Often it is not the big things that change our lives. But a moment that might have gone unnoticed or forgotten by anyone else, that rip the fabric of your thoughts and makes you re-evaluate your life, your views or what you may later do. Last night I had dinner in Sydney with one of my best friends. We go way back, to when our bodies were firm, our children were imagined and our ideals were being shaped. We were friends at Wits University, a liberal place in South Africa, in the apartheid years. We were reminiscing on life, as you do, with a fine glass of Australian wine and talking about how we have all ended up all over the world.

It made me think of when, did I for the very first moment decide that I would leave South Africa? My neurons scanned my memories and a scene filled my head. It was probably a 45 second memory that started my journey. I only left the country years later, but the memory is as clear as the day it happened.

I was seventeen years old. I had just left home and was living in the big smoke, of Johannesburg. Having grown up in a small country town, I knew that there was something wrong with the country I lived in, I knew of the injustices and I knew things had to change, but I was sheltered from seeing these things myself, first-hand. Johannesburg was slowly starting to allow blacks into restaurants and places that had previously been off limits by law. The law had not officially changed, but practices were starting to. My now husband and I went out for dinner together, in the centre of Johannesburg to Mike’s Kitchen on Rissik St. It was a great, grown up feeling going into the steakhouse, where the Carlton Centre towered above you and the city drummed to its own beat. As we walked in and were seated, a well-groomed black couple had just taken a seat in a booth. Six months into my liberal education and in line with what my parents and school had taught me, I was pleased to see that things were changing. What happened next shamed me to the core. The manager walked over and quietly spoke to the couple. It was clear that he was asking them to leave. The woman clearly did not want to and at first spoke quietly to him, but you could see she was asking to stay. He shook his head. She looked at her husband with tears in her eyes and said “Come, let’s go.” She stood up and then thought better of it and went down on her knees, she turned to the restaurant and her husband and crawled out of the restaurant saying “Crawl out on your knees, we are defeated in our own country.” I could not eat dinner that night. We left without ordering. I only wish I might have crawled out behind her, but at seventeen just walking out was a statement enough and my skin burned red that no matter what I did or stood for I would always be white and to some extent part of the legacy, even though I did not want to be.

© Tanya @ Ordinary Poetry

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