Chapter 13: THE PURPOSE OF SUFFERING
One of the first places I visited when I arrived in Knysna was Karatara, a small settlement about thirty kilometres from Sedgefield, the closest town to Knysna. I had heard about South Africa’s first free rural eco-business school for entrepreneurs was based in the Karatara settlement, and the journalist in me sensed a good story. However, the story that eventually found me there had nothing whatsoever to do with business, but everything to do with the heart.
Karatara used to be a forestry station in the 1920’s and became a settlement for forestry workers in the 1940’s. There were fifty-three wooden houses in which black and mixed-race forestry workers, all of whom were employed by the National Department of Forestry, lived with their families in the so-called “bosdorp” (forest village). Karatara was eventually de-proclaimed as forestry land and, after much wrangling and several official investigations, the ownership of these houses was legally transferred to the historical occupiers in 2014.
Several of the inhabitants of these homes had benefited from the activities of the rural business school at Karatara and had obtained a Certificate in Practical Business Administration. Some of these graduates had gone on to establish small eco-businesses, in harmony with their environment and offering much-needed employment within the community. However, students also came from far further afield in South Africa, as the school offered full board and lodging for sixty-five non-local students for ten months of the year. I was impressed by the many activities and the successes of the school; however my story was to be found in the kitchen rather than in the classrooms.
***
I was served lunch in the school cafeteria by Martha, a current student at the school and a resident of the bosdorp. All students were obliged to contribute a certain amount of time to the upkeep of the school and the cafeteria was Martha’s special responsibility. As I was leaving, I popped my head into the kitchen to thank Martha for the excellent lunch, and I noticed a small girl crouching in the corner of the kitchen with her head down on her knees, which were drawn up to her chest. She looked up at me as I called Martha’s name and I was shocked to observe the extremely waxy pallor of her emaciated, café latte coloured face. “Hello, who are you?” I asked, crouching down next to the little girl, but she didn’t answer, merely putting her head back down onto her knees with a listless and exhausted sigh.
“That’s my daughter, Elsa,” said Martha, her eyes clouding over with concern as she observed her little girl’s posture.
“Is she OK?” I asked. I am not an expert on children, but I could sense that there was something very wrong with this child.
“Dis bloedsiekte,” Martha whispered in Afrikaans, with a slow, hopeless shaking of her head. To me “bloedsiekte” (blood sickness) could only translate to one thing, which was AIDS, and an icy dread ran down my spine to think that this beautiful child could be a victim to the virus which had wrecked the lives of so many South Africans. But then Martha showed me some leaflets that her doctor had given her and I realized that the child was the victim of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, or cancer of the white blood cells in the bone marrow.
Martha sank down onto a chair in the kitchen and sobbed as she poured out her tale of woe. It seemed that little Elsa, who was six years old, had started complaining of pains in her joints a few months earlier. The child was listless, weak and pale and she refused to eat. She also had a fever. Martha had thought that Elsa had caught the flu, which was doing the rounds at the time, and so she put Elsa to bed with some aspirin and coaxed her into eating chicken broth several times a day. But Elsa just didn’t get any better and when Martha noticed several unexplained bruises on Elsa’s body and tiny red spots under her skin, she began to feel concerned and she took Elsa to the local clinic. The doctor who examined Elsa at the clinic immediately referred her to a specialist in George, the nearest city to Knysna. As Martha’s family did not have the means of taking Elsa to George, not to mention, afford the fees of a specialist, the director of the school offered to help in exchange for extra duties for Martha at some time in the future when Elsa was once again healthy.
What followed was a confusing and upsetting whirl of medical examinations, blood work, scans and even a bone marrow biopsy, all of which finally confirmed that Elsa had leukaemia and that she would probably die within a few months if she was not provided with proper treatment. Elsa would need to spend prolonged periods of time at the hospital in George to receive chemotherapy, which would continue for more than three years. Other therapies might also be needed, the goal being to induce in Elsa a lasting remission, defined as the absence of detectable cancer cells in the body, the specialist had explained to Martha. However, it was crucial to get the treatment started as soon as possible if Elsa was to have any chance at survival. The diagnosis had been received two weeks earlier, and Martha was still in a state of shock. She was well aware of the fact that there was no way she would ever be able to afford the treatment that Elsa required and the school would not be able to continue assisting at the level which would be required for the foreseeable future. The situation seemed hopeless.
