CHOCOLATE ANGEL OF THE NORTHERN SOUTH

                      

The northern province of South Africa has the most attractive natural features that any tourist would kill to put their eyes upon. It’s called the Limpopo a local name which means the strong gushing waterfalls also derived from the Limpopo River.

Limpopo being a province in the north has a lot to admire be it the physical landscape or the beautiful little children that are born and raised in this poor region of South Africa. Your choice stands, either to kill yourself drinking the local poorly distilled liquor or forge through the poverty and other challenges to make it in life. If you are lucky to have enough cash then you may as well take drinks of wine at the Baobab pub which is a big tree carved into a pub.

In  Capricon,Botlokwa, Ga Phasha region of Limpopo about 28 years ago, Miss. Irene Macheba  Montle, who was just under the age of 20, still living at home with her mother , brothers and sisters, she was still a student at Mamafa high school when she gave birth to baby Tumelo Rosemary “ Tumza” her first daughter. She taught her the ways of life and gave her the warmth of a beautiful home with the help of her struggling single mother( grandmother of Tumelo) who was also working as a house keeper at the time Mrs Moloko Theresa Montle.

Beautiful face and tender skin made Tumza stand out of her peers and despite her slim and petit body she had a dream that wasn’t normal especially coming from her poor background.

Tumza’s father died when she was only 6 and life gave her a big blow of having to endure a single parent upbringing. Mrs. Montle toiled and hustled just to make sure there was something on her table for little Tumza and her 3 siblings. Working as a house keeper in different areas in Pretoria South Africa,and struggling to pay her fees for her studies for her teacher’s degree at university of Pretoria, which she later achieved and is now a teacher  at a school in Brooklyn Pretoria. All effort for her children.

Being praised as fancy face,” tumza ngwana” or “rozy baby” could make any girl child proud and happy but this was not the case for Tumza. She was worried; she had a stubborn childhood full of wishes and prayers. Her petit and tiny body attracted negative impressions and looking at her other friends and classmates, who had round figures and admirable African behinds gave her sleepless nights. They mocked her and bullied her too at times calling her odd names like “monatlana” meaning chicken feet for being so thin.

Constant prayers and struggle for a young girl child wasn’t making things prettier. Her mother, having managed to take her just up to Secondary school in Mamafa, just a few miles from Mabyanene primary School. She had to shape her life and do something for herself to make it in life. She luckily moved away from home to Johannesburg Alexander Township, where she stayed with her father’s siblings,  just when she was 17 years old to attend her last two years of high school in Realogile High School. Tumza depicted exactly the meaning of her full name Tumelo which means faith. She stayed from one house to another struggling through till she was done with her matric, as things didn’t work out at her father’s family just after a year she moved.

After scoring admirable grades and getting a calling to join Tshwane University of Technology, she failed to get her admission because her mother Miss. Irene Macheba  Montle couldn’t raise the registration fees which was at the time about 2000 Rands. Left with no choice she opted to go look for a job and moved to Mamelodi Township in Pretoria.

Tumza landed her first job as a waitress and waffle maker and waitress in Milky Lane centurion and worked for four months earning a meager 3 Rands an hour before moving to another restaurant where she got better pay even enabling her to move out of her mother’s house in Mamelodi and rent a flat in Pretoria City for about a year and a half moving from restaurant to another to make ends meet. Luck knocked at her doorstep and she landed a job in Planet fitness as a direct sales representative which was well paying at the time, Tumza saved up and went to cornerstone College where she first gained a “how to sell”  qualities, call centre and debt collecting course..

The mercury was rising. Tumza met her prince charming in 2005 and tied the knot thereafter getting blessed with a baby a year later. Things started looking up. Due economic reasons, after careful and calculated dicision made between Tumza and her husband who was an expatriate and had visited South Africa to set up an engineering company called Beyontec Engineering, decided they relocate to Holland, his motherland after their 6 years stay in South Africa.

Tumza worked as the Sales & Marketing director in her husband’s company for three years and later got a second baby Lethabo Chloe Vodeb, after their first born Kgomotso Conrad Vodeb.

Tumza’s husband had to leave her behind in South Africa to go to Holland and set up a new home for their lovely family.

Tumza joined her husband a two year later in Holland.

Tumza recalls her sad ordeal in school because of her thin body and says throughout the 3 years of being bullied as too thin at school, she started praying every night for God to give her some meat on her bones

 “I wanted so much to be fat, and have big ass just like my peers” she says with a sheepish smile.

Tumza remembers winning the “Miss Botlokwa” as a queen when she was 16 in 1999.

“I was just doing it in the community events and concerts, those kind of things and I got just flowers, and a nice party cups set” she innocently brags.

