Ezra Azra--My Auntie Ellen

We lived in the City of Durban, South Africa. Auntie Ellen was my Mother’s elder unmarried sister. If Auntie Ellen had a home of her own, I never knew where it was. Auntie Ellen had only one child, Vivian, and she never told anybody who the father was, not even Vivian.

Vivian was one year older than me. She lived with us because at any given time, nobody knew where her Mother was. Every few months, Auntie Ellen would drop by to visit. She never brought Vivian anything. She never stayed overnight. I never saw her hugging or kissing Vivian. I know she never gave Vivian anything; not even a birthday present.

Early on when we discovered that nobody knew the date of Vivian’s birth, my Mother declared I and Vivian had the same birthdate. Later on in life, I asked my Mother if that was a fact; she scolded me for suspecting she had lied.

Vivian eventually married and had two children. Vivian died of an illness in 2013 at home. Her teenage children had never seen their Grandmother.

At one time when I and Vivian were in Primary School, a few blocks from where we lived, there was a freak tornado. There was extensive damage to the school. Many of us in the school at the time were seriously injured. I and Vivian were among the injured. We had to stay away from school for about a week. Auntie Ellen never visited Vivian.

While my Mother looked after Vivian, Auntie Ellen, over the years was involved in two suspicious deaths on the shores of Brighton Beach, deaths that were covered for weeks in the local newspapers. Brighton Beach is one of Durban’s Beaches along the Indian Ocean. It is about five miles from where we lived.

The first death was of Auntie Ellen’s boyfriend. The two of them had spent a night on the shore. According to the newspapers, Auntie Ellen said that when she awoke in the morning in their tent, her lover was nowhere. After waiting and searching awhile, she walked about four miles away to the town of Wentworth to inform his Mother. His Mother called the police. The police search on the beach site turned up no clues. His corpse was found days later drifting miles north of Brighton Beach. Auntie Ellen had said to the police that the last time she had contact with him was the evening before when they were together in their beach-side tent.

His family did not believe her. When the police notified his Mother of the discovery of the body, nobody tried to locate Auntie Ellen in order to inform her. She was not mentioned in his obituary in a newspaper. In the times she visited us afterwards, she never spoke about the matter.

The second death was, again, at Brighton Beach. Auntie Ellen was in the company of a man and a woman, spending the evening in a tent on the shore.

Something went wrong; the couple got into a fight that moved from the shore into the ocean. The woman drowned. The man was charged with murder. Auntie Ellen was a confused witness. She claimed she had slept through most of the fight.

At one stage of the jury trial a matter of a weapon was deliberated. The Prosecutor had tried to establish that Auntie Ellen had disposed of a weapon used by the man. That Prosecutor was not successful, even though forensic marks on the dead woman were not consistent with only accidental drowning. The man was acquitted. The trial lasted for weeks.

His surname was Gordon. He and the drowned woman had attended Clairwood Primary School with all of us.

In the 1950s-60s, the international engineering Company, Foster Wheeler Incorporated, was in South Africa, building oil refineries.

We lived in Clairwood, Durban, South Africa. One of the refineries built by Foster Wheeler was located in Merebank, a suburb adjacent to our Clairwood.

Before Foster Wheeler arrived, the unemployment percent in the communities was nearly 100% for generations in Clairwood and Merebank. Within a month of Foster Wheeler’s arrival, there were not enough workers available for the opportunities. Auntie Ellen got a job though she could barely read or write.

This surprised all who knew Auntie Ellen because she had never applied for paid employment that required education beyond Primary School. My Mother vouched for Auntie Ellen’s literacy, as minimal as it was, because they had attended Clairwood Government Primary School together.

Auntie Ellen had refused to attend High School; her joy knew no bounds, we were informed, that she was allowed to refuse. Auntie Ellen had the distinction of being the only child of her generation in the family of not having a Secondary education.

The saddest thing of all for me was that when I came to be able to read newspapers and magazines about beauty contests for women, I saw that Auntie Ellen was the most beautiful of them. Vivian, my very own cousin, took after her Mother; and so very more so.

Auntie Ellen worked wherever she could get paid work in the neighbourhood. She was never out of work. She became a neighbourhood favorite because she was a reliable and meticulous worker. She was generous in spending on treats for the children in the family; Vivian included, as part of the gang.

Foster Wheeler had deadlines. Everywhere they built an oil facility in the country, they finished the job within months, always ahead of deadlines. They trained workers from scratch to be welders of many metals. When they moved to build elsewhere, they invited the workers they had trained to move with them, all living expenses paid. Some of their welders continued to work in other countries in Africa after Foster Wheeler had left South Africa.

None of us in the family benefited from Auntie Ellen’s employment by Foster Wheeler. In all the few years she worked at the Foster Wheeler sites, we did not know what she did there.

When Foster Wheeler had completed its Merebank refinery, that branch of the business left South Africa. By its tax agreement with the Government, Foster Wheeler was not allowed to take any of its personal-use luxury vehicles out of the country, nor to sell them, because those vehicles had been brought into the country duty-free.

Foster Wheeler arranged for Auntie Ellen to set up a registered Charity Organization with a local Religion Establishment to which all the vehicles involved were donated. Approximately a dozen. Foster Wheeler assured the Charity that other similar vehicles would be donated from other Foster Wheeler sites throughout the country in the future.

Auntie Ellen became a local celebrity. Her photo was in all the local newspapers. None of her celebrity drifted onto her family. In the weeks and weeks that it lasted, she never visited any of us. None of us knew when Auntie Ellen’s celebrity ended. Foster Wheeler never returned to that part of the country.

I remember seeing Auntie Ellen a few times over the years when she visited, but I do not recall ever speaking to her, or her speaking to me.

The last time I spoke to Vivian was a long-distance phone call overseas, a few years before she died. Neither of us us mentioned Auntie Ellen.

I do not know how or where Auntie Ellen ended.
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