Bless me Father

Mario D'Offizi

Description

Bless Me Father is the true story of an incredible South African life. Born into a violent and broken family, and growing up in a variety of institutions, Cape Town based poet and writer Mario d'Offizi tells his remarkable, often shocking and ultimately inspiring life adventure - one that spans several decades in a country undergoing radical change. From his tough days at Boys Town to wild years in the advertising world, a stint in the restaurant business and a sharp edged journalistic adventure in the DRC, d'Offizi tells his critically acclaimed story with the unfailing sensitivity and warmth of a true poet.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: African Perspectives Publishing
• Date de parution: 02 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780992228514
• Langue: English

Extrait

Foreword
I found Bless Me Father an almost overpowering and emotionally draining read. This is a story of a rich, fascinating, but intermittently tragic life, told with scrupulous, graphic, and disturbing honesty. It is eminently readable and accessible, written as it is in a recognisably South African voice, which would nonetheless appeal to a much wider audience. It is part of our human nature to want to look through a window into another’s life, and here the window is crystal clear and the life well worth looking into.
There are hidden depths to the story too. There is pattern, despite the lack of chronology in the arrangement. Mario’s intermittent hedonism and obsessiveness and his two failed marriages are surely directly related to his unhappy childhood, his consignment to Nazareth House and Boys’ Town, his abuse there, and subsequent traumas. Another pattern that is discernible is his gradual social and political awakening that issues in his life-changing visit to the DRC, which so neatly frames the action. Mario was a child of apartheid South Africa, who, through his own sensibilities and experiences, ultimately transcended it.
For me the most striking aspect of the book is the lack of bitterness displayed throughout, despite the writer’s exposure to so much violence and abuse of various kinds. His nature rises above it all, so that ultimately its message is positive, optimistic, and life affirming.
Mario d’Offizi speaks in a fresh and uniquely South African voice about the harsh realities – as well as moments of great joy – of a real, authentic South African life.
Mario Fernandez,
Educator & Historian.
B.A. (Hons) (English), B.A. (Hons) (History), M. Phil. (History Education), H.E.D.
First published in November 2007.
A 2nd edition was published in June 2010.
This 3rd edition in English published by African Perspectives Publishing with foreword from Mario Fernandez.

