In 2018, I was back in George, working on a one-year contract while completing my PhD.
Although I was employed, there was still uncertainty about what would happen next. The contract was supposed to end in December, while the PhD journey was also approaching its final stages.
It was during this period that I had a dream that has remained with me ever since.
In the dream, my grandmother wanted me to accompany her to consult a traditional healer.
At first, I refused.
She said she would go alone.
I felt guilty about allowing her to go by herself, so I decided to accompany her.
When we arrived at the traditional healer’s place, we sat outside because he was still attending to another client.
When he finished, he came out of the consultation hut just as my grandmother was about to enter.
Instead of allowing her inside, he closed the door and greeted her outside.
He was laughing.
Then he asked my grandmother whether she was the daughter of a particular man.
He started describing him.
A tall, slender gentleman.
A clean man who was always well dressed.
He also described a particular green jacket that the man used to wear.
My grandmother said yes.
The man he was describing was her father.
My great-grandfather.
Then the traditional healer delivered a very simple message:
“Your father says you must not worry. Everything will be alright.”
That was the dream.
When I woke up the following morning, I was still in George.
My grandmother was at home, far away from me.
I called her first thing in the morning.
Before telling her the entire dream, I started asking her questions.
Was her father tall?
Was he slender?
Was he a clean man who dressed well?
Did he have a particular green jacket that he used to wear?
My grandmother was shocked.
She wanted to know how I knew these things about her father.
I had never met him. He had died before I was born.
That was when I told her about the dream.
I explained how we had gone together to consult a traditional healer and how the healer had described her father before giving her the message:
“You must not worry. Everything will be alright.”
But there was a problem.
Neither my grandmother nor I knew what was supposed to be alright.
The message did not say that I would get a job.
It did not say anything about the PhD.
It did not mention money.
It did not give us a date.
It simply said:
Everything will be alright.
So we were left with the message and a question:
What was going to be alright?
Life continued.
In November 2018, I travelled from George to Grahamstown to submit my final PhD thesis for external examination.
After everything that had happened during the PhD journey, the thesis was finally out of my hands.
One uncertainty was moving towards resolution.
Another remained.
My one-year employment contract was supposed to expire in December.
When I left George for the December holidays, I therefore left believing that my time there had come to an end.
I acted accordingly.
I gave away my belongings.
My bed.
My plates.
My pots.
As far as I knew, I was leaving George.
I went home.
Then, while I was at home, something unexpected happened.
I was informed that I should return to work in January because the contract was going to be extended.
So I returned to George.
But there was still no new contract.
We were told to continue working while the new contracts were being prepared.
There was something almost strange about returning.
Only weeks earlier, I had given away my belongings because I genuinely believed that this chapter had ended. Now I was back, working again, without even having the new contract in my hands.
Then another opportunity appeared.
On 11 January 2019, I received an invitation to attend an interview for a permanent GIS position.
There was also a funny coincidence in the date.
11 January is my real birthday, although it is not the date of birth recorded on my identity document.
Did that mean anything?
I did not know.
Perhaps it was simply a coincidence.
But I noticed it.
I accepted the invitation and later attended the interview in January.
By then, the dream had already happened.
My grandmother had already heard me describe a father I had never met.
She had already recognised him from the description.
And she had already heard the message:
“Your father says you must not worry. Everything will be alright.”
When that message came, neither of us knew what it meant.
Since then, I had submitted my final PhD thesis for external examination.
My temporary contract had reached what I believed was its end.
I had given away my belongings and gone home.
I had unexpectedly been called back to George.
I had returned without a new contract having been signed.
And now, before that situation had even fully settled, an invitation to interview for a permanent position had arrived on my actual birthday.
At this point, I still did not know how the story would end.
That matters to me.
It is easy to look backwards at events after we already know the outcome and arrange them into a meaningful pattern.
But at that moment, there was no outcome to work backwards from.
When I called my grandmother after the dream, neither she nor I knew that I would submit my thesis in November, leave George in December believing that my job had ended, be unexpectedly called back, or receive an invitation for a permanent position on my birthday.
We knew none of that.
We had only the dream.
We had the description of a man I had never met.
And we had a message whose meaning neither of us understood:
“Everything will be alright.”
Perhaps it was reassurance.
Perhaps it was coincidence.
Perhaps it was something else.
At that point in the story, however, there was simply no way of knowing.
There was only one unanswered question:
What exactly was going to be alright?
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Have you ever experienced something that seemed meaningful before you had any idea what, if anything, it meant?
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