People here refer to where I am staying simply as “the Rural Areas.” The villages here are too small for people to bother referring to them by name. They just point and say “I stay in that village” or “We’re going to the village on the other side of that hill.” Whenever I tell anybody I am living in Tsomo they give the same surprised expression then say “Why are you staying in the rural areas?!?” I respond that I am here for work, and explain that my company gives small loans to women in the villages to start businesses. After this brief explanation it is clear that they are still confused and I can tell in their eyes that they are not satisfied with my answer. They want to know more. They want to know why a white person would choose to work here. I wish I could tell each of these people all the reasons why I am here, but it would be too difficult with the language barrier, far too time consuming to give a full answer to everybody who asks, and honestly sometimes I just do not know. But getting this question so often has forced me to reflect a lot about why I am actually here.
The other question I get a lot from the people here is “How are you liking South Africa? and to this I find myself replying “I love it.” While this has been one of the toughest experiences of my life, while it has pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I have given up many comforts I can honestly say that I am loving it. Whenever I start getting anxious and questioning why I am here, whenever I start getting frustrated with everyone staring at me, with not being able to communicate easily, I think of some other options for my life, settling for a desk job in the States or going to grad school, and they somehow just don’t feel as fulfilling as this experience does and I find my soul shifting back to contentment. One of my favorite quotes is from C.S Lewis and it says, “To follow the calling does not necessarily mean happiness and it may entail suffering. But I also know that once this calling has been heard there is no happiness if I do not follow.” I would not go so far, at this point, to say that this is my calling, but I believe it is a part of it, that I am here for some reason, and I know that if I had not taken the opportunity to come here I would have regretted it forever.
I often say that my mission in life is to effect as much positive change as possible and the only way to effect change is to understand people and understand how the world works and the only way to understand people and how the world works it to experience new things, to look at things from a different point of view, to step out of your comfort zone. The reason why I am staying “in the rural areas” and why I am loving this experience is because of all the opportunities that I have had to do just that. Some of the experiences have been strange, some awesome, some depressing, some uncomfortable and some a bit scary, but they are each things that I would not have experienced if I had stayed at home.
Since it has been hard for me to keep up with this blog, especially with my limited internet access in the first month I was here, I would like to try to catch you up on some of these unique experiences that particularly stand out in my mind.
Back in my first week in South Africa I had my first the opportunity to go out “into the field” with SEF. That meant pretty much doing what I am doing now, going around with one of the zonal managers to see what they do, usually attending centre meetings, checking up on clients, that sort of thing. Well my first day in the field was unique; I went to court. One of SEF’s clients had stolen a large amount of money by forging deposit slips and SEF had caught her and she had been arrested the day before. We arrived at the court and there were about 50 people also waiting outside. After about an hour of waiting we were informed that it was about to begin so we went inside followed by everybody else. The first strange thing that I observed was a number of women breastfeeding out in the open, something that I have now learned is a fairly common sight. The second strange thing was that the only other white person in the room was the judge. This felt strange to me, out here in a very rural area why do they not have a black judge? Now the third strange thing was that we had expected there to be a number of cases to be heard, outside we learned that this was only a preliminary trial to set bail, and after all, there were many other people with us in the gallery. But after the hearing we were concerned with was done, court was adjourned and everybody left the room. It was then that we realized that all those people must have been friends and family of our former client, and that they must have known that we were from the organization that was pressing charges. Quite uncomfortable to say the least and the day didn’t get less uncomfortable as we spent it tracking down people that had not paid back loans and figuring out why and when they could pay them back.
One of the things I love South Africa is that South Africans love to braii (barbeque) and eat meat (the sausage here is my favorite). Back in Butterworth there was one place my colleagues and I would go to braii on Saturdays, located next to one of the squatter camp/shanty towns that had sprung up near town. It was a butcher shop where you would go to buy whatever meat you wanted and next door they had this large room with about 20 tables, a large TV and 5 large fire pits, where you can go for free to braii and eat your meat. Everyone shares the tools needed for braiiing, you throw the meat right on these worn grates over a wood fire, then you put your cooked meat on pieces of cardboard that are taken from wherever you can find them, and bring it back to the tables to eat with your hands, and if you are lucky one of the sawblades that is going around to cut the tough bits. Even here in Tsomo at one of two bars here, there is a fire-pit, and a butcher shop next door. So we sometimes buy some meat and braii it up while we are hanging out at the bar after our soccer games.
The sad part, however, is that we do not do this often. You have to remember that for the most part the people around here are poor, so it is only the more well off people who can splurge on meat. I have learned that one of the most common meals here is simply bread. It is very cheap, filling, and at least vitamin enriched. My first time seeing this was in the back of a baaki taxi(pickup truck) and there was a small boy next to me and he ate about 4 slices of bread as his lunch. A few days later I was waiting by one of the local shops in the morning for a taxi and saw a mother with three small boys come out of the shop. She then took the loaf of bread, split it up between them, and they each put what they had in their lunchbox. Even after one of our soccer tournaments that lasted all day, we went back into town and bought 2 loaves of bread and split them amongst the people that were there. I felt a sense of guilt as I thought back to the times when my soccer team growing up would all go out for pizza after long tournaments, and how I took that for granted.
Some of my most fun experiences have involved soccer (As you can probably tell from my last post). Well one unique experience was my second weekend in Tsomo the team I am playing with now was playing in a tournament final that was sponsored by a local man who used to play professional soccer. Well the day of the final the teams gathered in town and were marched down to the field by a full marching band.
Unfortunately they went on to loose that game in penalty kicks. Another thing that I learned is that when there are no games scheduled on weekends, the local teams will organize betting tournaments. They will find four teams willing to play, they each pay some money, and then play out a single elimination tournament. Last weekend I played in my first of these and we ended up beating the local semi-professional team in the first round!
Well there are more experiences I would like to share but this is already getting too long so I will write part II soon.
Salani Kakhule.
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Life's A Trip 