Alexa stands up again
2005-04-28
Malané Bosman
ALEXA KIRSTEN’S life was changed forever by the man who murdered her neighbour and nearly succeeded in killing her in Wellington three months ago.
But she stood up, albeit with a cane for support, and is not only taking firm steps to recovery, but is helping others in need of support after similar trauma.
Alexa ran to the assistance of Lisbé Smuts when she was attacked in her home in Burg Street and left to die in the swimming pool.
“I am not a very brave person,” Alexa says.
“But I could not ignore such cries for help. Anyone would have responded to the splashing and screaming.”
Alexa recalls how her gardener stood ready with a large crowbar. But she told him not to jump over the fence and perhaps scare Lisbé even more.
So she went instead. She saw what she thought was Lisbé’s wet footprints leading into the kitchen, so she followed.
“I was calling her name when a man popped out of the kitchen. The way he avoided my eyes made me realise that he was not supposed to be there. So I turned.”
But it was too late. The man started hitting her on the head and stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and shoulder with a screwdriver.
“For a moment my soul went to the ceiling and I looked down onto my body,” she remembers.
“And then it felt as if I was sucked back into my body. I don’t know why I was given a second chance. Maybe there are still things for me to do here.”
From that moment it was trauma upon trauma. The ambulance. The anxiety on husband Steve’s face. Intensive care for eight days.
“But even though it was so ghastly and so scary, it was like panning for gold, with nuggets that sparkled in between.
“So many people touched me. Patients, doctors and nurses who had also suffered trauma, related to me.
“Maybe I was put there to touch them, to help them heal.”
Alexa was in rehabilitation for three weeks where she first had to learn to crawl before she could learn to walk.
Now she is ready to tackle life again.
Alexa, an extremely fine crafter, has crafted for Masizakhe in the Red Shed in the Cape Town Waterfront since its inception eight years ago.
“I was lucky to be accepted with the grassroots crafters,” Alexa says humbly.
These three words one hears often from Alexa.
But she is too modest. Alexa is caring and creative, soft-spoken, with a heart of gold and fingers that turn anything she touches into art.
Alexa married her forester husband Steve, whom she met in Hogsback, where she grew up. Since the couple moved to Wellington 25 years ago, Steve has been well-known as the “Stapole man”, with a company selling timber.
In the eighties she was involved in the launch of the Mbekweni Projects Committee.
“Things were burning there,” she remembers.
“I often had threats and I was stoned once. But I was okay. I am not really a very brave person, but I kept on going. The women needed me for the project.”
She now works mainly on cloth that she draws on, paints and transforms into vibrant table linen.
Over the years a handicapped girl from Wellington has often given her a hand with the filling in of the co-lour. She now needs her assistance even more, with herself now temporarily handicapped.
The injuries had left her paralysed on the left side. Through physiotherapy she is once again able to walk with the aid of a walking stick, and she is slowly starting to use her disabled left arm.
Alexa might not look it, but she is strong and she is picking up the pieces of her life that was so rudely interrupted by the assailant.
“Luckily I am right-handed,” she says and strokes a tiny kitten on the couch with her. OC (short for “occupational therapy”) was a get-well present from her daughter.
“That man changed my life. Only towards the end the trauma started peeling away like an onion. It is a good thing to talk about it, it dilutes the pain.
“I’ve come a long way, and only now am I starting to feel normal again.”
The Kirstens have been overwhelmed by the kindness of friends and relatives. Visitors have brought enough food to last them for months. The pile of letters from well-wishers can fill a trunk.
“It is all very humbling for me,” Alexa says, in her modest way.
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