Ezra Azra--Abahkhan and the Yikkamangas

In October 1967, the City of Durban suffered its first-ever tornado. With the exception of the hospital, every City Building on downtown Warwick Avenue was reduced to rubble.

Abahkhan’s parents were puzzled. On the one hand, that hospital, named after the Christian Saint Francis of Assisi, was, clearly, blessed. The parents felt truly “blessed in Christ” that their firstborn had been born in that hospital a few days before that weather catastrophe imploded.

On the other hand, what else could thy feel but cursed that their firstborn Abahkhan was born 90% blind in that so-blessed Saint Francis of Assisi hospital on downtown Warwick Avenue?

Abahkhan’s parents, Marion and Lancer Yoonvy, most practical wisely, did not attempt another birth.

They gave Abahkhan the best loving care. As an extra precaution, they moved out of the City of Durban so that they would never again need to seek help at that Saint Francis of Assisi hospital on Warwick Avenue.

As expected, life was an uphill struggle for Abahkhan Yoonvy.

The spectacles Abahkhan wore had the thickest lenses available. She was fortunate that modern science was making all the parts of spectacles from materials far lighter than natural glass and metal, and practically unbreakable in ordinary accidental falls to hard surfaces.

Life was an uphill struggle for Abahkhan until she reached Secondary School.

Secondary Schools in the City had a Soccer competition every year, separate competitions for all-girls and all-boys schools. There were no other kinds of Secondary Schools in the City.

Abahkhan proved to be a genius soccer player! To many, many players, she appeared to be more than a genius; more like a genuine necromantic wizard!

On the playing field, she did not need sight to know where the ball was. She sensed it. Some of her team colleagues insisted she divined the location of the ball at any time.

And more, she sensed where the ball was going to be in the next few seconds, and she would be there when it arrived!

On the soccer field, there are eleven player positions, traditionally. While it is claimed that these positions are practical necessities, in every game all positions, except the Goalkeeper, are fluid.

The basic universal rule for every soccer player, except the Goalkeeper, is ‘when you have the ball, run with it for as far as you can, unchallenged by opponents.’

Abahkhan’s assigned player position was Striker, or, Goal-scorer. This meant she was to be, always, in the opponent’s half of the field.

However, because of her incredible skills, the unwritten understanding in the Captain of the team and in every other player on her team, was that she was permitted to be anywhere on the field she chose to be at any time during the game, with the ball or waiting in anticipation for the ball.

In the four years she was in Secondary school, her school team won all four annual national inter-school championships.

Abahkhan was not the only goal scorer, but, always, she was the highest.

And every time, the first scorer in a game. The spectators came to expect it; they waited breathlessly for it; and when it happened, they cheered and clapped and roared tumultuously in deafening joy for endless seconds.

Of course, the number of goals scored is only one half of a victory in soccer. The other half is how many lesser goals are scored against the team.

Seetha Yikkamanga was the goalkeeper on Abahkhan’s team. She and her identical twin sister, Muthal Yikkamanga, were two years ahead of Abahkhan in school.

The parents of the sisters, Boma and Kunkoo Yikkamanga, had legally changed their family name from Yikkamanga to Francis. The parents had claimed the reason for the change was to honor their Christian Saint, Saint Francis of Assisi, for having answered their prayers for the safe birth of their twins, who were their only children, a birth all medical doctors of the time diagnosed was highly unlikely to occur because of the same congenital flaw in both Yikkamanga parents.

Yes, those Yikkamanga identical twin babies, were, too, born in that blessed Saint Francis of Assisi City Building hospital on Warwick Avenue.

As an added safeguard of their children’s genetically ever-threatened health, the Yikkamanga-Francis parents enrolled their children in the school’s soccer program, and they themselves engaged in volunteer services in the program.

No team scored against Seetha Yikkamanga-Francis. Her greatness as a goalkeeper was the reward of diligent practice. In her achievement of greatness there was no help from genius or miraculous wizardry. Her six feet six inches height provided her the best of beginnings in successful soccer goalkeeping.

Seetha Yikkamanga-Francis deeply respected and admired Abahkhan Yoonvy; but she had to keep it a secret from her twin, Muthal Yikkamanga-Francis.

Muthal, who vigorously insisted on using the surname Francis, only, never acquired a taste for soccer. She wasn’t alone in this. Most students did not care to be more than merely loyal spectators.

In addition in Muthal was the subliminal resentment of the obligation to engage in the physical activity of soccer as therapy against an ever dormant unhealthy risk, congenital in her and Seetha. That subliminal resentment in Muthal Francis stirred up an open resentment of Abahkhan’s genius-wizard excellence at scoring goals as an unfair eclipsing of Seetha’s ‘by the sweat of her brow achieved excellence’ as a flawless Goalkeeper.

In the two years before Abahkhan had enrolled, Seetha had twice won the school’s “Soccer Player of the Year” medal. Abahkhan had won the medal the next two years.

Unlike everybody else, Muthal was never unduly impressed by Abahkhan’s on-field exceptional soccer skills. To Muthal Francis there was no miraculous ‘genius-wizardry’ in ‘that blind girl’s’ soccer playing. It was all mere completely explicable mathematical calculations. After all, was it not well known that ‘that blind girl’ was exceptional in her classwork Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry? Her challenge of the accuracy and necessity of Albert Einstein’s ‘cosmological constant’ had already brought two world-renowned Physicist visitors to the school.

Muthal Francis was determined that Seetha’s school soccer career would end on a highest note, despite that blind girl’s phenomenally higher soccer celebrity.

In her final year at Secondary School Muthal campaigned for a City-wide boy-girl match between the highest scoring teams in the annual school competitions. She countered the traditional conviction that males are more spectacularly successful at soccer than females with years and years of statistics showing more goals scored at girls’ games than at boys’.

When some male officials pointed out that those statistics merely showed that female goalkeepers were less skilled than male goalies, Muthal referred to Seetha’s flawless record that no male goalkeeper had ever matched in the history of the City’s school soccer competitions.

Muthal’s challenge was accepted. The citizens of the City were electrified.

Muthal persuaded City Businesses to create a scholarship for the goalkeeper that prevented all scoring attempts. In this way, she planned that there would be no special financial reward for goal-scorers, like ‘that blind girl.’

That competition eventually happened in the City’s Sports Stadium, a week after the last day of the fourth year of Secondary School classes for Muthal and Seetha.

The final score was a victory for the girls’ team; one-nil. Abahkhan scored the goal for the girls’ team; Seetha won the scholarship.

That ever dormant unhealthy Yikkamanga congenital risk eventually struck. Muthal Francis collapsed at home, and died within the hour in the absence of the other three of the Yikkamanga-Francis family.

Seetha eventually traveled overseas on the scholarship to study to become a medical doctor, proving, some would aver, that she affirmed the African Xhosa meaning of ‘Yikkamanga’ which is, “Bird of Paradise.”___________________________________