Somewhere Else

Tension: On the Way to Robben Island by Keith A. Barker. 2013. Digital print.

The Catholic sister smiled kindly as she pushed the button for the gate to close, leaving me alone on the curb. Before dawn in Johannesburg, South Africa, I stood outside the Catholic compound where the rest of the members in my traveling group still slept. The hazy fatigue of jetlag made my bones feel like lead. Back home I would have been heading to bed about now, but here the day had barely begun. Back home, summer was in full swing, but here the cool breeze whispered late fall. For this, my first trip to South Africa, I’d made special arrangements for a side-trip on one of our first mornings there before our group’s itinerary began. Though my objective for that day was Sterkfontein Cemetery, I had no idea where I was going, was in search of someone’s grave whom I’d never met, and anything resembling success required dependence on others. A small red Audi pulled up and pulled me out of my thoughts and on to my journey.

My time in South Africa had all the makings of any great trip abroad: the beautiful, gratifying vistas, the new appreciation for the familiar and the unfamiliar, the carpe diem motivation each morning, and—no matter what you think about the indelible British influence and how it got there—the afternoon tea is wonderful. Beyond all that, this fascinating country gave me a renewed sense of the world’s geographical and historical immensity, and my small part of the whole.

I had been reading G.K. Chesterton’s engaging Father Brown series of short fiction, which features a beloved parson who solves baffling mysteries armed with wit, and world-wise perspectives gained in part from his parishioners’ confessions. Amid the unfolding of one such mystery, Father Brown is asked as clergy, if he thought there is any ultimate meaning in the world, and if we all really will have to answer to a final, inevitable end; the kind of retribution and reconciling in which all that has happened will be sorted out and judged. He answered in the affirmative: “We here are on the wrong side of the tapestry. The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.”[i]

While South Africa is not that heavenly “somewhere else” land of clarified meaning, reconciliation, and ultimate truth for which our hearts yearn, it merely points as a sign to that perfection. In the meantime, the wrong people get the short end of the stick.

What I had known about Africa was through vicarious experience. Family members and friends had lived and worked on the continent for decades. For example, Lilburn Adkins, and his wife, Florence, were missionaries there for many years. Lilburn grew up an orphan in western Kentucky and went on to attend Asbury College where he fell in love and later married Florence Northcott. After graduating in 1922, he took his bride to work as missionaries in Africa. By the late 1950s they had lived almost three decades in East Africa, and then finally moved to Krugersdorp, near Johannesburg, to live among the Africans working in and around the gold and diamond mining operations there.

On the evening of February 12, 1961, Lilburn and Florence walked home from an evening church service, having taken the train. Their car was in the shop in anticipation of their daughter visiting with their new son-in-law later that month. After disembarking the train, they realized there were no taxis at the station, and so they were forced to make the 25-minute walk home in the dark.

On the way, two men ran up, attacked, and beat them. Lilburn collapsed under the attack and lay in a pool of his own blood. He’d received repeated blows to his head. His briefcase contained cash, and his perpetrators ran off with it. A passerby happened upon them and called the police. Lilburn never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead the next day in the hospital. He was buried in Sterkfontein Cemetery, outside Krugersdorp, near their home.[ii]

This is a story I've heard all my life because it is the story of my own grandparents. Lilburn Adkins was my mother's father. Though he died before I was born, his story has always been a part of my history. At this point, I know more about his death than his life. I knew he lived, worked, was killed, and buried in South Africa. I have always felt a distance from those events, and from deeply knowing his story. Now, I found myself as a photographer and educator included in a fellowship to convene in South Africa, joining other artists from all over Africa, the U.S. and Canada, to study and make work about this fascinating and complex country. I was also on a mission to visit Lilburn Adkins’ grave.

Deep Undertones

South African author, Alan Paton, who wrote the seminal 1948 novel Cry, The Beloved Country said of his home that, “When one thinks of it and remembers it, one is aware…of solemn and deep undertones that have nothing to do with any mountain or any valley, but have to do with men.”[iii]

From my own experience there, I saw and felt these undertones in South Africans from all walks of life. I grappled with a way to understand their struggles, seeing first-hand the results of sometimes senseless retribution. It was all more overwhelmingly complex than I had thought. What I came home with, besides a refreshed appreciation for all that I take for granted, was a realization that the struggles South Africans experience are everyone’s struggles. Their successes, failures and attempts to engender hope and equality can be seen as a microcosm of the larger human condition: what we all want we can’t have…yet.

