She waits nervously inside a quiet coffee shop in Pretoria, her heart pounding in her chest. For 32-year-old Roeléne Botes, this impending reunion is so strange and miraculous that it feels entirely surreal. Today, she is finally going to meet the woman who literally saved her life when she was just a helpless infant.
Roeléne was merely two days old when she was plucked from certain death in the biting cold. Because she was just a newborn, she obviously has absolutely no memory of that fateful day. But her saviour has never, ever forgotten the tiny, defenceless baby, wrapped only in a thin towel, that she and her childhood playmates discovered discarded in a dark stormwater drain in Potchefstroom.
For decades, Louisa Wessels wondered what had ultimately become of the tiny, fragile life she had stumbled upon. It remained a lingering mystery until just last month, when Louisa happened to hear a woman speaking on a local radio station, detailing how her biological mother had left her as a newborn to die in a Potchefstroom drain.
Because a bright-eyed six-year-old girl thought she heard a helpless kitten mewing 32 years ago, Roeléne survived the unthinkable to tell her incredible tale.
Louisa, who is now 38 years old, walks into the coffee shop to finally meet Roeléne. When she arrives, the two women recognise each other almost instinctively, as if bound by an invisible string. They immediately embrace like old friends, holding each other tightly.
“I never stopped praying for you,” Louisa says softly, overwhelmed by the moment. “It feels unreal to see you in the flesh.”
Roeléne wipes away a tear as she looks at her childhood guardian angel. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
The journey to this coffee shop was paved with dark secrets and heavy truths. Roeléne was adopted as a baby and fortunately grew up in a warm, loving family home. She was raised first in Potchefstroom, and later in Polokwane, by Kobus and Daleen Bekker and their children, Miri and Henrico.
She knew from an early age that she was adopted. “My mom and dad told me how much my biological mother and father loved me but they couldn’t care for me, so I had a beautiful picture of it,” she explains. “My mom said she’d support me if I ever wanted to meet my biological mother one day. I’d always hoped my birth mom would reach out to me once I’d turned 18 but that didn’t happen.”
For years, Daleen desperately wanted to tell her daughter the harsh, brutal truth about her entry into the world and her miraculous rescue, but she could simply never find the right moment to break her heart.
It was only when Roeléne was 28 years old and already married to orthotist Werner Botes that she finally discovered the dark reality of her origins. Her husband had heard the harrowing story from Roeléne’s adoptive brother, Henrico, and firmly decided it was a truth his wife needed and deserved to know.
“Werner and I were lying in bed one night when he told me,” she recalls, the emotion still fresh. “We couldn’t stop crying but I’m so grateful that he told me and that he could comfort me.”
He gently explained everything he knew about her horrific birth on the 14th of July 1993.
“My biological mom was living in Potchefstroom on the military base and she gave birth in the bathroom,” Roeléne tells us. “First she ripped off the umbilical cord, then she tried to drown me in the toilet,” she adds, her eyes quickly filling with tears at the thought of the cruelty.
When the newborn miraculously clung tenaciously to life, the young mother wrapped her in a towel and dumped her in a cold stormwater drain, leaving her to the elements.
Roeléne’s biological mother was left in a terrible physical state, suffering severe tears during the birth and bleeding so profusely that she was eventually forced to seek medical help at a local state hospital. She arrived claiming she’d had a miscarriage.
In a twist of fate, the two-day-old rescued baby, Roeléne, was admitted to that exact same hospital. DNA tests quickly confirmed what the suspicious doctors had guessed: the bleeding young patient was indeed the mother of the baby who had miraculously survived being abandoned in the street.
The birth mother, who was 21 at the time, was promptly arrested on a serious charge of attempted murder and was ultimately sentenced to three years of house arrest.
Roeléne admits she was furious with her biological mother when she first heard the whole, unfiltered story. “I had so many questions but when I look back now, I know the hand of God was over my life. I know God has a plan for my life.”
Today, Roeléne, a former teacher, is heavily involved in children’s ministry at a church in Pretoria East. She is also a fiercely loving mother to a 14-month-old little boy, Ruwan, who is the absolute light of her life. However, knowing the grim truth about her own birth has inevitably re-opened old psychological wounds.
“Every time I look at Ruwan, I just cannot see how you could reject such a perfect little thing. How can you not just shower a little baby with love?” she asks. Although it is a painful question that haunts her quiet moments, Roeléne has chosen to forgive her biological mother. “I don’t know what her circumstances were,” she says with incredible grace.
The magical reunion was sparked when Roeléne bravely shared her story of rejection and forgiveness on the Pretoria-based radio station GROOTFM on the afternoon of 23 April.
At that exact moment, Louisa was busy fetching her children from school. She was so distracted that she only caught snippets of the broadcast.
“But when I went to pick up my second child, my sister sent me a message. ‘The baby who sounded like a kitten in the stormwater drain in Potchefstroom is on the radio’, she said,” Louisa recalls.
She could hardly believe her ears. “I’d always known the baby was a girl but now I also knew her name.”
Armed with a name, Roeléne was easy to find on Facebook. They quickly got in touch and eagerly made plans to meet up. Now, Louisa can finally tell Roeléne her side of the story—the day a baby’s faint, desperate cry in the bitter cold of winter drew the attention of a six-year-old child.
“We were playing outside and I heard what I thought was a kitten behind a cement block. It was far too heavy to move so I asked my sister to call my dad to come and help with the cat,” Louisa remembers. “I was small so I can’t really remember much detail but I know the drain was right in front of our house and that this baby was wrapped up and had been left there.”
The tiny human who had endured so much trauma in her first 48 hours of life was never forgotten by Louisa’s family.
“We often talked about this little baby,” she says. “We wondered what had become of her, had she achieved something in her life, was she happy?”
And now, she finally has her beautiful answer. Roeléne thrived with her loving new family and has built a wonderful life of her own. Roeléne knows she will forever be in debt to the observant little girl who heard her cries.
“That child who didn’t know anything about me saved my life,” she says, looking at Louisa. “I’m so glad that she could fill in a little of the parts of my story I didn’t know.”
Now that their paths have miraculously crossed for a second time, Roeléne feels she has gained more than just answers; she has found a true friend in Louisa.
“It’s quite strange how much we have in common. We’re both involved in the church and we both live in Pretoria now. I have to pinch myself sometimes because it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a movie.”
