Today's Home Visits

I went on two home visits with Yvonne, Nomokwazi, and a new friend, Nolothando, this afternoon. We went to an area called Lower Crossroads, about 10-15 minutes drive from the Centre. It's outside of JL Zwane's usual catchment area. However, Nolothando lives in the area and she would like to start supporting children in the way that Yvonne does it. Yvonne is contacting churches in the area to have them back Nolothando's efforts, and it looks good that something positive will happen.

The first home we visited belongs to a 20-year old woman. Her 14-year old brother lives with her. Their father died in 1994, and their mother died this past March. They share a one-room cinder block house about 15 feet x 20 feet. They have almost nothing in the house, just two twin beds, a desk that they use to store food and kitchen gear, and a TV. There's one bare light bulb hanging in the middle of the room. You can smell the soaked-in odor of paraffin from a stove (for cooking and heat), and you can't help but notice the black specks on the walls where mold is growing. The toilet is outside (like most places around here) and they get water from a central tap down the road.

Since their mother died, their only source of sustainable income is the R200 per month they get from renting two shacks in their front yard. The woman only completed Standard 5 (7th grade) so her chances of finding a decent-paying job are almost zero. Needless to say, they have little to eat and are constantly scrounging. When Yvonne asked about how she gets money to buy food, the woman didn't answer, she just started to cry. In the car afterwards, Yvonne and the other women explained that this is the typical reaction when a woman doesn't want to admit to using sex to survive (literally known as survival sex). She does not consider herself a prostitute by any means. She is simply allowing men to help support her and her brother and offering her body in return. Women who do this know it is not "right" but they feel trapped by a lack of any other means of support.

I knew that this goes on in the townships but it was my first time meeting someone dependent on it. It's really difficult to know that women have to rely upon this and not be able to do anything to help avoid or prevent it. And by the way, it's not just women who depend on survival sex. It happens with men, girls and boys, too. It's just not talked about, as if it will go away if we just ignore it. But it won't, and we shouldn't.

The other house I visited belongs to a young woman as well. She had lived with her father, who died recently. Her mother hasn't been in the picture since the father divorced her years ago. She is living with her sister and three other adults or older teenagers. The house is also cinder block and is larger than the first one. It's in a little better shape, but not much. They added on to the house at some point, with wood walls and newspaper circulars for wallpaper. It's colorful, but dreadful at the same time. The house has a full-sized bed and a couch for five adults, so I'm sure someone sleeps on the floor.

The primary woman and her sister recently had babies, thinking that they would then qualify for government assistance (R190 per child per month). Unfortunately, they hadn't considered that you need an identity card (kind of like our state ID cards) to get assistance. These two women don't have identity cards because their paperwork has been lost and they cannot get birth certificates. (Apparently, lost paperwork is somewhat common here, especially when people move from province to province. There isn't any common computer system across the country for personal documentation and if the original gets lost, it's gone forever.)

So, now there are two young women with babies and no money to take care of them. They had a social worker who came regularly with food parcels, but those stopped a while back. This will be one of the first families Nolothando works on because their situation is really dire.

So, when you go to sleep tonight imagine if your bed and your dresser are the only things you own in a house the size of your bedroom. And you share it with 4 or 5 other people. And you don't have painted walls or curtains or a closet. And your roof leaks. And you have only water and two slices of white bread to look forward to for breakfast. That's reality for hundreds of thousands of people in one of the most beautiful and affluent cities in all of Africa.

And imagine what you'd think if you heard a government minister spent over R1,000,000 ($140,000) remodeling his office conference room. No joke.