Never go back...

I had the good fortune to visit my hometown of Durban this last week and prior to leaving, had decided that I would spend a day whilst down there, taking photographs of the places I frequented or lived while growing up. I am after all a nostalgia junky! I wanted to create some sort of then & now homage to the city that raised me…

But I was to learn a harsh lesson on my trip down memory lane. The kind of lesson that can crush your memories and leave you wishing you’d never gone back.

The sadness started trickling in when I visited areas I used to “hang out” in and the Church I was christened in. They were older, more run down, and typically depicted the central city decay that has infested most of our CBD areas across SA in the past 20 years. That was sad, but to be expected.

The true devastation, for me, was the visit to my Pre-School & Crèche, and my old house in Manor Gardens. Upon arrival at Davaar Kindergarten in Moore Road, I was greeted with a dilapidated site that bought tears to my eyes. The school’s owner, Ms Johnston died just over 2 years ago, and had not made provision for someone to take over the school. The children all left and the building was abandoned. Within days, it had been gutted by vandals and cleared of anything remotely valuable. Then over the next few months, it slowly turned into a hostel for squatters, which was how I found it on Tuesday.

I remember how it was. The front building is classic early 1920’s corrugated iron, with blue and white eves. Behind it was a green floored courtyard surrounded by 3 classrooms and the bathroom block. To the right of the house, was a smaller courtyard, where white and blue crates were stacked as lockers for children’s suitcases – each one had its own picture on the left hand side. And through that courtyard were the Pat Ramsay gardens, which was the play park with swings and trees etc. There was also a wooden jungle gym with tires on the front lawn. I remember playing in the dress up room, swinging on the swings in the garden, singing in the green courtyard. I learned to count in Mrs. Suitor’s class, and tried my hand at Ballet in the main house. I have such happy memories of that place…

Today, the property is overgrown and broken. The surrounding fence has been broken down and replaced with mesh. Even the main gate had been stolen. Mrs. Rabi’s classroom is an empty open structure with piles of rubble in it. Mrs. Suitor’s classroom is a communal bedroom strewn with makeshift beds and mattresses. Ms Chaval’s classroom is a lounge of sorts, with pieces of wood and board blocking the windows to keep out the cold. The bathrooms are dirty, and the windows are broken.
The main house has a woman with a baby staying in the “dress up” room, while the rest is being cleaned in order for it to be turned into a museum. But there is nothing else inside. The jungle gym has been dismantled. And most of the tiny lockers are being used all over as seats or tables – the remaining ones lie in heaps in the overgrown courtyard. There were stenciled signs on cardboard advertising the nightly rates and rules of the communal areas. The Pat Ramsay gardens are overgrown and the sign has been spray painted. The minute I walked in, I wished I had not. The caliber of the characters loitering around there was less than savory and the whole place had a sad, forgotten feeling. It broke my heart.

The sad thing is that, in 1983 – 1985 that area was a good area and Davaar was a sought after school. The values and Christian grounding have made many a well balanced adult who undoubtedly remember that little school fondly. Unfortunately, as with most things, the bad areas have spread and crept up into the good ones. So, it’s no longer viable to have a sweet little school in such a dodgy area.

I left there with a heavy heart, and proceeded to my crèche/aftercare in Bonamour Avenue, called Sunshine. Although, not quite as devastating, this too was a sad experience. Sunshine’s founder, Mrs. Davies evidentially sold the school 5 years ago to a lovely lady who currently runs it. She was very obliging in showing us around and filling us in on all the changes. One thing that has not changed is the smell of that little school. It still smells of cooked veggies! It is a lot smaller than I remember, and the changes are mostly cosmetic. It is a lot lighter – the millions of mobiles have been removed from the ceilings, which has opened up the rooms and allows a lot more light in. The structures are all still the same, just a little more run down. Obviously, in my day, there were no children of colour in Sunshine. Today, there are only children of colour there.

Leaving Sunshine, I headed to Manor Gardens to suss out my old neighbourhood. Manor Gardens is the area just below the Natal University. In 1982 my parents paid R80 000.00 for a three bedroom house, with a HUGE kitchen, lounge, bar, dining room and domestics’ quarters. The house is on the side of a hill, and had a huge balcony which overlooked a 3 level sloped garden and a swimming pool. It was the house I grew up in and I remember every inch of it as if I left there yesterday. So I went back to see it. Obviously I was restricted to looking from the outside (as much as I think I’d let someone in to look at the house they grew up in, I suppose others are far more security conscious!) and I was met with a peachy-pink coloured house, with bright blue windowsills and doors – YUCK! While snapping my pictures from the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance, I was interrupted by an Indian woman who lives in the adjacent property. She asked why I was there, so I explained that I had grown up there. She told me that it was recently bought by the varsity as a digs and that there were now “black students living there” with a tone of obvious disgust in her voice. The property was very run down. She also said the pool was empty and garden overgrown.

It was at that point, after a day of disappointing discoveries that I instructed my husband to head home. So, I turned off the camera and headed back to my dad’s house. But in passing the Cato manor informal settlement (which wasn’t there 20 years ago!) I burst into tears with the realization that you can never go back. If you do, you’re sure to only find disappointment and heartbreak if you’re as nostalgic as I am.

My advice is: Keep your memories where they are, in your head, and never go back.

(Supporting photos to follow soon)