Written by Sofia Bant
It was almost mid-term break when I got to know Marin. Mid-term break was our version of spring break at Waterford Kamhlaba, a time for fun, a long weekend to forget about school. Usually, my mother would come over for mid-term, but this time she couldn’t and asked me to make a plan for myself. I was dying to go to Johannesburg, because I love it there, but I needed people to go with. To my disappointment most of my friends were going home or doing things with their families. I needed a plan B.
I had met her once at one of the ‘Dutchie’ pancake nights the students from the Netherlands organised. She was beyond excited to be at Waterford, she was so far from home and she loved it. For her, a new life had started. I remember her twirling around the dorm common room kitchen. She barely looked at me, her sparkling eyes were everywhere else. Five days later, I asked her and two other girls I barely knew, if they wanted to come to Johannesburg with me. I promised they would love it and South Africa’s explosive energy. They did. It was one of the greatest weekends of my life.
Unfortunately, the two other girls we went with drifted off and found other friend groups, but Marin and I stuck like pollen to the legs of a bee. Whoever created us, used the same ingredients for each of our brains. We took long night walks around our sleeping campus and talked about serious, but also unimportant things. We went from frowning to laughing in a space of seconds. We were beyond the earth, we lived in our own fantasy. The real world was only an oyster in our ocean of being.
Wonderful months went by far too quickly. Marin was on a field trip with her drama class to Grahamstown, the theatre festival in South Africa. I was having a horrid day without her. Over the phone, I asked her how she was. A minute later, my phone buzzed.
“Not good.”
She was alone in her hotel room, away from the festival. She said she was dizzy. The replies came slower and slower. I tried to call her but she said she couldn’t speak. I didn’t understand what she meant. Her messages became incoherent. Panic. I called another friend of mine who I knew was also at Grahamstown and asked her to please check on Marin. I sat shaking in the quiet of my room for an hour while Marin was taken to the hospital.
This was the day Pandora’s box opened. Marin suffered under seizures that made her unable to speak properly and her arms and legs shake several times daily. She had had lyme disease when she still lived in the Netherlands, but the doctors couldn’t connect it to the seizures, they thought it was anxiety, something they would still insist on a year later. She called herself a ‘medical unicorn’, no one could tell her what was going on.
Boarders at Waterford living far from their home, were given ‘link families’. These were families that had some kind of connection with the school and lived in Swaziland. Their main purpose was usually to provide students with a place to go on the weekends if they needed an escape. Marin’s link family went beyond this purpose. They took her in a let her stay with them for as long as she needed. The mother of the family, Cara, was like the generator during a blackout. She was constantly going out of her way to keep the lights on in Marin’s eyes. I feel I owe her for taking such incredible care of my friend.
To keep Marin company in Cara’s luxurious, but painfully lonely house, I was invited to sleep over and join them for breakfast at a serene garden cafe the next morning. Swaziland is known for her thick fog on winter days, but that morning the sun was shining perfectly on my friend’s weary face. Whatever she had, it was causing a major drought in her energy reservoir. It stung to see her that way. Though her smile was tired, it fascinated me. Marin never let her illness kill her spirit, she was born with the strength of a thousand elephants. A strength life-changing to witness. Though not quite used to the presence of the crutch she had to carry around with her everywhere, we were happy. The solar system we built together was still turning, we floated around in it that morning, feasting on banana pancakes jeweled with syrup.
Cara’s ten year old son, Luke, had just been given his weekly allowance. Still foreign to the concept of saving, Luke was set on buying Marin and I presents from the handicraft market next to the cafe. He came back with two lenticular placemats that change image depending on what angle you view them from. We giggled at Luke’s sweet randomness. One had stock photos of lions on it, the other of wolves.
“Now who gets which?” Cara asked.
Without thinking, I reached for the wolf at exactly the same time as Marin went for the lion. There was a moment of silence as we held our placemats that now were evidence of the magic of our connection. Snapping out of eye contact with me, Marin shrugged,
“I mean, I am clearly the lion.”
“And I clearly the wolf.” I laughed.
How did we know that?
August came. There was no improvement in Marin’s health. The school thought it best to send her home. We sat in the middle of the field covered with dense, Swazi mist as I read a poem I wrote for her. We cried quietly. Waterford was a dream she deserved to live in. Why were the gods taking it away from her? Our friends organised a bonfire for her the night before she left. We threw any sadness we had into the flames.
I visit her when I am in the Netherlands. Nothing has changed. We still swim around in each other’s minds. She hasn’t lost the crutch, but we still walk through the woods. Doctors are yet to tell her what she has, but we still have big plans to travel the world and live together. The demons of illness tried to destroy her, but my lion still roars as loud as the crashing waves of our ocean and if you listen closely, you can hear the wolf howling in reply.
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