Some of them repeatedly hit their heads against a wall. The teachers and assistants would take them away, only for them to go back and do it again. I tried it and it was quite fun. When I started doing that at home, my mother scolded me, so I’d slip away and do it against other walls. This was when my mother started making other plans.
She dressed me like a little princess, tied my hair in cute ponytails and took me to Martie du Plessis School, where children had to have a normal IQ, but had to cope with other challenges like dyslexia or some physical disability. “Our child,” she pleaded in the principal’s office, “needs more stimulation. We will do our part. Please …”
The answer was no.
Children with Down Syndrome would never cope with the normal curriculum. The children at his school were not intellectually challenged; they merely had special needs. A child like me, my mother heard, would give the school a bad name.
My mother did not take no for an answer. “Shéri has special needs,” she said. “These needs cannot be met where she is now.”
Giving up does not exist in my mother’s head or vocabulary.
One day, after many prayers in our home, the principal unexpectedly phoned my mother about me.
She took me back to the school, but this time she didn’t do anything special to my hair or the shoes or the dress I wore. I looked quite Down Syndrome-ish.
She told Mr Hugo, then the deputy principal, she would do her best to ensure that I did what normal children did. She would make sure that I did my homework.
“Our multidisciplinary team has agreed to test her,” he said.
My mother wanted to know whether she should stay. If so, she’d put in leave at the office.
“Not necessary,” Mr Hugo said with a broad smile. “Shéri will come here for three days and spend time with the teachers, the occupational therapist, physiotherapist, our school psychologist and other kids of her age. Just drop her off. And don’t forget to pack her something nice for lunch.”
My mother was told that they would be giving me IQ and cognitive tests, to determine whether I would cope emotionally.
I could not get enough of the tests. There were puzzles and blocks, all sorts of things to count, forms to identify, like triangles, squares and circles. I had to colour in pictures and finish sentences. Nothing was repeated over and over again.
The children in that school really worked hard. I heard class groups singing and saw children walking in lines from one classroom to the next. I counted and drew pictures and talked, and time passed far too quickly.
That school felt like my kind of place. Break was wonderful. The teachers took me to sit with the other children. And yes, I did look at what they had in their lunchboxes! There were peanut butter and cheese sandwiches, drinking yoghurt, chicken legs, small fruit juices, packets of chips, pink and green Fizzers, even fizzy cool drinks. I had a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a small fruit juice in my lunchbox. Not a single sweet, no chips.
Every day my mother was worried that I might not behave myself.
Once all the tests had been done and my results had been interpreted, my mom and dad received the news that I had been accepted as a learner at Martie du Plessis, as part of the nursery group.
“Your little girl worked as though her life depended on it,” one of the teachers apparently told my parents. “She worked her way into this school!”
But I really enjoyed it. Only later did I start to realise that I would have to work as if my life depended on it everywhere and always. That only one time out of ten I’d be able to say: “Now that was easy!”
Nowadays, as a teaching assistant at Lettie Fouché school helping kids with writing and reading, I know and realise that nothing feels easy for them. But we persevere. I have to, they have to. Because when you’re slow, you have to give it your all. You have to soldier on and on, until people start realising that you too have a place in society, where you mean something to other people. You have to work harder than other people and not lose hope.
When I teach the children the correct way to hold a pencil, I notice how hard they have to work, how sometimes they do lose hope. But we cannot be satisfied with second best or almost right. We have to carry on, until they succeed.
This is what my mother expected of me, so that I could go to Martie du Plessis. She sometimes had to help me get dressed; I could really take my time getting ready.
The school bus picked me up at about quarter to six, when my dad was still snuggled up in bed. I had to be good, walk straight into my class, greet my teacher and finish the pictures that I had to draw, my mom said.
She made a long list of rules. I was not allowed to ask other kids for sweets or biscuits and under no circumstances take anything from anyone’s lunchbox. Even if I really wanted to taste it, even if I was craving it. I had to eat my own sandwiches and fruit.
I had to make sure that I didn’t lose my white sandals; I had to look people in the eye and listen to my teacher from the minute I walked into the classroom until I left at the end of the day.
At home, around our dining-room table, I had to learn to look whether anyone needed anything: salt, sugar, milk, salad. Normal, well-behaved children are considerate and disciplined, my mother and father used to say.
I really liked my teacher and my classmates: the little boy with the glasses which looked like my dad’s binoculars, the little girls who dressed so beautifully. Four of the kids were in wheelchairs and one of them always wore red shoes. My teacher, whom we called Juffrou Hester, chatted happily with us, also in Southern Sotho.
In our classroom were books about cars and animals and Spot the puppy, a big doll with hair that we could comb, a workbench with hammers and other tools, a toy ironing board and a doll’s house. Outside there were bridges made of old tyres that crossed rivers full of crocodiles. You had to walk very carefully, one by one, or you could cross together, because the crocodiles were only make-believe.
My teacher said she was so proud of me after I’d finished the very first nursery street mile on 11 April 1986. I was four years old. She asked me how I did it; a street mile is long. I told her that I just carried on, that was all. And I did it in my new white tackies.
It is the Lord’s story and I’m part of it
I was 31 years old when I started thinking that I should write my life story. So much has happened in my life.
I remember the day on the school bus when some of the big boys asked me whether I could run fast. Of course I wanted to show them that I could. When the bus stopped, I got off and ran home. I fell, blood streaming from my knees. I did not want to look back; I was crying so much. I think I heard the boys laughing.
About a year later I wanted to run the 400-metre race for the Red team at school. I was lagging far behind, but then the teacher announced: “All the members of the Red team will now finish with Shéri.” And everyone joined me for the last lap, the boys too.
But when I turned 31, I also remembered how I had met Oprah. It was in 2011 when Prof Jonathan Jansen, then vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, invited me as guest of honour to meet Oprah Winfrey when she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university.
And I remembered being trained as an educational assistant at Moteo College.
When I turned 31, I decided I should write down everything that has happened to me since the day I was born. Because it is a story. It is the Lord’s story and I’m part of it.
I borrowed my mother’s diaries and started reading. I looked through albums and asked my mom many questions. This is how my life started:
When my mother heard that