I'm drafting this the night of my first full day in Africa, whilst waiting for luggage (which, at the time of post, is 24 hours ago). Sorry to dwell; it’s increasingly distracting not being able to settle. I’m sitting in my lovely living room, waiting to jump up and be burned by the space heater in my inattentive rush.
I’m going to try something different this time around, with that extra-handy link at my disposal. I’ll include a summary of the post’s adventures on the blog page, and then expand beyond the link in most entries. I hope that this makes my blog easier to follow (and proves to you that I can be concise, but who would want to be concise habitually?).
After morning errands, we bussed to TSiBA, out partner school in this grand adventure. We finally met the students, split into 3 groups for convenience, and bussed to Langa, South Africa’s oldest township. We went on a township tour, guided by Emcee (or MC?), one of the entrepreneurs who has benefited from this program’s work. The township tour was a walking tour through the area, with intermittent bussings across larger areas. We stopped by the community centre, a shebeen, a smiley stand, one of the shacks (Emcee’s family’s), a renovated hostel, a Love Life centre, and a restaurant that doubles as a culinary/catering school.
That tour will immediately bring anyone into Africa. I can only begin to describe what it was like: what we saw, what we heard, what we tasted, what we smelled, and what we felt. Children run at you in the streets and smile as they grab your hand and walk with you, pose for pictures, and clamour to see their beautiful faces on the screen. Music plays from everywhere and cars speed through the narrow streets, sometimes calling to friends from windows. There are fires on most blocks, smoking animal heads and other parts or acting as the focal point of a braai. The dark smoke floats forth and mixes with fag smoke on the sidewalk around your head. Fewer people smoke than in Europe. They know what ‘vegetarian’ means. Everyone is so open and so kind, so unimposing. They smile and say something that I can’t understand in return when I say, ‘Enkosi--enkosi kakhulu.’
After late lunch, we returned to the hotel exhausted, some of us daunted by the errands that we had to run, computer or wireless setup, or the chronic lack of luggage. I feel guilty for missing my makeup brushes, my face wash and moisturiser, my organic and sweatshop-free wardrobe, and my Gucci shoes. I feel less guilty about the shoes, though, as my feet are unapologetic after spending the last four days in heels.
On errands this morning, I got groceries. I realised that my diet is really, really high maintenance, but I did manage to find organic coffee. They don’t do the organic so much here, it seems, even at Pick n’ Pay, the ‘Whole Foods of South Africa,’ (Bring Me My Machine Gun). I did buy really small yoghurts (and they spelled it correctly), even though I could only find fat-free. Shouldn’t there be yoghurts with fat in them? Alas, buying Soy Yoghurt is so easy… They didn’t even have any of the fancy Greek yoghurt that Ryan loves--I looked. I foraged for other comestibles, and now have things to eat and plans to cook after the second round of grocery shopping Wednesday.
It was great finally to meet the TSiBA students. Nqobile (guessing at the spelling, but sure that the ‘q’ is a click!), who had greeted us at the airport last night and mentioned something to me then in a flurry, remembered me this morning, which was a great welcome. She’s incredibly outgoing, that one. I put together what was going on after meeting a few of the other TSiBA students, all of whom remarked, ‘O, you’re Meaghan!’ and called for someone. One of the students, Zenifer, had seen my profile in LinkedIn and apparently couldn’t wait to meet me. My ego found that more than hilarious. We shook hands and he gave me a hug, but said nigh on nothing to me the rest of the day, which I found flattering but unattractive. Honestly, people, make with the unabashed conversation.
As horrible as I am with names, I know most of those in our ‘US group’ by now, and all of those within my ‘blue’ group. After gathering outside at TSiBA, Peter, the TSiBA professor, split us into three groups for convenience. He asked for volunteers for group leaders. Two of his students volunteered for the first two groups, and he said that he needed an American for the third and asked who would lead. After some silence, I through my arm into the air and declared, ‘I shall!’ because I’m ever the one to be shy.
Langa was founded in 1901 and established as a township in 1929. It became a black township under the Group Areas Act of 1950, when the white Afrikaans (as opposed to white English) Nationalist party took power and established Apartheid. Blacks could live in the countryside or in designated black townships, but not in coloured or white townships. There was a lovely era of mutual exclusion (and denial, and all manner of other human rights atrocities). In Langa there is pride. The sense of community is strong, and somewhat familiar. Neighbours look out for neighbours, which is considerably easier in the proximity of a township than it is where I grew up, but I could relate to the non-nosy sense of community. Everyone knows what is normal, and everyone calls just to make sure when something not normal is going on.
* The city centre is somewhere that I’d like to visit again. We saw one of the studios--pottery--and had a performance by the Happy Feet Dancers, a group of young children performing song, dance, and movements that originated from their mining forebears in jump suits, gum boots, and hard hats.
* In the shebeen (yay Irish etymology!), we sat around on low benches in a large room and practised ubuntu, which in this particular case meant drinking from the communal pot of umqombathi, traditional beer made with maize and sorghum, which inherently contains yeast. There was thick foam on the top, but settled, not bubbly, and the beer wasn’t quite carbonated. As Ben said, it’s not the first thing that I’ll order the next time that I sit down at a bar, but I could drink it. It had a very distinctive taste. Ubuntu tasted better.
John!
* Mm, the smiley stand. What’s a smiley, you ask? Well, when slaughter houses discard the heads of sheep, lambs, cows, et cetera, local people take the heads and char-broil them, brushing any remaining bristly hairs off with an iron brush. I don’t know when the last time was that you saw a char-broiled sheep’s head, but if it were to-day, then you’d have to agree that the poor animal did look like it’s smiling. It’s smiling because the inside of its cheek, its tongue, its eyes, and its inner ears are delicious, apparently.
* The living conditions were neat but haphazard. I wanted to build everyone houses. And gardens. Everything was small. Some shacks/row houses were larger, but still had far too many people living in them. Emcee said that the more people who went into the house, the more that the house stretched. In the renovated hostel, in which only male miners used to live, there were now sometimes 3 families living in a room, one to each bed.
Yep, 3 families in there.
* O, the children. More on the children later; they deserve their own post. I can’t even begin.
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