Saturday, 23rd April, 2011.
We departed from Tsitsikamma early Saturday morning and made the drive to Cape Town, stopping for a nice lunch along the way. Our destination for the evening was Gugulethu, a township about 10 miles outside of Cape Town. Mama Knox had started a cooperative business with our tour guide, Mike, through which people were taken into homes of other Mamas in the neighborhood for home stays. She started with just a few Mamas and now has 16 other Mamas in her business. We arrived in Gugulethu around 6:30 pm that night, an hour behind schedule and our Mamas had all gone home to finish cooking dinner. When they returned they took us in pairs to their homes. Heather and I were to stay with Mama Ndsentu and her family. Her youngest son, Siko (who was 5), was a bouncing dancing ball of energy the entire time. When we got to the house, we met her older daughter Natasha, who was 15, had cooked us all dinner. The home was quite nice inside. The rooms were in no short supply of decorations and the appliances you would find in any other home were present. Besides the neighborhood, the only ways you could tell you were in a township home were from the age of the house and the building materials. The bathroom was half-finished and the laundry was obviously done in the bathtub. After we sat and had some introductory conversation about her family and the usual questions about our schooling, we took a short walk to her friends house. A short distance from her house we heard a dog crying and saw one lying in the street. Mama Ndsentu immediately said that her dog always sleeps in the street and was probably just fine but when the crying persisted, we went over to the dog who’s gritted teeth revealed its pain. A neighbor man came to carry the dog back to the driveway of the house as Mama Ndsentu’s husband was arriving home from work. Eventually the dog was stood up and it shook the shock off and seemed fine. They took the dog to the garage and Heather and I still don’t know what came of it. We continued on our walk following the dog incident. When we arrived at her friend’s house, her friend’s son let us in and we stayed for a little while even though his mother wasn’t home. He and Mama Ndsentu’s two sons taught me how to play UNO which was quite funny playing with three tricky little boys.
We departed from Tsitsikamma early Saturday morning and made the drive to Cape Town, stopping for a nice lunch along the way. Our destination for the evening was Gugulethu, a township about 10 miles outside of Cape Town. Mama Knox had started a cooperative business with our tour guide, Mike, through which people were taken into homes of other Mamas in the neighborhood for home stays. She started with just a few Mamas and now has 16 other Mamas in her business. We arrived in Gugulethu around 6:30 pm that night, an hour behind schedule and our Mamas had all gone home to finish cooking dinner. When they returned they took us in pairs to their homes. Heather and I were to stay with Mama Ndsentu and her family. Her youngest son, Siko (who was 5), was a bouncing dancing ball of energy the entire time. When we got to the house, we met her older daughter Natasha, who was 15, had cooked us all dinner. The home was quite nice inside. The rooms were in no short supply of decorations and the appliances you would find in any other home were present. Besides the neighborhood, the only ways you could tell you were in a township home were from the age of the house and the building materials. The bathroom was half-finished and the laundry was obviously done in the bathtub. After we sat and had some introductory conversation about her family and the usual questions about our schooling, we took a short walk to her friends house. A short distance from her house we heard a dog crying and saw one lying in the street. Mama Ndsentu immediately said that her dog always sleeps in the street and was probably just fine but when the crying persisted, we went over to the dog who’s gritted teeth revealed its pain. A neighbor man came to carry the dog back to the driveway of the house as Mama Ndsentu’s husband was arriving home from work. Eventually the dog was stood up and it shook the shock off and seemed fine. They took the dog to the garage and Heather and I still don’t know what came of it. We continued on our walk following the dog incident. When we arrived at her friend’s house, her friend’s son let us in and we stayed for a little while even though his mother wasn’t home. He and Mama Ndsentu’s two sons taught me how to play UNO which was quite funny playing with three tricky little boys.
After the lively game of UNO we went back to the house and ate dinner. They were all quite surprised that Heather and I had eaten samp before and liked it. Dinner brought good light conversation with the whole family, Shrek 2 providing a charming ambiance. After eating, Heather and I offered to do the dishes and Siphosethu, the 12 year old daughter whose turn it was to do dishes, emphatically accepted. To be honest it was the most fun I have ever had doing dishes. We chatted with Sipho and Siko commanded Heather and I to wash the dishes, demonstrating with an imaginary dish. Siko also graced us with his modeling walk and tried to teach us how to dance. It’s a little embarrassing when a 5 year old boy is better at dancing than a 20 year old girl but it’s entertaining nonetheless. Siko then decided to label Heather and I as different kinds of fruits and finally me as a shark and Heather as a fish. While the conversation with Sipho remained light and on the surface, giggles were had and a little bit of expectation was broken down. They were all surprised Heather and I had offered to do the dishes and when we had fun doing it and chatted with the family as if it were normal, I think they were pleasantly surprised.
After dishes and a little more of Shrek, the family began to yawn and bedtime became imminent. When we were shown the bedroom, it became obvious we had displaced two of the children, which was slightly uncomfortable but we knew there was nothing we could do about it. We whispered our thoughts about the day for a few minutes and promptly fell asleep. At 2 am the dog started barking relentlessly for like 10 minutes and I was up the rest of the night every half hour. When morning broke, we were offered a shower but we said we could just pin our hair up. It seemed like taking a shower was quite the task as Mama would have had to heat water on the stove and put it in the tub and we only had 20 minutes before Mass. We ate a quite breakfast and took a picture with the two boys and Mama Ndsentu and were walked back to Mama Knox’s house.
While we didn’t have any conversations that explored life in the township or racial boundaries, the home stay was still a wonderful experience. We were offered insight into what a family in a township, albeit a nicer part of the township, lived like. It’s a simple thing, but we broke down some boundaries that are not often broken. We were told that foreigners, much less white foreigners, do not stay in the townships often. It was unheard of for whites to sleep in the townships until only a few years ago and whites during apartheid could not enter the townships for fear of violent repercussions, fears based in reality. So our simple home stay is evidence of the small steps in the continuing road of breaking down the continued legacy of apartheid.
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