Once upon a time I sat in this venue on a night like this. If memory serves me well, it was a Thursday evening on October the 21st in the year 2010. It’s almost 13 years since the spectacle that was my last speech night as scholar of St Charles College; and yet the things I felt on that day are still as fresh as the feeling I have today. That feeling is home. I am home. This is home. And there will always be a place at home for me.
I Googled the definition of home… And for those of you that don’t remember or were not born yet, we used Oxford’s or Merriam-Webster’s dictionary to look up the meaning of words, and if those didn’t work or we needed to escalate, we would use Britannica’s encyclopaedias to get the job done. Needless to say, I’m envious of the conveniences you have at your disposal these days to get through prep.
But before I get swept away in nostalgia and envy, what I found on Google was the following:
- A home can be a place where one lives, more especially as a member or part of a family.
- A home can be an institution for people needing professional care or supervision.
- A home can be an area, location or subject in which one is intimately familiar with.
- A home can be a territory we instinctually return to after a period of absence or when one seeks safety.
- A home can be something that we move towards, focus on or centre ourselves around.
So, it should come as no surprise that I discovered the following when I engaged with different groups of boys between Tuesday and today:
- That so many boys spoke of a brotherhood and a kinship not too dissimilar from a feeling of family.
- Even the guys that are more eager finish their time at the college, have found something to invest themselves in and work towards in this place they call home.
- Some of the boys spoke about how St Charles, was different from the other schools they knew of or had attended, because of the quality of attention, education and care they receive from the staff. Part of that care also translates into a general feeling of safety at this school– almost as if no issue, situation or bully could compromise this.
- I was lucky enough to encounter two boys, that told me, that they had been at the school since Grade 00 and that they have never thought of leaving. When I asked why they felt this way, the response was simple, “St Charles, is as much a part of them, as they are a part of St Charles” – and is this not what intimacy is truly about?
At the start of this address, I mentioned that I was a scholar here 13 years ago. In the time between, I have had a chance to reflect on the ingredients that made this place a home for me, and I have to honestly say that I’m still figuring it out. But so far, I have categorized the ingredients into two parts – namely Discipline and Love – based on the work of a psychiatrist by the name of Dr Morgan Scott Peck, but also very closely linked to the core values of this school.
I start with discipline purely because that is how my time at St Charles began. It has very little to do with the dress parade that I had to do every other week; the hidings that I received; the black marks for incomplete homework or being too noisy in Mevrou Walsh’s tutor period; or Saturday night detention; or even early rising outside the prefect’s window during the winter months. It has more to do with some facts that I had to learn very quickly:
- Firstly, that life is difficult, and living under any other false assumption always led me to feeling disappointed.
- Secondly, that I will have problems to deal with, and only when I accepted them, and started to do something about them, would things start to become easier.
- And lastly, that I needed a combination tools to achieve discipline – for me these were a dedication to the truth; taking responsibility for myself; delayed gratification; and giving up comfort for growth. Tools that will hopefully make sense as I tell you more about my story.
I arrived in January 2005 ready to embark on what was going to be a 5-year journey in my chosen home as termly boarder from Botswana. There were so many hardships and growing pains to get used. One that comes to mind is routines, because they were a thing to get used to. On the good days, I could wake up at 6.15 and on the bad days I was getting my first dress parade signature, at exactly 6.15. Routines lasted all day and only the end would vary. We religiously started prep at 6.30. On the good days we finished at 8pm, and if we were lucky 7.30pm; but then again that was most Fridays, so maybe we weren’t so lucky. On the bad days we got extra prep and finished closer to 9pm, and on those bad days you hopefully managed to get your final signature for dress parade, but only if your prefect wasn’t playing hide seek with you. This was my routine for two years, and despite the monotony, frustration, joy and everything else in between – it was home and where my brothers were.
Then I had to leave home and return to my actual home. My family had moved to Westville, Durban and extended its members by two people – which meant that we were not able to afford for me to staying at St Charles. It was really hard to take, and I couldn’t bear the truth of my new reality. That made me feel very angry, and it took me sometime to accept that this was my problem now. Not without my struggles and doubts, I managed to accept my problem and take responsibility for it. After a few months I started making friends, playing good sport and generally did quite well with my schoolwork for almost two years. I was on the way to completing my grade 11 year and had already started putting plans towards my matric year, as well as all the things I wanted to do with my life after I left high school.