 To her this never meant much because she felt she wasn’t perfect enough and her slim body wasn’t fit for anything. But remembers keeping the souvenirs she won until the time she was relocating to Holland when she sold them when leaving South Africa.

 “It was something that made me cry every day. I couldn’t get the courage to go on despite the few encouragements I got from the boys in Joburg.”

 She got tempted to try again because the boys at her new school liked her a lot and told her how she had a beautiful body and all.

“Coming from where I was from, my confidence was already chopped off and all that moving from one house to the next was not helping with worries either. So I gave up about modeling after one try in Alexandra Township.” Tumza says rather sadly.

She says in South Africa it’s only the light colored girls who feel more comfortable modeling and that dark is not viewed as pretty in South Africa. Besides most of the locals ladies are not as tall as the 1.75 m that is usually required for one to qualify to be a model.

“Being short always worked against me.” Tumza says.”I never thought I would do modeling again”.

After moving to Holland ,a new country and faced with a challenging task of looking after her family, going back to school to better herself, she says she got her second eye opener.

“I met this lady super model her name is Lily Cusiel, from Tanzania now based in Holland, and I must say she was an angel sent from God. The first time I met her, she told me dear friend you should be a model, you are very beautiful and you have a beautiful body.” She recalls.

She remembers telling her friend Lily Cusiel off that she is married with two kids and only 1.63 m tall.

“She told me she is a model too at her age, she has children too. Then I knew my second chance to do what I have always loved is here.” Tumza says with a renewed confidence.

She sees this as a delayed but not denied chance and encourages the other African girls with dreams and determination.

“Now I am confident and that is why I am giving it my all, I know this is my second shot at it and nothing will stop me now”.

Tumza was in the finals for “Miss Limburg Int.”  That is a province in the south of Holland; she is a glamour, fashion, hair and artistic model in Europe. She is also a founder of an organization that focuses on creating shelter for the homeless, providing them with rehabilitation, providing skills for them and creating projects to create a sustainable life for the homeless in Africa…She calls upon social workers, designers, seamstress, directors , African governments, global governments and all people who wish to be part and help the people with no place to call home..

”I am saying lets provide sustainable life to those who in need .lets not shut ourselves and pretend we don’t see what is going on around us..PROVIDE A SHELTER, REHABILITATE, EDUCATE, PROVIDE SKILLS, CREATE AND IMPLEMENT PROJECTS THAT WILL REQUIRE THE SAME SKILLS. This is one most powerful way to pick anybody up.”

 She now remembers her struggle in South Africa, how she took herself to a Centre College from her meager savings from waitressing.

With her photo of modeling pose she has a pistol and says “If that mugger can come back now he can know what I am made of, I can shoot him down.” This she says referring to the mugger who robbed her at gun point one Sunday afternoon in the streets of Mamelodi Township. An event that pushed her out of the Township, never to return again. Insecurities and rape cases on innocent girls was the order of the day. Things she says she wants to fight through her modeling career.

In reference to her style of donning a smoothly shaven head, she says;

“The inspiration behind my smooth shaven head is that lots of African women are made to believe that our natural beauty is not as beautiful as hair extensions and straightened hair. A lot of money is being spent on trying hard to be pretty when our own beauty is what we need to represent and stand behind it. Our kids will be embarrassed of being black if we don’t take a different route now. In whatever I do, I try to do different things that we were meant to believe don’t look good on black women!

“African women should embrace their inner beauty and play around with their hair!  We are also taught to cover up which is weird because as Africans our ancestors used to wear almost nothing until the Europeans came to Africa. The taboo that is pit behind covering up is the reason why people with Aids don’t survive in South Africa, everyone sees them as whores of their times. They are stigmatized. Sex is a shameful thing back home.”

With her snowy white eyes and the cute beautiful African smile Tumza, who has fought  her way through hardship and poverty manages a smile every day and says she wants to do it all for her lovely mama land Africa. Now happily married in the Netherlands but forever has her Africa at heart.

 She poses for a camera for our catch phrase: 

“I AM DONG IT FOR AFRICA. PAREE!!”

AUTHOR: ROOSEVELT BENARD. (Dar es salaam Tanzania)

INSPIRED AND NARRATED BY: TUMELO ROSEMARY VODEB MONTLE. ”Rozy Vodeb” (Holland)

SPECIAL MENTIONS: LILY CUSIEL (Netherlands)

                                    : MRS. IRENE MACHEBA MONTLE (LIMPOPO PROVINCE SOUTH AFRICA)

EDITOR: LARS & Rozy Vodeb (Netherlands).

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY: RONNY ROUFFA (Belgium)

                                                : JOHAN LEMMEN (Netherlands)

FOR PAREE!  INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTIONS inspired by BENARD ROOSEVELT doing it for Africa.