A Whole New World

A whole new world

Don't you dare close your eyes

A hundred thousand things to see

Hold your breath, it gets better

Before I came to South Africa, I had been familiar with a certain residential part of this country: the township. Admittedly, I fell into the trap of imagining that every township was composed of the tin-roof shanties that adorn the informal settlements in many township areas. However, my stay in Soweto during my weekend trip to Joburg showed me how I wrong I could be about the idea of a township. For that reason, I was slightly less apprehensive (at least I think so) than many of my friends at the prospect of our weekend homestay in Ocean View, a township with perhaps the most ironic title of any place I’ve been in South Africa. There is no view of the ocean. Instead, Ocean View is sandwiched in a small valley between mountains, and is comprised almost entirely of individuals who were forcibly removed from places like Simon’s Town, Noordhoek, and Sunnydale during the apartheid era. At the end of the weekend, most of my ideas were proved wrong, as I had a blast staying with my family.

Just as a small note, however, I am not going to be using their names, for reasons of privacy. I will just refer to them as their relation in our host family (i.e. host mother, host father, host grandmother, etc.)

Our weekend began when our busses left UCT at 5pm, departing for Ocean View High School. We got our nametags, each with a number corresponding to a table where our host families were waiting. Over dinner and performances from the local arts center (who completely showed up the Americans who performed, by the way), I and my housemate Akeem who was also staying with this family got to meet our host father and mother. They told us a little bit about themselves, including that they had 4 kids: a 6 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, and twin 7-month old girls. I was SO excited to be back around little kids!! It felt like working at camp all over again.

After dinner we went back to our host family’s home. It was modest, but a lot nicer than my initial notion of a township home was. Our host dad explained that he bought the house from his brother, who had bought his mother’s old house down the street. After a glass of tea, we proceeded to go meet the rest of the extended family, easily accomplished by walking down the street to our host aunt and uncle’s house. We were greeted exceptionally warmly, and made to feel immediately like members of the family. It was that night that I learned my family, like I imagine many other families in the township, has a rule: no empty glasses. Whenever, you are done with a drink, it’s time for another one. It was interesting to note, however, just how generous everyone was, for they would see empty glasses, pour a bunch of drinks, and pass them out, before finally serving themselves. They also began to teach us some words in Afrikaans, most of which unfortunately I’ve already forgotten.

That night I also got my first taste of the shebeen, of which some are legal and others are illegal. A shebeen is a liquor store. Unlike the liquor stores in Rondebosch, however, these stores are open 24/7. So, we drove over to the home of another uncle, and went with his son over to the shebeen to buy some brandy for the next day. There were a couple of teenagers hanging out outside, waiting for someone to offer to buy them something (felt kind of like being back in the US, except that they were drinking in the street).

From there, we went back to the party, where we ended up staying until about 2am. I received some great advice from my host uncle, my favorite piece of which was “all you need in life is to wake up happy”. Luckily, this guy liked me enough to give me this same piece of advice about 10 more times during the weekend. My host mother, pretty drunk by this point, also opened up about her past relationship abuse issues, and the loss of her first child. It really struck me that someone could be so open with someone they had just met, but I had to remember that these people weren’t just opening up to a stranger; we were people staying in their homes, joining their families for the weekend. Finally, we went back home, because we had to be awake at 6:15am for our Saturday outing.

We woke up at that ungodly hour, roused ourselves to get dressed and drink a glass of tea. The bus was supposed to leave at 7, but we didn’t make it there until about 8. Luckily this wasn’t a problem, however, because the park we were going to didn’t open until 9 anyway, so we were still waiting for about 20 minutes before the park gates opened. I spent some of my day chatting with the adults and with the 5 other Americans who had become members of this large extended family. However, most of my day, luckily, was spent playing with all the little kids. I learned a little bit about how to play cricket from a kid who I believe may have been my host cousin, but I’m not necessarily positive about that one. This kid, an 8 year old, also was the person with whom I had the most intellectual conversations the entire day; he was way smarter than his age would let on, and it actually reminded me why I’ve always liked working with kids so much.

