Township Life

Now that I am back in my cozy guesthouse I am going to try to write about the township experience in Guguletu. It has taken me the last two days to try to sort this out in a way that can best describe the experience to others. I said many times in the township, “I can handle this as long as I don’t say it out loud” as if seeing it was just a dream, but speaking of it made it real. And if it is real, it is much more difficult to handle. So this many not be in chronological order (and you know how that’s killing me!) but let me attempt to paint a picture of the whole experience instead.

(Picture here, a grocery store and TV repair shop in a shipping container.)

I will begin with township life, as it has been shown and described to me. We began with a Presbyterian church service, held at JL Zwane community center (pictured at top of the page). JL Zwane (say ZWAN-ee) is a nice modern facility with a church big enough to hold perhaps 200 people. Service began with singing – joyful, soulful singing in Xhosa (say KO-sa). They gave us hymnals and we attempted to sing in this language full of Xs and clicking sounds and words beginning with unfamiliar double consonant combinations like “mL” and “mf”. But not only do they sing, they sway and clap and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the rhythm of it right!

I was invited to speak by Rev. Edwin Louw, the director of the community center and now someone I call a dear friend. Fortunately he had taught me earlier in the week how to greet a group “Molo weni” – and when I said this they all greeted me in unison with something I didn’t recognize. I said something about being made to feel welcome already and thank you for inviting us: “Encosi” and they all said something back to that too. (If I haven’t explained, South Africa has 10 or 11 official languages, including English. Most of the adults speak English very well, although native to this township is Xhosa.)

We met our hosts for our homestays after that. These wonderful “Mamas” (and one Papa who really was more of a Brother) hugged us when they met us and we learned quickly that we’d be touched, hugged and squeezed for five days straight. My mama’s name was Thoka (TOE-kah) and I later met her husband Emdin (EM-djin, almost like “engine”) and 22 year old daughter Nokolunga (NO-ko-LOON-gah), whose room I shared. They own a family business making screen printed and embroidered shirts and other gear, particularly for their political party COPE (Congress of the People, the spin-off from the ruling party ANC) and various sporting events (the 2010 World Cup included). They are well off in this community. Their house is two bedrooms, one bath (no shower), living room and dining room, and a well-equipped kitchen with all the appliances we have at home with the exception of a clothes dryer. Because they run the business out of their home they also had a fax machine and a computer. All told this was probably about 1200 square feet. Pictured at left: Thoka and Emdin.

Each night we had dinner at one of the other homes where the students were staying (yes, dinner for all 11 of us, plus all of the Mamas, several children and grandchildren, other neighbors who helped cook). These other houses might have had rooms out in back of the house for the students to stay in, some did not have a bathtub with running water (ask Matt about his “township shower”: a bucket full of water and a cup), but some had “real showers” like we have at home. Most felt like they had been added onto piecemeal. All were heated by gas or electric space heaters. All had electricity and running water in some way. In the States we would have considered these homes to be lower-middle class to poor. But our perspective changed when we went out into the townships to visit the people helped by the JL Zwane staff.

The next level of homes (going down) is government homes built during the apartheid era (see left). These had some electricity, some running water, and concrete floors and walls, and usually more than one room. Roofs have holes in them, windows are broken and stuffed with paper or blankets to keep the rain and cold out. There were also hostels, built originally to house bachelors who were brought in from the rural areas to work for the white people. They were like the worst college dorm on steroids – one room, leaky, dirty, with shared bathrooms with sketchy plumbing. Although they were built to house one man, they now often hold entire families.

The next level down (yes, it gets worse) is an “informal settlement” home. I hate that phrase because it brings to mind American frontier people who circled the wagons at night and made a camp. This is nothing that adventurous or romantic – it is squalor. These shacks (which is what most people in the township call them) are made of corrugated metal, pieced together in any way possible, with tires and big rocks placed on the roofs to keep them from blowing away. Some have been standing long enough to have electricity in them (a wire hanging from the ceiling) but they must fetch water from a tap that is often shared by 50 other people. They are heated with paraffin heaters which are known to catch fire. They might have an electric burner on which to cook everything. There is no floor and are often built on low land, so in the rainy winter season not only do you have to worry about leaky roofs, you have to worry about seepage up through the sandy floor. And in the five nights we were there, I believe it rained every single night. The toilet is located outside – a port-a-potty also shared by about 50 others. Everywhere there is laundry hanging from the lines strung up between shacks. And shacks are wedged together with enough space between them that small children can squeeze through. Pictured here, shacks as far as the eye can see (this is Khayaleitsha, the bigget township in Cape Town) and laundry in an open area between several shacks.

And yet, as awful as this could be, I have never felt so welcomed to someone’s home as I was when we visited these homes. People showed us around, told us their story, posed for pictures, thanked us for coming, invited us to sit down on the rickety bed propped up on concrete blocks to keep them out of the water. They hung pictures (sometimes of American movie and pop stars), painted walls in bright colors, had pictures of Nelson Mandela. If we had asked to stay for a week, they would have offered us the bed and slept on the floor/ground.

Around the township, there are a many shops and businesses running out of shipping containers and other shacks. I’ve included a few pictures. We also ate lunch at Mozoli’s a meat market/barbeque joint. More meat on that table for 15 of us than most township folks eat in a month (see picture at left). And yes, Jane, we got "serviettes"!

As I mentioned we ate dinner every night together with our Mamas at one of our homestay houses. This was potluck gone wild: lots of meat (chicken, beef, lamb), pap (a very fine corn meal that looks liked mashed potatoes but sticks together in such a way as you can make balls out of it), rice, vegetables (squash, cooked carrots, spinach) and bread. To drink: always juice and Coke or orange Fanta! They always served us first. We always said a prayer for the food and a prayer before we parted. We also always sang a song (even once co-lead by me and the church’s song leader whose name I think was Goli). Singing is a lot of call and response and I did the calling part! (Merryl, if you’re reading this, you would have LOVED it!). The last few nights we danced too. These Mamas are mostly in their 40s and 50s and not one is too shy to have danced. And they taught us a move or two.

And so each night ended in prayer and singing and laughing. I think this is the only reason we survived what we saw during the day, what they see every day.

Coming up: the Children, education system, health care issues.