Bless me Father

978-0-9922285-1-4

Chapter 1

After 25 years as an advertising copywriter, and a few days from my 57th birthday, I was about to attempt a change in career and embark on a journey that would forever alter my life, my thinking, and the way I saw Africa and the world.

Three years earlier I had met Matt O’Brian, a conflict journalist with many years’ experience covering wars, coups and other dangerous situations in almost every country on earth. He is half Irish, just like I am. I met him by chance on Biggsy’s, the dining car carriage on the Cape Town – Simon’s Town rail route.

On the evening trip home, drinking a few beers, my friends and I were discussing a short story I had just had published, a satirical piece about an episode I experienced during a 4 month stint with the South African Defence Force in Angola in early 1976.

Matt, standing in our company, was listening in. I had never seen him on the train.

Before I could say hello he introduced himself and enquired if I was a journalist. No, an advertising copywriter, frustrated poet and short story writer, I replied. He told me a little about his background, and within ten minutes of our meeting, asked if I would be interested in joining him on an assignment in Burundi.

Matt didn’t waste any time. I liked that.

I was vaguely aware of what was happening in Burundi at the time. Hutus slaughtering Tutsis. Or was it the other way round?

Yes, I said, I’d love to go.

He gave me his phone number and suggested I call him to meet and talk about it. A few days later, over coffee, he told me more about conflict journalism, the countries he had been to, his experiences, and about his late partner and friend, Shaun, who had been killed in a car bomb explosion in Haifa, Israel. Matt was with Shaun when he died. Matt himself had been wounded, waking up two days later in hospital, suffering from amnesia.

The story did not deter me. I was 52, and in advertising. I was also tired of advertising. In fact, I was hanging from the cliff-face of my career by my finger tips. Remind me not to cut my nails, I joked with friends.

Matt had arranged two seats on a South African National Defence Force plane to Burundi. We were going to write stories about South African soldiers serving as peacekeepers with the United Nations, he told me. Since Christmas was around the corner, stories such as these would be warmly received, he guaranteed.

Matt and I went to Home Affairs to sort out our passports and visas. I put in for 2 weeks’ leave. We were ready to rock, until, a few days before our departure, we were informed that we had lost our seats on the military transport plane, to two generals.

Anything for a Christmas break, Matt said sarcastically.

Matt and I stayed in contact for a while, but eventually lost touch. Three years later I was working with my son, Paul, on our little freelance set-up in Hout Street, Cape Town. Paul and I had worked together, on and off, for 10 years. In October 2004, after we had both been retrenched by the ad agency we worked for – where Paul was my creative director – we formed our own business. One day, in early February 2006, Paul said to me, ‘Sit down dad. I need to talk to you.’ He broke the news about his decision to immigrate to New Zealand with his wife and two daughters. He was extremely concerned about me and what I would do. I had known something like this was going to happen. Paul, like me, is very impetuous and can change direction at the drop of a hat.

I took his news with composure and assured him that I would be ok, not to worry, and that he should go for it. ‘Follow your heart,’ I added. I always did.

Things happened quickly from there.

A few weeks earlier I had met Mike Bernardo, a South African ex-world Kick Box champion. We had discussed the idea of me helping him put his life story together, but I had no idea where to begin, no idea how to structure a biography. I just knew that, if I put my mind to it, I could pull it off. But I needed a little help. One name popped into my head: Matt O’Brian. I scratched around for Matt’s number and phoned him. He admitted that he had lost my number, told me he thought my calling him at this stage was quite auspicious and mailed me pointers on the sort of basic structure I would need to get going with Mike’s story.

Within a week or two of Paul’s news I received a call from Matt. This time he asked me if I would like to go with him to the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, to do a story about one of the DRC’s most powerful Christian churches. Matt had it from good sources that the Mai Mai rebels were targeting the church and had already buried six of their pastors alive. The rebels had warned the church that their prayers were interfering with their, the rebels’, chances in the war against government troops.

We would be going to write and shoot a documentary about the church and its work in the Congo. The plan was to cut DVDs to sell in Christian fora – bookshops, churches, and hopefully to Christian television networks for broadcast. We would target the American market. The media is a giant whale. Broadcast material is the plankton on which the whale feeds. America is an ocean full of giant whales.

