Unbeknownst to her, my mother was one of the first people in my life to introduce me to the honesty, activism and complexity of another community of color. Driven by my father’s love of the changing leaves we visited Vermont every crisp October and drove to South Carolina every summer to visit my mother’s family so I grew up knowing White New England and Black Southern culture simultaneously. But in her box of cassette tapes, in a dining room cabinet that I was afraid to touch unless specifically instructed, were two tapes. Both were albums by Miriam Makeba, the South African force of nature/lioness/educator who’s voice rang with the beauty and pain of Apartheid-era South Africa. Sangoma was a collection of songs lifted from and inspired by the traditional healers, the Sangomas, from her home. The other, Welela, was a sublime mix of apartheid resistance songs and melodies dripping with a heartfelt love for her country.

 A combination of my mother’s fear for my safety in a world she did not trust, and my developing introversion meant that I spent a lot of time at home, on the inside looking out, alone in my elementary, middle school years, after school, in the summer months, over vacations etc. On those days, the television, my books and the extensive collection of music in my parents house kept me company. Natalie Cole. Duke Ellington. Ella, Louise… and Miriam. Over time, I developed a love for music my generation cared little for and I created a world where only I and the musical characters I encountered existed.

“My South African friends teased me and called me old school.”

 Miriam’s music appealed to me specifically. I had never been to South Africa and didn’t speak of word of Xhosa but I listened to her albums so much that I memorized all the songs from both albums phonetically. She, the master story-teller, taught me through the songs that were in English about South Africa’s people, the land, family, love and the struggle. And I, in turn, alternated between creating choreographed dance sequences and listening reverently. “Soweto Blues” taught me about the Student uprising and massacre long before I ever learned anything about South Africa in school.

 It seems South Africa was meant to be the universe’s curriculum for me in that period of my life. On a warm summer night, mom took me to Southern Connecticut State University to see the Mahotella Queens. The trio of women standing at the center of the theater in the round took me deeper into the history of the country with their rhythmic, harmonized, hypnotizing style. I fell in love with these mothers at first sight and gripped my poster nervously as my mother guided me backstage to meet them. The three crowded around me, smiling and clucking like the grandmothers that they were. Their sweaty faces and dry, golden skin warming me instantly. They teased me for being so shy and signed my poster without flourish. I wanted to stay. But they were busy women, my mother insisted, with other people to see and minds already on their next show.

Sitting in the car I wasn’t paying attention to any of the streets we passed on the way home. My mind was on the women. And Miriam. Stepping out of the garage into the darkening yard, I grinned. Jumping off of the path, I began to dance and twirl in the dusk light. I had made contact. These mothers had touched me. Affirmed something for me. Set something off inside of me. My shut-in, tight world was cracked open just a bit.

I suppose it was inevitable that, years later, I would find myself in South Africa, teaching and learning. In 2000, I traveled with a group of Oberlin colleagues to Kwa-Zulu Natal, north of Durban on South Africa’s East Coast to learn from rural schools in the area. We would wake at dawn, have a light breakfast and walk the half mile to spend the morning at the Mbazwana Educational Resource Center (MERC), the newly constructed school supplemental building provided by the government. The MERC had a beautiful large conference room, laboratory classrooms, office space and bright courtyards meant to be utilized by the local students. The afternoons were spent at our various schools. At times I strolled with a student representative through lush green school grounds while they explained how the students decided to write and bind their own books to bulk up their libraries. Two days a week were spent sitting with a grandmother keeping watch over her tiny granddaughter at a hospital and orphanage run by Doctors Without Borders. Covered from head to toe in bandages, the little girl had tripped over a kerosene lamp. On the first day, her shy smile was the only part of her body visible. We played peek-a-boo while her grandmother asked my high school partner and mentee in Zulu whether I was South African. When he said no, she stared in concern and asked how on earth was I so far from my parents.

It wasn’t until I began asking around that I realized that both Miriam and the Queens were favorites of a generation before mine. My South African friends teased me and called me old school. But they borrowed my CD’s all the same. I shared with them how the music kept me company when I was little and they introduced me to new South African artists pushing Kwaito, hip hop and jazz forward. Riding home on a crowded combi bus or sitting at a table talking with a teacher about her children over curry and rice, or walking home from the MERC, I felt at home again.