Driving to the Past: Malungeni, Part 1

"And where are we off to today, Mr. Peabody?"

"We're going to Malungeni, South Africa, circa 1907, Sherman."

"But Mr. Peabody, the Wayback Machine still says we're in 2007!"

"Sherman, sometimes times moves very slowly."

(with apologies to Jay Ward)

I had one of the most interesting trips of my life this past week. I accompanied Rev. Spiwo to his home village, Malungeni (maal-uhn-GAY-nee). This is a small village, no more than 5,000 people, located in the heart of the rural portion of the Eastern Cape. It's about 1200 kilometers (800 miles) from Cape Town and takes 15 hours or so at posted speeds. Flying, it takes about 3-4 hours via Johannesburg or 2 hours to East London and then a 3-hour drive. Needless to say, it's an out-of-the-way destination. (I didn't do a good job with the map, but Malungeni sits at the tip of the black line coming up from the white box. It's about 18 miles from Mthatha and 4 miles before a little town called Mgqaleni. It's about 30 miles inland from the sea.)

(Malungeni is in an area that some still refer to as the Transkei, which means beyond the Kei River. The Transkei was a Black homeland (also called a Bantustan) during the days of apartheid. That meant it was nominally separate from South Africa, with its own government. Mthatha, then spelled Umtata, was its capitol. The Transkei was one area where Xhosa people were sent from Cape Town and other cities. In 1994, after apartheid ended, the homelands were disbanded and incorporated back into South Africa. Transkei was merged with the Ciskei bantustan to create the Eastern Cape.)

In some ways Malungeni reminded me of Cumberland, Wisconsin where my dad spent his early years. They are (or were) both farming communities, with huge open expanses of land and a population where everyone was seemingly related to everyone else. Today, though, that's where the similarities end. Through the next couple postings I hope to portray both the idyllic facade of Malungeni and its impoverished core. To say they have challenges is the understatement of the century.

My experience starts on Monday afternoon at Cape Town airport. I haven't traveled on a domestic airline in South Africa yet, so I'm using all of my US assumptions to get prepared. I have my passport and boarding pass in hand, and all of my liquids are neatly packed in small bottles inside the required one-quart clear zip-top bag. I also have on my easy-to-untie shoes and clean, hole-free socks. Imagine my surprise when:
- my ID wasn't checked
- I didn't have to show my liquids
- I could keep my shoes on
It was like traveling 15 years ago! It was fun again!

For being in a large city, Cape Town airport, at least the domestic terminal, is definitely a small-town operation. The terminal is about twice as big as I remember it from 12 years ago but the news agent shop and bookstore looks exactly the same. We flew on a cheap, no frills airline. We got hand-written boarding passes, and they checked our names off a paper list. The terminal is small, so there are almost no seats at the gates and you either walk outside or take a bus to your plane. Boarding takes about 10 minutes because everyone tends to be on time and they know how to queue up (must be the British influence). What's really nice is the airline opens up the tail staircase of the plane, so you can board from the front or the back.

For being a no-frills airline, the service wasn't too bad. It certainly wasn't any worse than the US-based so-called full service airlines. The only difference was that you had to pay for your sodas and nuts. At least, you were supposed to. I had a Coke not knowing you had to pay and the flight attendant never asked me to. She did charge the people next to me, though. Go figure.

We took the East London route, so we picked up our car and headed for Mthatha. We had to first stop at the grocery store since we were on the self-catering program for the week. It was pretty comical, two grown men wandering around the store asking each other what we should get. We ended up with cereal, peanut butter, bread, eggs, and chicken. And some apples, just in case we had a craving for nutrition. We also picked up some sandwiches and sodas for the drive to Mthatha.

Next stop: the local KFC to pick up Thebo. He used to live in Cape Town and I knew him from the Centre. He's now living in a village outside of East London (King William's Town) and Spiwo invited him to spend the week with us. Thebo is in his mid-twenties and is currently unemployed. He's living with his parents while he tries to find work. He's also on the hunt for a wife, which is proving difficult in a village where nearly all the women are already spoken for.

Thebo hitch-hiked to East London, a process that took him about 90 minutes to travel the 80 or so kilometers. I asked if hitching is safe, and he and Spiwo agreed it is very safe. It's a very popular form of travel, since there may not be taxis between some of the cities. Spiwo said most people carry their taxi fare just in case the driver asks for payment, and will share some of it to help defray petrol costs even if the driver doesn't ask for any. I noticed a lot of people hitching rides throughout the week, and they have a unique system for getting a ride. Everyone holds a small card with a two-letter code for where they're going. They all started with X and then had a letter corresponding to a city. XA is East London, XC is Mthatha, etc. Thebo said it usually doesn't take more than a half hour to get a lift, which is considerably shorter than waiting for a taxi.

I drove the first leg to Butterworth, a small city about a third of the way to Mthatha. (Spiwo joked that he hoped I'd stay on the left side of the road and not let my US experience confuse me.) We stopped to see Spiwo's sister there (who is really his cousin - the lines of relation are very blurry here and the descriptions can be tricky. I've learned that sisters, brothers and cousins are often used in a communal sense, and people will describe true relations by who they are. For example, a male first cousin is introduced as the son of my father's brother. Or a great uncle is the brother of my father's father. It's confusing until you get the hang of it) and then he took over driving.

During the drive I learned about witchcraft and the hold it still has on many people in the rural areas. I don't mean witchcraft in the Wizard of Oz sense, it's more akin to voodoo. Many people still believe that certain other people have the power to curse them and create problems in their lives. Spiwo told me that when tragedies happen you'll often hear people say "So-and-so cursed me and made this happen." They will even point to people and accuse them. HIV/AIDS is definitely one of the things that people are blaming on witchcraft, especially when it runs in a family. Spiwo said he's been at community meetings where someone will stand up and say "The person who is causing this problem needs to stop now" as if someone in the room was to blame. He said he believes it is a way for people to avoid personal responsibility and acceptance of their own culpability in their problems, and until people are willing to accept their role things will never change.

These beliefs are not just in the rural areas, either. Plenty of people in the townships still consult sangomas and traditional healers, even people who attend church at JL Zwane. I don't know how they reconcile their Christian faith with their traditional beliefs, but apparently there's room for both.

(I also found the discussion a little ironic. Here's a Christian minister telling me that believing in supernatural is not right, that no one person/entity can be responsible for creating strife or curing problems. Isn't that what people believed 2,000 years ago and still believe today?)

During the trip we drove through the area where Nelson Mandela grew up, and the home town of Thabo Mbeki, the current president. Mandela has a large holding in the area and still comes back on a regular basis. His house is now a museum.

We got to Malungeni late Monday evening. We drove past the new church that Spiwo is building (more on that in the next posting), and then drove to the house we were staying in. The house is on Spiwo's grandparent's property. It is large enough to be a conference center, which is what he wants to ultimately do with it. It has a main house, three small dorms, a large garage for storage, and another dorm currently under construction. All told, the place can hold up to 20 people very comfortably. It would serve as a great base for the week's activities.

Coming up next: Tuesday and my travels around Malungeni and Mthatha.