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Today I went home, after 42 years, having lived everywhere. I never did leave happily then.
The indignity of eviction under the Group Areas Act regurgitated the memories from the depths of my being.
Two hours later I left with the weight of a crate of mangoes off my shoulder.
I approached the gate cautiously as the two Alsatians familiarly barked themselves into a frenzy, as all South African dogs do at black people.
So this was where I arrived into the world in such haste before my mother could be taken to the local hospital.
Perhaps that was why I had the gnawing nagging feeling, almost a primal tug, which visited me often in the lead-laden days of Galway, where I now lived.
A young man approached me quizzically, perhaps dismissing any initial idea that a grey-haired man was a potential burglar, as gravity quickened his pace down the sloping driveway.
I had searched for this place nearly two years ago and the road name had changed: when I came to this gate I smelled the recognisable rain sodden soil as my eyes scanned everywhere for familiar landmarks in place of the countless mango, banana, litchi and guava trees, houses seeded the sloping land.
Then I saw it, a ficus tree festooned with parasitic cactus which we called harjhoor. I recalled how my grandmother cooked that cactus in turmeric powder, placed it in a much-used Union Flour Mills cloth and healed the soccer lumps and bumps on my shin, and when I fractured my arm.
But where were the litchi trees that our relatives marauded in season on their weekend visits?
Evocations of a green International van gouging out countless cousins who ran down and raided the trees came to me as I recalled many leaves and branches scattered in the wake.
I then saw two stumps jutting out from the turf which confirmed any doubts I might have had.
Much had changed. Tarred roads replaced the graded ones. The road was not that steep, nor long.
Earlier I had gotten into the car again and drove down the road to look for more familiar trees which testified to and corroborated feelings deep in my soul.
The umdoni tree still stood there as a sentinel to the past but the road did not continue in a bend to the left.
Flashes of my close encounters with that tree came before me as I rode my sister’s bicycle, without brakes, down that same hill until I hit the bend to the left where all the silted soil collected.
Split-second decisions had to be made in the adrenaline-induced bicycle charge down the hill.
Take the bend and let the silt slide-crash you on the umdoni tree, or close your eyes, hold the handle bars tight, and miss the umdoni tree only to land on the bramble thicket.
Whatever the decision, there was always pain.
Previous encounters with the umdoni tree left me all shaken and dishevelled with a nasty headache for a while.
Or the slow dragging retrieval of the bicycle left me with lacerated limbs which reminded me with such excruciating regret at washing up time for dinner just before my father came home.
I had to snap out of these recollections as the young man was now at the gate looking at me quizzically while the Alsatians barked and bounded around dutifully. I then blurted out that I had a strange request: could I walk around on the land?
In an incoherent outpour I explained that after my visit two years ago, I sent a postcard to the house asking for email communication with the occupant.
His mother had replied very graciously and said that I could visit, but I had not set the day, and she was not home that afternoon, I was certain.
Unsure about what to do next, he said I could come on to the land but that he had to secure the dogs first. As I drove my car up I saw the V-shaped litchi tree stump, bleached and dried.
The original house was not there but the view of the Durban skyline was, with Howard College before us. That was the view from the verandah, I recalled. I saw our mango tree. It is strange to be so possessive over one tree in when a large orchard was always available.
Before I could verify the connections with these old friends, the current owner drove up. I tried to introduce myself but she said she knew I was the “Irish oke”.
After that clear acknowledgement of who I was I recall prattling along about the mango tree, the litchi tree and the harjhoor tree. She said the harjhoor tree had more beautiful yellow flowers in full bloom.
Then I asked permission to see more closely the last connectives I had in recognising the land. I went down to see the V-shaped litchi tree which appeared to stand as a symbol of victory over time. I wanted to embrace it but was aware through the back of my head that I was being observed, now perhaps as the “Tree-hugging Irish oke”.
Instead I stroked the dying remnant of the branch. I felt it had struggled to remain alive, almost to make communion with me again. I patted it and felt it to be hollow on one side but fairly solid on the other.
I recalled the bountiful crop these trees yielded which we harvested, tied in bunched in the evening with string from undoing hessian, which made me sneeze, and sold them in the market. And the raids by our relatives never diminished it bounty.
I then examined our mango tree which I hugged surreptitiously. The forked trunk that I so often leapt on with abandon had grown about two metres tall.
The branches were the same in design but much stronger, not the sinewy ones which so often snapped under my weight.
It was also the tree that knew all my feelings as a child as I hugged and clung to its branches for support in more ways than one. When I was lonely, the tree gave me comfort. When I was hungry, it fed me.
When I needed an adventure, it was willing to play. When I needed a confidante, it listened without judgment. When I needed a friend, it let me just hang out.
I had come home.
• This was written in 2010. Dr Vinodh Jaichand completed his doctorate in restitution of rights in land in South Africa in 1996 at the University of Notre Dame Centre for Civil and Human Rights and in 1997 published the first book on this topic. He has been a consultant with the World Bank on the Land Governance Assessment Framework on Africa. is a founding member of the African Land Advisory Group and is the former head of the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand.
