Out in Greene County, Iowa

A profoundly spiritual moment highlighted Simpson College’s “Lessons & Carols”

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
December 11, 2009
INDIANOLA, IOWA

When she was dying in Des Moines in the fall, 27-year-old Geni Stanley-Sigadi told her South African husband Highway Sigadi that he must “sing from your heart and tell your story.”

In the twilight of Sunday evening here at Simpson College, where he is a senior, the 33-year-old Highway Sigadi indeed sang from his heart. His a cappella tenor solo on “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” was the most breathtaking performance during 90 minutes of soaring spiritual music in Simpson’s annual “Festival of Lessons & Carols.” Walking slowly, occasionally stopping, across the altar area of beautifully decorated Smith Chapel, he sang with stunning clarity:

Sweet little Jesus boy
They made you be born in a manger
Sweet little holy child
We didn’t know who you were
Didn't know you’d come to save us Lord
To take our sins away
Our eyes were blind, we could not see
We didn't know who you were…

When he finished, there was a thick moment of silence when you could hear a pin drop in the packed chapel. It was clear we had just heard something special, something that was touching people deeply.


Highway Sigadi, a senior tenor majoring in vocal performance at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, is shown here doing an a cappella solo on “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” during the college’s annual “Festival of Lessons & Carols” on December 7. The festival features the College Choir, Women’s Chorale, Madrigal Singers, brass ensemble, organists and a number of faculty, staff and students who do biblical readings between musical selections. (Simpson College photo by Michael Rolands of the Indianola Record-Herald.)


But many, if not most, in the audience did not know the whole story. I’ve known Highway Sigadi for a decade, and there was a lot of his story I didn’t know about, either.

One thing I did know was that “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” was also the song that Iowa’s opera great Simon Estes sang the first time he ever performed in public, about 60 years ago. That was in Estes’ hometown of Centerville in south central Iowa, when another Iowa legend, Bill Riley, brought his “State Fair Talent Search” to town. Estes, then a boy soprano, wound up getting second in the state contest, singing that song.

So it especially grabbed my attention, during “Lessons & Carols” when Sigadi began singing “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” because a part of Sigadi’s story I did know was his connection to Estes.

In the late summer of 1998, Sigadi was one of the oldest among 40 black South African high school students whom Estes brought to the Des Moines area for a year of education in Iowa schools.

They came from desperate poverty in the townships that ring Cape Town on the southern tip of the African continent. Estes, who is African American, was moved by their plight while on a 1995 trip to perform at the Cape Town Opera. The choir from all-black Masiyile High School in Khayelitsha Township came to the airport to welcome Estes, and he was so impressed, he later visited that poverty-riddled, horribly-overcrowded public high school. Eventually, he founded his own Simon Estes Music High School, in a Cape Town suburb, to help give more of a lift to these oppressed students, and that school still operates today.

The group of 40 students who came for the 1998-’99 school year at a dozen central Iowa high schools, became the core of the first group of students to attend and graduate from Estes’ new school. While in Iowa, they lived with host families, had much medical and dental work done, and had their horizons greatly expanded. Sigadi looks back and realizes how the year he spent with Jim and Jean Holman, in West Des Moines, and studying at Dowling Catholic High School, was one of the most stable years in his life.

His life had been especially tough up ’til then, although he probably never thought of it that way. He just accepted what came his way and tried to keep growing.

He was born in Transkei, a rural region of South Africa well east of Cape Town, the homeland of the Xhosa people. His full name is Highway Nonkwenkwe Sigadi. “There is a small town in Transkei that is called ‘Highway,’ and I was named after it,” he explains.

He never knew his father. His mother “died in 1984 when I was nine years old.” He and his sister, then a baby, went to their grandmother, who took them in even though she was having her own health problems. By 1989, the grandmother’s health was failing, and Highway and his sister went to the townships outside Cape Town, where their uncle Johnson Sigadi took responsibility for them.

“I went to Cape Town first, and I will never forget that trip,” Highway Sigadi said. “I had no money, but I got on the bus in Transkei that was going to Cape Town. I told the driver I could not pay, but that when we got to Cape Town, I would telephone my uncle who would come pay for my trip.”

The driver, seeing a desperate 14-year old in front of him, told him to get on board, and in fact, Johnson Sigadi met the bus in Cape Town and paid for the ticket.