This picnic, however, did have a slightly sour element to it. I can safely say that I now understand what people mean when they say that townships have a very distinct drinking culture. Whatever may have caused it, there is no denying that people from the townships drink heavier than anyone else I’ve ever encountered. Most host mom, albeit only on 2 hours of sleep, spent some time sleeping, but immediately after sleeping (while still drunk) managed to reach a point of intoxication that I’m not used to seeing in adults. While she happened to be an extreme case, there were many around who were approaching that level. While I can safely say that I had a buzz for almost the entirety of the time I was there (because it was uncomfortable to say no to any drinks I was poured), there was no chance that any of us Americans were anywhere close to the level of drunkenness that our host parents achieved.

From there, I noticed some very scary things beginning to happen that made my a little bit uncomfortable. When we got back on the bus to return home, I sat with my host family towards the back of the bus. Upon looking over, I saw that my host mother was being yelled at for hitting one of the other children on the bus, and her response was “he hit me first!” For an adult to say something like that was truly frightening, knowing that it came from a real place of seriousness. Then, I was surrounding by 10 middle-aged coloured women literally screaming church songs, banging on the back and roof of the bus, literally blasted and outrageous. Finally, we got home, and I was able to take a nap. The saddest and scariest part of my weekend, however, was when my mother’s sister-in-law and her best friend each took away one of one of the 7-month old babies. While I cannot safely say why this happened, my best guesstimation is that they took the babies away because she couldn’t handle taking care of them in the state she was in.

After our nap we were again invited back down to the aunt and uncle’s house for a braai. I was immediately greeted warmly by the family again, and was fed some of the best fish that I’ve had since I’ve been in South Africa. First I ate some snoek, and then I had angelfish. Both were absolutely superb. Then, finally, the TV was working, and we were able to really partake in the reason we were there: KARAOKE! This family was crazy about their karaoke. Unfortunately, there were no microphones for us to use, so karaoke was basically just us yelling and dancing together while watching words on a screen. Oddly enough, the first video we watched was actually a Playboy karaoke video… definitely an interesting experience to say the least. All of us Americans spent the entire time just laughing at the absurdity of that. The rest of the night was a repeat of the night before… just dancing, laughing, drinking, and enjoying ourselves. I learned a new kind of dance called the “jazz” which was kind of like salsa (thus I had problems doing it because I just kept doing salsa moves). We also managed to do an entire karaoke CD of just ‘Nysnc music, bringing us all back to our childhoods. Finally, around midnight I had to go to bed, so I left and went back home to sleep.

Sunday morning we just lazily woke up whenever we wanted, and then hung out at home for a little bit. My host dad taught Akeem and me how to DJ on this cool computer system that he had, which was totally awesome because it’s the same system that most major DJs in the world use. After that, we went to my host grandmother’s house, because it was her birthday. I thought it would be a simple hello, happy birthday, goodbye kind of situation. Instead, we were there for a couple of hours, during which time a toothless woman sporadically jumped out of her comatose state (from drinking, I assume) to yell “DANCE” at me…which made me very uncomfortable. Because of that, I spent most of my time outside with my host dad, who was awesome and talking to us about the differences between the US and the South African education system, and about the township itself. I also spent a lot of time again playing with the kids, who I did not at all want to say goodbye to. After heading back home, we grabbed our stuff, and made one more trip to our host aunt and uncle’s house, where we found out that one of the kids on our program had actually appeared in a music video that was really popular in South Africa, and thus the family had dragged him back over to their house to take pictures with him. From that house, we said our many goodbyes, and went back to Ocean View High School to say goodbye to our families for the last time. It was bittersweet, especially to say goodbye to the kids, who just wanted me to hug them over and over and over, but I was slightly relieved to be getting back to my normal routine.

None of the above statements in any way imply that I disliked my time in Ocean View. I think that the community is a vibrant, historical, and incredible place to have been. I probably learned more from my weekend in Ocean View than I have about the apartheid era in my entire life. However, the strange things I had to go through, not par for the course for this homestay, did manage to make my experience a little bit less of a good memory than I hoped it would be. I do not, though, have any regrets about the weekend, and am so glad that I had the opportunity to live in a township, even if just for a weekend.