Growing up as an only child in a single-parent household, Morenita Holloway always dreamed of having a sister or a brother, or anyone in addition to her mother, Frieda Stangar, to call family.
Born in Durban and now a Germiston resident, Morenita grew up shy and always kept to herself, and when her mother said that she would have to fend for herself at the age of 16, she quickly learnt how to hustle and look out for herself.
While building herself up and living day-to-day, wondering if she had any other family, she had no idea that in Cape Town there was a young lady 10 years her senior, named Wilma Iris Merrington, who was in fact her sister.
“My mother passed away 19 years ago, and before she died, because I had known so much controversy and lies in the story of my life, I asked her to leave me with something to work with.
“She wrote on a piece of paper that she had married a man named Desmond Charles Merrington, and that she had a daughter named Wilma Iris Merrington who was born at a provincial hospital in Cape Town in 1949 and who she had given her up for adoption,” Morenita said.
Morenita looked into the information given to her by her mother, but nothing came from it, her research was inconclusive and she decided to let it go.
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Abandoned as a baby, Wilma grew up in Cape Town under the care of a foster mother.
They had been living in a ‘European’ area, and under the laws of the apartheid regime, when the foster mother’s husband died they had to leave the neighbourhood because she was ‘non-white’.
Wilma, who was nine at the time, had started her schooling and went from finding a home here, there and nowhere to eventually landing up in a convent.
Although miles apart, the sisters grew up in a similar manner – they both attended boarding school, were both left to look out for themselves at a young age, and through it all they both yearned for a sibling to help them bear the hardships of life.
“The foster mother gave me all these photos of my mother, and because I did not know the person in the photos I felt no relation to anyone,” said Wilma
“My son, Patrick Lakey, and I started looking for my mother when I had just turned 50. We were looking for her under the name ‘Frieda Stangar’, and I later found out she had given half a name to the provincial hospital when I was born and that made it harder to track her down, so we decided to stop the search.”
Wilma later found her paternal relatives and was informed that her father and mother both died in 1996, so the quest to uncover anything about her mother or relatives had hit a dead end.
Then, whilst cleaning last month, Morenita found the piece of paper from her mother, and something prompted her to try looking for her sister again.
“I typed her father’s name and it immediately came up on the births and deaths, and her [pointing at her sister] name came up as the daughter, and it said her mother was Frieda Stangar,” Morenita said.
This time Morenita felt a need to pursue her search to fruition.
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Social media played a significant role in joining the sisters.
When Morenita felt she had compiled enough information, she searched on Facebook for Wilma, and there began their exchange of information.
“I added her, and sent her a message leading with, ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I have information I would like to share with you’, and I left my email address,” said Morenita as she relived the day.
Wilma did not take long to respond. “I received her message, immediately deleted her as a friend, and sent her an email saying, ‘I understand you have something to tell me’,” she said.
“All the while I thought she was a scammer, I was waiting for the typical chain messages about God and the ‘I have missed my flight, I need money’ messages, that never came,” Wilma teased.
Morenita responded and said, “If my information is correct, I think you may be my sister”, and Wilma’s response read, “What the hell; more information”.
Out of fear of upsetting Wilma and her family, and not knowing whether she knew she was adopted or knowing much of her background, Morenita felt scared to reveal all the information she had, but as the two began to share information each one’s material began to fit the missing bits of the other’s information.
“She sent me a black and white picture of my mom on a horse in Cape Town, and immediately I knew that was my mom,” said Morenita. “We shared pictures of her and we arranged to meet.”
Wilma recalls falling intensely ill four months ago: “All I had were my children and they had moved out and I was alone again.
“I remember praying and asking God to send me someone, a brother or a sister.
“I cannot just be alone in the world, I remember saying, and a month later this happened.
“With this excitement, I will probably live another 10 years,” Wilma joked.
Morenita celebrated her 59th birthday on February 10, and her sister flew up from Cape Town to join the festivities, and they have spent the week catching up on lost time and sharing memories of their upbringing.
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