They will not empty the room because you are praying. In preparation for ngelanga lam lokufa, I sit under a white cloth next to a woman who died a long time ago and survived.
She is also quiet. Praying. We are praying together, next to each other.
Healing one is to begin healing us all.
PRISON
Written by Roslyn Smith Performed by Roslyn Smith
Hi, my name is Roslyn Smith, and I thought I would die in prison. The day I got the decision from the parole board saying that I was going to be released, was one of the happiest days in my life. While in prison, I had all these hopes and dreams about what my freedom would look like. I was gonna get a job, find a place for me and my daughter to live, travel, enjoyed all the things that I missed while I was incarcerated, but to my surprise, none of those dreams panned out the way I thought.
Prison didn’ t prepare me for re entry. I was released in 1979 and came home 39 years later, in 2018. I was stuck in a time warp. Tokens were Metro cards, phones, with cellular letters, with emails. I returned to a world that I was foreign to, and the world that I was in didn’ t give me any kind of skills to carry forth. I was trying to establish myself in a new community, and I was at the age of people retiring, preparing for retirement at least.