All I could say was that I had never used a movie camera before. Matt calmly responded that he would teach me. I made Matt promise me just one thing – that we’d be back in Cape Town for my wife Carla’s 50th birthday on June 12. I would turn 57 on June 13. He gave me his word.

Three or four months before our departure, fourteen South Africans and a couple of other personnel from various other countries, 21 in all, had been arrested in the DRC on suspicion of being mercenaries planning a coup to overthrow the then government of President Joseph Kabila.

This scared me a little. But, what the hell, I thought. It’s now or never. Besides, change is never easy.

I thought about a saying I had once heard, which I always refer to when times are tough. Never are we nearer the light than when darkness is deepest.

On the Sunday before our departure Matt gave me a crash course on a Panasonic Mini DV video camera. We filmed boats and birds on the water at Marina Da Gama where he lives. We also went to the Sunday market at Sunrise beach, just up the road from his home, filming the stalls, the people, and anything and everything in sight. Back at his house we put a little movie together with fades, dissolves, titles and music.

A day or two before we left, I did my rounds in the city centre of Cape Town, saying goodbye to friends in coffee shops; and to our few clients. Steven Minaar, a young client service director at Ogilvy One, hugged me goodbye, placed a pink crystal in the palm of my hand, closed my fist around it, squeezed, and implored me to follow his wish:

Promise me, Mario, that you will bury this crystal in the DRC, the Congo – for peace in Africa. I gave him my word.

The night before we flew to Johannesburg on the first leg of our journey to the Congo, my wife, Carla, daughter, Mirella and I joined Paul and his family – his wife Leanne and my granddaughters Hannah and Kirsten – for a farewell braai (barbeque). My nephew, Paul’s cousin, Wayne, and Carla’s brother, Ray were with us too. This was June 1st. Paul was leaving for New Zealand on June 8th.

After supper I hugged him goodbye. Paul is 35 and the last time I had heard or felt him sob was in his early teens.

Matt and his girlfriend Karen collected me at 4.30 am for the flight to Johannesburg. She dropped us at domestic departures, and after helping us unload our bags and gear, handed us a white plastic carry bag with a few magazines inside and some goodies to eat. On the bag she had written in blue Koki:

Dear Matt & Mario

May this road take you to your destiny.

I am sure it is the start to a great adventure.

Much love, Karen

At Johannesburg airport we were met by my son Gianni and his and Paul’s godfather, my best friend Carey Abdul Fanourakis. I hadn’t seen either of them for nearly two years. We sat in the smoking section of the Spur Steakhouse and had beers and breakfast. I confided in Carey that I was doing this crazy trip not only as a change in career, but to become a stronger person.

Matt had the window seat. I was squeezed in the middle. A giant sat next to me in the aisle seat, dressed in khaki, deeply tanned and as rugged as Africa itself.

I have always been terrified of flying. When I do fly, I always insist on an aisle seat. Just in case. Now, stuck in the middle, squeezed uncomfortably between the two of them, I began to feel claustrophobic and unsettled. When the aircraft reached cruising height, after a smooth take-off, and we were allowed to unbuckle and stretch, I manoeuvred myself out of my seat and proceeded to the back, where the crew was preparing to serve a breakfast snack. The plane was pretty empty and I asked a steward if I could sit in one of the vacant seats. Anywhere you like, he nodded and gestured to the empty seats left and right of the aisle.

I chose a window seat and looked out and down on terra firma. We were already crossing Zimbabwe, and the pilot informed us that Lake Kariba would soon appear beneath us. I suddenly remembered that I was scared of flying. I had never, ever before ventured to look out of the window of a plane. Nevertheless, here I was, soaring through blue, cloudless space, soaking up Kariba and the landscape north of Kariba, all of it, all the way to Lusaka, eyes glued to the scenes below me, mesmerised.

I was totally fearless and at ease. I was the heart throbbing in the metallic body of this majestic eagle in flight.

We arrived at Lusaka international airport 15 minutes ahead of schedule disembarking and walking the short distance to the airport terminal. We collected our luggage, which included a 12 kg box of French books – Principes Bibliques pour l’Afrique – which we were to deliver to the church in the Congo. I wanted to lose it a few times on our journey, but as things happened, that box played an important role in securing our safety.

