Adopted at birth by parents who met in the Eastern Cape, Ashley Brownlee grew up with a persistent sense of otherness, and in his forthcoming memoir Agency, the Klein Karoo guesthouse owner tries to make sense of dreaded illnesses, poor life choices and heartbreaking losses.
A former actor, Brownlee, 55, now lives with his life partner Andre Hagan between Barrydale and Ladismith, where they own Wolverfontein Karoo Cottages, the backdrop of this compelling, wry and often hilarious story.
Daily Dispatch asked him:
What made you decide that now was the time to tell your story?
In 2021, diagnosed with yet another unexpected deadly disease — I have a penchant for being poorly — I languished in a Cape Town hospital for more than two months. During this time, I posted daily on Facebook; stories of the horrors and humours that accompany a life-threatening predicament.
It would not be the first time I’d faced my own mortality, but it would be the first time I’d considered how important storytelling was in the process of healing, which is how the tentative scribblings that would become Agency bubbled to the surface.
I turned 55 this year, almost six years since I fathomed my book into reality, which makes it feel auspicious and perfectly timed.
You have mentioned that even though you were born in Cape Town, you are a ‘son of the Eastern Cape’. Why is that?
I carry the surname of the Rev John Brownlee, who established the mission station which became King William’s Town/Qonce. He is my adopted father’s great-grandfather.
Also, my adopted parents met each other in the then Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha) in the late ’60s.
My father was one of many engineers lured to what was then known as East London (KuGompo City) for work at that time and my mother was a local PE girl from Collegiate. She was the daughter of a well-known doctor and lived in Western Road. She worked for Union Castle.
I was, incidentally, conceived by my biological parents just down the road from Western Road in a sea-view apartment, during their torrid year-long relationship. All around the same time, like magic.
So, even though I now live in the Klein Karoo — when I’m not travelling the world — I’m a son of the Eastern Cape!
You grew up in 1970s Cape Town. How conscious were you as a child of the society and political system around you?
I was adopted at birth, so for the most part it all felt decidedly odd to me, as nothing seemed particularly real. If your instincts about who you are run at odds with where you are, it can be both dazzling and disorientating.
In the world I found myself in — where I felt decidedly other — I found myself seeing very clearly the others that were marginalised and thrown away too.
It was abundantly clear from a very early age that there was an “us and them” situation, created by both invisible rules and visible motorways, that made Cape Town a divided city.
I never fully understand the dangers that came with this realisation — nor the threat I actually posed — until much later.
When did you realise your childhood experiences could form the basis of a book?
Great question. Once I realised that the hospital stories could act as a kind of coat hanger, onto which I could drape my childhood experiences, I began to see the potential for a book.
If I could tie my lived experiences to my recovery, exploring how the outcome of present trauma is often already decided in the past, I could write a book that was life-affirming and generous of spirit.
Agency no longer has the structure I initially imagined with the coat hanging — but it was the key to unlocking the belief in it.
Was there anything you discovered about yourself while writing the book that surprised you?
Wowzers, that’s a toughie. I think I discovered that I had a great deal more fortitude and patience than I’d previously thought, and that I was wise enough now — as opposed to my youth — to let things go.
Writing Agency has been a labour of love with many guiding hands. So apart from developing a rather thick skin, it’s also been an incredibly humbling experience.
You were adopted at birth. How has that shaped your understanding of identity and belonging?
Abandonment issues aside, much of my life has felt more like a choose-your-own-adventure tale rather than that which is experienced by those with biological family.
This feeling — that I was making it up as I went along — came with a huge amount of freedom to explore.
There’s no mad great-aunt in the attic, unless you want there to be, dictating your mental health. I was never going to be the product of any particular gene pool that I knew of, which gave me the freedom to steer my becoming in any which way I could imagine.
There are, of course, unknown genetic predispositions at play, but there’s no reflection mirror to compare yourself to.
My belonging – even though securely rooted in its space and time — was, for all intents and purposes, open to a variety of realities. It’s certainly an unusual way to unfurl into the world.
The helicopter crash and the murder of your godfather are described as moments that shattered your sense of security. Can you briefly tell us about those events and how they changed you?
These two incidents — both standout events from my childhood — brought home the realisation that what felt like an imagined, or conjured life, could also have dire consequences, which were very real.
The helicopter crash took the life of my first godfather, while my second godfather was murdered by his gardener.
It had not dawned on me until that point that others — equally ensconced in their own adventures — could brush up against mine and die. I quickly decided that my death would never be the cliffhanger in someone else’s soap opera, that I would always control the narrative.
How did loss influence the person you are now?
Aside from a string of losses which played out in my childhood — which would also include pets and grandparents and baby pacifiers — it’s the overwhelming loss of friends from the HIV/Aids pandemic that truly altered me.
