This last weekend 16 of us went to
Ocean View for a homestay with local families. Josh and I stayed with Auntie
Alice (here you call anyone “who you didn’t play marbles with” auntie) and her
husband David. Auntie Alice ran a preschool out of their house and David worked
for the local parks department and served as a pastor on Sundays. His church
was run out of the preschool run out of their house. Josh and I stayed in a
room adjacent to the preschool.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon,
were brought to our homes for the weekend and were introduced to our families.
That night we attended a ballroom dancing class. We were to learn how to waltz,
cha-cha, quickstep, and jive in 90 minutes. For all of us this seemed
ambitious. We started with the waltz, which was easy enough, but as we
progressed to more and more complicated dances we grew increasingly
appreciative of how difficult dance was and the coordination of the 8 year olds
dancing circles around us.
The next day we worked at “sports
day,” where local kindergartens and elementary schools organized races for the
kids. We were all separated to help out all of the different teams and one of
us from each team, including myself, was asked to help the kids at the finish
line. The kids would line up at the starting line with their teachers pointing
at us, telling the kids to run to us. The kids would run to us and, surrounded
by cheering, the kids either got extremely excited and ran straight to us, or
started crying and got to us a tearful, mucus-covered mess. Another fun factor
for the races was the wind, which threatened to roll the kids sideways into the
judges’ table. Every time a gust swept by we’d see the kids all stagger a few
steps to the side and stumble back on track. At the end of the race we picked
the kids up, told them how awesome they were, and ran them back to their team
so we could go retrieve the next child. We caught, picked up, carried, and
repeated for several hours and then sports day was over and we were brought to
lunch and then left with our host families for the rest of the weekend.
The rest of the weekend was some of
the most relaxing time I have had since I arrived in Cape Town. We couldn’t do
work as we were told not to bring our laptops so I spent most of the time
talking to my host family and reading. Josh and I played dominos with our host
dad, talked to them about our futures and their futures (they were very
concerned that we weren’t married yet and not thinking about children), and met
their extended family. By the end of the weekend their house felt more like
home than our house in Rondebosch had in our first few weeks.
Like in most communities in South
Africa, what shocked me most was how ordinary everyone in the community was. I
mean ordinary in the best way. In my head I know that people in one community
aren’t typically any better or worse than the people in another community but I
still have to battle the feeling that creeps up inside me in more disadvantaged
communities that there is something wrong with the people there, and that is
why their community may not have as much physical wealth as another. Of course
this wasn’t the case. The people in Ocean View I met exhibited the same
spectrum of traits, personalities and strengths and weaknesses I see in every
other community I’ve visited, worked, or studied in while being in South
Africa. The biggest difference is just where the money is concentrated (in
South Africa, as in much of the world, in white areas, due to apartheid’s
continued grip on the economic systems in South Africa). Another difference is
that in a lot of the richest neighborhoods in Cape Town it seems that people
are too busy protecting their possessions and their wealth to ever invite you
into their homes. In Ocean View we were welcomed in openly and trusted
immediately. In South Africa there is a saying “Ubuntu.” It means, “I am,
because we are” and is frequently used in tourists’ social media posts, much
like “pura vida” is for tourists in Costa Rica. Books have been written on the
phrase’s meaning and Desmund Tutu has called it South Africa’s gift to the
world. It seems to escape the richer communities in South Africa though as the
people have started to link themselves more to the wealth around them rather
than the people. Although we need to continue fighting to improve people’s
socio-economic wellbeing, it is interesting how once we have exceeded the
degree of wealth necessary to have all of our economic and social rights
fulfilled by such a large extent that wealth starts encroaching on our
humanity. It might not be a strict rule but it is definitely apparent in South
Africa and, to a large extent, at home as well.
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