We walked through the nothing-to-declare exit where an official stopped us and asked us to open the box. When he saw the content he was satisfied, and let us pass. Matt informed me that we would be met by a Pastor John Jerries, who arrived more than half an hour later with his wife Joyce and five young children. We were happy to see him, as Matt had mentioned earlier on, quite nervously, that he did not have Pastor John’s cell phone number, and nor did the Pastor have his.

Pastor John greeted us warmly and enthusiastically, helped with our luggage, and loaded us into his 4x4.

He drove us to a place he had chosen for our brief stay in Lusaka, a camping site called Eureka, about 28 kilometres from the airport. We would spend the night there and he would collect us at 9.00 am the next morning, Saturday.

The children were surprisingly quiet during the journey to Eureka. I complimented Pastor John and his wife on how well behaved I thought they were. He explained that they were not his children, but orphans from the Congo. He had driven to the Congo only a few weeks earlier to collect them. Their mother had been gang-raped by government soldiers, while the children, ranging from 18 months to nine years old, and their father, had been forced to watch. When they finished with her they slit her throat and shot the father dead.

I was dazed for the rest of the journey.

We arrived at Eureka and checked into the cheapest accommodation available, a dormitory section with a few rooms, each with two single beds and a double bunk. I saw mosquito nets for the first time.

According to Matt’s and my understanding, the church was going to treat us like royalty, from Zambia into the Congo and back. So, we hadn’t exactly brought a lot of money with us. We didn’t have a lot of money to bring.

Before I left home, Carla had given me R1 000. I said I did not need it as we were going to be looked after; in fact, treated like royalty. She insisted I take it, just in case. Matt himself had only a few hundred rands.

The room at Eureka set us back about R150. We decided to skip supper.

Instead we had one local beer each. We were sipping our beers at the bar in the communal boma when two weary-looking travellers arrived to find a room. Like us, they could only afford the cheapest, the dormitory block. We introduced ourselves. They were both pastors from Mkushi, a farming community close to the Malawian border. Pastor John Symond, an ex-geography teacher from England and Pastor Michael Tembo, a black Zambian. They both worked at an interdenominational school at Mkushi and had come to Lusaka with a 5-ton Isuzu truck to shop for mattresses, utensils and food. Since we were neighbours for the night, they invited us into their room to chat and shared their flask of coffee with us, as well as a plate of hot chips they had ordered from the kitchen.

Pastors John and Michael captivated us with their stories. They told us how happy they and the Malawian government were to have several dozen Zimbabwean farmers, thrown off their land by Robert Mugabe, developing the area. They were also intrigued by the fact that we were on our way to do a documentary about a church in the Congo.

They reminded us that it was not a safe place to visit.

Over breakfast we met a group of Canadian field workers, in Zambia doing community work with street kids. Some were trainee nurses, others teachers. All of them were Christians. We chatted a little and exchanged email addresses. One young lady, Kelly Ross lived in Toronto, where my eldest brother David lived. The family had lost contact with him for over twenty years. I gave her my home phone number and asked her if she could pass it on to David if ever she came into contact with him, but please, not to go out of her way.

Six weeks later, back in Cape Town, I received a call just before midnight. It was David. ‘I believe there are rumours that I am dead,’ is how he started his conversation. We chatted a long while. Then he handed me over to speak to his fourth wife, whom he had recently married. Her name was Carla.

The field workers were also intrigued by our trip to the Congo. They wished us a safe journey.

As promised, Pastor John arrived to collect us just after 9am. We drove a short way to his house, or rather, the orphanage, the Samaritan Children’s Home, where he and Joyce lived with 53 orphans. There could be a lot more children here, Pastor John told us. Every day they had to turn children away. There were just too many homeless, too many orphans for one couple to feed and care for. Pastor John and his church, the Every Nation Church, fed up to 6 000 children daily, throughout Zambia and in southern Congo. The orphanage was a work in progress, he explained as he proudly showed us around the place. For Pastor John and Joyce there was a pastor’s office, a small bedroom en-suite, and a little lounge. And for the children there were a few little bedrooms, each with two double bunks. There was a communal room and a kitchen, where Joyce cooked three meals a day for her children. Outside, a school building, clinic, conference centre and another dormitory block were taking shape. Pastor John explained that they were building the conference centre so that they could hire it out to help sustain the orphanage and the children.

