The Story of Esther
In April, many years ago, a deaf girl was admitted to St Dominic’s School for Deaf Children at Hammanskraal. She was nameless, homeless and thought to be about 16 years of age. She had been found in Pretoria and had been kept in a place of safety for a year before application had been made for her to be admitted to the Deaf School. Because her application was accepted on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, this girl was called and was known as Maria.
More than four and a half years later, the mystery of her parentage and background began to unravel itself in a remarkable and unsuspected way. Meanwhile, Maria spent about two and a half years at school and then passed into the employment of the Sisters in the Convent.
One November morning, an African man, employed at the Jubilee Mission Hospital, presented himself at the Convent, and producing a letter written by or in the name of Maria, announced that he knew her family and that he recognised Maria on a number of occasions when she had been to the hospital[1]. He said Maria’s parents lived on a farm outside Rustenburg, and he was now asking permission to take Maria home to them, since Maria’s letter seemed to imply that this was what she wanted.
However, we were not so sure yet that this man’s interest in Maria was authentic, and, rather than let him take her, we asked him to inform Maria’s parents and bring her father here to identify his daughter.
He did just that. To our amazement, he arrived back the following day, Sunday, with Maria’s father, having completed the journey to Rustenburg and back by motor-cycle, in record time.
There followed the touching re-union of father and daughter. Maria was brought along to the stoep where her father awaited her and the unmistakable light of recognition lit up her features.[2] But she managed to control her emotion better than her father did. He unashamedly wept tears of joy, for, for him and his family it was the end of a long search.
Nearly six years previously, Maria, or Esther , as her correct name turned out to be, left home with her sister to stay with an aunt in Johannesburg. It is not quite clear whether she got lost or ran away from her aunt’s house, but her family lost track of her from that time. An advertisement in the newspapers about another deaf girl brought to our school about the same time, brought Esther’s parents post-haste to Hammanskraal in a vain attempt to find their child.
Now, as though to make no mistake in identifying his own daughter, her father asked Esther take the shoe off her left foot and there, sure enough, was the proof he looked for – a birthmark which only the two of them knew she had.
Esther’s father stayed overnight and left for Rustenburg the following morning. It was agreed that he would return at the end of the with Esther’s mother to fetch her home for the Christmas holidays. In the meantime Esther was making all sorts of preparations for her re-union with the family, buying gifts and presents to bring home for her mother and brothers and sisters. Sister M. Gilbert brought her to Pretoria one day for this purpose. She settled on a pretty frock for her mother, being the correct size, Esther insisted, for her mother whom she remembered as a big woman.
But poor Esther was to receive a great shock for her mother, instead of being the robust person she had been before Esther was lost, had gone to a shadow of her former self from the worry of her daughter’s loss.
Eventually the great day of her homecoming arrived and Esther set off with her parents for her first trip home in six years. There was tremendous rejoicing throughout the whole school. Rarely have the Deaf Pupils entered so wholeheartedly and lustily into a send-off as they did on that day, and it was fitting that they should do so, for their fellow-pupil “had been lost and was found again”
NB All distances between places mentioned are around 60 to 70 miles. Hammanskraal where the sisters had their school (1962 to 1994) is roughly 30 miles north of Pretoria. School still very busy.
[1] In Hammanskraal itself, about 50 kilometres north of Pretoria
[2] Stoep is a raised area outside the door of a house, with a roof over it, where you can sit and relax, eat meals, etc.