Guguletu

Sunday morning began my week in the township Guguletu. We all dressed up for the church service at the JL Zwane Presbyterian church. Driving through Guguletu was my initial experience seeing the inside of a township. My heart started to ache. I saw many people on the sides of the road and very young children who couldn’t have been 4 years old walking by themselves. Some of the homes were very small and run down. It looked as if pieces of scraps from old buildings, machines, and houses were thrown together to put up these shacks. I was speechless. I stared through the windows and I felt as if my heart was being squeezed.

Right before church began, each of the students was informally introduced to their host mothers and fathers. Erika and I were introduced to Noxi and then we attended a lengthy church service with her and the group at the JL Zwane Center. The associate minister, Mel Baas, is a 26 year old white army chaplain from Florida who is doing service work in South Africa. She was a very sweet woman who did a very nice service. The singing for the mass was down in Xhosa. Xhosa is a prominent language used in South Africa. The choir sang absolutely beautifully acoustically. It gave me the chills every time we stood to sing a prayer – and that was quite often! The congregation participated in the mass which made the service quite informal and laid back. It was a nice atmosphere. Mel then had an extra ceremony after church to have to officially sworn in as an associate minister for the Presbyterian church.

Everything to this point was pretty much a normal day. We stayed within the JL Zwane center and mingled and went to church. The center was quite large. It had a nice kitchen facility with offices and a large area for church services. We met several new people and started to become accustomed to the where we would be spending the majority of the week. Once the services were over and it was time for dinner, our driver dropped Erika, Ben, David, and I off at Noxi’s (my host mom) brother’s house. I had so many ideas of what I thought the house what look like. We pulled up and it was quite small which it what I expected but it wasn’t a shack. It was made of brick and it had its own drive way and rod-iron gate surrounding it, although it couldn’t have been longer than 20 feet wide. We walked in and I was surprised to find how nice everything inside was. The meal was amazing! That is something I will take away with me forever from the townships – the food. They can cook. They were also so welcoming to us when we arrived with Noxi. My apprehension melted away when I walked into that home with my host mom.

That evening, Erika and I moved into the home in which we would be living for the next 5 nights. Noxi, like her brother, lives in a small house made of brick. Later on in the week, I came to the conclusion that Noxi might be a little better off than some. She has a larger house and has a car. Unlike some, she has running hot water. Erika and I were able to bathe every morning in a tub. Many of my classmates didn’t have that luxury. They only had a water basin which was filled for them and were expected to use that to clean their entire bodies. Erika and I slept in a separate little house outside in the back of the house. That really took me off guard. When we first came into the house and were being taken towards the back, Noxi said “you will sleep outside.” I wasn’t sure if she meant that literally or not! Then she clarified herself and said it was a spare room behind the house. We had to walk out the back door and around the house and unlock another room and in that room was one bed and a bunch of lawn chairs. It was a nice room with a space heater because at night it gets really cold! Noxi asked us several times if we were going to be scared or cold and we said over and over that we wouldn’t be because we would be together and there was a heater so we would be fine. Not going to lie though, at first we were a little nervous, but after a while our nervousness faded away. Before we went to bed, Erika, Noxi, and I all crawled into Noxi’s full bed and watched Jerry Springer while we drank Milo (hot chocolate) and ate marshmallows. At this point, I knew it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

It really surprised me how different my initial experience was in the township. I really tried hard to come in without any preconceived notions, but that is almost impossible. In my head, I thought everything would look the same and the poverty would be uniform throughout the area. That isn’t true. Even within the township, the level of poverty is unbalanced. There are people living in shacks that are falling apart from water damage and they don’t have the money to fix them much less the money to buy tonight’s dinner and then there are people like Noxi who are considered to be living in poverty who have the ability to own a car and a nicer home that can withstand the rain. She also has the ability to provide dinner for herself tonight and even for Erika and me.

I thought this was intense – I hadn’t even met the kids yet…