I left Karatara in a gloomy and despondent mood. Elsa’s beautiful, exhausted little face began haunting both my waking and sleeping hours. I wished that I could find a way to help her. One morning I awoke with the name of Helena Kroukamp on my lips. She was the journalist who had written the newspaper article that had provided me with some of the inspiration to start my book. Somehow I was certain that she could assist Elsa. I went to visit Helena in her modest offices in the centre of Knysna and watched her somewhat sharp face softening as I explained Elsa’s situation to her. When I had finished she exclaimed, “We need to crowdfund Elsa’s treatment!” I had never heard of the concept of crowdfunding before, but Helena explained to me that it was possible to access funding from hundreds, if not thousands, of ordinary, concerned people all over the world if one knew how best to use social media and online funding mechanisms. Helena immediately set about registering on a charity crowdfunding platform and creating a Facebook page for Elsa, which she populated with heart-rending photographs of the child, her family and her home, taken by a freelance photographer from whom she had called in a favour. She also wrote articles about Elsa’s plight that appeared in all of the Garden Route newspapers and the local classifieds, the Action Ads. She accomplished this by feverishly working during her own free time and I assisted wherever I could, and learning a great deal in the process. The result of all this activity is that, within a month, Helena had managed to source sufficient funding to cover the cost of Elsa’s first year of treatment and she was confident that the rest would follow shortly.
During the months of treatment that followed, I visited Elsa at least once a week at the hospital in George. Martha, who had been excused from her duties at the school and had had her studies deferred until she could once again fully focus on them, was provided with free temporary housing at the hospital residence and she spent most of her waking hours at Elsa’s bedside.
The little girl was not doing at all well. It almost broke my heart to witness her small, deathly-pale bald head, fragile as a bird’s egg, resting on her pillow and her painfully thin little body barely making a dent in the stark white bedclothes. She had had a portacath surgically implanted under the skin near her collar bone, through which drugs were administered. It caused me an almost physical pang to realize that this device was uncomfortable for her, as her little hand, with its nails bitten down to the quick, continuously fluttered near her collar bone.
Martha had told me that the doctor’s major concern was with the increased risk of infection, particularly pneumonia, and that they were all on high alert for symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing or vomiting. Elsa would have to remain in intensive care for the duration of her chemotherapy until the doctor believed that the risk of such infection had been minimised.
Against all odds, Elsa survived her first round of chemotherapy and, within a couple of weeks, was moved from intensive care to a general oncology ward. The little girl appeared much happier here and, for the first time, her eyes were bright and she was sitting upright and appeared alert and interested in her surroundings when I next visited her.
I arrived just as Martha was leaving to go and meet with Elsa’s doctor en route to the store to purchase a few items that Elsa needed. She was, therefore, very happy to see me and said, as she was leaving, “Elsa, tell Mr. Allen about your dream, my baby,” and then she winked at me, blew a kiss at Elsa and left. It was good to see Martha in a playful mood for once, thanks to the improvement in her little girl’s health.
I bent down to kiss Elsa’s cheek and she grabbed my hand and whispered in my ear, “It wasn’t a dream, you know.”
“Really?” I said, settling down into the chair at the side of the bed. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” The story that followed would probably have been dismissed by any rational adult as a dream or fantasy at best and a delusion or even a drug-induced hallucination at worst. The story was, however, extremely interesting to me for reasons that will become obvious below.
Elsa had been feeling really sad and homesick the previous day. Although she had started to feel a bit better, she was really missing her friends and the rest of her family. But most of all she missed the forest surrounding her home. It had always been her best friend, her refuge and her playground, and the sterile, bright white environment in which she found herself was cold and unfriendly. After Elsa’s mother had tucked her in, read her a story and then left for the night, Elsa had started quietly sobbing, thinking about how lonely she was feeling and how much she wanted to go home to the forest.
Suddenly Elsa heard an unfamiliar, barely audible, whooshing sound outside her window and so she climbed out of her bed and pulled the curtain aside. To her astonishment she saw a large Eagle Owl perched on her window sill. The owl stared straight into Elsa’s eyes, slowly blinked a couple of times and then she heard a deep voice resonating within her heart. “Elsa, come with me,” the owl hooted.