I had never previously set foot on the African continent, and was not equipped to associate, much less integrate South Africa with the most important parts of my life. Perhaps my not wanting the past to dominate or define my experience, and the lack of first-hand exposure to the continent had done Africa a disservice for me. I saw that I had my own colonialist ideas about this place that was too many times referred to as merely a “mission field,” which, whether I knew it or not, downgraded its culture and history to just a backdrop for the stories. It was where my mother was born, and my grandfather was buried; where many cousins and friends grew up or worked; the subject of countless stories that colored my view. I remember Bono championing an awareness of and resistance to Apartheid. I could recall vague reports of Nelson Mandela getting released from a prison to become their president…but I possessed little understanding of the significance of these events.

While I was excited about going on this trip, these misunderstandings and foggy, inaccurate perspectives spawned performance anxiety and imposter syndrome…fear about whether I could engage with what we would encounter, and hold my own as part of a group of artists that were, I felt, much more impressive and promising than I. It dredged up the shame of being the new kid, having moved a lot, and always being ‘different’. The shame and insecurities did not just feel exposed but magnified—pulling me inward like hypothermic reaction to extreme cold. I left the U.S. for Johannesburg full of my own internal tension, wondering if this opportunity would be worth leaving my family for two weeks. I felt the pressure to make the most of it, though I had little idea of what to expect, and less inspiration from which to draw. In short, I felt completely alone.

The Queens of Soweto by Keith A. Barker. 2013. Silver gelatin print. • These women sat proudly for me after mass at the Regina Mundi Church in Soweto, the site for many anti-Apartheid demonstrations and activities, most notable of which was a violent clash with police in the 1977. Though no one was killed in that skirmish, the church building still bears scars of bullet holes fired within the church.

Tension

Why do you show me iniquity,

And cause me to see trouble?

For plundering and violence are before me;

There is strife, and contention arises.[iv]

The trip took our group mainly to Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town. Hearing first-hand stories and histories from so many varied perspectives, I felt myself gaining a richer view of South Africa’s past and present. A more accurate color and focus came to all the distant knowledge I’d possessed. I came to realize that the nation is like life itself: it is full of dichotomous tension. I could relate with tension; I was feeling it.

South Africa, I was told, is where the best humankind can offer is set right next to the absolute worst. This young nation has a centuries-long story of rich culture. It is a melting pot of languages, ethnicities, cultures, and people groups, yet has become synonymous with slavery, unmitigated bigotry, and racial violence. It is the wealthiest and most developed of any nation in the continent yet shows equal extremes of poverty and need, along with pervasive extortion and corruption. Yet I am not immune to culpability: the retrieval of resources that make my life easier is at the expense of the poor and destitute. The computer on which I type, the phone I use every day, the platinum and silver I sometimes use for photographic emulsions, not to mention the fact that they mine gold and diamonds there…all materials extracted from this very human landscape.

Some tensions might be unique to the country but contain characteristics common to the collective human experience. Many South Africans I encountered—painters, philanthropists, priests, professors, and poets—recounted personal experiences and perspectives of their homeland. I found myself identifying with much of the content of their stories, because I realized they embody our common human story.

The tensions and insecurities in my own life were put in perspective by my being awakened to situations I was unable to know first-hand. We saw the profound natural beauty of the land—something I missed in all the stories I had heard. We visited an HIV/AIDS support group full of very happy, hopeful people, though their realities were foreign and sobering to me. We walked through muddy shantytowns where the poorest lived, and yet saw everywhere how artforms of every imaginable expression, such as tapestries, sculptures, music, paintings, and photographs were what helped them express what they endured, felt, and remembered.

We heard stories from still-displaced former residents of District Six in Cape Town—a place known for racial oppression and suffering. Over a twenty-two-year period, thousands of law-abiding citizens were forcibly removed from their homes in the district by Apartheid power, solely due to the skin color and multi-racial lineage of the residents. Yet, those to whom we spoke, passed on their stories in hopes of keeping the memories and realities alive. We experienced memorials, monuments and sacred places designed to help us remember the events, people, and traditions that went before.