Diagnosed HIV+ in 1993, there was no viable treatment available. An ARV medication roll-out would only be sanctioned by the Mbeki government in 2003. So while clinging onto my own precarious health, I watched dozens pass during these early years.
Barely into my twenties, I learnt very quickly how to manage grief and anger, but only just. Without the tools and emotional support because it was a time of immense ignorance and societal shame, I made mistakes, misdirecting the overwhelming burden of grief into some poor life choices.
But there’s also a light in Agency, a result of having nothing to lose, as ultimately, among the horrors of dying, I took a chance on love and changed my life.
What was the most difficult chapter to write?
It was less about the challenges presented by certain chapters — I’m a pretty quick writer once the juices get flowing.
The real difficulty was the sitting in subject matter that bristled with horror and uncomfortable truths. Wading through your own complicity is never an easy journey, especially when the unpacking is so revealing.
Why did moving away from Cape Town give you the distance you needed to understand your childhood differently?
By the time I left Cape Town I was drowning in sorrow and excess — a scratchy drug addiction that would not let go.
It was the slow resurfacing, in an environment free from distraction, that provided a safe harbour for self-reflection. In the Karoo there’s nowhere to go but in.
The Klein Karoo seems to be an important part of your story. What did you find there that you haven’t found elsewhere? And how did you come to end up there?
The Klein Karoo has been an ethereal undercurrent for most of my life, a calling home I guess and a theme I explore throughout Agency.
My partner and I purchased our Karoo home in 2002, when after a night of raucous clubbing we found it advertised in the Country Living section of the Weekend Argus. We drove up to put in an offer that day. When I finally moved here in 2006 — in a desperate last-ditch attempt at redemption — I began a journey back to self.
As my heart healed, it also cracked open, releasing a spiritual awakening that needed an enormous open space to breathe itself into fruition. Conveniently, the desert is born to hold and cradle the soul.
You have a background in speech and drama. Can you briefly tell us about that and also if that had any influence in the way you shaped your story?
Transformation is the surest path to healing. If you can imagine yourself whole, healed and restored, then it’s entirely possible. I arrived from “the agency” with many squiff conditions, one of which was juvenile scoliosis.
My mother, faced with the possibility of her child spending his childhood in a brace, enrolled me in spine-aligning ballet school. This set in motion a career in the arts, culminating in three years of speech and drama at UCT.
Having the skill set required for massive immersive pretending — being able to assume the costume and character of an imagined person — has allowed me to put on the visage of bigger and bolder people, especially at time when I’m feeling vulnerable or anxious.
I am no longer a professional actor, but the life skills have been invaluable.
What was your funniest memory to revisit?
That is a difficult question, as I’m almost always constantly bemused by life, so funny runs in my blood. Peter-Adrian Altini, author of Salt Water Pool Boy, called Agency “laugh out loud funny”, but I’m also told I have a dark sense of humour — macabre even — so the humour in Agency is a way to combat the often crippling sadness that surrounds childhood trauma and chronic illness.
It is also a reaction to finding yourself unsteady on your feet, as I was when I first moved to the Klein Karoo — surrounded by two-tone khaki and the brandy-and-coke doomsday cults — my experiences of this new environment, and it’s quirky village-folk, will surely illicit a wry smile among the knowing.
Why do you think humour is important when telling one’s story, even if it involves loss and hardship?
Laughter is not only contagious, but a universal experience too, an essential counterbalance to the darkness.
Not everyone will relate to the sometimes unique challenges I face in Agency, but when hardship is presented in a way that tickles the funny bone it gives the reader a hug. It’s a kind of kindness, offered as an exchange for the ocean of compassion I’m asking them to swim in. It’s the buoyancy that keeps us afloat.
What do you hope readers who are adopted will take away from this book?
Ahh, for my adopted brothers and sisters, for folks with adopted children, and also for those who’ve given their children up for adoption, I hope you’ll see your particular magic celebrated in Agency. Because not all adoption stories are the same and some require a little more generosity than others.
I hope they’ll be inspired to seek ways to live their true and authentic lives by embracing the paths less travelled. I hope they feel seen.
Your memoir asks, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where do I belong?’ Do you feel you have finally found an answer?
I wish there were a simple answer to that. So, … maybe, perhaps? My problem is that I’m feverishly curious about the vagaries of truth. I’m always dreaming of the next great adventure — most recently a safari to Gonarezhou in Zimbabwe. So my anchor is tenuous, my belonging fleeting, ever open to change.
The Karoo is my home, my present temperament is still, but my mind is constantly in flux. My father would always say that matter is merely the conjuring of memory, and that seeking the answer as separate from the problem will leave you in the dark.
It’s a paraphrasing of something Isaac Asimov said about the universe, I think. Just like the expanding universe, I’ve only just begun to fully understand my purpose.
