In 1983 I matriculated at SAHETI, the 3rd matric group at the school and a part of a group of kids who were blessed to be pioneers. For years after I finished my schooling, I would drive past SAHETI with a sense of longing, with a smile and with a warm heart.

I started at the school in Standard 4, the first Jewish child at the school ever (Intermediate Greek student and Greek Classical wannabee dancer), and the students in my year and the two years above me were closer than close. We loved our schooldays so much that we spent our holidays together at Holiday School, evenings and weekends we were at school for rehearsals for our epic productions and in our free time we were at each others’ homes, movies at Bedford Centre, socials at the Cyprus club, and just generally in each others’ pockets.

Then we grew up and made our own lives and families and careers and many of us lost touch. And 31 years later, social media, which I have used extensively in my business life but less so in my personal life, brought a bunch of us together. Karen (Wurfl) Becker - Class of 1982 and now living in Australia - and I connected on Facebook and we agreed to meet up after all these years during her visit to SA in March. She asked if I was in contact with any of our school friends and suggested maybe I would invite them to join us. Truth is, I had only kept touch with one or two of our crew, but I thought that maybe social media could help us out. So I opened a feather pillow on Facebook and the feathers floated further than we imagined, and next thing we had almost 30 people re-connecting on 4th March in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg.

Karen’s note to me brought so many people together – some SAHETI Alumni and other friends of SAHETI - Angelo Roussos, Dimitri Tzitzivacos, Mary Nicolaou, Michael Statheros, Aliki (Elia) Ttappous, Marianne (McGhee) Kohler, Warren Thomson, John Sferopoulos, Tasha (Tsokas) Rossen, Ian Katsivalis, Sheldon Thomas (by phone from news Cape Town!), Andrea Raftopolous, Helen (Yiannoulis) Moustakis and some partners (and I’m sure I’ve missed some, my apologies) and some who nearly made it but couldn’t. Many of our friends on Facebook from all over the world were with us in cyberspace and it was pretty amazing to know how connected we can be, if we just try.

Of course, some of the old friends are still good friends today, but most of us had not seen each other since we were our childrens’ ages – well my children anyway! There were no flowers, speeches or bands, but the evening was more successful than any of us imagined. We laughed and laughed. We remembered and told tales and laughed more. In the stories our friends told, many of us realised that who we are today was already evident back then. Every photo I look at from the evening is full of smiling faces that seem to look exactly as they did in the 80’s. More beautiful probably, more filled with life and love and experience and comfort in themselves. I couldn’t take the smile off my face for days. I still can’t. A small opening in a feather pillow and the world is connected!

Heidi (Greenberg) Brauer, SAHETI Alumna - Class of 1983