Trauma Centre Reunion – October 2010

After I resigned from the Trauma Centre in May last year, I had the feeling that there was hardly anyone left working there to whom I needed or wanted to say goodbye. All the colleagues I’d been close to had already left years before. Perhaps many people who work in NGOs for more than a few years have had a similar experience?
Anyway, I decided I would construct my own farewell reunion. So finally in early October 2010 – after Eid and the Jewish holidays – 13 of us met on my patio for a Saturday lunch. A big coincidence/surprise was that Potiphar Nkhoma, who started working at the Trauma Centre pretty much at the same time as I did in 2001, just happened to be in the country from the USA and he turned up.

l.to r: Jackie Stewart, Siyabulela Mkabile, Potiphar Nkhoma, Emma Oliver, Kailas Kassan-Newton, Carmen Low-Shang, Haseena Parker, Robyn Rowe, Kerry Magnus. Seated: Lane Benjamin, Sarah Crawford-Browne, Margaret Green

I was sorry that some people who had been very important to me were unable to come – Dr Gordon Isaacs, who introduced me to trauma work (South African style) and supervised me for years, Maria Stacey, the first co-ordinator I had when I joined the Intake team and Eric Harper, who believed in me enough to hand over the work he was doing with Khulumani – an experience from which I learned so much. They had other commitments, as did Wanga Zembe, who was in Oxford ‘defending’ her Ph.D.

We each shared what we were doing now and a highlight of our time at the Trauma Centre. For the 4 of us who had been in the Trauma Response Team in its heyday, our team and our awaydays together were our highlights. Siyabulela Mkabile said that he thought he was the only one of us who had actually taken his highlight with him – he had married Wanga earlier in 2010! Sarah Crawford-Browne reminded us of an extraordinary event during one of the many crisis times at the Centre. Fridays were set aside for staff development and celebration of work. The call went out that we should gather in the Staff room with an improvised musical instrument. So there we were with our pencils, bits of paper, noisy toys and cups circling about and making a terrific racket, when Siya started chanting and we all joined in. As the sound built up we spontaneously snaked out of the room and took the rhythm into every space of the building. It felt like a healing ritual or a kind of exorcism.

It was a pretty amazing gathering of people. Former staff members of the Trauma Centre have gone on to make huge contributions to the academic and organizational life of Cape Town and beyond.  Lane Benjamin started her own community organization in Hanover Park; others continued working for NGO’s or have become lecturers or heads of department at universities.