I am more than aware that there are several names by which Sara Baartman is known. I’ve called her Saartjie because that was the name she herself used in life. Familiarity and tenderness have always mixed easily with insult and patriarchy.
“A poem for Sarah Baartman” has become Diana Ferrus’s magnum opus. It really is credited with tipping the scales in favour of the return of Baartman’s remains to South Africa in 2002. Go to http://dianaferrus.blogspot.com/ for more information.
Ingrid de Kok’s poem, “Small passing” (from Seasonal Fires, Umuzi 2006), says in five stanzas what took me nearly 68 000 words. Its power, its passion, its grief and resolution are a blueprint for reconciliation. Buy the rest of her work.
The Hee-Hee-Scree! Book is – would you believe it – loosely based on The Ha-Ha-Bonk! Book, a staple of my childhood. The original title was the onomatopoeic rendering of someone laughing their head off. I recently met a man who actually did compile these books for a living. His head was still firmly on his shoulders.
Sigmund Freud is less celebrated for the series of nasal surgeries he and Wilhelm Fliess performed at the turn of the nineteenth century. Emma Eckstein’s case is pretty well documented. The gauze was eventually removed by Dr Ignaz Rosanes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Eckstein
Peers Cave and its inhabitants exist. I hope they will not regard my fictionalising them as desecration. My thanks to Julia Martin, whose excellent description of the remains in A Millimetre of Dust dove-tailed eerily with my own. http://www.kwela.com/Books/2740
Thanks to Anel Hamersma, for an explanation of the ancestors so clear even a white person understands it. http://inyourbones.com/faqs/
Thanks must also go to the lady at The Fish Hoek Valley Museum, who overcharged me for photocopies and then wasn’t terribly sure where Fish Hoek Man was – although she did let me breastfeed in the exhibition room. For the record, his and the remains of a number of other people are not available for public viewing. They are stored in the back rooms of Iziko South African Museum, which was in the process of packing them up, along with all their other exhibits, and moving to an as-yet-unspecified location at the behest of the so-called Department of Public Works. If the desire to gloat over the remains persists, please apply in writing to the department. Let me know how you get on.
To make a real difference in the lives of the people who need it most, please donate money, materials or your time to the Saartjie Baarman Centre in Manenberg. The Centre depends on civil society – us – for support. Go to http://www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za.
And finally, for Saartjie, and for all the massed dead, wherever you may be: We’re sorry, and we’re trying to do better.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
And for the rest of you, know this: Ntunjambili is real.