homestay weekend

March 22, 2009

Right now I’m going to skip straight to talking about my homestay in Langa this past weekend. It was really quite an experience. Langa is one of the black townships in the Cape Flats, east of the city centre and north east of Mowbray where I live. Townships are the areas that the blacks were moved to during apartheids when the white government rezoned the city to separate all the different races. They are traditionally very slummy places, because that’s the only option the white government gave to the blacks. They were only given electricity and running water after the liberation struggle in 1994 and there are still a lot of makeshift shacks that make up most of the townships. Langa has shacks, which they call the squatters, but there are also lots of areas with small houses, some even somewhat larger ones, but still all very close together. Anyway there are about 1 million people who live in Langa and the majority are Xhosa, which generally denotes that they speak the Xhosa language (which has clicks in it) and have specific traditional rites of passage, etc.

Anywho I was staying with this woman named Ncediwe (of course her name has a click in it, so I can barely say it). She is 51 and was born in Langa and has been living there most of her life. She speaks Xhosa and she lives by herself, but her family lives all around her. She has 3 children who are all grown up (her oldest daughter lives in the UK, and her two sons still live in Langa). She had her first child when she was 17. Her youngest son, who is 27, has a daughter named Nandelo who is 4 and lives with her mother and grandmother (not with Ncediwe’s son, Nandelo’s father… more about that later). Nandelo spent a lot of time with us and it was awesome to be able to hang out with her. On Friday when we got to Langa we had a small meal with all of my other IESers and their host families and then went our separate ways. Me and Julie were together staying with Ncediwe and we headed back to her house, and had another HUGE meal that Ncediwe’s mother made for us. I’m telling you I ate more food this past weekend than I ever have in a weekend before. They love their meat and they love their massive portions. Then we just kinda chilled and went to bed early because we had to be up early on Saturday.

On Saturday we got up at like 6 am and went to pick up Nandelo as well as Ncediwe’s friend Tiny from work and Tiny’s son. Then we all went to the preschool, that they call a krush (I have no idea if I’m spelling that or even saying that correctly), and the entire krush and their families took an hour long bus ride to Gordon’s Bay, which is south of here, and had an all day braai (barbeque) at this small water park right on the beach (it only had like one water slide and a pool, nothing huge). We just lounged around all day but it was actually really fun. Our group sat with a few other women and their young children and the kids just ran around jumping in the water and stuff and we sat there and talked and ate and napped on and off. It was really relaxing. The other kids were soooo effing cute. The other two families we were sitting with, aside from Tiny and her son, were this one Xhosa woman from the Eastern Cape and her daughter, and this Tswana woman and her 7 year old son and 4 year old daughter. There were tons of other coloured kids and families as well as other Xhosa, etc families too. It was cool to hear so many languages being spoken. Me and Julie were also the only white people there which was also quite interesting… people always look at you. Not necessarily in a rude way, but still.

Some of the parents and even the teachers got sooo drunk. It was kind of funny actually. They were just yelling and being ridiculous. At one point one of the teachers just completely ate shit and fell over when she was playing with some of the children. It was hilarious. I kept thinking about what it would be like in the States if someone did that.. if one of the teachers got drunk at a function with the parents of their preschool kids. And it would NOT go over well. One of the cultural differences I suppose.

On the bus ride home, a lot of the parents were still drunk, and they ended up getting into a yelling match with some of the teachers because when the bus was dropping people off, it dropped the teacher off pretty much at her house in one of the other townships when the parents had been told that they could only be dropped off in specific places. That was quite something to see everyone yelling about it, especially because I thought that some of the women were a bit too drunk to be formulating a coherent argument.. but at the same time I don’t know the situation quite as well and my host mom seemed to be agreeing with them.

I also had a really interesting conversation with some of the women about marriage and men and relationships. The Tswana woman that we were sitting with (I never caught her name unfortunately) was talking about her father and how he has two wives. Her mother was the first wife, and they had 5 children together (including her) and then only in 1995 the father took a second wife and has had 3 children with her. He also has 2 other children with 2 other women. Apparently it has caused a lot of tension in the family and between the two wives and their respective children. She said she is not happy with the situation and that her mother says the only reason that she stays with her father is for the children. When I asked her if she had spoken to her father about it she said she did not want to “hurt his feelings”! I know it is a cultural difference but it is so hard for me not to feel strongly about this because of my feminist ideals. Overall though they were saying that no matter what, men will not be faithful and there will always be another woman on the side somewhere. You just have to decide how you deal with it. Also, no matter what, if the man gets sick he always gets sent back to his first wife and she is expected to take care of him, whereas is the wife gets sick she is sent back to her original family.

I also noticed in general, when surveying all of the different families that my fellow IESers stayed with, the families were generally consisting of all women and children; grandmothers, mothers, children, aunts. There certainly were men, just much less and often they were sons rather than husbands or fathers. Nandelo is the daughter of Ncedwie’s youngest son, who is 27. Nandelo’s mother and father are not together though and Nandelo lives with her mother and her maternal grandmother. On Saturday night we were getting together to watch a movie in the living room and the speakers were not working so Ncedwie called her son to have him come by and help out. He gave Nandelo a hug when he came in but otherwise there was not very much interaction. I didn’t realize until after that that was actually her father! I am trying not to make judgments, but in my world it is so much more customary for the father to be involved, even if he does not live with his child. Obviously this is ideal and doesn’t happen all the time, but it just seems that the family networks are certainly more distinct here.

There was an obvious communal nature to everything that I really admired. When we were at the braai we were sharing everything with the different women and children around us and half of them Ncedwie had just met that morning. We were all lounging around and the women were braiding each other’s hair and lying on each other. It was really nice. We all talked freely, for me at least as much as I could when they were not speaking Xhosa. Overall it was a really mind opening, great experience that I am really glad I had the opportunity to take part in!