Sterkfontein Cemetery by Keith A. Barker • One of the photographs taken at Lilburn Adkins’ grave site.

Part of the Story

"…The only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love. It's a weak thing and a tender thing; men despise and deride it. But I look for the day when in South Africa we shall realize that this only lasting and worth-while solution of our grave and profound problems lies not in the use of power, but in that understanding and compassion without which human life is an intolerable bondage…"[v]

When I got into that little red Audi, it was not lost on me that I was at the mercy of a stranger in a foreign land in which I was a minority. But the hour-long drive to the other side of Johannesburg allowed for a chance to get to know my driver. Tumi shared his perspectives on things, and I learned a lot. As we traveled, the early morning sun slid warm light across the landscape.

It occurred to me that I should communicate to my guide the expectations I had about what would happen once we found the grave. I am a photographer; I knew that I could take at least 20–30 minutes to photograph but…my stomach dropped. I suddenly realized how ill-prepared I was. I didn't know what would happen next. Do I just stand there? Take a hundred pictures of the tombstone?

When we got to the gate of the cemetery, Tumi seemed as relieved as I, and had a couple of conversations with the cemetery caretaker in a dialect incomprehensible to me. Cleared to drive in, we began looking for the gravesite. The organization of the plots reflected the color of skin. Racial segregation accompanies Africans even to their graves, I realized.

We followed the caretaker, zigzagging back and forth until we found Section 3, and searched for plot M-64. I found it:

LILBURN EDWARD ADKINS

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.

Everything about the grave seemed somehow different than the few pictures I had seen. I wondered: Why did I even come? Was this all a waste of time? The morning light did make it beautiful. I stood there and looked at a low, granite stone with the name, dates, and abrupt epitaph; the stone slabs delineating the plot; the small pebble-gravel spread over the rectangle of earth where the casket was lowered decades before. Over sixty years of life distilled to a granite marker. No fanfare, no lightning bolts, nothing out of the ordinary; only silence and a soft breeze on a hillside overlooking a beautiful view to the East.

Tumi quietly walked up and broke into my thoughts. “Sometimes when African people come to see a grave, they clean it up a bit.” He suggested we pull some of the weeds that had grown up through the pebbly, white gravel that marked the rectangular grave, and he produced a tire iron from the car which we used to pull, dig, and scrape. A little embarrassed, it dawned on me how much more humbling my actions ended up being at the grave side. Plus, I thought, anyone, not just Africans wanting to honor the dead, should want to dress things up a bit. “A nice gravesite makes it look like the person buried there is still remembered,” Tumi said. He was right.

I grabbed three small pebbles from the plot and put them in my pocket. It felt a little like stealing, and a little like the right thing to do.

On the way home, I thought about the purpose of it all. I guess feeling some need to justify all the fuss of this side-trip, I found myself expressing how it seemed significant for me to visit the grave even though I didn't personally know my own grandfather. Tumi said, “Now you’re part of the story!” Right again.

History (maquette 1987, bronze 2003) by Dumile Feni (1942–1991). Johannesburg, Constitutional Court Collection. Photo by Keith A. Barker.

To Be Carried

Sculptor Dumile Feni’s (1942 -1991) piece entitled History graces the entrance of Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, where their Chief Justices preside and uphold the South African Constitution. The bronze sculpture features an elongated, stylized human figure yoked like a mule to a cart holding two more figures. At first glance it seems to manifest the “intolerable bondage” of which Paton wrote. That interpretation makes the most sense, given the struggles with which many South Africans readily identify. However, such was not the artist’s intent. We were told by the docent that Feni said of this piece, “It is about the reality that sometimes we carry, and at other times we are carried.”

Invisible lines divide in so many places. My friend Father Peter once told me (I found out later he was quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn): the line between good and evil runs right through each of our hearts. Even in my small town in Kentucky, vastly different rhythms, schedules, perspectives, and expectations separate those who live in proximity. I live near people I seldom see and with whom I interact even less. Mixed in are the differing interests, ways of spending time, money and energy, and disparate convictions regarding topics like child-rearing, politics, sexual identity, sports, guns, theology, even recycling. Sometimes harmless, sometimes not, these differences create an otherness that might make neighbors seem like foreigners.