“But... But I can’t,” she replied, “I’m sick and I’m not supposed to get out of bed. Also, my mother told me not to talk to strangers.”
“Elsa, what does your heart tell you? Am I a stranger to you?” asked the owl, his large orange eyes staring deep into her own.
“Uh, no, I guess not,” Elsa replied, as she realised that she actually knew this owl very well. She had seen him several times in the trees near her home and often heard him who-whooing before she fell asleep at night.
“And the very reason that you need to come with me is because you’re sick,” the owl continued. “We’re going someplace that will make you feel much better.”
“Uh, OK,” said Elsa. “But how are we going to get there and won’t my mother be sad when she arrives tomorrow morning and I’m not here?”
“Elsa, we’re going to fly there and we’ll be back before morning. Nobody will even know that we’ve gone,” replied the owl. “Now, open the window and climb out onto the window sill.” Elsa did what the owl told her. She found that she wasn’t at all afraid, even though her hospital room was on the third floor of the building. “Now climb onto my back and hold on tight!” hooted the owl. Elsa was amazed to discover that she was quite small enough now to fit comfortably onto the owl’s back and so she held tightly onto his feathers as he who-whooed once or twice and then, with a whoosh, flew off the window sill and into the dark night.
The flight was absolutely exhilarating as the owl dived and swooped and then flew at top speed and Elsa nestled deeper into his feathers for warmth. Finally they arrived at their destination, which turned out to be the forests in which Elsa had grown up. The owl swooped to a halt in a forest clearing, the full moon lighting their way and causing a silvery glistening on the leaves of the trees and bushes that surrounded them. “I’m home!” Elsa crowed, as she breathed deeply of the familiar scents of fertile, humus-rich, moist soil and green leafy growth. “But, what are we going to do here?” she asked, “It’s late and my family and friends must be asleep. They won’t want to play with me now and they might tell my mother and then I’d get into trouble for getting out of my bed,” she said with a worried frown.
“You’re going to meet with your forest family tonight, little one,” replied the owl.
“But, where are they?” asked Elsa, glancing around the empty clearing in the forest.
“Do you see those two tall trees over there?” asked the owl. Elsa nodded. “Well, they are the door to a wonderful world, just beyond this one. That is where we are going tonight.” The owl led Elsa to the trees and then encouraged her to step between them. For a moment Elsa could see nothing at all, only a strange, silvery mist that swirled all around her. But then, as she took another few steps, the mist cleared and she found herself in the most wonderful place she could ever have imagined.
She was in a forest glade, but the trees surrounding her were truly gigantic and absolutely covered in tiny, multi-coloured, twinkling lights. Looking closer at the lights, she saw that they were actually tiny, perfectly-formed, beautiful little creatures in brightly-coloured clothing, darting through the leaves in a wild, joyful dance. “Oh! Look, it’s fairies!” gasped Elsa, her eyes widening in amazement. There were larger creatures with a variety of animal faces dancing in a double circle in the clearing, bobbing and weaving amongst each other in a chaotic dance that kept resolving into complex patterns. In the centre of the two circles was a tall, lovely, green woman. As Elsa stared, transfixed, at the sights before her, the circles of dancers parted to form a double line and the Green Lady glided between the dancers up to Elsa and held out her hand. “Are you the fairy queen?” whispered Elsa in awe, but still taking the Lady’s hand without a second’s hesitation.
“I’m the spirit of the forest,” the Lady replied as she led Elsa into the dance. To Elsa’s complete surprise, she found that she knew all the steps to the dance. She twirled and jumped and danced and whirled, realizing that she felt completely healthy and well in a way that she hadn’t felt for a very long time. The music grew louder and faster until Elsa’s cheeks were pink from exertion and her hair swung out behind her in a wild tangle.
