A few days ago, we went on a tour of Langa township, the township where we are living. In my last entry, I explained what a township is (basically a “suburb” of the cities where Black people were confined to live during apartheid). We’ve gotten a lot of weird looks from people when we say we’re living in Langa since most people think of it as really violent, poor, and dangerous, so it’s been a really interesting experience seeing where people’s expectations of the township are in relation to what we are actually living. On some levels, their expectations are correct: none of us are allowed to walk anywhere by ourselves, we must keep all valuables hidden when we do walk (with people from the community), and we’re not allowed to use public transportation in the area, at least until the Independent Study period, so we have private buses to take us to and from our classroom. Even our buses are unwilling to enter the townships at night because there are sometimes carjackings and muggings. While I don’t know enough about Langa to say that calling it dangerous is a misconception, I can tell you that the street I live on, Moshesh, is really wonderful. There are tons of kids that are always playing outside- soccer in the streets, cards on someone’s front porch, and in the evenings, the moms all sit outside on plastic chairs and chat. On my first day, my Mama told me that if something bad were to happen on this street, everyone would know it was caused by someone who doesn’t live there since they know and trust everyone. I feel safe in my house and on my block because already everyone knows me, but I know that if my 13 year old Sisi uses caution when she leaves the immediate area, I should too, especially since I obviously stand out.
So, last week, we went on a tour of Langa run by an environmental NGO with its base just two blocks from me. Even though my noble ideas about Development were ripped apart and then stamped on by Lubkeman’s Development Anthropology class last semester, the organization seemed really great- it was dedicated to building community gardens, selling artwork and jewlery made by community members, and giving tours of the township to tourists looking for the “real South Africa.” (Speaking of these tourists, we saw some of them while we were walking and they were so unreal- literally, Hawaiian shirts, beige shorts, strapped sandals, sunhats, sunglasses! And I think that I stand out in Langa…)
The types of housing in townships in South Africa literally range from slums and tin shacks all the way to mansions and Langa is no exception. On our tour we visited the “Beverley Hills” of Langa- a block with enormous gated mansions with driveways and cars in them. These are some of the only two-story houses in the side of the township we’re in. (Two of the students in our group were very luckily placed there and one has an amazing view of Table Mountain from her second story window. And her own bathroom. With a shower. I’m not jealous.)
Literally two blocks from Beverley Hills is Joe Slovo, an informal housing settlement of tin shacks with cardboard floors. Housing is a huge issue in South Africa and the housing system here is completely foreign to me. Basically, since 1994, the ANC has built homes for the poor because the new democratic constitution basically says that everyone has the right to shelter that they own. However, you must meet specific qualifications and standards in order to be given a “free” house and the new homes take time to build. I say “free” because they are expensive once you move in- you must pay electricity and water bills which are really expensive here. Even my homestay, though my family is not “poor,” (I mean this by comparison to the much poorer people here, but compared to American standards, most of the rest of the world is poor) conserving water and electricity is really important because it is so expensive. But I digress- basically, in South Africa, and in the continent of Africa as a whole, there is a huge trend of rural to urban migration- the movement of massive amounts of people towards large cities and their surrounding townships and suburbs in an effort to look for jobs (unemployment in South Africa is at 40%). But many of these migrants set up shacks on municipal land, and law states that if people have called land home for 4 or 5 years, they are allowed to fight for that land in court and the government cannot take it away.
So basically, Joe Slovo is this neighborhood of shacks right next to mansions of people who have claimed the land as their own and are given free electricity and free running water by the government. And what often happens is that people don’t want to move into homes because these amenities are so expensive that when they are awarded a home, they often stay in their shacks and rent out the home to others, or sometimes move into the home and stay in their shacks. To make matters worse, they often rent to illegal (and legal) immigrants, mostly from other parts of Africa, so immigrants are often living in the homes that were rightfully built by the government for citizens of South Africa. This, among other things, has created a huge backlash against immigrants, especially those from Zimbabwe, and there was a lot of xenophobic violence last May, mostly in townships outside of Jo-Burg.
As we continued our walk through Langa, we also saw some other really cool things:
1) An old woman killing chickens she kept in crates. She was just wringing their necks really casually and even smiled to let someone in the group take a picture. (I of course didn’t bring my camera since we were told not to take pictures of people in the neighborhood or to flash our wealth around, but I’ll have to steal someone’s pics off facebook and post them here.)
2) These two guys with a shopping cart full of bloody goats’ heads. Apparently they (goat brains) are a delicacy here. They were pretty gross but also really cool. I’ve probably eaten some and not even known it since my sisi cooks unidentified meat with really weird-shaped bones all the time. (If I have had it, it’s delicious, because everything she has cooked has been amazing.)
One other Langa-related thing I’ve learned since I’ve arrived. South Africa has a huge transportation crisis. There’s no public bus system or bus lines and the trains are so overcrowded (think worse than Santiago overcrowded, for anyone who went to Chile with me) that today we were driving and a train passed and all the doors were open and people were literally hanging out of the train doors with five or six people standing on the rickety link between the cars as it sped by. It was UNREAL. The only bus system they have is in the form of mini-buses- like 12 person white vans that are privately owned and run on routes that only locals know. They tend to be safe, but you should never get in them by yourself if they are empty and you shouldn’t ride them after dark into the townships
South Africa supposed to host the World Cup in 2010 but government has to deal with the public transportation issue before they do because at least 1 million tourists are supposed to descend upon the country and they won’t be able to move around easily anywhere.
