I am often mistaken for a missionary. This was the case yet again as Oros and I made our way, house by house, through the Lenyenye Township outside of Tzaneen. While Tzaneen is predominately home to Shangaan speaking people, Lenyenye is mostly Sepedi. This is a legacy of the Apartheid policy of keeping ethnic tensions high amongst black groups so as to channel anger and resentment away from white rule. Thanks to a certain church that has set up shop in the area, my presence made many homeowners rather suspicious. Apparently this church has been sending out white missionaries door to door for months now. After greetings, many homeowners asked Oros, in Sepedi, why our church was bothering them again.
After explaining ourselves, we are finally able to get to the meat of our survey, which is very short. We ask how many taps the household has and then we see if any of them leak. And that’s it. People are often disappointed. After perhaps 5 or 10 minutes of introductions and explanations, the survey itself takes maybe 30 seconds.
We’ve found some interesting things along the way. One woman had her tap running constantly, at full blast, for months. She couldn’t turn it off because of damage to a thin rubber washer in the faucet that had broken. I wondered why she didn’t bother to try to fix it, at least for the sake of saving money if not water conservation. The problem is that she already owes 10,000 Rand to the municipality for her water bill. 10, 000 rand is an insurmountable bill, one that she will never, ever, pay off. She pays 50 rand a month when she can; often skipping a month if the money is thin. She hasn’t got any incentive to save water because there is no relationship between the amount of water she uses and the amount of money she has to pay at the end of the month. This is something we saw over and over again. The poorest families often owe massive amounts of money to the municipality for their water.
As we conducted our survey through Lenyenye I noticed a long train of elderly women, referred to as kokos(with the ‘k’ sounding like a ‘g’), in bright yellow vests running through the streets. I was told that this was a charity event for children. After the koko run was over, we heard loud horns and drums coming from a few blocks away. We followed the sound until it lead us to a large community centre. Inside we found a stage and an audience, with kokos dancing and the music alternating between live horn music and incredibly loud, thumping techno music. Oros and I sat down near the back, hoping to observe the event in an unobtrusive way. Immediately we were approached by one of the officials for the event. After asking us who we were, she insisted that we sit on stage at the VIP table. We tried to get out of it, but quickly realized that to refuse would be impolite.
South African community events have a few necessary components. There must be food. If you want anyone to come, you must cook up some porridge, beef stew, cabbage and other traditional food. There must also be very loud music. The music is almost always techno or house music—the sort of music my mom couldn’t stomach for two minutes is joyously accepted by 80 year old kokos in South Africa. There must also be a VIP table. This is a table which faces the audience and is reserved for ward counsellors, chiefs, representatives from government ministries and other notables. Since Oros and I had literally wandered in off the street, we wanted nothing to do with the VIP table. We didn’t even know what exactly the event was for.
As I nervously approach the stage, the music suddenly turned off and all eyes were on Oros and me. We took our seats at the table and wrote our name, place of birth, and company on sheet of paper so that the MC can introduce us to the audience. I looked at the program and noted that the event was running about two hours late, which is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. Once Oros and I arrived, however, the show began.
The MC asked me my name and, as expected, couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it, “Al… Alfred?” he asked. The trouble people have here understanding my name confused me when I first got to South Africa. There are a couple notable Africans who are named Oliver that almost everyone knows. There is Oliver Mtukudzi, a well known Zimbabwean musician and there is Oliver Tambo, a former president of the ANC during the struggle against Apartheid. The problem lies in my pronunciation. I pronounce Oliver as “Ah-lih-ver” while the African pronunciation is more like “Oh-lee-vah”. They may as well be different names.
When the MC realized I am an American, his face lit up. Once the MC introduced me as such, the crowd was appreciative as well, actually giving me a standing ovation. After that, my duties as a VIP were essentially complete. For the next three hours I watched various groups of children dance, hula-hoop, and sing their way through the program. It was delightful. Even though I should be used to it by now, I was still surprised to see that almost every kid in the room had impressive dancing ability. Prior to each dancing competition, all the children in the room surged towards the MC to volunteer to compete. As the program continued I found myself glancing more and more at the women preparing the food that I was increasingly hungry for. At the end, the VIPs were showed to a back room with a private buffet and a table while everyone else stood in a long line to get their food.
Moments such as this present a problem for me. My instincts are egalitarian, and I feel funny coming from a place as wealthy as America so that the Lenyenye Community Center can pay to feed me better than I feed myself or the majority of their community. These sorts of dilemmas are strictly academic however. While I may feel funny walking out of the community hall with a full stomach as hundreds of children wait in line for food, to not accept the generosity offered to me would be self-serving and impolite. I can’t count the number of times people have flown out of their chairs so that I can have a place to sit, and I can’t count the number of mangos, papayas and bananas my friend Patrick has brought me over the course of my stay here. People are so generous here that I have trouble keeping up.
I’m visiting my host family, the Chaukes, this weekend. It is Dodo’s and Mamaza’s birthday (they are twins) and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Beyond that I am now training for a 50 kilometer race in March. This is a daunting prospect, especially while training under the harsh African sun.
I have added new photos, by the way.
