Touring the townships

This morning I woke up for a run and had a 10am meeting about House.  The meeting was successful and a group of students bought paint and supplies to start our first project next week.  We'll be painting five bedrooms and two bathrooms.  I am very excited to start the project.

This Bradley took my flatmates, our Finnish friends, and I around town.  First, he showed us a container in a township in which two women make bread on a gas burner every day.  He has trained them in business management and marketing and the women go to bat with the municipalities to get the space to hold their business and the materials that the local governments have been promising.  They have a successful business which sits at the road leading into the townships where causal laborers enter each day after work.  The casual laborers stand along the highway and people who need one or two day’s-worth of work pick them up and pay them an hourly wage.  So, after a long day they need some sustenance, and these “Strong African Women,” as Bradley calls them, are just the people to provide it.

Next we stopped at Ma Mngadi’s.  She was a freedom fighter who is featured in a South African DVD about women-lead freedom walks.  She is also pictured in a history book at a museum in Port Elizabeth called the South End Museum.  Today, she has a soup kitchen for children who are orphans or whose parents do not have the resources to feed them.  She showed us her kitchen, gym and homework area for the children, and her garden.  When we went into her home, I was so surprised because the outside looks like the pictures I have posted of the homes I the townships, but the inside had a curio cabinet with china, antique-y chairs, a full refrigerator, a TV, and a dining room table.  It looked almost like an upscale trailer home in Eau Claire might, but the outside was still plaster and other building materials stuck together to create a seemingly make-shift structure, but it looked pretty sturdy from inside.  When took a picture with her and left, I felt sort of ashamed or at least ignorant for assuming that all the homes we had seen were dumps inside.  

We saw newly installed solar panels in Ma Mngadi’s neighborhood that serve as hot-water heaters and a small amount of electricity for the home.  Bradley shared that he grew up around Uitenhage, the township we were visiting, and he had no electricity until second grade.  He said that when his daughter screams from the bathroom that the hot water ran out, he just yells, “At least you have it sometimes.”  He challenged us to explore what our great-great grandparents’ experiences were with electricity and hot water.  I am surprised at myself for not knowing.  I have discussed aspects of my grandparents’ childhoods, but I have never gotten that kind of detail.

After Ma’s we went back to the pottery place that he showed us on the first city tour.  I got a few pieces, including a mask :D !  Then, Bradley showed us a child-headed home.  Both of the parents are gone, so a young boy takes care of the household.  He receives some aid from the government to help with income, and Bradley knows the young boy and his siblings because they are part of an African dancing troupe that Bradley would like to incorporate into some of his tourism endeavors.  An older-teen or youngish-twenty year old girl came out from one of the houses in the area, and she said hi to all of us with really great English.  She talked a little bit about the dancing and Bradley told her, “Don’t get too fat now.”  And I was a bit taken aback.

Next, we went to a tavern in New Brighton township, right by Pendla Primary School which is one of the service sites that our group visits.  We got three beers/ciders for the price of one in PE.  When we were all outside under the umbrellas on the wooden deck enjoying our beverage, I asked Bradley about the fat comment.  He said that the girl was pregnant, so he was just poking fun at her.  I should also mention that for the older generation, say Bradley's parents, fat meant healthy and was taken as a compliment. At one point, we all saw a puppy that was really cute, and we watched it sit under a van in the van’s shade.  All of a sudden the van’s alarm started going off and the dog scurried out, turned around and tried to figure out where the noise was coming from, eventually the dog gave up and found some other shade, but it was a funny scene.

In the car leaving from the tavern, Bradley offered us all some of the bread/rolls he bought from the first women we visited to keep out stomachs from sloshing around in the car.  The bread was great.  He said that it will be served in a backpacker (hostel) that is being built right next to the women’s container.  These are all centered around a cultural museum called the Red Museum that we visited as a group.  The backpacker is owned by twenty or so women from the community who will manage and run the place.  The building should be done or close to done by the time we leave in the end of May, and the women will be cooking the bread there without electricity in the same manner that they cook it in the shipping container that they occupy now.  These women along with the other stakeholders know how to write United Nations proposals and have the skills and product to manage their own business, but many of them are unemployed due to the lack of jobs.  So, Bradley is helping to create jobs with the backpacker for women who truly deserve it for all of the hard work that they are putting in.

Last, we stopped at a food stand on the road and I got some butternut squash and blue pumpkin.  The blue pumpkin is grayish on the outside and is allegedly very good, so I will cook it up and let you know.  I have an Indigenous African Cookbook that I checked out from the library, so maybe there are some pumpkin recipes that I could dish up from in there.  I am writing on the terrace now, and the sun was beautiful all day, but the clouds are back and the dampness is coming again.  The gray weather is very conducive to a late afternoon nap, so we’ll see where the rest of the day takes me.  We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30 for Addo with Bradley as our guide, and we won’t be home until after a night game ride.  I have high hopes for sighting some of the big five (water buffalo, leopard, elephant, lion, and rhinoceros).

P.S.  There is a court transcript of Ma Mngadi's hearing at the Truth and Reconciliation Trials.  It is her testimony of the wrongs committed against her during her imprisonments during the liberation fight and her requests for compensation.  It's verrrry interesting to read.  http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/hrvel2/mngadi.htm 

Peace

Culture Questions for Bruce

Today, I'm wondering what the difference between freedom fighters like Ma Mngundi and Jacob Zuma are?  The both come from meager backgrounds and sacrificed a lot to fight for themselves and their people to have a better life.  Ma still lives in the townships and continues her social work by demanding food resources to prepare from the government and doing what she can to improve the lives of others she can touch.  Zuma had similar beginnings, but he is drowning in corruption, using the people's money for his own or underhanded uses.  Does power corrupt people or can some people keep working for the people?

In a short film we watched in POLS yesterday, a former freedom fighter Reverend who serves Zuma now, claimed that the government has not failed the people.  He said that one can acknowledge that the government has tried it's best but there is still poverty.  (He also claimed that Zuma is an appropriate leader of the AIDS council despite his comments about showering to protect himself after having sex with a women he knew was  HIV positive.  He said that it's all media who just run with comments like that and Zuma is an absolutely capable leader.)  I have a problem believing that the government is doing it's best when one man in PE can have so many things going on to help the people by teaching them to use their own talents and learn the political machine to get funding in order to make a better life.  The government deals with so much money, and they are choosing to cut education funding and meals at school (which is the only meal that many children get).  I think some of the same "stuck thinking" problems are present in the US, too. I would like to look into how some of the local politics work here and what is required for women to obtain a container to conduct their business in, and what causes that container to, despite promises from the government, go without electricity even though it has the necessary materials on the container to handle electricity.  I think it will give me perspective on how the political games are played and how to work with them to achieve development in communities.