In 1990, at 62, “Mama Alice” came to Canada. She believes that God wanted to relieve her from her struggles in South Africa. Raised as one of nine children in a poor family, education was costly and distanced from where she shepherded her father’s flock. She started school late at 12, sharing a slate to write her lessons on, with a cousin. Having a lesser standard of learning than white South Africans because of apartheid, she always felt inferior because of her lack of education. She couldn’t believe her good fortune in joining Fredericton CASPs free of charge.

Proud to be a Canadian

Where I grew up, it cost to go to school: to buy a uniform, to buy books, and to pay school fees. Because the school was very far, I would go to school one week and stay home the next, sharing the ‘looking after the flock’ with a cousin I shared a school slate with. I quit school because I had already grown up. When you were a teenager, you had to work on the farm before college or work in Johannesburg.

The farm, that my parents worked, belonged to a German owner. He just gave my parents a piece of land, to grow crops on, to bring up their children. It was like a family. Every family had a house, but we were entirely contracted on that farm.

When your time comes to be called to the farm contract, you go back and work there. I was in a school institution, doing a 3-year domestic science course, after grade seven. While there, I had to come back to work at the farm for one year, at 15 cents a day. After the year, if you’d done a good job, they gave you money. If not, they cut it off.

I was looking forward to marriage. At 24, I married, moved to Johannesburg, and had five children very quickly. The marriage lasted 12 years with my baby only 8 months old. I struggled and prayed to God to help me because I didn’t have an education. Without one, my work was making dresses because I had trained as a dress maker.

In Le Sotho, a lady teacher from Fredericton was interested in me and the orphan children I raised. I used to go to school to volunteer and she was surprised. On visiting me, she found me in a really unbelievable state compared to Canada, and she said, “How do you bring these children up in this?” When her contract ended, she wrote and sent me five dollars to fix up a passport and said, when it was ready, she would send us a ticket to come.