How cool? Ice cold.

Yesterday I joined Sarah, Anne-Marie and Rebecka for a day out in Khayelitsha- a township just outside of Cape Town in the Cape Flats. This area was built in 1985 by the Apartheid regime as a place for Blacks to live since under the Group Areas Act of the 1950s, they weren’t allowed to be in the cities. The three girls I went with work at the Olive Leaf Foundation based in Khayelitsha, and two of the guys they work with wanted to take them around, so I tagged along.


View of the informal settlement area of Khayelitsha

The morning itself was an adventure. Zwai said he would pick us up near the city bus station, so we just had to get there at 7 a.m, which Sarah had written down as the meeting time.
False.
We were supposed to meeting at 9 a.m.

So, there we were at 7:15 a.m, near the Parade. Let me tell you about the Parade. During daylight on weekdays this place is bustling, but we have been warned a number of times not to be there after 5:00 or really on weekends, when the area is deserted and there are sketchy people out. So, there are three American girls by the Parade on a Sunday morning, and not a single place open to go and kill time (the coffee shop concept exists here…it just starts at 10 a.m)

After being asked by a random man if he could take our picture because we are "so pretty" we end up taking a minibus back to our house, napped for half an hour, and then trekked back to the city center. We eventually were picked up by Zwai and Vulani, who also works for the Olive Leaf.

After about 30 minutes we arrive at Vulani’s church, where we attend a service for about 2 hours. The church is in a huge tent, set up on a plot of land, and everyone was incredibly welcoming to us newcomers. Two girls performed a dance, and then we all danced a little- I danced with this sweet old woman sitting next to me. We didn’t exchange any words but the smiles were enough.


After the service

After church we stopped at Shoprite grocery to pick up some lunch, and then proceeded to Vulani’s house in the Town 2 section to eat. Across the street was a Zion church, and this is what Zwai has to say about that:
“they shut the doors and run around in circles inside, until they are dizzy, then they say that they feel like that because they were touched by the holy spirit. No! you are dizzy!”


Two women who attend the Zion church and wanted their photo taken

We left his house to go to Zwai’s home, but apparently he leaves his keys with his neighbor because he will lose them, and since his neighbor wasn’t home we couldn’t get in and thus walked around the streets of Khayelitsha. We walked over to the informal settlement area- this basically means tin shacks. It was a great experience to be able to do this, because you can’t go alone. Throughout our time walking around people loved to pose for the camera and get their picture taken, adults and children. At one point a group of girls who were about 10 literally mobbed us and gave us hugs and kisses and told us that they love us and will come visit us (even though they never asked where we are from- that information is clearly besides the point).

one of the many groups of kids

We stopped by to see Zwai’s friend, who wasn’t there, but his girlfriend was. They happened to have a dumbbell made from concrete, and we all took turns lifting it. I’m not gonna lie, it was really heavy. Then, one of the women wanted her picture taken and started taking her head wrap off. Why? Because she wanted a picture of her ear. Why a picture of her ear? Because part of it had been bitten off. Yes, bitten off. A good chunk of her outer cartilage. Apparently, her boyfriend’s other girlfriend got jealous and sent her friends to beat this woman up, and they bit off a piece of her ear. Welcome to Khayelitsha.


local barber shop- there are a ton of these

After taking photos of a lot of random kids and people (one woman called me from the side of the street to take a picture of her and her baby, and then asked me to come inside her house so that she could get a picture of her baby on the kitchen counter) we headed to a shabeen. A shabeen is essentially a house where they sell alcohol. We sat inside for at least 30 minutes, chatting with these people while they drank alcohol at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Sunday (one man straight Smirnoff from the bottle…occasionally he would pour it into a shot glass) and danced to super loud music. Hey, they know how to have a good time. I was talking to a 25-year old boy for awhile, who was asking us if we were scared to be in Khayelitsha and how they were so glad to see us not scared and walking around.

Rebecka dancing in the Shabeen


woman who wanted her picture taken- we're going to print these out and give them to her

Then we headed off to a favorite local hangout, where they have alcohol and braii (south African barbeque). We awkwardly sat at a table with some 35-40 year old men with whom we had little to no conversation. My favorite part was a man sitting at the table who asked we wanted anything to drink because he wanted to buy us a round. We said no, that we had to go back and write our research papers (I realized later how lame that sounds) but he didn’t mind. Then 10 minutes later a guy comes back with blue energy drinks for us- since we didn’t want alcohol the man bought us a round of basically Gatorade, haha. It was delicious.

We stopped by Vulani’s mothers house for a few minutes, where him and his 6 siblings grew up, and then headed back home.

Olive Leaf girls with Vulani and his mother

One of the benefits of staying in one city for three months and having an internship is that you really have time to appreciate your surroundings, and go much deeper than the touristy aspect. You can go on a township tour, but walking around with Zwai and Vulani was an experience of its own. Everyone welcomed us so graciously, and we were able to see how many South Africans live. Vulani goes to church, and then straight home- he has started a youth group of sorts in his area because many kids there have drug problems. Zwai loves going to shabeen’s and the local hangout and has probably been to church 3 times.

Taken from Outkast but modified for his own purposes, Zwai likes to say whenever he can fit it in “How cool is this? Ice cold.”