Story 1The first story introduces us to Thembi Shibe, who has since married into the Mhlongo family. Thembi is 31 years old and is a mother to 4 children.
Her call to her KK concerns her need to be united with her father’s family. Her father passed away in 1992, all the while having had no contact with his children. The separation was a result of a fight between her parents, which resulted in her mother moving back to her home, with Thembi and her 5 siblings. They then grew up with their maternal grandmother, until their mother was able to build her own home, and thus lived with her children.
Thembi tells us that she has been working as a casual at many a shop, with people who came after her being hired permanently before her. She believes reuniting with her father’s family will change her luck, with the obligatory rituals being perfomed ofcourse.
Thembi Shibe MhlongoMildred Mgomezulu is Thembi’s mother. She says she had a good relationship with the Shibe family, however, once there were no more elders in the family, conflict resolution became a problem. The issues with her and her husband were fuelled by his being too much of “dictator” (For lack of a better word), and her being in a foreign land. She also only found out about the death of her children's
father a month after he had died.
Mildred Mgomezulu
Sakhile is the last of Mildred’s children, and the only boy. His memories of his father are liteally non existent, as he was only 6 when he died.
Sakhile also has problems with work, as he is struggling to find permanent employment and thus, like his sister, believes that reuniting with his father’s family will help him in this regard.
So the family heads out with KK to meet with the Shibe family. Since their mother has not been to her in laws in years, it is tricky trying to find their home, but as luck would have it, they meet an old woman on the way, who is a member of the Shibe family. The old woman takes them to Shibe’s. Their arrival is a happy one, with everyone present at the Shibe homestead happy to see them. After the explanations, they go to where their father and grandmother are buried, and the children are thus reunited with their father’s family.
Story 2 In the second story we meet Mamiki from Glenvista. She wants to confront her mother about the things she used to do to her as a child.
According to Mamiki, her mother had favourites from her children, and Mamiki was clearly not one of them. She recalls an incident when her brother broke her father’s leg in an attempt to protect their mother from a beating by their father. Her father used to work night shifts, and one day, Mamiki’s older sister told their father that there was a man who would come while he was at work and leave every morning. This then led to Mamiki’s father leaving their home, promising to come back for Mamiki.
MamikiFor Mamiki, this was the beginning of her hell. Her mother would beat her up for no reason, always telling her to follow her father. At some point, when her mother was living with another man, this man wanted to sleep with Mamiki, ,and when she told her mother, she didn’t believe her.
She says she now wants to fix things with herbmom, and has for this reason enlisted the help of KK. She asks her aunt (her father’s sister), whom she had met just 3 weeks earlier, to accompany her to her mother.
They go to her mother in Senekal(if there’s one thing you learn from KK, it’s the many dorp names in SA) to meet mother. However, things don’t go quite as planned as the mother refused to talk on TV (Duh, I wouldn’t want to be on TV with such allegations against me either). Mamiki then informs us that their off camera talks yielded no understanding, as she denied ever ill treating Mamiki.
With that, Mamiki decided to go see her father, whom she hasn’t seen since she was 11, and is now 32 years old.
Mamiki's fatherOn arrival, Mamiki’s father talks about the pain of living with Mamiki’s mother, and tells us how he would withdraw all his money from the bank because of her.
All Mamiki wants to know is how he could have left her, knowing how her mother was. He however, goes on to blame Mamiki’s mother, how she ill treated him in his own house. He says his heart is in pain “straight away” when he hears Mamiki speak like this. He even offers to give her a cut of his pension money,but all Mamiki wants, as she makes it clear to him, is his love, not his money. He apologises(I must say, an apology?! This is a first from the infamous KK fathers). He then says he puts all issues of the in God's hands, and continues to blame Mamiki's mother.
They hug, and Mamiki is happy that her father apologised.
Story 3 Story 3 is a revist to a story I thouroughly enjoyed, that of Sipho Khanye, who had left home to go to Pretoria because he felt unloved by his parents, and ended up driving taxis. I did not do a recap for this episode, but it was filled with drama, as Sipho went form throwing tantrums to complaining about having no money to apologising to his family.
Its been a year since Sipho’s sister, Zanele, wrote to KK, asking for help to bring her brother back. After we endure rather long interviews with Zanele, her parents, and the youger brother (all in the name of passing time, because this episode seemed to really need to fill time) we finaly get to see Sipho, who tells us that he is doing well, working wth his father at a job he found for him.
Zanele
Zanele, who has a clear dislike for taxi drivers as there is no future in the industry, expresses her gratitude at her brother being saved from a life of driving taxi. Sipho’s father also adds to the dislike of taxi drivers by commenting further about the lack of a future in the industry. ( is it just me who doesn’t see anything wrong with driving taxi’s, like any other job? )
SiphoThere is only one complaint though from his father, his drinking. Apparently he goes slightly out of control after one too many, but dad is not yet throwing in the towel on that issue.
Sipho also informs us that he is working on something that should materialise, he doesn’t go into detail, but tells us that for now, no one really knows about it, and he is still looking at the advantages and disadvantages.
Eish, I wonder what that is. KK must do a revisit of the the revisit.
At the end of the episode, the pictures of long lost people are shown, and for me, no luck, still no one I know...yet!