“In that time period, there was a whole lot of violence and protest going on across South Africa, and especially in Cape Town,” Highway Sigadi remembers.

People were demanding an end to Apartheid – the legalized system of racial separation and oppression by the government – and also demanding the release of their great hero Nelson Mandela, the freedom fighter who had been held a political prisoner for 27 years in a penitentiary on Robben Island, just off the coast of Cape Town.

In all the protests and violence, schools and many other public institutions were closed by strikes and by lack of security. One unfortunate long-term result of that: There is a generation of young South Africans, of Sigadi’s age, who lost four to five years of progress in education. Some never went back to school to finish. Sigadi did – at Masiyile High School in Khayelitsha Township, at Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines, and doing his final exam work at Simon Estes Music High School back in South Africa.

In that year the South African kids were in the Des Moines area, they performed as a choir all over Iowa – in churches, schools, colleges, at community concerts and even at the Iowa State Fair. They were a huge hit, and Sigadi was a lead singer and dancer in some of their numbers, and usually a ringleader in the fun that happened along the way, too.

He met, and became smitten with, Geni Stanley, the daughter of Harry “Stan” and Linda Stanley, of Des Moines, who were hosting others of the South African students. Highway and Geni, who was becoming a good singer, too, dated and were pretty certain they were falling in love.

He and the other South African students returned to Cape Town in the summer of 1999.

That November, Sigadi recalls, “Geni surprised me with a visit, and she stayed three months into early 2000.” During that time, Sigadi was also preparing and traveling for a four-week series of concerts with Estes and others in Switzerland and Austria, sponsored by South African Airways.

Highway and Geni talked about marriage during her visit, and he used some of his concert earnings to have an engagement ring made for her. She returned to the Des Moines area, but she soon sent Highway an airline ticket and in late June of 2000, he joined her in Iowa.

They married and lived for a time with Geni’s parents, the Stanleys. In 2002, their daughter Vuyiswa was born. Their son Highway Jr. was born in 2006.

Meanwhile, Highway landed a job working as an orderly in physical therapy Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, and his contagious personality and enthusiasm have made him a favorite employee around the hospital.

Simon Estes’ foundation, Mercy and Simpson College have all been generous in their support of Sigadi as he has followed the long, twisting route of a non-traditional student through the school.

The last few years, Geni Stanley-Sigadi began battling serious health problems. In 2006, she survived thyroid cancer. But liver and kidney problems followed, with infections and by late summer, Sigadi knew he would lose her. She died on October 31.

There are six other of the original group of 40 South African students who have returned to the Des Moines area to live and work. The six of them came together as a chorus to sing at Geni’s funeral. “They sang ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘Jerusalem,’ and they did such a beautiful job,” Highway said. “That meant so much to me.”

How is Highway, now a young widower with children 6 and 2, holding up?

“To tell you the truth, it is very hard,” he said. “I am hurting so bad with my wife gone. But I have the two little kids, and I can’t just stop, or go on to something else. I have to stay here and try to get life back together for my kids and me. I am very lucky to have my in-laws, who have helped me so much and still do. And I am lucky to have Mercy and Simpson helping me so much.”

What is ahead for him and his family?

“First, I want to finish my degree at Simpson,” he said. “I hope I can graduate in May. I am a person who wants to finish what I start, and I know I need that degree.”

And then?

“I would like to be able to have a future performing music,” he said. “Opera, if I get the chance, but other music, too. I’ve already done a few concerts, while I’ve been in school, and I want to do more of those.”

Robert Larsen, Simpson’s renowned opera director and professor, worked with Sigadi on his “Lessons & Carols” performance and is steering him through the requirements to earn his degree.

“I want Highway to have a future as a performer,” Larsen said. “He is not a great musician, in a traditional sense, but he is a great soul. He has a good voice, and he learns music quickly. That combination can be a good one. He will probably have to have employment on the side in years to come, but he has already shown that he has such a way with people in healthcare. They love him at Mercy!”

Larsen said he deeply admires Sigadi’s determination and resiliency.

“When you think about all he’s been through, you wonder, ‘How can he do it?’ ” the professor said. “Maybe it’s sheer naivete. He doesn’t know how incalculable the responsibilities are he has. He just handles them. It’s made a lot of us on the faculty – most of all Jamie Poulsen – go all out to help him.”

Meanwhile, Sigadi knows to sing from the heart and tell his story.