Then, finally, the dance ended and the dancers made their way, with much excited laughing and chattering, to the long tables to the side of the clearing. The tables were absolutely laden with tempting food displayed on leaves, and large acorns filled with a sparkling pink drink, which Elsa immediately sampled as she was so thirsty from all the dancing. She had never tasted anything so delicious in all her life! It tasted like liquid sunshine and ripe peaches and happiness. She felt a warm, golden glow suffusing her entire being as she finished her drink and immediately had another. Then, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she sampled a little pink cake frosted with lavender icing and covered in tiny silver sparkles. It was divine and she closed her eyes in delight as she tasted blueberry ice cream and perfume and spring meadows. The Green Lady appeared at her side, smiling. “You’re enjoying our feast, I see,” she said.
“I’ve never tasted anything like it!” replied Elsa, biting into a pale green cake that tasted of toffee apples and holidays. “I’m just so hungry!” exclaimed Elsa, grabbing yet another cake, which was orange and covered in tiny golden sparkles.
After eating and drinking her fill, Elsa sat down on a tree stump covered with soft, bright-green moss and listened to the music played by the fairy musicians. Just like the voice of the Lady, she could hear the music directly in her heart, instead of through her ears. The music sounded like laughter and crystal-clear running water and tiny glass bells and it made Elsa feel deeply and completely happy and content. The Green Lady sat behind her and plaited tiny white flowers into her hair.
“Who are all these creatures?” Elsa asked the Green Lady.
“They’re called sylphs,” the Lady answered. “They make sure that the trees and the flowers grow properly and remain happy and healthy.”
“I wish that I had a sylph to make me healthy again,” whispered Elsa sadly, the corners of her mouth drooping as her bottom lip quivered.
The Lady hugged her close and told her, “You do, you know! Your body has a spirit being who looks after you and makes sure that things are all going according to the plan that you decided on even before you were born.”
“Well, where is my sylph then?” asked Elsa indignantly. “She’s not doing a very good job because when I’m not here in this place I’m normally quite sick, you know.”
“I know,” affirmed the Lady, with infinite gentleness and compassion. “But you know, Elsa, you are much more than you think you are. You believe that you are just a sick little girl, but you are actually a powerful and magnificent spirit being who has decided to allow a little part of itself to forget what it truly is and pretend to be Elsa for a little while. This being loves you, Elsa, far more than anyone here on Earth could ever love you; far more even than you love yourself. You will become this being when you aren’t pretending to be limited as you are here on Earth, and when you leave Earth you will once again remember who you truly are. This being decided, before it expressed a part of itself to be born as you, Elsa, that it would choose to go through some hardships and experience some pain and suffering for a very short while for some very good reasons, which you will remember when you leave this place. I don’t know what your reasons were, but, for some people, suffering and hardships make them strong and help them to grow in love and compassion so that they can do even more incredible things later on.”
“What is it that I must do later?” wondered Elsa, “And will it be when I am a grown-up?”
“Only you will know that, Elsa, and only a little later. It might even be when you are in another life, not as Elsa, but as someone else. But when it is time, you will know exactly what it is that you must do. And believe me, it will be something very wonderful that will make a beautiful difference in the world,” said the Lady.
Elsa leaned back and sighed deeply. “I want to help people and to make a difference, especially to other children who are also sick,” she said, “It’s just so hard sometimes to be in the hospital and to feel miserable and weak all the time.”
“That is why you need to come back here and spend some time with us, every now and then,” said the Lady, “So you can also have some time to feel well and to enjoy yourself. Then the sickness won’t be quite as hard to bear.”
“Oh, does that mean I’m coming back here again?” asked Elsa in excitement. “Can I come back again tomorrow night?”
“Perhaps not tomorrow night, but very soon,” replied the Lady.
“Oh good,” said Elsa, sighing with contentment. “I’m having so much fun,” she whispered, her eyes beginning to flutter shut with exhaustion. It had been a very long, eventful evening for the little girl.
Elsa didn’t remember the trip back to the hospital at all, but when she opened her eyes, she was back in her hospital bed and the nurse was placing her breakfast on a tray in front of her. To her surprise, she was very hungry and, for the first time in weeks, she ate all of her food.
Elsa was to make several more visits to the forest glade during her time in the hospital. Most weeks when I visited she would have some delightful, new story to tell me. I began to really look forward to our visits so that I could hear about Elsa’s latest adventures in the forest. She had stopped telling anyone else about her forest visits as they all believed that she had only been dreaming, but Elsa knew that I took her stories seriously. So seriously, in fact, that one day I asked Elsa to give the Green Lady a message from me. “Please would you ask the Lady if I will ever meet her myself,” I requested of Elsa.
