Mary, Jane, Kori, Heather, Erika, and I called Vicky as soon as we got back to the hotel, called several times because Vicky’s cell phone wasn’t working properly. When I finally got her, an hour and a half after I started calling, sometime around 5 pm, we arranged to be picked up at 6:30 to spend the night at the B & B. However, South African time is not exactly timely, and we were picked up at 7:15 by Vicky’s husband. By the time we got to Khayelitsha, it was dark. The shebeen was hopping, the streets were full of people walking around, most carrying beers, music playing. We were welcomed by Vicky’s children and niece, Olona. Olona is a senior in high school and she welcomed us, retold Vicky’s story and explained that Vicky was at a community party and would be home later. We were left upstairs to our own devices for some time before Thandile, Vicky’s 9 year old daughter came up to visit. She sat on the arm of my chair and we talked about the first time we had met her during the Kayelitsha tour in our first two weeks. She had stood shyly beside her mother as Vicky welcomed us and told us her story about starting her own business and how she has been giving back to the community.
Thandile was something else, a little drama queen. Her hero is Beyonce and she showed us some Beyonce moves that looked very grown up in her little 9 year old body. For some time she sat on the arm of the chair, petting my hair. The girls found it very amusing, but I remember when Twana Plair, back in elementary school liked to brush my hair because she said it was so much softer than hers. I asked Thandile if she liked my hair.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s soft.”
“Yours is very pretty, too,” I said reaching up to touch her extensions.
“This,” she said, yanking hard. “Is not my real hair.”
“I know, it’s a weave,” I said. “Did it hurt?”
“Yes, it hurts a lot.”
“And it took a long time.”
“Only forever,” she said.
A little later, Jane mentioned that she was from the same town as Beyonce, at which point, Thandile promptly begged for Jane to take her home with her. Jane told her she’d have to ask her mom. Thandile then, very dramatically, fainted across my lap, making us all burst with laughter. 9 year old dramatics cross language, cultural, and age barriers.
Olona and Vicky’s eldest daughter brought up our dinner then, baked chicken, pap, and beans. It was delicious, but Vicky still wasn’t home. It was obvious that the older children took responsibility for the younger ones frequently. Around 9 pm, Vicky returned home and with Lolo, her son, Pumna, her son’s friend, and Thandile, came up to visit for awhile. She told us that Sunday she would give us a walking tour of the township as it was too late to go out tonight. She mentioned that since it was the first Sunday of the month, she would be very busy that day, since the burial committee meets the first Sunday of the month to go over who has died and how much was paid out in burial fees so that the community can be asked to contribute and replenish the fund.
Just before bed, while the other children were cleaning up downstairs, Olona came up and visited with us. She talked to us about Umbuntu ngumntu ngabantu, “one hand washes the other.” In the townships, they have learned and continue to learn that to get by they must work together. Olona’s mother is a nurse, her dad is a principal and she plans to attend Capetown University after graduating from high school. She has worked hard, applied for and been accepted for a program that gives her extra assistance in physics. She says that even though she goes to Rhodes High in Capetown, she is a part of the township community and proud of it. She says her motto is, “perseverance is the key to success.” For a little while after she left, we sat up discussing events from the trip, people we’ve met, and childhood stories, but then went into our separate bedrooms.
In the morning, the first thing I noticed was the sunrise over the township, making the mountains a hazy purple in the background. For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been taking sunrise pictures, over the ocean in Tsitsikamma, over the Drakensburg Mountains, by the coast of Capetown, in the hazy valley of Bobanango, but it was the sunrise Khayelitsha that encompasses the beauty and the depression that is South Africa in a way I had not thought possible.
For breakfast, Vicky made us delicious muffins, coffee, and tea before we went on a short walking tour of the township. During our walk, I took numerous pictures of houses in various stages of construction. In Vicky’s area, the C area of Khayelitsha, home to 3.5 million people, there is a lot of construction because it is an older section and the compensation funds have been appropriated for many of them. The Khayelitsha building committee, which Vicky takes part in, receives money from the government, which they distribute to applicants when they are approved and ready to build. The building is supposed to take a month, but very rarely are the funds available for each stage of building on time, and those who are building do not always have the opportunity to work straight through on their homes.
While we walked around, we ran into several people heading to church and a group of boys still partying after Saturday night. I think Woody Allen made a movie about New York Stories, but, for me, it’s about South Africa stories. They’re all different, they’re all important, and they all change how you view this country.
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