Ek is van kaapstad!

(“I am Cape Townian!” in Afrikaans, which I learned on my homestay Not the whole language… just that sentence. LOL!)

This past weekend was our homestay in Ocean View, a coloured township about 30 minutes from campus, and it was SO perfect!! I was really needing a weekend just to relax, so it couldn’t have come at a better time. I packed up right after class on Friday and got on the bus, and the ride was so beautiful with the scenery and everything. We got there, and went into the high school for dinner, where we met our families! It turned out that me and Terrance were cousins, because he was staying with my host mom’s cousin. So that was cool! Anyway, we ate some really good food and then this poet from Ocean View went up and spoke and read some of her poetry. It was really stirring, especially one about Nelson Mandela that she wrote in his 70th birthday when he was still in jail, back in 1988.

After that, we went home with our families! It was me and another American girl, Emilie, staying with our host mom, who I will call Mama J to protect privacy. She was so welcoming from the beginning, and I could tell she had such a good heart, so I knew the weekend was going to be great. She has three kids, a daughter who’s grown and lives with her husband and two kids (SO cute!), another daughter who’s 23 who lives at home so we got to hang out with her all weekend, which was so much fun, and a son who’s in the army and 21, just like Jack! On Friday night we basically just hung out and talked, and I learned so much about Mama J and what an inspirational person she is.

Mama J was 19 when her family was relocated to Ocean View, a segregated all-coloured community, during apartheid (I think around 1969). She said it wasn’t as big of a deal for her because she had just become an adult and was starting a new life anyway, but for her mother, it was a huge adjustment and broke her heart to leave their old neighborhood. Mama J’s father had died when she was 14, so she had to drop out of school in 8th grade to help her family. She married and had three children, but her husband was an alcoholic and horribly abusive. There were times when she and her kids would have to run away, and Mama J told me she remembers having to hide under the car in the driveway for hours so that he could not find her. She said she felt like an animal, but it was hard for her to find a good job, so how could she leave her husband with no income? But one day she came to work and a co-worker was really concerned because she had a black eye. She convinced Mama J to divorce her husband, so she finally got the courage to leave him. Although times were really hard for the family financially, she said she felt such a peace in the home that had never been there before, and her children could feel it, too.

Despite all of these struggles, Mama J has such a kind and giving heart, and you can tell that she passed it on to her children too. She was telling us that her son in the army befriended a black soldier from Joburg who came from a very poor background, and began to teach him how to save money. He would take him shopping and help him pick out inexpensive items. He never accepted anything in return, and when this friend gave him some sweaters as a thank-you gift, he didn’t keep them, but instead gave them to some boys down the street who were in need. The family has so many stories like that, of giving what they have to people who need it even more. These little girls who live next door came over for food 3 or 4 times during the weekend, and Mama J fed them every time. It was just really beautiful to see how giving they were.

And of course, they treated us SO well! Mama J gave up her bed for me and Emilie to sleep in, and she shared a bed with her daughter for the weekend. The third room was for an old mentally ill man who the family has been taking care of for forty years! He was so sweet and you could tell he was like a member of the family, and it was yet another reflection of their dedication to helping out whoever needed it. And we ate SO well this weekend!! That was really the highlight, besides getting to know Mama J and her daughter, of course. On Saturday we woke up to a huge breakfast of like 4 different types of meat and toast, and for lunch we had a classic Coloured meal – a gatsby! Picture a huge sub with lettuce, tomato, bologna, and… french fries! Yes, french fries. I know it sounds SO random but let me tell you, it was delicious! It did feel a little bit unhealthy to be eating a french fry sandwich but hey… when you’re on a vacation you don’t count calories right? And then dinner was amazing too!! We had two courses – lasagna, and then chicken curry! Apparently curry is a big thing in Coloured communities too, and Mama J is going to teach me how to prepare some dishes next time I come over, probably in a few weeks when her son comes home on leave for the long weekend.

Then Sunday we went to church, which was funny because Mama J’s daughter was saying she could tell everyone was looking at her because she had two white girls with her! See, she’s really light-skinned so she said everyone was probably thinking, “who does she think she is, trying to pass for white and hanging out with these white girls!” Because the community’s so small, it’s very gossip-y, so I definitely believed her! After church we had Sunday lunch, which is a big deal there… not too different from the States, everybody getting together to eat Sunday afternoon/evening after church and stuff. It was a FEAST! Mama J made lamb, chicken, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and these delicious squash filled with corn and cheese. And then for dessert we had apple pudding and custard! We ate SO much this weekend, it was really ridiculous.

I’m really glad we did the homestay, because I bonded so closely with my host mom and sister, and also it was so interesting to hear first-hand about apartheid and people’s attitudes now. Mama J was saying how she used to have such negative perceptions of Black people, because people were made to hate each other under such a divisive system. But now she says she works with a lot of Black ladies and she can see that we are all just people at the end of the day. That’s not to say they aren’t frustrated with things like Black Economic Empowerment, though. Mama J said “During apartheid we weren’t white enough. Now we aren’t black enough!” She was saying how much she dislikes President Mbeki because now all the benefits go to Black people and the Coloureds are left out. It’s such a fine line because during apartheid, Coloureds were afforded better treatment than Blacks, so now all the affirmative action policies and things like that are mostly for Black people, so they’re frustrated. But to me, as long as everything is so race-focused, the real problem of poverty here is not going to be solved. Blacks and Coloureds alike are really, really suffering, and it’s definitely worse in the Black townships from what I have seen, but continuing tensions between the races isn’t going to help anything. It’s a really hard situation, but at the end of the day, no one should be suffering from such immense poverty.

My homestay was definitely one of the highlights of my trip thus far. I’m so glad I was able to be immersed in a community that is not a privileged college campus like UCT. I learned so much and I can’t wait to go back and visit!!