She remembered that Rosianna and Carlotta were the two girls whom she had liked the best. In earlier years, they had played together and pretended that their dolls were their children. Those two had become mothers, and they now had responsibilities that were quite real. The Shangaan children had called her Tati Christie, meaning Ms. Christie. The older Shangaans, however, had always called her Mu Shangaaniana. This meant small little Shangaan girl, and they had called her that for as long as she could remember. White people had seldom been seen in this vicinity, and the Shangaans had only seen black babies, so when they had first seen her, they had been surprised to discover that she had been born white!
Soon, however, they came to realize that white people have white babies! Despite the difference in skin color, Christine loved the Shangaan people whom she knew, and it was with affection that they always called her Mu Shangaaniana.
Having been born in Africa and raised in Tavani, Christine had grown up hearing the Shangaan language, and she had learned to speak it at an early age. At home, or in the company of other missionaries, English was spoken, but Portuguese was also spoken, at times, because it is the official language of Mozambique. Christine could speak these languages, but in her early years, she had sometimes used a curious mix of words to express whatever she wanted to say. Although the mix of languages made perfect sense to her, some of the older missionaries found her manner of speaking to be quite amusing.
The missionaries’ speech, she had learned, was often quite amusing to the Shangaans. Noting the rain barrel by the downspout at the corner of the house brought to mind the story about Mrs. Bostwick, who, as a newly arrived missionary, still had a limited command of both Portuguese and Shangaan. On one occasion, she reportedly asked a young Shangaan lad who was working for her to ask her neighbor, who was Christine’s mother, for some water from her barrel. She had confused some of her words and had apparently asked the youth to get some water from her neighbor’s bladder! If the youth went home and reported what the missionary had asked him to do, it would likely have produced a roll of the eyes, or a good chuckle.
On another occasion, Mrs. Bostwick had asked a young Shangaan boy to sweep the area near her house. To keep dust from getting into the rain barrel, she had given the lad a petticoat, and she thought that she had directed him to place it over the barrel. She had then gone about her work and had later been surprised to notice that the boy was trying his best to slip the garment over the rear end of their horse! Her request had confounded the youth who had thought it strange that the missionary had asked him to cover her burrow with a cloth. Not having a burrow, he had assumed that the confused woman intended for him to cover her horse, though he could not imagine why.
Mrs. Bostwick had continued confusing words until such confusion became almost legendary. Of course, at one time or other, all the missionaries had made mistakes in their speaking. Some mistakes had been realized, but the actual number of translation errors would never be known. Such mistakes were probably both confusing and amusing to the local Shangaan people.
Christine liked to think that she spoke Shangaan quite well. She could understand what the local people were saying, and when she spoke, they seemed to understand her. She could get along in Portuguese, but English was her native language. Her mother and the other missionaries had come from the United States, so they all spoke English with an American accent. There were no English-speaking schools in Mozambique, so her mother had enrolled her at St. Mark’s in Swaziland, because that area had been under British rule and thus English was spoken in schools and in many other places in that land.
Her classes were all in English, and her teachers and most students at her school spoke English with a British accent. Christine had come to believe that a British accent seemed more refined and sophisticated than an American accent, so she had worked to cultivate a British accent which she used at school, but when she returned home, she easily resumed an American accent. At school, she was required to study Afrikaans, a major language used in South Africa, but she disliked that language and only studied it because it was a requirement. The same was true of mathematics, science, and physical education. She took such classes because they were required, and her grades in them had only been fair. She much preferred English, geography, art, and history, and she was doing much better in those classes.
There were certain things about school that she did not like. She hated the fact that it took so much time to travel between her school and her home. The distance was more than three hundred miles, and because of the time and the expenses involved, she only came home a couple of times a year. She missed seeing her mother, but they kept in touch with each other by writing at least one or more letters each week. She disliked having to study so much, and she hated the way certain girls had teased and taunted her.
The teasing and name-calling had been hard to endure, and all of that had really been Sara Rankin’s fault. She had circulated hurtful rumors, and she was upset to think that another girl from Tavani could have caused so much trouble for her. Was it because of jealousy that Sara had started rumors at school? She didn’t know. The one good thing at school was Jim Pearson. She had had a crush on him for some time, but she wasn’t sure what he thought of her. Did he like her? Perhaps. But they had barely gotten acquainted. Maybe a closer relationship with him would develop after school resumed in the next term.
She looked toward the Rankins’ house but could see no signs of Sara. She knew that she was around somewhere because they had recently made the long two-day trip together from St. Mark’s to Tavani. Sara was one year younger than Christine, and she was the only other young white person on the mission station. Before they had gone to St. Mark’s, they had been the best of friends, and in other years, they would have probably been together at a time like this, but things had changed and their friendship was not what it had been. In other years, they had been nearly inseparable, for they had spent many hours in each other’s homes playing with dolls, making cookies, playing hide-and-seek, dominoes, and things of that sort. They had often commiserated with each other about how lonely and boring life was on a mission station, and how long and uninteresting prayer meetings could be. They were two people who had a lot in common, and things had been just fine until Sara had arrived at St. Mark’s and begun stirring up problems during the past school year.
Christine knew that Sara could be as sweet as could be—and she often was—when adults were around, but she had also discovered that Sara could be two-faced! Although Sara had been pleasant enough on the long trip home from school, she had caused real problems for Christine during the school year. At school, some trivial disagreement between the two of them had seemingly hurt Sara’s feelings, and she had retaliated by making some remarks about Christine that had been very hurtful. Although Christine was white and did not look much different from other girls, Sara had apparently overheard someone at home mention that Christine’s father had been part Indian. That meant, therefore, that Christine was racially mixed, and in parts of race-conscious southern Africa, being of mixed races could be quite a liability!
In the dorm, Sara had stated, “Christine is a half-caste who is trying to pass for white.”
From time to time, she had made various rude remarks about her appearance, and some of the other girls in the dorm had picked up on the name-calling. Although not many were involved, Sara and some of her friends had been keeping the rumors going. This had made Christine upset, and she hardly knew how to handle the situation.
Christine’s mother, of course, had learned about this problem at school, and she had tried to counsel her and give comforting advice. She had suspected that her daughter would, at some point, encounter some prejudice or teasing, but she had never let her daughter believe that she was different from others in any way. Christine had never actually known her father, but she had seen pictures