African Perspectives Publishing P.O. Box 9342 Grant Park 2051 Johannesburg, South Africa
E mail: francis @africanperspectives.co.za
Website: www.africanperspectives.co.za
Facebook: African Perspectives Publishing
Copyright Mario d’Offizi
ISBN number: 978-0-9922285-1-4
Chapter 1
After 25 years as an advertising copywriter, and a few days from my 57th birthday, I was about to attempt a change in career and embark on a journey that would forever alter my life, my thinking, and the way I saw Africa and the world.
Three years earlier I had met Matt O’Brian, a conflict journalist with many years’ experience covering wars, coups and other dangerous situations in almost every country on earth. He is half Irish, just like I am. I met him by chance on Biggsy’s, the dining car carriage on the Cape Town – Simon’s Town rail route.
On the evening trip home, drinking a few beers, my friends and I were discussing a short story I had just had published, a satirical piece about an episode I experienced during a 4 month stint with the South African Defence Force in Angola in early 1976.
Matt, standing in our company, was listening in. I had never seen him on the train.
Before I could say hello he introduced himself and enquired if I was a journalist. No, an advertising copywriter, frustrated poet and short story writer, I replied. He told me a little about his background, and within ten minutes of our meeting, asked if I would be interested in joining him on an assignment in Burundi.
Matt didn’t waste any time. I liked that.
I was vaguely aware of what was happening in Burundi at the time. Hutus slaughtering Tutsis. Or was it the other way round?
Yes, I said, I’d love to go.
He gave me his phone number and suggested I call him to meet and talk about it. A few days later, over coffee, he told me more about conflict journalism, the countries he had been to, his experiences, and about his late partner and friend, Shaun, who had been killed in a car bomb explosion in Haifa, Israel. Matt was with Shaun when he died. Matt himself had been wounded, waking up two days later in hospital, suffering from amnesia.
The story did not deter me. I was 52, and in advertising. I was also tired of advertising. In fact, I was hanging from the cliff-face of my career by my finger tips. Remind me not to cut my nails, I joked with friends.
Matt had arranged two seats on a South African National Defence Force plane to Burundi. We were going to write stories about South African soldiers serving as peacekeepers with the United Nations, he told me. Since Christmas was around the corner, stories such as these would be warmly received, he guaranteed.
Matt and I went to Home Affairs to sort out our passports and visas. I put in for 2 weeks’ leave. We were ready to rock, until, a few days before our departure, we were informed that we had lost our seats on the military transport plane, to two generals.
Anything for a Christmas break, Matt said sarcastically.
Matt and I stayed in contact for a while, but eventually lost touch. Three years later I was working with my son, Paul, on our little freelance set-up in Hout Street, Cape Town. Paul and I had worked together, on and off, for 10 years. In October 2004, after we had both been retrenched by the ad agency we worked for – where Paul was my creative director – we formed our own business. One day, in early February 2006, Paul said to me, ‘Sit down dad. I need to talk to you.’ He broke the news about his decision to immigrate to New Zealand with his wife and two daughters. He was extremely concerned about me and what I would do. I had known something like this was going to happen. Paul, like me, is very impetuous and can change direction at the drop of a hat.
I took his news with composure and assured him that I would be ok, not to worry, and that he should go for it. ‘Follow your heart,’ I added. I always did.
Things happened quickly from there.
A few weeks earlier I had met Mike Bernardo, a South African ex-world Kick Box champion. We had discussed the idea of me helping him put his life story together, but I had no idea where to begin, no idea how to structure a biography. I just knew that, if I put my mind to it, I could pull it off. But I needed a little help. One name popped into my head: Matt O’Brian. I scratched around for Matt’s number and phoned him. He admitted that he had lost my number, told me he thought my calling him at this stage was quite auspicious and mailed me pointers on the sort of basic structure I would need to get going with Mike’s story.
Within a week or two of Paul’s news I received a call from Matt. This time he asked me if I would like to go with him to the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, to do a story about one of the DRC’s most powerful Christian churches. Matt had it from good sources that the Mai Mai rebels were targeting the church and had already buried six of their pastors alive. The rebels had warned the church that their prayers were interfering with their, the rebels’, chances in the war against government troops.
We would be going to write and shoot a documentary about the church and its work in the Congo. The plan was to cut DVDs to sell in Christian fora – bookshops, churches, and hopefully to Christian television networks for broadcast. We would target the American market. The media is a giant whale. Broadcast material is the plankton on which the whale feeds. America is an ocean full of giant whales.
All I could say was that I had never used a movie camera before. Matt calmly responded that he would teach me. I made Matt promise me just one thing – that we’d be back in Cape Town for my wife Carla’s 50th birthday on June 12. I would turn 57 on June 13. He gave me his word.
Three or four months before our departure, fourteen South Africans and a couple of other personnel from various other countries, 21 in all, had been arrested in the DRC on suspicion of being mercenaries planning a coup to overthrow the then government of President Joseph Kabila.
This scared me a little. But, what the hell, I thought. It’s now or never. Besides, change is never easy.
I thought about a saying I had once heard, which I always refer to when times are tough. Never are we nearer the light than when darkness is deepest.
On the Sunday before our departure Matt gave me a crash course on a Panasonic Mini DV video camera. We filmed boats and birds on the water at Marina Da Gama where he lives. We also went to the Sunday market at Sunrise beach, just up the road from his home, filming the stalls, the people, and anything and everything in sight. Back at his house we put a little movie together with fades, dissolves, titles and music.
A day or two before we left, I did my rounds in the city centre of Cape Town, saying goodbye to friends in coffee shops; and to our few clients. Steven Minaar, a young client service director at Ogilvy One, hugged me goodbye, placed a pink crystal in the palm of my hand, closed my fist around it, squeezed, and implored me to follow his wish:
Promise me, Mario, that you will bury this crystal in the DRC, the Congo – for peace in Africa. I gave him my word.
The night before we flew to Johannesburg on the first leg of our journey to the Congo, my wife, Carla, daughter, Mirella and I joined Paul and his family – his wife Leanne and my granddaughters Hannah and Kirsten – for a farewell braai (barbeque). My nephew, Paul’s cousin, Wayne, and Carla’s brother, Ray were with us too. This was June 1st. Paul was leaving for New Zealand on June 8th.
After supper I hugged him goodbye. Paul is 35 and the last time I had heard or felt him sob was in his early teens.
Matt and his girlfriend Karen collected me at 4.30 am for the flight to Johannesburg. She dropped us at domestic departures, and after helping us unload our bags and gear, handed us a white plastic carry bag with a few magazines inside and some goodies to eat. On the bag she had written in blue Koki:
Dear Matt & Mario
May this road take you to your destiny.
I am sure it is the sta