Three Days in the Community.

I stayed three days in the community with one of my students, Nokuzola, from June 11-14.

I arrived and Zola was very hospitable. She showed me where I was staying. Honestly, when I first walked in I was quite surprised. The door leads into a kitchen. I’d say a pretty large kitchen – larger than an apartment kitchen and comparable to an average sized cooking area. They had a beautiful wood stove used to cook and heat the house. Her Gogo’s favourite spot (where I saw her about 90% of the time) was on the floor on a homemade mat right beside the wood stove. She would sit there slumped over until she had something random to teach or say. She spoke English alright and would tell me stories about when she cooked for the white people. She was constantly teaching me SiSwati, which was great, because I was eager to learn. At times she would speak to me only in SiSwati but used extravagant hand gestures, which were enough for me to follow most of what she was saying.

After passing through the kichen, straight ahead was a large eating/ resting space and to the right was a long hallway. The space ahead had a couch, a radio, a dining table, a fridge, and a freezer. Not much time was spent in there. Down the hallway were four bedrooms. Zola and I slept in the spare room (which had two beds) and Daphne and Gogo slept in another room. Zola has her own room also.

After getting settled in, Zola cooked supper: chicken, rice, and a bean salad. It was delicious and sparked the questions of if they eat like this all the time or if they just brought out the best for the guest. After supper we sat around in the kitchen for an uncomfortably long time, drank coffee, and then proceeded to be around 8:30.

Preparing for bed is interesting when there is no indoor plumbing. They have water from the tap just outside their house (which is a luxury) and store it in buckets inside. This also means there is no bathtub or toilet. In the middle of the night, I heard Zola get up and pee in a bucket in our room. I tried my best to time my excrements (I didn’t want to have to take a large dump in the middle of the night – OR a medium-sized one for that matter) but on the last night I got to (enjoyably) experience peeing in a bucket in my bedroom.

Now taking a bath was definitely my favourite part! Every morning Zola would grab two basins, create a perfect mixture of hot (boiled on the stove) and cold water and place the basins in our room. We would then proceed to get naked and bathe in our separate basins. I was unsure how to do it at first and without wanting to look foolish, I asked. She was a bit surprised and said “are you serious” but it is in her nature to politely teach. So there I was standing in a small bucket trying to reach all the necessary parts. The bucket was probably ½ a meter in diameter and the water level probably had a height of about 3 inches. But how efficient!! It was quick, efficient water usage, and it left my skin feeling like a baby’s bottom.

In the morning Zola would have my breakfast and coffee ready for me and I’d be off to work for a day. She was always up at 5:30 getting the fire in the stove and feeding, dressing and shipping her 7 year old sister off to school. This is the life of a child-headed household.

I was basically up at 5 every morning too because apparently all the roosters in the community like to sing in unison upon sunrise. At night we go to bed at around 8:30 and fall asleep to the beautiful chorus of dogs.

On the last night, I brought a deck of cards to have a little fun. I taugh Daphne ‘Go Fish’, which seemed like a great idea at first – until she pestered me every second to play until I left the next day. And OH how she cheats! But how do you scold a child when you do not speak the same language and when you are a guest in her house? Well, you shake your finger where you can and pretend mismatched pairs are normal.
The last experience that was enjoyable was doing laundry. I requested we do laundry Saturday morning before I left and so we washed a couple things I had: a bra, a couple of skirts, a couple of t-shirts, and a jersey (sweater). We had 3 basins: the first with soapy water, the second with rinsing water and the third with Stay Soft fabric softener. So we scrub scrub scrubbed the clothes in the first (keep in mind her ratio of clothes done to mine is 3:1) then rinse in the second and then soften in the third. And – yes my arms were dead tired, the muscle falling off and all by the end and yes – my knuckles were bleeding.
An incredible three days!!
The men’s reactions to a Mulungu in the community, although, is another story…