And then calamity hit, and I found out from my brothers back home, that Samke – the gentleman that this arena is named after – was with us no more. I attended the funeral service a week later and sat with all my former with a deep sense of sadness and regret. I remember speaking to Mr Naidoo later that day about life and how things were going, and by the time I drove out of Harwin Road, I knew I had to come back home somehow.
Fast forward to a couple weeks later, as well as some back-and-forth exchanges with the school and my mom – I sat in a meeting with my mom, Mr Van Blerk, Mr Bradford and our former headmaster Mr Kuhn. We spoke about me returning to the college and all the obstacles it entailed. By the end of it and some miracle, there were options in place, and I could come back as of January 2009, if I wanted to.
Talk about delayed gratification for something you had given up on ever happening; and in hindsight it’s probably the closest I’ll ever be to being a professional footballer and signing up to Arsenal on deadline day. And yes, north London is red and will probably be, after the derby this weekend.
But back to the options I had that day, I could:
- Just finish off my final year at Westville and carry on with the plans I had put in place;
- Return to the school and do two years as a matric while dividing my exam subjects over the period;
- Or stay back a year and do grade 11 again.
I went with the third option and the rest is pretty much history. If I was to choose again, I’d do the same in a heartbeat because the comfort I gave up allowed me to become the person that stands before you today.
And then there’s good old-fashioned Love. Probably the most important ingredient of the two because for me love was never just the things I enjoyed doing. Like playing touch every Sunday afternoon, or flapjack Fridays in the AW King hall alongside a cup filled with Nesquik chocolate milk; or even the 1st team rugby winning through Sipho Evans’ intercept try against Hilton in 2006, on Harwin, on Old Boys day.
Love for me is the crucial ingredient that made St Charles home because of our willingness to extend ourselves for our own or another’s inner growth. For me there are five elements that contribute to the love I know and what I felt at St Charles:
- The first was independence – which I experienced in my latter years at the college, but more especially when I became a prefect, and I was in a position where I had to take care of the boys in my dorm but also because of the space I was given by the school to grow into myself;
- The second one for me is commitment – which was being able see things through despite whatever challenges, turbulence and doubt that came about. For me one of the greatest embodiments of that is Mr Ronnie Kuhn. I say Mr Kuhn because not many people know this, but he personally contributed to about half of my school fees at St Charles in my last two years because we didn’t have the money. I found out on my final speech night that the reason he did this was because he was moved by my conviction and commitment to the school, and so he committed to helping me see it through.
- And then there’s attention – And I can say without a shadow of a doubt I got plenty of it, through the many conversations and memorable moments that I shared with Mr Naidoo, Mr Irons, Mr Markham, Mr Kelly (r.i.p), Mr Bouwer, Mr Kotze, Mr Halcomb, Mr Beaumont, Mr Boote, Mr Usher, Mr Shezi, Mr Bradford, Mr Malloy, Mr Smith, Mr Speed, Mrs Hackland, Mrs de Croes, Mrs Frangs, Mrs Thorpe, Mr Riley. The list is actually endless, and I could spend the whole evening telling you stories about how each one attended to me. I didn’t even mention all the prefects and seniors that had their part to play in this as well, but like I said the list is endless.
- This home also needed one to have courage – because of all the decisions I had to make or witnessed other people making. For me true courage makes one vulnerable, and vulnerability can feel like the scariest thing because it opens you up to disappointment;
- And the fifth is balance – because Mr Sheppard always told us to work hard, play hard and then fall asleep which is easy in principle but harder in practice. What I found difficult in my time at the college, was figuring out when I had spent enough time. Enough time on my commitment to myself. The school. My sport. And my academics at the end of each day. Whether we like it or not, one needs balance to grow – but more importantly I figured out that one needs balance for all the elements, parts and ingredients to feel like home.
Ladies, gentleman and brothers of St Charles College. I stand here with a deep sense gratitude and pride but most all – an overwhelming love. I say gratitude because there were enough sliding door moments that could have prevented me from standing here before you. I say pride because of all the discipline, commitment, courage and responsibility that enabled or at least allows me to stand here before you. But my love for this institution and all it symbolizes is my greatest joy because it is an opportunity to extend myself for the growth of those that need it in the ways that many others extended themselves for me to become the person I am today.
In closing I would like to ask you all to continue growing and nurturing one another – especially the nurturers. Most of all I ask you to take care of the values that connect us and make this place a home for so many of the boys that needed one like I did in January of 2005.
Thank you for your time and attention. – Mr Charles Malanga (St Charles College Old Boy)