OK so now I shall explain my problem with the waterfront. Basically, like I said before, it is a big fat lie! There we are safe and sound in this wonderful clean place with fancy italian and sushi restaurants, with a gigantic mall full of brand name stores, surrounded by tons and tons of shops, and yet if you go just a little ways outside the waterfront and the city you are hit with the exact opposite. The amount of poverty I saw in South Africa was awful, but all of it was in the townships, where the blacks were pushed during the apartheid. The Africana’s were free to work good jobs and enjoy the waterfront, while the blacks were lucky if they could find any job at all. But wait I thought the apartheid had it’s great ending? I guess it has only been 16 years since Nelson Mandela won the presidential election, and yeah there is no more violence against the blacks, they don’t have to stay out of the cities, but what else has changed for them? Can’t they do anything about the poverty? Another issue now is that people are migrating from Zimbabwe (where the government is really screwed up right now) following the rumors that there are plenty of jobs in south Africa, unfortunately that is a lie and so they end up in the townships totally stuck. One good thing that is going on in the townships I learned about during my home stay.
Unfortunately my home stay didn’t start first thing in the morning I had some time to kill before. So what do you do when you are all alone, in a new city, and there is a limited area where it is actually safe to roam around? Well I don’t know about you but I go in search of free internet. Haha. Pretty lame right? I agree….but that’s how a lot of my time was spent in South Africa, everybody I would hang out with ended up going on long day trips that I couldn’t join cause I had an sas trip, and so I would be abandoned at the waterfront. So I spent a lot of time navigating the gigantic mall, finding the best place to get internet and eating yummy food.
I was soooo bored and ready to get away from the waterfront once the time came for us all to gather for the home stay. Our group was given an amazing introduction to the place where we were going to spend the night. It turned out that the township community that we were going to was not one of the original townships where people were forced to live during the apartheid. Rather it was a newer township built on the land that once separated the townships from the city. Our guide’s story was quite interesting. He was a white man who had volunteered with habitat for humanity through his church and had spent a lot of time in the townships. As he spent more time with the people of the township he got more and more involved with helping them find ways to support themselves. It turns out that the women and their family’s that we would be spending the evening with had created their own organization to help support themselves and that was offering their homes to people like us for a small amount of money. It sounded like a pretty awesome deal and I got very excited hearing about the kindness of the mamas we would get to meet. Once we got to the township we gathered at the main mama’s house where the other mamas were to meet us. We received another brief introduction from the mama as we waited for other mamas to gather. We learned that we were going to be split in to pairs and taken in to a home. I was soooo excited to meet my mama and amazingly enough we found each other before we were even formally introduced. My friend Maria, a nice girl who I had recently met was immediately drawn to one mama because they both had dred locks. They began talking and soon realized that they had been matched up, along with me as well. I won’t ever forget about when I met my mama, she gave me a big hug and she said “I could tell right away that you were my girls, they always give me the naughty ones.” Hahaha. She got really excited, told us that we would be cooking dinner together and then we would dance all night. When we were finally free to go our mama walked Maria and I around town a little bit and we greeted some of her friends on the way to her house. Everyone I met was so excited to greet us. They were all smiling and laughing.
When we arrived at Mama’s house I was shocked at how beautiful it was. It wasn’t a huge house, it was simple with concrete walls and floor, it only had a small living room two bedrooms and a small kitchen, but the way she had decorated it was so colorful. None of the furniture matched, some of it was falling apart, but she had pictures and decorations hung up everywhere which made the house seem very nice. Mama led Maria and I to our room which was furnished very nicely with two tiny twin beds with giant mismatching pillows and comforters. After we had a small tour of the house we sat and began cooking dinner.
As we were cutting up sweet potatoes and carrots mama started playing music and started dancing. It was so awesome to see her being so excited and we had to join her. Soon she took over the cooking, although Maria and I offered to help more but she wouldn’t let us. Soon after we received a few gifts, one was mama’s good friends miss Lucile, another was mama’s sister’s granddaughter, and then another was a high school student who often visited mama. It was good talking to these people, Miss Lucile was very curious about where we came from, and about our studies, we talked to the high school girl about what life was like. I asked her about tall the languages she could speak and when she found out that I could only speak English she was shocked. How I wish that wasn’t the case. Mama’s grandniece was a very shy little girl who barely spoke any English. We were able to feed her some dinner which she seemed very excited about.
When we did finally sit down for dinner mama led us in a short prayer, she insisted that we take a picture of the dinner table al beautifully set. Before we ate she insisted that we eat the South African way, eating the chicken with our hands. The dinner was really good, minus the beat salad, but I was still able to eat everything on my plate, with a little help from Maria.
After dinner we went across the street to visit the neighbors. We brought food to a small family who was enjoying some tv before they went to bed. Again mama insisted that we take lots of pictures of her neighbors. We went to another neighbor’s house, two young girls with their grandmother and when mama insisted that we also take pictures of them the girls ran in to their room and changed from their pajamas to nicer clothes. This household was a little funny to me, the whole house was painted pink and the grandma and her grand daughters were also dressed in the same color pink. It definitely brought a lot of light to the house. Soon it was time to go home and leave the neighbors alone.
Maria, who is a part of a video journalism class asked to interview mama once we were comfortably, situated back at home. Immediately the atmosphere changed. Maria asked mama to talk about her life and we could tell just by the look on mama’s face that she had had a very difficult life. She told us about her two children who she had to send away to the east coast as she worked on the west coast. She told us about how she received a letter from their caretakers saying that her children had become ill and she told us that by the time she was able to make it to see them her children had already died and had been buried. She told us of her third son who was a very good man, he became a police officer. When he was thirty he was working overnight in the office with his partner and they had both fallen asleep. The windows and doors were all closed and the fumes coming from the coals which they used to heat the cold office killed both of the men in their sleep. She also told us about how her husband had left her, and how confused she was by that. Our mama had had a very painful life, and yet after hearing her story she insisted that we dance as we got ready for bed. It is amazing how horrible one’s life can be and yet how they are able to move on and live life to the fullest.
After hearing our mama’s stories we all agreed it was time for bed. Maria and were both so tired, we both easily fell asleep, but it didn’t feel like we were asleep for very long before we were woken by mama’s grand-niece, who came to say goodbye to us before she went to school. She was such a sweet heart, she gave each a big hug before she left. Mama then told us to go back to sleep and we were both happy to obey. The rest of our time spent with our mama was spent eating, we were served porridge and coke. Yum. Miss Lucile came to walk us back to where our group was waiting and we walked down the street of our township, greeting people we passed and saying goodbye to the many people we had met. Our mama was of course sad to see us go but her smile never left her face, even after we got on the bus waving goodbye to her. I was very sad to say goodbye to my new mama, she was such a strong example of what life should be: No matter what happens don’t give up hope and keep on dancing!
So I feel really terrible for not keeping up with my blog. As many of you know I will be comeing home soon. It is really important to me that I keep writing in my blog, I have so many stories I have to record, so i will continue writing even after I get home. I hope some of you will continue you reading. I learned so much on this trip and I would really like to share it all with you!
Thanks for all the support!
Jya Ne!
