My mother said that his wife described me exactly. weird....Anyway, she (his wife...i think her name is Nani) got extremely angry with my father. My father said it was none of her business and put the "fear of god" into her--meaning he forbade Nani ever to speak of me or my mother again...
Ineffect, he has disowned me. At least to her.
There are a few details about his and my mother's relationship that i really don't wish to discuss, but the main poiint is he left us on our own.
Years go by...14 years to be exact (he left when I was 3)...and this convesation comes up. A long needed discussion that should've happened years ago. I decided to look for my father from the information that I had learned.
I googled his name: Mthobeli Guma...found his email address and place of employment within a day. (the internet is really something special...especially google.) I emailed him everyday from then on until he responded...he did, a week later.
He called me at 5:30 in the morning. the first words I heard that morning were "May I speak with Sizwe?". there was only one person that called me by that name, and that was him. For it was the name he had given me, he refused to acknowledge any of my American names. Anyway, we talked for about a half hour or so..he gve me excuses for why he hasnt attempted to contact us for 14 years, when I found him in a day (go figure). I wasnt really interested in that, I was just glad to hear my father's voice for the first time. He spoke with my mother later on that week, and she talked more about me than I talked about me (mothers are overly proud about the littlest things)...
Anyway, we've been talking via email ever since. He takes his sweet old time responding to my emails, but I'm not surprised...I mena, I found HIM after all these years, he didnt find me. He never answers his phone, but whatever. I'm going to be spending the summer this year with him and my brothers and sisters (yeah, I got brothers and sisters) after I graduate. I'm makin damn sure he's at my graduation, cuz he's had an excuse for everything else. The least he can do is come to my graduation...
So yeah, I'll be in Cape Town, South Africa come June...and in September, I'll be back here for my classes at columbia college. Its amazing what someone can find on google....