Our work started in earnest. Armed with our cameras, we captured the children at prayer and at play. They sang for us. They danced and clapped, in the name of Jesus. ‘Jesus!’ The children refrained. I cried a little inside.

Matt set up the tripod and camera in Pastor John’s office.

Pastor John took up his seat behind his desk, and as Matt had taught me, I rigged the mike to his jacket lapel. Then Matt placed the headphones on me and nonchalantly whispered, ‘You’re doing this interview. Just remember the rule of thirds. Don’t centre your subject.’ Then he left the room.

I was a little nervous at first, but when Pastor John began to speak, about love for God’s work, about how it’s all about the children, my confidence grew. I had never ever felt such passion and compassion emanating from another human being.

Bless you, bless you, Father John. Bless you, Mother Joyce.

My mother’s name was also Joyce. She had 13 pregnancies. Nine births and four miscarriages, from her first two husbands. All of us children were either fostered or went to orphanages and children’s homes.

Pastor John was taking me back on a long road.

• • •

Alba sat on the swing and Lillian and I pushed her and we were singing that song, ‘Don’t sell Daddy any more Whiskey’. Leandro played in the dirt in our tiny, flower-bare, shrub-bare backyard. There was a single big pepper tree. The swing was a wooden plank strung to the tree by a rope.

We pushed Alba higher and higher until she screamed.

We didn’t notice Leandro, lying on the ground, writhing and convulsing, until Alba saw what was happening and her screams took on a piercing shrill. LEE! LEEE! LEEE! LEANDRO is dying … STOP!

‘Shut up Alba,’ Lillian hollered, ‘You’re screaming so loud you’re gonna wake mommy from her nap and there’s gonna be all hell to pay, and Mario and me are the ones who will get the buckle and belt’. But our mother was already outside, bent over Lee and fiddling in his mouth, shouting, ‘Lillian! Mario! go fetch a bloody spoon, hurry before this child swallows his tongue!’’

Lillian ran to the house and back in a flash with a tablespoon.

Alba couldn’t stop screaming and our mother yelled at her ‘SHUT UP! SHUT UP!’ I just stood there, frozen to the ground. Alba didn’t shut up and Lillian smacked her one across the face. She fled into the house. If our father came home drunk that night, like he mostly did, with that terrible temper of his, he would have blamed Lillian and me. Because we were the oldest. Lillian was one year older than me, I was nine, Alba was five and Leandro was just under two years old. Leandro was the apple of his eye, and as he grew up he became even more so. Only Leandro, in time to come, would be allowed to buy sweets and cold drinks on tick at Rose’s corner café.

Our father came home drunk that night but mother didn’t say a word about that day’s episode. She had warned us not to say anything either, because you never knew with him.

Early one evening my father sent me to Rose’s Café to buy a loaf of bread, and on my way back a black man stopped me. He was cupping a little bird with a broken wing in his hands. I felt sorry for the little bird, and the man gave it to me. I gave him the loaf of bread.

I skipped all the way home sort of singing – shouting, I’m Mario d’Offizi, I’m Mario d’Offizi and I saved a little bird! I saved a little bird!

When I got home I was proud and excited so I went to show the little bird to my father.

‘Where’s the bread?’

When I told him that I swapped the bread for the bird the veins began to swell in his forehead and he swore and beat me about the head. I ran across the road into the grounds of Rose Lodge, the boarding house, to hide from him.

My mother screamed at him, telling him she swore that if he hurt me she’d call the welfare and the police.

I hid in the long grass in the orchard at the boarding house. It was a warm, clammy dusk and the light was fading. I saw my father in brownish shorts and white sleeveless vest, with his pocket- knife in his hands. He studied the branches of a quince tree, sizing them up.

He broke a branch from the tree. He was whistling then, a familiar song like Arri-vi-der-ci- Ro-o-ma, as he deftly worked the blade, cleaning the branch of its bark. Fondling the smooth cane lovingly, like it was a woman, and whistling on, he stalked me.

The bedside stories he told us kids were about the war in Abyssinia. We laughed at his funny accent. Our father was Italian and I once heard a man call him a fucking eyetie prisoner of war. My father beat him to a pulp. The police came and it took quite a lot of them to put him in the back of their van. He knew all about war and killing,