Supernatural Forces and Powers

Introduction


This book is intended to raise the name of our Creator Almighty God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not intended to glorify
those in its chapters.

But more likely, it was to pinpoint the help that we encountered during difficult times when we called on Him to be rescued. Many times He has been called upon, and has answered those prayers.

I encourage those who at the moment are enduring hardship and difficult situations to have faith and dig deep when calling on Him. Have strong, undiluted faith. Be genuine and don’t hide anything. He knows you deep down. He is within you.

May our Lord Jesus Christ dwell within you after you have read this book and see His greatness that cannot be compared with anything on this Earth.



Inspiration To Write This Book


Before lockdown I read the book The Robe by Douglas Lloyd. During lockdown I read the book Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I pondered and meditated on it for forty days. After a few days, I received a call from my late daughter’s friend, Myrtle. We chatted for a long time catching up on events. Then I said to her that due to my financial situation I would be unable to attend property development boot camp to start a business. “What,” she said, “that’s amazing. You have gold in you, why don’t you write a book?” After our talk had ended, I began to recall other instances. There were three reasons I wrote the book:

1. Mike Warren, Vicar at St Peter’s C of E Church: I was depressed. I needed prayers desperately. I emailed him about my son who had epileptic seizures continuously and his fiancé had left him. He was alone. I wrote almost two paragraphs about the situation. He said, “It must have been painful to write it all down but I hope it’s been helpful to share it”.

2. Carol Watson also of St Peter’s: I gave her an old newspaper that I’d written after my daughter’s death. She said, “Why don’t you write a book? We will read it.”

3. Myrtle Gray: As above. There were three reasons or forces that made me write this book. On the 1st July, 2020 I started to re-collect my mind, and I started to write. It was not easy. I was hurting, at times and I would even cry while writing. My tears would fall on my manuscript.



CHAPTER 1 - Getting to know nature


I was born at Port Elizabeth in South Africa (now Gqebera). The area was then called Edasi, now Commercial Road. During that time racial segregation was the norm, and we were forcefully removed to KwaZakhele.
At Edasi, there were shops, a bakery and electricity. As children we were happy. We could buy lollies from the shops, and there was a comforting smell of freshly baked bread that made us very hungry.
But at Kwazakhele we stayed in a corrugated iron shack. There were no shops, no electricity and only one communal tap for water.
My mother was from Fort Beaufort where she ran away from an organised forced traditional marriage to an abusive man. She had a baby girl when she joined her sister in Port Elizabeth who was living with their mother’s sister at Edasi village.
This is where she met my father Frank France Shaniso Fernando. He was from Mozambique Mambona Village. He used to talk about Maputo and Lorenzo Marks. He was a gentleman, working as a chef in one of the biggest hotels in Summerstrand.
He knew how to treat a woman. She was happy and gave birth to four children, two boys and two girls. We did not stay long at Kwazakhele. My father got a property in New Brighton. It was a three-roomed house, two bedrooms and a big space you could organise into a kitchen and a living room.
In New Brighton we were self-sufficient. My father cooked very tasty food, and would take us to school before going to work. We were happy children, smart and well dressed.
My dad was a handsome man, but he cheated on my mother by falling in love with a white lady at work. Then everything changed. He was deported to his home country of Mozambique.
We accompanied him there, journeying by rail for several days before changing trains until we reached Beira. We stayed there for two days with my father’s relatives. During this time my mother was told by one of the ladies there that my dad had a wife in Mozambique and three children.
Wow! Things were getting hot and they argued. My father denied having a wife and was very angry with those ladies. During that time my mother was breast feeding my younger brother. The next day we boarded a small boat. It was full of passengers, there was not even a space to stretch your legs. We travelled the whole night and arrived in the morning. Thank God, the boat did not overturn.
It was a remote area, but you would not feel that nature was there to entertain you. We had to cross a dense forest; there were monkeys, birds, flowers, shrubs, trees, fruit trees and nuts. It was a beautiful scenario with grass and snakes of course. We had to walk several miles to reach the town. We rested a little bit and we had cookies and drinks for breakfast, before proceeding on our journey to his village.
We enjoyed the journey because he was teaching us how to pick up forest fruits, bananas pawpaw and nuts. What was frightening were the snakes, but my dad was not bothered by that.
When we reached the village Mambona, we learned that my dad was a wealthy man. He owned a farm and farming on live stock had rice fields and ducks and chickens. The bulls looked gorgeous with their horns and shiny furs.
We ultimately arrived at our home. We were received by his mother; his dad had long since died. They had several rondavels. There was a big, middle rondavel which had doors that opened on the outside. This one had three rooms.
A tall, beautiful lady appeared. She was wearing a surrey dress, a head scarf and was bare footed. She had two boys. They had dark skin and short curly hair. The older one was Komodo, the younger one Mlandana or Brandt. We never saw the daughter. My father embraced his wife warmly. My mom had to take it. Whether she liked it or not, it was now a reality. Ladies in Beira were right about him.
There were no schools. Every morning my brother had to go with his brothers to shepherd the livestock. He returned in the late afternoon to milk the animals and was learning a lot from his brothers. Me and my sister were taught how to chase away birds from the rice fields. We had to clap hands and say, “Hay eway”. The birds would fly away and it was something we did every day. We never went hungry in the fields. We would indulge ourselves on wild bananas, pawpaw and nuts. We enjoyed that and could play freely the whole day after each chase.
Food was in abundance including wild leafy vegetables and different kinds of sea food and fish and I don’t remember feeling hungry. When we came back from the rice fields, dinner was served. My father’s first wife would serve us in the dining room, on the other side of the big rondavel, which is where we were served every evening. There was a big table containing different kinds of dishes. In the middle there would be a big dish of mealie meal styfpap (umqa) in xhosa, then green hot leafy greens, fish, prawns and other sea creatures that I have never heard of. All the food was chili hot and damn tasty. We had to wash ourselves before going to the dining table. There were no spoons or forks and we used our hands to eat, which was new to us.
What was funny was that her family and my grandmother never joined us at the dining table. It was my mom, my dad and us children.
My mom was not happy there because:
1 My father spent most of the time with his first wife.
2. We were always having headaches and running temperature because of mosquito bites.
3. The sun was terribly hot driving the snakes into the house which was very scary.
But they were used to that, they were not frightened of the snakes which blended perfectly with nature.
My mother pushed for us to return home. It was argument after argument, there was no peace.
Ultimately we had to leave. My father accompanied us to Beira and put us on the train. That was the last time we saw of him.



