there comes a time in everyone's life when they discover that the only person you can truly depend on is yourself. that the only real power anyone has to get anything done is the power of one. with any luck you can make it through a lot of years before you ever have to face the reality of that fact. it was a luxury i never had. i discovered it the year my mother had her nervous breakdown.
i was all of six.
my father died before i was born, and even though i was raised by my zulu nanny, with my mother, depending on her health, in nominal attendance, it was decided, with her departure, that i, too, would depart.  .  for boarding school.
but before i could be sent out into the world one very serious matter had to be dealt with. i was a chronic bedwetter. since my nanny was the one responsible for my well-being, she did what any responsible zulu mother would do. she called on the greatest medicine man of her tribe -- inkosi inkosikazi.
legend had it that inkosi inkosikazi was the last son of the great zulu king, dingaan, who fought both the boers and the british to a standstill nearly 100 years before, and the night inkosi inkosikazi was conceived stars fell from the sky until the sun rose. the circle complete, the old man sits down opposite the boy. from a leather pouch he produces several bones. he throws the bones on the ground and studies them for a moment. he begins to wave the fly switch back and forth in front of the boy's eyes, chanting low, softly. the boy's eyes grow heavy; his lids droop.
the medicine man instructed me to jump off the falls and climb along the ten stepping stones, counting as i went until i reached dry land.
even though it was only a dream, i felt as if my struggle to reach dry land was terrifyingly real. the water was like ice, bone- chilling, cold, and as i made my way from one stone to the next i could feel my strength desert me. the progress from one step to the next gets progressively harder as the boy keeps slipping into the swirling water, coughing and sputtering.
i was three rocks in when i ran out of gas. i couldn't pull myself any further. no matter how hard i
inkosi inkosikazi said the spirit of the great zulu warriors lived in me. he told me that whenever trouble arose i should return to the waterfall and keep stepping across the rocks until the trouble passed. he said three rocks were enough to conquer my problem with the night water; that i was very brave. he said i was a man for all africa, bound to her by my spirit, bound by my dreams. and he let me keep the chicken.
although i was bound by spirit
the school i was sent to was attended and staffed entirely by afrikaaners, the oldest of the two white tribes of africa.
i spoke only english. the hated tongue. the language of the enemy who had usurped power and stolen the country through political chicanery and military brutality.
during the boer war of 1896, 26,000 boer women and children were herded into detainment camps by the british, where they died like flies from dysentery,
and no one made this more evident to me than jaapie botha, a wheat farmer's son from the transvaal.
the only time i was at peace was when i slept. inkosi inkosikazi's chicken proved to be, like his previous owner, a salvation.
during the day he would live outside the dorm, happily scarfing down bugs and grubs, secure in a little house i built for him.
and at night he would hop through the window and, perching over my bed, squawking if any intruders came near.
he was my best and only friend.
i'm sure in time a status quo would have been achieved between me and my schoolmates were it not for the cataclysmic events occurring in that faraway place none of us had ever seen. two montjhs after i arrived at the school world war ii broke out in europe. hitler had vowed to crush the british empire. the boers sharpened their swords in anticipation. the six-year-old comes back to his bed in the dorm to find a swastika carved into it. cut to: