Best day of my life (Tip: Took 8 pages in Word)
Trip Start
Feb 07, 2007
1
27
50
Trip End
May 15, 2007
Cape Town,
South Africa
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
A Capetown sunset
. However, I figured I'd try another ATM because perhaps this one was just having problems. Nope, definitely was my card. I then tried to use a pay phone with my credit card, but when the phone reads "Card" it means a prepaid calling card, not a credit card. I hope I'm not the only one who did not realize this right away. If I am, well, you learn something new every day. I didn't have time to run back and email my Dad about it, so when I met up with Katie she was kind enough to cover me for the rest of what I needed to pay for the tour. Our search for Mugg and Bean ended brilliantly, allowing us time for lunch even though we were running late because of the debit card problem. However, we learned after meeting the tour guides, Winston and Loyiso, that buying lunch on our own wasn't the way to go because he was going to be taking us to a sandwich shop so we could try Gatsby's, popular South African sandwiches with the chips (or French fries) piled in with the curried meat or chicken, lettuce and tomato. Even though we'd already eaten huge sandwiches we'd purchased at Mugg and Bean, we agreed to buy just one sandwich and cut it up for all of us to sample. I do enjoy curry but this stuff was hot. Also, the meat was a little tough. But then again, we were buying food in a township, so it wasn't going to be the highest of quality. But I did enjoy having the chips on the sandwich
A women's crafting center
. It saved the step of having to dip them in the tasty sauce that was dripping all over the plate. After our lunch excursion, Winston drove us to the area of the township where he grew up. I'm still fascinated with the idea of the townships because within them people are still divided. Some live in nicer (which by no means are what Americans would consider nice) but others live in sheet metal boxes at most two feet away from the sheet metal box of their neighbor. Winston was fortunate enough to have lived in a nicer area of the township, in a stucco house with a door and two windows. He had a front yard to play in, and a paved street. We had the windows open and from what I could tell the air didn't have the thick odor of rotten garbage. A few houses down and across the street was a park where he used to play. These areas don't have much, but they have enough to survive. They have real walls around them, even though the roof is only the sheet metal. They have kitchens and food and playgrounds. Even with only having little more than just enough to survive, Winston brought himself out of his situation and participated in the start of Africa Jam, a non profit organization that performs concerts and organizes tours for students like us, among other things, to raise money for the townships. The inspiring thing about him is that he is proof that it is possible to change your situation
Dinner at Camps Bay...the view from the backyard
. We talked to him when we finally arrived in Khaleytshia about how these people typically just don't know how to get out of the cycle of their lives. I didn't hear the specifics but Winston had someone to help him, to show him that he could find a better way of life. All he needed was empowerment and then the tools to get him there. Loyiso said the same thing. He's originally from a clan that still to this day cuts off the pinky fingers of all of their members as a way to identify them as members of this clan. It's interesting because Winston talked of the experiences of his clan as well. He said that many of them now are Christian, but his father did not convert to Christianity until after his first son was born. When these children are young, their parents or the elders cut them on their faces, their arms and hands, their backs and their chests, that eventually leave scars. These cuts are then dusted with a powder of some sort that is supposed to serve as protection for the rest of the child's life. However, Winston was born after his father's conversion, so he doesn't have these cuts. At the same time, Loyiso's clan is also Christian, and yet he still doesn't have the tip of his pinky. Even though these clans are mostly now Christian, they still retain some of their traditional customs. As a result, he, like all of the other male members, also had to go on a kind of mission period, a time when he went to the bush (or out in the wilderness) to spend time with the elders and learn about becoming a man
Katie, Neo and I with the cows by the pond
. He had to spend quite a long time there because his parents couldn't afford to throw a party in his honor to celebrate his return as an enlightened and educated member of the clan. In all clans, Winston told us, the parents could have no money to even buy food, but they had to come up with the money to host a celebration for their children's return from the bush. If the parents don't have money when the children finish, usually around their late teens, they have to remain in the bush until the funds are raised. Loyiso too didn't remain in the township. He now heads a drama group in the Khaleytshia that works with kids between the ages of eight and seventeen every day after school. All they really need is the knowledge that they can pursue another life if they choose to. Winston and Loyiso learned that they could, and they did. By the time Winston finished explaining all of this to us, we had arrived in Khaleytshia. As usual, the worst of it was on the side of the freeway. The more residential-like areas, the areas with the sturdier built homes, don't have the sheet metal homes. Maybe they'll have fruit stands or barber shops constructed with rotten plywood, but even these are nicer than the shacks on the side of the road. We turned off of the main highway and after a few turns arrived at an open lot with only a quite large stone building that looked like a school, but we learned it was a community center
With Neo's family
. I thought it was a school because it was built quite similarly to the schools at home, with a quad, or in this case an amphitheatre, in the middle with the building surrounding it. We walked through the amphitheatre and out a gate on the other side that opened up to a few flights of stairs leading up to a circular platform. We climbed up and at the top; we had views of the entire Khaleytshia Township. When we'd first pulled into the parking lot of the community center, I thought as I looked over the area that it looked a lot like the layout of Vegas. The entire township has about two million people in it, and it is situated in a valley. We would have been in the Henderson area looking towards Red Rock, and even in the location of the little mountain around Southern Highlands there was a hill. It was so weird, looking at it and thinking it looked familiar to me. Of course there were major differences, but the basic layout in a valley and its spreading all the way across and up the mountain edges seemed a lot like home. Getting to the top and looking down, however, the familiarity dissipated. For miles and miles, rows and rows of all different colored square homes, like the ones you would draw when you were a little kid with a door in the middle and a window on each side with a slanted roof, lined the roads. They looked like the pieces of the Monopoly Junior game, the houses. Katie and I liked the magenta house in the middle of paler blues and yellows. The wind was strong off of the Indian, so the air was thick with dust and dirt, so the view wasn't as clear in the distance. But I definitely struggled with my sinuses. As I play catch up and write this journal entry on March 8, I'm still sneezing out dirt. We took pictures, but I felt a little bit awkward taking pictures with me in them. I didn't want to take a picture of me not smiling, but it felt somehow wrong to smile in a picture being taken of a township. I know not everything about the townships is bad and that in a way they are a way for people to at least have a roof over their head if they can't afford one themselves, regardless of the quality of that roof. But I just remembered how I felt taking a picture in front of the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. It just didn't seem appropriate for me to smile. I don't know, maybe I'm just weird, but it was a thought I'd had. We headed back down to the main building and went to visit a group of women who were making crafts to sell as a way to get by, as Winston said. I didn't have any cash on me because of the debit card problem, which really upset me because I wanted to buy a skirt that these women had made. Another note on the skirts, I found it interesting that they were made for larger women. When you go shopping in America for one of a kind pieces, you're usually only going to find the smaller sizes. But these one-of-a-kind skirts were all made for the more robust woman. And that made sense, because our tour guide on the Cape Doctor tour explained to us that traditionally women who were attractive to men had big backsides and a large pair of breasts, as he said. He had said that now with the prevalence of the media that tradition is starting to change, that black women in South Africa are starting to work out to be thinner. In the township, however, the tradition carries on, so it made sense, which I thought was kind of cool. The skirt I wanted didn't have a button yet, because when you bought it they'd sew it on, but all of the skirts with zippers weren't small. Very different than America. The one I wanted was a cream color with the silhouette of a woman wearing a traditional headdress hand painted on the front. But I suppose it was a good thing that I didn't have any cash on me because I probably would have spent entirely too much on the skirt and other goods. The things these women created were incredible. They made bags, scarves, jewelry, pottery, paintings, and wood carvings. Katie was able to buy oak coasters with each of the Big Five game animals carved into them. More so than wanting the actual possessions, I just wanted to help them. So I did the only thing I could do. I took pictures. I asked a group of eight women sitting at the beading table if I could take a picture. Well, meaning I pointed at my camera and waited for a nod or a shake of the head because I don't speak Xhosa and they didn't speak English. They agreed to let me, and my flash was on automatic. Because we were inside it went off, and these women just thought that the flash was the coolest thing. Each time I took a picture, all at once and in the same pitch they would cry " 'eh!". A long, drawn-out "hey" without the "h". After I took the pictures they'd all get up and gather around me to look at the camera and smile at themselves, or shake their heads because they didn't like how it turned out. When at first they had been skeptical about even looking me in the eye, they were freely gesturing to me to take more pictures or touch my arm or hand. It wasn't monetary help, but it was a connection. It was my favorite part of traveling, getting on the same level with someone from a different culture.
Loyiso had to come back in and get me because everyone else had already started going back to the vans. He then explained to us that we would be spending the next three hours with the children, spending the first hour on a tour around the township guided by two of the kids from his drama group, and the remainder of the time participating in the daily program. We were also informed that we would be asked to act out a skit of our kid, imitating them, so we were asked to pay particular attention to the way they walked, any songs they liked to sing, funny comments they made, and other things like that. We got to the area of the township where we were spending the afternoon, we pulled up to a wooden structure made of splintered plywood that was on its own on a sizable plot of dirt and rocks. We climbed out of the van and immediately children just swamped us. Younger children ran up to us and just wanted to touch us, and the older kids, the drama group members, came up and gave us hugs and shook our hands. When Katie and I met Neo, one of our guys but Katie's and my main one (we were split in groups of four SAS kids with two township kids) I knew it was going to be a piece of cake to act him out. He was the most adorable kid I've ever seen. And I really shouldn't even say it like that because he was fourteen, turning fifteen in April. It's interesting because when you ask how old someone is they say how old they're turning that year. When I asked Neo, he said he was fifteen years old. But when we met his mother later on, she said he turns fifteen on April fourteenth. Weiga, another boy I met, answered the question in the same way. He said he was sixteen and when I made a comment about being so old, he said yes I'll be sixteen in October. He greeted us by hugging us and took us on our way.
He took us through the more residential area first, so the homes were sturdy with rickety wooden fences in front of them, a door and typically one window. Homes did not have a lot of room in between them, but they were set off the street so that they had a good deal of space in the front yard. As we walked, Neo taught us how to shake hands, with a clasp like you would use in a handshake, followed by connecting the thumbs so that each of your four fingers are free to snap, and then each twists his thumb and forefinger against the other one so that the four fingers create a second snap. We talked about his school and what subjects he has (students in the townships take a life orientation class, in which they learn about life, he said- I couldn't get much more detail than that but it seems like a really good idea for a class), the school uniforms, families, girlfriends and boyfriends, he taught how dances called The Chicken and Cut the Cake, and tried to teach us some words in Xhosa, but only words and phrases that didn't have the clicks. I can't click in the middle of words. I tried for six days, and it's just not something I can do. Neo got a kick out of my attempts, though. He took us by a reservoir where he said a lot of crime occurs, and he talked about the muggings and the rapes and the murders that took place there like it was no big deal. We saw cows grazing and I'd never seen a black and white cow up close, so I got out my camera to take a picture. This started the picture taking frenzy during the visit. The rest of the time he took pictures of Katie and I, the sheep and cow heads and cow intestines that we passed on the street, of his friends that we passed in the street, and when we arrived to his house his family and us with his family.
His street looked like all the rest, a road approximately the size of a two lane road with homes lining the streets, with an occasional fruit stand in what looked like the big, long U-Haul box I used to make forts out of with my Dad when I was little, with a cut out door and window. They weren't cardboard but they looked that unstable. Dogs and children roamed freely, and ran up to us to take pictures when they saw the camera. Women with babies strapped to their backs by tying a towel around their middles worked in their yards and in their small homes, men sat outside on plastic chairs and watched the children play, and all of these people would smile and greet us as we passed. I was surprised by how many of the adults were willing to let me take pictures of them. I'd point at the camera and they'd laugh and nod, sometimes stop what they were doing to pose for the camera or sometimes continue on with their work. When we got to Neo's house, his aunt was outside washing a bowl with water coming from a spout on a structure that looked like a porta-potty. When we walked up towards the house and turned around, I realized it was an outdoor toilet. Neo's mother stood in the doorway of the small boxy house, holding Neo's one month old brother Kevin. She invited us in and Neo introduced us to her mother and his grandmother. His two younger toddler aged brothers ran around outside, but she called them in so we could take pictures with the whole family. The couch took up half of the main room right inside the doorway, and a cabinet with pictures and knickknacks took up the wall opposite the door. These people are so resourceful, making picture frames out of plastic bottles by tucking the pictures inside. Whatever they have, they use. To the right was another small room, presumably a bedroom based on the glimpse of a bed through the door. To the left was the kitchen that had just a countertop and an oven, and another bed. A huge round bread was sitting on the counter, and we asked Neo what it was and he said it was cornbread his mother had made. I think the thing must have been sixteen inches in diameter. We talked to his mother, Veronique, and learned that she lost her job right after her son was born. She worked at the grocery store and they accused her of stealing money that had come up missing, and they fired her. Then she had her fourth child, her mother and her sister live with her, and I'm not sure where the baby's father is. Neo's father died when he was four months old, so I'm not sure and didn't want to ask about the little baby's dad. And she talked about it without complaint, just as simple fact. She said she simply needed to find something else in order to take care of her children. These situations are normal, scarcity is normal, and they don't feel sorry for themselves or ask for sympathy. They simply need to continue on living, and that attitude, a happiness to just be alive was apparent in her, and Neo as well. They don't know any other life, but the life they have is enough for them. And if she was inconvenienced by our being there, she did not at all show it. But I really don't think she was. She welcomed us with open arms and let us hold her son and take pictures. She walked us out and down the street with us for awhile as she talked about the situation with her job. She even thanked us for coming taking the time during our travels to go visit with them before hugging us goodbye. It was incredibly humbling, to think that while they were the generous ones for inviting strangers into their home, they wanted to thank us.
. After leaving his family, he took us to the market area. This area was quite different in layout than the residential areas. The buildings were similar to the cardboard box-like fruit stand, and more speed out. They were shacks, sometimes constructed from street signs or billboards or the ever present sheet metal and rotten wood, and they were more spread out, not lined up in tight neat rows like the homes. Men sold fruit, (Mom, seriously, skip this part) women grilled cow heads, the full heads of the cows. Neo asked if I'd ever seen one before and when I answered the obvious no, he told me he'd take me but not to be scared. Some were whole heads straight off of the body, others already had the skin removed. I'll never forget the smell of the smoking grill and burning flesh and the popping and sparkling sounds of tissue and blood cooking over the fire (okay, Mom). The streets smelled of these grills and smoke and trash. Chickens and dogs ran around the streets, and men, women, and children walked around barefoot. Neo pointed out the medical center across the street from the traditional healer or witch doctor. He also took us to a kind of convenience store where we could get Fat Cakes, which we heard were fried dough filled with a sweet jelly-like substance. We bought three, one for Katie and I to share because they were huge, and one each for Neo and Weiga. After we bought them we realized that they weren't quite what we were expecting, that the filling of our Fat Cakes was not at all sweet or appetizing to me. It was stuffed with chicken livers. Neo and Weiga said they ate them every day for lunch and that they were one of their favorite meals. Katie and I, to not be rude, picked off a bite of the dough, avoiding the livers, and gave it to the children who came running and jumping into our arms when we made it back to the building we had arrived to. I asked Neo if it would be okay if I gave them the Fat Cake because we weren't very hungry, and when I held out my arm to offer it to a little boy he started to run away. I bent down to him then and let him approach me, and soon he and all his friends were taking huge bites out of it. We were running late already because we were supposed to all meet up at 4:30 but it was about 4:40 by this time. And with the children all running up to us and giving us hugs and jumping on our backs when we'd bend down to hug them, we were delayed a few more minutes. But it was incredible how excited they were to see us, so we wanted to spend a couple extra minutes giving them hugs. They wanted to see us, these older people they don't even know, so we couldn't just walk away from them.
We reconvened with the group, and we spent the next hour playing games with everyone. The first was a game of "Who Sir? Me, Sir? Not I, Sir!". We all had a number and Loyiso, who leads the drama group, would choose a number and ask if they had stolen his pair of socks, and the person with that number had to respond with this phrase right away and correctly, or else they were out. As people would forget to respond or mix up the response, the number of us still playing would go down, so the new idea was to remember whose numbers were out of the game and whose remained in. The second game was "Fly, Fly, Fly". Loyiso would call out something that would fly, and you'd clap your hands three times, but if he called out something that didn't fly and you clapped, you'd be out. Or, if you didn't clap for something that did fly, you'd also be out. He started with mosquito flies, a fly flies, a butter flies. A lot of us clapped, but we were called out because butter doesn't fly, a butterfly does. We continued on with this for awhile, and they were great ways for all of us to laugh and tease each other. Next was an improve game, which was one of the most emotional points of the day. The kids would start singing a song, any song they felt like, and would all sing it together all the way through. Loyiso would then explain to us students what the song meant, because it usually wasn't in English, and he would pick kids and students to act out a scene of what the message of the song mean to them. There were songs about missing home and the home land and about intense suffering, and we all sang Lean on Me together. The richness of these children's voices singing in Xhosa the way they sound resonated off of the sheet metal, and the heart and emotion they sang with brought tears to my eyes. One would come up with the song and sing it solo, and the others would join in in the background, they'd drum their hands and their feet on the floor, or clap. They'd sway and hold each other's hands. I just loved it. I wanted so desperately to get it on video, but us students were told not to bring out the cameras because it would distract them. Even more intense than the emotion of the songs was the skits that the kids performed, expressing their interpretation of the song. Loyiso randomly chose his kids and on a couple of occasions SAS students, and the differences in the topics were just astounding, but not at the same time not. These kids improvised scenes about missing their families because they had been sent away, suffering in jail and struggling with the idea of committing suicide with the belts around their waists because they'd been given ten years for stealing even though they were innocent. I felt like I was watching professional actors. They would cry in their scenes, and I cried too. The few SAS kids who were chosen to do scenes talked about missing home because we were on the Semester at Sea trip, or not doing well on a test. These are our problems and they're not insignificant to us, but they're just so different from what these kids, eleven, twelve, fifteen years old see and hear about on a regular basis. After the emotional roller coaster ride of the scenes, the SAS students went outside to practice their skits imitating their guides. Katie and I did the handshake and dances Neo taught us, and used a water bottle to represent meeting Kevin, and we held hands throughout the skit to represent his asking if he could walk in the middle of us and hold our hands. During the other students' performances, Neo kept looking at us and reminding us of things he'd taught us, like the handshake and the dances, to make sure we included them in our bit. He'd look over at me and snap for the handshake, or move his hands around like the chicken, and give me a thumbs up when I assured him we'd covered it for him. Apparently these kids like when you shake your hips in any way, because when you cut the cake you move your hips from side to side as you tap your hip with the edge of your palm, and when Katie and I moved they burst into applause. Katie and I were the last skit, so it was really a way to end that part of the program, all of the boys and girls cheering and screaming. The final activity was a performance of a dance by entire group of drama kids that one of the twelve-year old girls had choreographed on her own. Neo really knew how to move, but I loved how he searched for Katie and I in the crowd and when he found us he just beamed, and watched us watch him. He really was like a child telling his parents to watch the cool thing he could do. I loved it, and I loved these kids. After both of the group's performances, we had five minutes to take final pictures and say goodbye. I had to try so hard not to cry, but Katie and I have Neo's address so we can keep in touch with him. He wanted our phone numbers and email addresses and said he'd call, but obviously he can't call us. I plan to write him, though, and send him postcards from the trip. I want to try, to see where he ends up. He has dreams of going to America for school, and I'd love to see what happens. We took pictures with other kids we'd met in the beginning and hugged and kissed Neo goodbye before running out into the van and shutting the door. Loyiso explained that we had to move or else the little little kids outside would swamp us again, and we had to get moving to go to dinner. However, while the rest of us sat in the vans, one of the SAS guys had a dance off with one of the drama kids. We blasted the radio in the van and watched as this skinny white guy tried to out dance this skinny black guy, and I have to say that our Anthony got his ass kicked by the boy who calls himself Beyonce (I don't even know his real name, and even Neo referred to him as Beyonce). The kids lined up around the vans and blew us kisses to see us off as we drove away, back to Cape Town to have dinner.
And the dinner was absolutely spectacular. A couple had let Africa Jam, the nonprofit group who was sponsoring our activities for the day, go into their house and prepared this phenomenal meal in a phenomenal house with a phenomenal view. The house was literally on the ocean in a very nice area of Cape Town, Camps Bay, and we watched the sun set over the ocean with Table Mountain in the background. When it got dark, the lights of the homes built up on the mountain decorated the mountain like white lights on a Christmas tree, and with the stars overhead in the backyard and Africa Jam's band playing music in the background, it was surreal. Katie and I spent the few hours we were there drinking wine and eating samosas (pastries filled with curried chicken), beef kebobs, tomato soup, seafood flavored rice, minced chicken curry, fruit, and miniature versions of the fat cakes we were expecting (which were sweet and just delicious) trying not to bawl. The dinner itself that Africa Jam had prepared for us was excellent, and where we were having dinner was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us. Our trip was the only trip, designed independent of SAS by one of the students, that included the dinner. It was just beautiful and so incredibly generous of these people, but then followed by the experience we had just had in the township with Neo and all of the others, it was overwhelming. After we finished dinner we just lounged on the pillows that were spread throughout the living room and talked, then sat outside on the grass, our legs swung over the side of the lawn that dropped off to the beach and staring up at the stars in bewilderment of the days activities. After we got in the vans to go back to the ship, we all agreed that we wished that our friends who weren't there could have experienced it because no one but us will ever truly understand the impact that the day had on us and how alive and hopeful and peaceful and inspired and confused and grateful it made us feel, but that at the same time we feel like we're lucky to be just a small group who have had an experience in South Africa like no one on the ship but us ever will. I hated to leave, I hated for the day to be over because it truly was the best day of my life. Ellen, one of the founders of Africa Jam, sincerely thanked us for taking time during our visit to spend time with the kids they work with and get to know them and demonstrate our care for them, but we just couldn't understand why they were thanking us when they were the ones who gave us the opportunity to have such incredible experiences. I'd visited townships a few days prior, but nothing compared to the personal and intimate nature of this visit. I got to know these people and they got to know me, and to know that they've inspired me and they feel I've helped them in allowing them to know that people far away care about them and love them, I feel like it changed my life. Seeing the contrast between the situations in the township and the amazing dinner we had, it was a little bit hard to swallow at first, but it just made me all the more aware that I've got my life as it is, I am who I am and I need to use it as best I can to do everything I'm inspired to do. This was my ultimate South African experience, what I am searching for in every port. In Puerto Rico it was Jorge in the square and the poet Lady Lee, in Brazil it was Maria, and in South Africa it was this. Katie and I had spent the car ride looking through a real estate magazine in search of a house that we could use for the youth hostel that we were talking about opening in South Africa, but we decided to scratch that and come work for Africa Jam. I don't know what I'll end up doing because in Puerto Rico I'd wanted to move there as well, but I'm excited to find out where in the world I'll be. When I got home I didn't even want to go out on our last night. My day was so incredibly full and pure that I didn't want to taint it by spending a night on the town. Before I went to bed I read the prayer that the children had prayed before we left the township. 'We thank you Lord for helping us and for blessing us with love, peace, unity, and prosperity. So help us to change the way we walk and the way we talk with our friends and families in our community. Lord give me dreams and the strength to prosper. No matter how high, I choose to choose. A right line which is a straight line in Lifelines.' Lifelines is the name of the drama group, and they close every day with this prayer. So in honor of them, these children who changed my soul, I closed mine with it as well.