I am not very good at letting others help or carry me, or at communicating my needs.[vi] Independence causes one to miss out on the riches of interdependence. Feni’s sculpture did not come to mind until weeks after the trip as I settled in back home with my family. We faced our share of unexpected hardships that summer like my dad’s heart surgery and stroke, a deep cut on my four-year-old son’s forehead requiring stitches (and a lot of screaming), my wife’s hyperextended knee, my daughter’s fractured foot…just to mention the physical stresses. Though they pale in comparison to the struggles of so many South Africans, especially those of color, the help and presence of many people carried us through it. Feni’s humble bronze sculpture spoke to me long after the trip. The thought of sometimes having to be carried became more poignant, human, and real. Our little family needed the help. Letting people help us continues to be part of our healing process.

Struggle creates human need, as well as a moment of opportunity to carry others and to be carried. In my mind I drift back to the early 1960s where I imagine my grandparents living and thriving, carrying, and being carried among their friends in Krugersdorp. I know they rubbed elbows with a few of the thousands of miners who were laboring in inhuman and dangerous conditions far below the high veldt. Did my grandparents know in that same moment of history that sixty-nine unarmed civilians were shot and killed by white police in what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre? Could they have known about an activist named Nelson Mandela who publicly and defiantly burned the passbook that he and all South African blacks were required to carry under Apartheid law? Tensions were high. This was as volatile a time as any in that country’s history. Of course they knew, but I still wonder: what were my grandparents doing in such a dangerous place, anyhow? How did all those tensions affect them? Did they have friends, or did they feel alone? Did they help carry those around them? How were they carried? If they were there to do good, why were they subjected to such brutal suffering and even death?

The answers to those questions are lost to history. Asking them is part of what it means to be human. My grandparents’ lives and my grandfather’s death are part of that country’s story. I can see my own story in light of my grandfather’s. It’s all a grand, complex story, with meaning, structure, and purpose if I’m looking. Just like Feni’s sculpture, the narrative is not just a concrete depiction of reality; there’s room for interpretation, for grace, for humanity. I could not feel my grandfather’s pain, or weep at his grave because his life was full of moments I can never share or know. There’s room for all we don’t and cannot know. The topic and theme are too big for words. Just like my trip to this country was too big for photographs, Lilburn’s life was bigger than his gravesite.

Past and future are inextricably related, and the locus, the crux, the point of contact is this present moment in time. I think Father Brown’s assertion that we are on the wrong side of the tapestry means somewhere else, on the other side, we will know as we are known. It will somehow make sense.

Until then I will hang on to those three small pebbles.

Endnotes.

[i] G.K. Chesterton. The Innocence of Father Brown. “The Sins of Prince Saradine.” Andrews UK Ltd. 2010. pp. 125–6.

[ii] Florence’s injuries required many days of hospitalization, and though she did recover, she was unable to attend her husband’s funerals. There were two services conducted due to segregation; one for the whites and one for the workers in the mining camp where they had been working—many of those people were from Mozambique.

[iii] Lewis Gannett quoting Alan Paton from Gannett's introduction to the 1959 Scribner's edition.

[iv] Habakkuk 1:3

[v] From Cry, The Beloved Country. Lewis Gannett quoting Alan Paton; from Gannett's introduction to the 1959 Scribner's edition. p. xix

[vi] Brené Brown writes, “Somehow, we have come to equate success with not needing anyone. A similar line divides us when help is needed. We’ve divided the world into ‘those who offer help’ and ‘those who need help.’ The truth is that we are both.” Brown, Brené. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be, and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden. 2010. p, 20.

Bio: Keith A. Barker’s photography centers around people, places and objects that relay a sense of history and memory. Barker has taught Photography in the Art and Design Department at Asbury University since 2000, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. Besides hiking the woods near his home, he enjoys trail running, listening to music, splitting wood, and playing outdoors with his family in central Kentucky. More of his photographs can be seen at www.kabarker.art