To my utter delight, the following week Elsa had a message for me from the Green Lady. “The Lady asked me to tell you that it is no mistake that all of these stories about her are finding their way to you,” Elsa said, screwing up her eyes as she attempted to recall the Lady’s exact words. “As you make the choice to open your heart, more stories will arrive and, when you are ready, you will meet the Lady for yourself.” A chill ran up my spine as I heard these words. I was convinced that these were not the words of a six-year old child, but rather a message for me from the Lady herself. I found myself looking forward with great anticipation to my time remaining in Knysna.
In the meantime, Elsa’s stories of her visits in the forest with the Green Lady were an absolute delight for me to hear. She told me about a daytime visit in which she helped the forest spirits to build a tree house, which they decorated by making vines and flowers rapidly entwine into beautiful, living wall art. On another occasion, she swam by the light of the moon in a mysterious rock pool surrounded by ferns and moss-covered pebbles, with tiny luminous fish nibbling at her toes in the silvery water. She described to me a midnight picnic, high up in the topmost branches of a gigantic tree draped in old mans’ beard, from which the sylphs taught her to fly, using thoughts alone. On one occasion she rode on the back of a massive stag in a wild chase through the forest, accompanied by hundreds of other creatures, just for the sheer exhilaration of it. And the feasts! Elsa had never before eaten such amazing and wonderful food and could spend hours just relating to me the taste sensations that she had experienced. I had no way of proving that the visits were real – they could just as easily have been the product of an incredibly vivid imagination. Elsa and I chose to believe that they were real and I did know for sure that they made one very sick little girl extremely happy. More importantly, they gave her a way of making sense of her suffering, of finding meaning in her illness. And, for that, I will be eternally grateful to whoever made these visits, whether real or imaginary, possible.
Then, out of the blue, things went terribly wrong for Elsa. One morning she awoke with a stabbing pain in her chest and a nasty cough. By the afternoon, she was running a high fever. Tests confirmed that Elsa had developed pneumonia and she was immediately transferred to intensive care again. Within two days, early one morning, she slipped into a coma, from which she was never to regain consciousness. A day later, despite the very best medical care, the little girl died.
The final part of Elsa’s story is purely of my own imagining. Perhaps I needed a way to make sense of the terribly unfair way in which her short life had ended. Perhaps it was my way of offering a final tribute to a very sweet little girl, whom I had come to love very much. Either way, here is the final chapter in Elsa’s story.
The night before Elsa slipped into the coma, the owl again appeared outside her window. “I don’t think I can climb out of the window,” whispered Elsa to her visitor, “I’m not strong enough any more.”
“Then we shall try another way of travelling,” replied the owl. “Close your eyes, Elsa, and imagine that you’re back in the forest with all of your friends.” Elsa did as she was told and, after a very short period of darkness, she opened her eyes to find herself back in the forest glade, surrounded by the sylphs, with the Green Lady standing in front of her.
“Elsa, this is a very special celebration for you tonight,” said the Lady. “This is your farewell party because soon you will be going on an exciting journey to a new and different place, which is even more beautiful and lots more fun than this place.”
“More fun than here?” asked Elsa, “That’s not possible!” But the Lady just smiled and took Elsa’s hand to lead her into the dance. That night was the very best party that Elsa had ever been to. She danced until her cheeks were rosy and her hair surrounded her head in a wild, tangled halo. She danced until her legs finally collapsed and she tumbled onto the soft leaves underfoot and rolled around, giggling with joy. She ate and ate until she could eat no more and she played every game under the sun with her friends and with the Green Lady.
And then, finally, the Lady said to her, “Elsa, it’s time to leave now, little one. This party is over, but your new life is just about to begin.” And Elsa could tell by the little bubble of excitement running up her spine that the Lady was right. She knew that she was now ready for her next adventure, and so she bade all her friends farewell.
Then Elsa took the Lady’s hand and together they walked between the two trees for a final time and out into a whole new world.
FOOTNOTES:
The Eden campus of TSiBA (The Tertiary School in Business Administration), a private, not-for-profit business school founded in 2004 to “Ignite Opportunity” for entrepreneurs (click here to return to text)