Basically, getting in and out of the townships is really challenging for ordinary working people and it’s something I find really interesting in terms of the “ideal” system of apartheid which physically separated blacks and whites in schools and restaurants, etc. but also geographically separated them and really, to this day, has prevented many of them from being able to rise out of poverty because of the huge distance needed to travel daily to get into the center of the cities for labor. When we read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, he talked about sometimes having to walk from Soweto (township outside of Jo-Burg) into central Jo-Burg when he couldn’t afford transport into the city. It was at least a twenty minute bus ride from central Jo-Burg when we visited his home in Soweto.
So since the government is faced with this issue, they are attempting to create some kind of public bus transportation system, but the mini-bus drivers are really angry because they’ll lose out of business so they held strikes all of last week and kids couldn’t get to school and many people had no way of getting to work. My sisi stayed home from school for three days last week because she couldn’t physically get there. I tell you this because there’s a rumor going around in the townships that they plan to strike for ten days this week since they don’t think the government is taking them seriously. Shane (Irish Academic Director with two pairs of glasses) doesn’t believe they will because it will cost them too much money, but stay tuned.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
First Post!
Molo everyone! Thanks for reading!
As this is my first entry, I’ll begin by explaining a little bit about what this journal is about. I am Susan, a native New Yorker and a junior at GW in
I haven’t been able to update for awhile, so bear with me during the enormous entry. After a 17 hour flight which stopped for an hour in
The first is a seminar on multiculturalism and social change. The seminars are often taught by guest speakers from universities in
The second is an introductory Xhosa class, an indigenous language spoken in parts of South Africa, mostly in the Eastern Cape. (Click your tongue when you say the X, almost like Kosa. Almost.) This is taught by Nomawethu, one of our professors at SIT. She is basically our mama.
The third is a field study seminar, which teaches us how to conduct interviews, observe
The independent study project. A four week portion at the end of the program where we will use our language skills, our field study skills, and the knowledge gained during the seminar to examine a topic of our choice, interview local people, do independent research, and write a 30 to 40 page paper of our findings. Most students use this as the basis for their thesis when they arrive back in the
Other important faculty members: Shane, our academic director. Picture a short Irish man, buzz-cut, grey-haired, wearing sunglasses on his head and regular glasses on his face, at all times. He talks in a roundabout way, has lived and taught in
Tabisa: Basically, Shane and Nomawethu’s bitch. She does everything, including telling us she’ll take us out dancing one of these days. But she’s young and supercool and hangs out with us when they’re not looking, and even when they are.
So, Jo-burg. We spent about 4 days there, stayed in a group hostel, took some introductory Xhosa lessons, and our first seminars on South African history, Bantustans (African “homelands” created as a means to segregate during apartheid), and the constitutional court, took a tour of downtown Jo-Burg, and saw most of it from the top of a very high building.
Sidenote: A mouse just ran in and out of my room. Cool times.
We also drove past Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s homes in
We also visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial, a memorial for a young boy who was killed in the Soweto uprising of 1976, an uprising by black students against making it mandatory for subjects in schools to be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the white, Dutch South Africans. The uprising occurred because Blacks in the townships felt that by being taught in Afrikaans rather than English, they were being made into incapable workers unable to speak English and forced to live in poverty in the townships rather than make a life for themselves.
Lastly, we visited the apartheid museum. For anyone who doesn’t know, apartheid means “separateness” in Afrikaans. It was a political policy established in 1948 which basically declared that whites and blacks should live their lives on a completely separate trajectory. It remained this way until 1994, when Blacks were given the right to vote and the ANC (led by Mandela) was voted into power.
We left for
As I write this, it is Sunday, February 8th, my second night in my homestay in Langa, a township outside of
Highlights of the homestay family so far:
1) Lots of bugs. It’s so hot here that the door needs to be open at all times except at night, so I understand why, but Jesus Christ, I have never seen so many bugs. On the bright side, there are much fewer spiders than bugs, so I can handle the situation.
2) I put salt in my coffee this morning. Mama and sisi (sister Ncisiwadi) said to just help myself to things, so I did. I figured the Tupperware next to the instant coffee (Shoutout to Meg, NESCAFE!) filled with white crystals would be sugar and proceeded to add it liberally to my coffee. Then I failed to understand what I had done, and wondered these two really stupid things:
1. Maybe the sink is not working and salt water comes out.
2. Did Sisi add salt to the water boiler for the baby?
Seriously? I can’t even believe these thoughts popped into my head. They’re so stupid it’s probably wasting my time to pick them apart and insult myself more. Salt fail.
3) We don’t have a shower, only a tub. This was unexpected, but it’s not a bad situation, only a surprise. I bathed tonight (and it wasn’t saltwater, OMG NO WAY) and it was actually pretty nice, and I feel really clean. Yay to cleanliness.
Last few things. It is REALLY, REALLY, INSANELY, HOT HERE. Every pore on my entire body is sweating. And each bead of sweat from each of those pores is sweating. It’s a good time.
The group is really nice and a lot of fun. I was really nervous about getting to know 18 other people but I’m really happy that everyone turned out to be really nice.
I went to church earlier today and really enjoyed it. There is a lot of singing and dancing and harmonizing and it lasted for 3 hours. My little sisi wanted to get out of there so we left early, but it was really interesting and I might go back next weekend with Mama.
Other things I’ve noticed:
1) Everyone calls texting SMSing here.
2) Nobody uses teapots here, just electric water boilers. Basically an electric pitcher that boilers water.
3) Napkins are called diapers. This is kind of funny, but also has caused me to reevaluate a sentence in Love Actually. When Hugh Grant says “No nappies, no teengagers, no crazy ex-wife,” he means no diapers.
Well, I’m getting tired now, so goodnight all. Stay tuned for more entertainment, possibly in the form of saltwater and diapers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)