CHAPTER 2 - Cooking and selling


When we returned home everything changed dramatically. My mother had to change our surname from Fernando to Qamse so as to be able to manage us in schools and re-register us in everything. She had to look for a job because she was now a single parent. We were struggling, but she was a strong woman and had several domestic jobs. Sometimes we had to go to school on empty stomachs. Luckily at school there was a feeding scheme that helped us a lot.
From her job she would bring a bucket full of amasi (cultured milk) from skimmed milk which was cheaper than whole milk. For meat we would eat the insides of the animal, the head of the animal and the feet would be burned on an open fire and the fur removed. It would then be scrubbed and washed thoroughly and cooked. In our culture it is believed that the ligaments and cartilage help to treat arthritis. Red meat was expensive for us.
When I was a young teenager my mom taught me how to buy fruit from the market and sell it at bus stops or taxi squares. While other teenagers bought fish and chips for their lunch, I would buy meaty bones from the butcher for our family dinner. I was selling only at weekends. During the week I was at school.
Soon after we left Mozambique we received news of the death of our grandmother. And then couple of years later the death of our father.
My mother eventually found a man and got married for the third time. Everything changed again for the better. My stepdad loved us as his own children. My mom was happy again.
At that time I passed standard nine, and I wanted to do a teachers’ course. I was sent to a boarding school at Lovedale Teachers’ College, which was run by Methodist Church missionaries from England. My stepdad used to carry my trunk to the station to board a train to Alice where my school was. I was happy and enjoyed the boarding school life.
At the college I had a boyfriend who spoke the Zulu language and I spoke Xhosa (Mandela language). These two languages have similar words at times but different meanings. We used to date under the oak trees, together with other students or at a secret place. One day he was late for a date and he apologised. He said he had gone to the bathroom to geza
Geza in Zulu means a bath or a shower. In Xhosa it means being silly rude or naughty. We did not sort that out then because the bell rang for us to go for dinner. After supper in the dormitory I told my best friend about our argument. She laughed and explained to me the meanings. I was embarrassed. The following day everything was sorted and me and my boyfriend laughed about it. At the end of the course I passed my exams, and I got a teaching certificate.



CHAPTER 3 - Saving a child’s life


During that time a lot had happened. The apartheid regime was in full force. Young people were gathering in secret places and they were raided by the soldiers. My brother JJ was among those raided. We did not know where he was. The soldiers entered the houses at night. We were woken up by a heavy knock on the door, kicking it open stripping our blankets and bitten in an attempt to tell them where JJ was. I was hit on the left eyebrow with the back of a rifle and bled. That scar is still visible to this day as a reminder of the brutality we encountered.
I got a temporary job in one of the local schools in Port Elizabeth (Mandela Bay) where I was once a pupil. But this time it was different. Only old teachers were there. There were no young ones. I used to wear my old green shabby coat, because that’s all I had. These teachers used to laugh at my coat and make jokes about it. I enjoyed teaching children, but I decided to apply and do a nursing job, where I didn’t have to wear my own clothes, but a uniform.
I was fortunate to be accepted, and was with a group that was due to start training the following month. I was called to collect my uniform. It was my day, I was elated. I said goodbye to anxiety. The day I went to collect my uniform, I saw my best friend from the college, who was also there for her uniform. What a reunion! We sat down and talked and talked. We caught up with all our experiences from the college. God is great and beautiful and He had prepared everything for us. We were like sisters, we enjoyed our time on training. We studied together. At weekends I used to go home and she used to go to see her fiancé.
One weekend I was at home, when we heard a big blast like thunder. We all went outside. People were gathering at a nearby house. We went there and learned that it was a gas blast from the shed that had left children who were playing nearby, on the ground. There was this little boy who was lifeless. With my little knowledge of first aid I checked his pulse. He wasn’t breathing so I started by tilting his head backwards and checking to see if his tongue was not obstructing the airway. I pinched his nose, opened his mouth and blew air into it It was one good blow and I did twenty chest compressions. I did it until the child started to breathe, then the ambulance arrived and took him to hospital.
I studied hard, and I was occupying myself in many activities such as dancing classes and beauty competitions. This is when I met Mr Flint. We were dating and I was no longer going home when I was off duty.