26.12.07
The other side
Kayamandi Township – 11/12/07
Ruth had us booked to spend a day in a poor township near CT. Today we went to visit Kayamandi. She’d been in touch with a guy called Songo who works with an organisation called Prochorus. They do basic development work as well as crisis work. Ruth’s thought was not that we just go along and peer at their lives but to maybe help out a little. Not too easy for just one day but better than nothing.
We’d seen the odd township slum from roads as we passed the outskirts of towns but we’d not really been into any of them before. My word what a sight/site.
Kayamandi (meaning “lovely home”, yeah right) was set up in the ’40s as a base for rural people coming into the region to work in the towns. When all the SA segregation laws came in they forcibly stuck loads of the black community here after kicking them out of nicer areas in the towns (reserved for “coloureds” and whites).
There are a couple of sections to the place. One is an organised place with small houses and services; this is the richer end where people have at least a tap in their house and some sewage system. The other part is a higgledy-piggledy mess of lean-tos and shacks built with whatever people could find. These places are built on mud, the streets and gutters smell suspiciously of poo and the place regularly floods, fires are common and, since there are no building regs, they spread easily. All of those who think “health and safety has gone mad” just think about that for a while. It’s nice to live somewhere where the builders have been made to think about our safety should the worst happen.
In recent years things have improved a little for the inhabitants though. At least 95% of dwellings had electricity and everyone is at least near clean water.
Songo showed us to a building in the bad area that used to be a dwelling for single male workers. They’d have been separated from family as they only wanted the workers to come into the towns. The building was for 40 men. But since the end of apartheid these men brought their families across too. So in this place for 40 men were now 40 families. The building was long with a communal kitchen in the middle and 5 rooms with 4 bunks per room on either wing. The rooms were big enough for 2 bunk beds (hence 4 beds) and about 2mx2m space inbetween. And that has 4 families staying in it. There was no storage, no possessions, no privacy. Very poor indeed.
But as this was being related and the sheer awfulness of it sank in I turned my head back to the kitchen area. There was a lad about 4 or 5 years old dancing away to what was on the radio with the biggest smile on his face. I guess it’s what you know.
And friendly wasn’t a good enough word for these folk. We picked ourselves up 2 young children. They just came up and joined us. I imagine they thought we might give them treats or some such. But they didn’t want to let go of K and me.
Songo took us to meet quite an old lady; apparently she was the local pastor’s wife and was active in looking after the older inhabitants of the township. Our plan was to visit some of these oldies to see if there was anything a couple of physios and a nurse could do to help out.
We met a few old folk and gave out advice, mended walking sticks etc… But we were clearly only scratching the surface here. How aggravating to know that it only needs a little bit of vigour and tenacity, and not much money really, to make a proper difference.
The stories we heard and watched were very striking. We went to visit an old gent who’d been having trouble walking. I had a look at his foot but therein lay the problem. It was a way through going manky from diabetic problems. He didn’t need a physio he needed a specialist doctor. But the doctor costs R140. He gets R780 per month in pension. So a quarter of his monthly pension to see a doc. So he doesn’t go; and the foot gets worse. He will end up with gangrene at which point they’ll help him. For more money and worse outcome. And people wonder why I work in primary care.
One old lady I helped out was being looked after by her 11 year old grand-daughter. The old woman had had a stroke 3 years earlier but had forced herself to get sorted as well as she could with no physio follow-up really. Someone had provided her with a zimmer and she made herself stay active in the house as well as she could. The grand-daughter clearly adored her granny and did what she could to help but that’s pretty much a full time job. She was clearly bright, eager, energetic and in other circumstances could do well at school and become anything she wanted to be. And more to the point get out of this poverty should she attain decent academic standards. It’s so sad that she probably won’t attain that; even she avoids the likelihood of getting HIV.
25% of expectant mothers in the camp have HIV. People we spoke to in SA generally said that the official rate of HIV infection was somewhere in the 20%s. They also reckon the actual percentage is nearer 70! Bloody hell. And the government still does nothing much about it. The president thinks that HIV and AIDS are not linked; one of his ministers still thinks that having a shower after sex will protect him (and more to the point goes on telly to say this), and Mbeke reckons that AIDS researchers are no better than nazi scientists.
And some of the churches in the camp don’t help matters either. Rather than educating they’re still doing the “sex before marriage is wrong” shtick. And therefore condemning those who get infected. The problem with this approach is that people don’t learn the truth. So myths still abound. “Sex with a virgin” still equates to “cure for HIV”. “Condoms don’t work” is one in particular that the churches are not trying to stamp out. So the cycle goes on.
The former of these is a particularly nasty myth. Most girls have kids by the age of 16. This means that men wishing to have this “cure” have to look for younger girls. I didn’t notice at the time but the rape crisis room at prochorus was a childrens room. Loads of cuddly toys etc… I’ll leave that there before I get too angry again.
Returning to the subject of women. We found out that Songo is single and he reckons he’s unlikely to find a bride now. He wants someone with no children yet and he’s in his late 20’s. All the women by that age already have children of their own so he’s not likely to get anywhere.
Other memories: K remembers the 11 year old asking her when she’s coming back. Quite made her well up it did. Ruth’s abiding memory was the rape crisis room.
Is there anything WE can do here? I wonder. I’d love to think that a bunch of jugglers could get together to go for a while, do some practical stuff in the days and maybe entertain in the evening. How worthwhile or fanciful that is I don’t know.
But again it’s only scratching surfaces. Kayamandi is quite a small township. There are worse problems in some of the larger ones.
We left in the afternoon to head back to what OUR normal was.
In the evening we headed to a restaurant in CT called Mama Africa. Good and proper food again. I had crocodile this time; nice enough but basically pork. The place was nice enough but it had a few black marks against it. The service was tardy at best; they didn’t have the drink Ruth wanted; and it was very very loud with a live band banging away in the bar.
The worst problem we had was in the evening before when Ruth phoned to get directions as she’d reserved us a table but hadn’t been before. An extract of the conversation as I heard it (Ruth’s on the phone to them):
“Hello is that Mama Africa?”
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“Is that Mama Africa?”
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“I’d like to confirm your address.”
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“No. Your address.”
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“How do I get to the restaurant?”
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“I have a reservation. How do I get there?”
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“Move somewhere quieter.”
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“This is my 3rd call. You need to move somewhere quieter.”
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“Where is the restaurant?”
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“No I have a reservation already. Where are you?”
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“Move somewhere quieter.”
And so on and so on.
One last note from today. The locals at Kayamandi speak a language called Xhosa. The room I was staying in at the house had a Xhosa-English dictionary so I had a peer through. Now some words don’t translate directly, we know this; we also know that some languages just nick words from others such as the French nicking “le weekend” and us stealing well just about our whole language from other places. But some of the translations in this dictionary were stunning. An example taken from the first page that fell open when I looked:
slogan, n; intetho emfatshane yokwazisa abantu ngeempahla ezithile okanye ngenjongo yombutho othile. [correct punctuation]
Very last note: The cost of my meal would have paid for the old bloke with the foot to have seen a GP. Hmm.