Parting Shots: Malungeni, Day 5

Friday was a day of relaxation, as we got ready to head home. I had a chance to wander around the village a bit more, and then read a book for much of the day. It was a treat to just sit and enjoy the quiet and idyllic nature of rural life. Until I thought about the severe poverty. Then I felt guilty because I got to leave for better climes.

My morning walk took me almost to the edge of the village. It was early, about 8:00, but already things were happening. Kids were walking to school, the local shop was opening for business, and farmers were leading their animals to the fields. No one seemed to mind a stranger taking pictures, and I took my time capturing memories.

I waved to everyone I saw and everyone waved back. The kids in the picture above laughed at first, but when they saw my camera they immediately posed for a shot. Then they ran away, just like kids do.

I wandered up to people I hadn't met just to say hello, and had a couple nice conversations. The woman in this picture is Spiwo's first cousin (their fathers were brothers). She was making breakfast, corn meal porridge. She told me about her family and how she has four children, none of them hers, living with her. The children are all orphans from others in her family. She also told me that 75% of the villagers were related to each other, which I could understand because there are only a handful of surnames in the town.

On my way back to the house I was reminded of a line from a bad Tom Selleck movie from around 1984 (High Road to China, I think): "The oxen are slow, but the Earth is patient." This picture says it all. It's a man and his son working a team of oxen to plow his small field. His wife (or maybe his mother, it was hard to tell) and a small girl were also there. In the US, he'd have a small tractor pulling a plow rig, making it a 10 minute job. In Malungeni, he had four oxen pulling a single blade plow that he had to physically keep in line. Considering the fields were really wet, he has having to man-handle the plow something awful to keep it where he wanted it. And of course the oxen weren't exactly easy to steer (nice pun, I know).

I was mesmerized watching him, all the time wondering how it's possible in 2007 that people would still be dependent on such antiquated equipment. But then, I see women every day in Guguletu and Phillipi washing clothes in tubs, scrubbing the pants and shirts with brushes or just against themselves. I see people in homes cooking over wood fires or oil stoves because they can't afford or don't have electricity. I see men using horse-driven carts to haul scrap metal down city streets because they don't drive and can't hire a truck. It's as if Malungeni, Guguletu and all the predominantly black areas are caught in a time warp, where the 1800s intersects with the 21st century. Where an Internet cafe can sit next to a woman selling meat cooked over a wood fire. Where a proper house with a satellite dish sits in front of a shack with no electricity, heat or water. It's the juxtapositions that make understanding life here both intellectually fascinating and emotionally hard.

I also noticed something Spiwo had mentioned to me. There are no cemeteries in Malungeni. People are buried on their homestead. This man was working his field while overseen by a close relative. There's no doubt that the relative was nourishing the farmer, both physically and spiritually.

Spiwo and I headed to the airport in the afternoon. We left directly from Mththa, heading to Cape Town via Johannesburg. I had a little chuckle looking at the flight schedule - there are only two flights in and out of the airport per day, but they them posted on a sign board about 4 feet square, like they were planning to have 100 flights a day next week. There was an airport bar, though, and a cafe (that didn't serve any food - go figure). We had a nice ride in a medium-sized prop plane before landing in the first world again and picking up our jet for the journey home.

Saturday morning I had a long, hot shower. And I only felt a little guilty.

More to come.