A Rainy Saturday

I thought I’d describe a typical weekend day at home with the Mdaniswas. To give an idea of the rhythms of my life here and what a days comings and goings include, that is when I'm home for the whole day and not, for example visiting friends at the hospital accomodation. I say a typical weekend day because week-days are never typical and I tend to often get home in the late afternoon for a bit of hanging out and then supper. OK, on with it then...

SIVUKA, SIBASE We wake up, we start a fire

General wake-up time is with the sun, which at the moment, since its winter, means around 6:45/7 am. Thembie and Lutho wake up much earlier in the week (4 or 5am) because Thembie has to go to school about 20 minutes taxi-ride away and has to wash and feed baby Lithemba before that. Lutho being the youngest, and a bit of a busy-body is just up and about helping her to light the fire etc. So, first thing in the morning, a fire is lit and stoked to boil water for washing.

SIHLAMBA We wash

Once the water is boiled, I pour some into my “kom” and take it into my room where I wash. I’ve grown rather fond of bucket bathing, and also splash a lot less all over my room now than I used to. It’s incredibly water-efficient: I reckon we use about 2 litres of water each, boiled on a kettle on the fire outside and then poured into a “kom,” round washing basin, and I feel just as clean if not cleaner than had I showered. I was discussing this the other day with a friend, a volunteer from the UK, who lives up on the old mission grounds. They’ve been having problems with their shower of late and so often resort to bucket bathing. She also said that she felt cleaner this way and the theory we came up with is that when you bucket bath you actually have to be pro-active about making yourself wet and thus soapy (since you’ll be using a sponge or facecloth to spread the water and soap simultaneously around) whereas when you shower you sometimes end up just standing under the water for a while thinking “ah, this is nice and warm” and then get out without realising you barely made soap-to-skin contact. Anyway, it’s just a theory and maybe it’s rather that you smell fresher because it’s tricky to wash all the soap off, but I’m OK with that too!

I wash in my room but for the younger boys, its in the main hut (a communal area for cooking and relaxing, kind of a kitchen come lounge come twins’ bedroom). Privacy, as I know it, is not a big part of Xhosa culture. I think privacy has become a bit of a western luxury (and certainly something that I miss from time to time). I think that this stems out of necessity: when you have limited resources and space both have to get shared, resulting in a generally more communal attitude. In this case, everyone has to wash in the mornings and there are only 3 “koms.” Aside from me, the two oldest sons and mama (who can pull rank when need be); no-one has the option of either their own room to wash in, a bathroom set aside for that specific purpose, or kicking other people (who are trying to eat breakfast, hunt for school shoes or iron their shirts) out. So, washing happens in and amongst all of the above. On the weekend, washing is not so imperative and sometimes doesn’t happen.

SITYA We eat

On weekends, we tend to have tea in the morning and then a late morning meal and a mid-afternoon meal with maybe some of the left-overs from that in the evening. The content of meals varies little, even with the time of day. Starch, starch and starch. Cheap and fills you up. Today it was rice and imifino (varies kinds of wild green leafs which grow in the garden and look like small weeds to the untrained eye) which is a common meal, or pap and imifino. The other meal we eat a lot of is umnqusho (samp and beans, delicious on a cold day). That is about the extent of the family’s diet. Every now and then we’ll have cabbage and on special occasions, when I’ve brought visitors round, we’ll have “soup” i.e. soya mince with tomato and onion, cabbage and a starch (pap or rice). Meat is maybe a once-a-month treat.

SIDLALA (AMAKWENKWE AYAGEZA...) We play (the boys are silly...)

Today was really cold and rainy so most of the time was spent indoors. I’d borrowed a digital camera for the past week and so much fun was had by all taking photos. Mama went off in the morning to a weekend-long funeral. I’m not sure the whole story but I think it’s preparations for a funeral that is to happen next weekend. So that left me, Thembie, baby Lithemba, the twins, Sihle and Lihle and the little boys: Buntu and Lutho. An example of the variety of rainy day activities we did today:

·         “7’s”: a ball game my mom taught me when I was younger and kept me busy for many a rainy holiday day. You have to bounce a tennis ball against a wall first 7, then 6 then 5 and so on times each time doing a progressively more difficult trick before you catch it.

·         Card games: bringing a pack of cards with me was the best idea ever and they’ve done some serious mileage. Spoons or “Amacephe,” Go Fish “Hamba Loba” and a game the boys taught me called “Top 10” have been the favourites thus far.

·         More iintsomi: I also borrowed a dictaphone from a friend who is here doing PhD research so that I could record some of the stories. We all really enjoyed this and I hope to type some up as well as copy them onto a CD to give to the family.

·         Hand-clapping games: as taught to me by Lutho and Buntu.

·         General mutual terrorising by the boys as they grew progressively more restless due to the rain

SIXOVA ISONKA, SIPHEKE IPIZZA We knead bread, we cook pizza

preparing the fire for the pizza



My, albeit, few requests to help cooking have thus far been met with amused exchanges between mama and Thembie and a, I sense, slightly reluctant agreement and everytime I do do something cooking-wise I get endlessy praised for knowing how to cook when what I actually did was manage to beg Thembie for the stirring stick and stir a pot of pap for a minute or 2, or clean out a big cast-iron “imbiza.” Mostly, I’ve given up trying to cook, a)because I often get home past cooking time in the week and b) because cooking for 10 is no joke so I can understand why they might be reluctant for amateur interference. Anyway; today I managed to get Thembie to let me help make the bread and was determined to show her that I have actually kneaded bread before. She was eventually impressed by my “xova-ing” before retrieving the bowl and continuing as master chef which admittedly she does very well. Xhosa bread, as it is known, is just standard white bread dough which is then rubbed with oil, put in a cast-iron imbiza and cooked on an open fire with coals on top of the lid as well as underneath. When cooked, and whilst still warm, Thembie rubs the thick crust with a mixture of sugar and water. We took off a small piece of dough and experimented making a kind of pizza, really just a flat-bread-rubbed with oil and laid flat in a smaller pot over the fire. It worked out really well actually.

SIHLELI We sit

There’s always a lot of sitting and chatting going on, often punctuated by Sihle intermittently throwing the cat on some unsuspecting victim’s back or grabbing baby Lithemba and making him dance or sitting him down on some or other obscure place such as his shoulder or on top of the water bucket. The twins also had a part of a newspaper-the advert section and were looking through at all the products. It’s one of the things that I remember quite clearly from my first week living here, crouching over a grocery store advertising insert with the younger boys and being asked what certain products were, poring over the multitude of colourful things one could buy. Lihle was looking at all the products and saying what he’d do with each one-treadmills, cellphones, laptops and pooltables. We also saw a picture of cheese and I said how I like it so much and then Sihle began teasing the little boys that they’d never eaten cheese (which they indignantly claimed they had; I think he was joking but I don’t think they’d have had it very often). Just the thought that they could have never had cheese was strange to me and Thembie said she didn’t like cheese (even stranger, yes??).

At times I wonder how much of a Heisenberg-ian effect I’m having: you know, changing what you observe by observing it. Becoming a part of the family must, even if slightly now since we have all become comfortable around one another, change the dynamic. The strangeness of my presence must definitely have changed the daily rhythms in some ways, even if just slightly. For example, we’ve spent a LOT of time playing cards and since I brought the pack of cards, I wonder what was done in that time before? Also I wonder if people, especially the little boys, spend more time at home because I’m here? The twins go off to play soccer fairly regularly and some evenings go to watch wrestling and Generations on TV at a nearby house with a generator but otherwise, a lot of time is spent together at home. This definitely has it’s pros and cons. Pros are a strong family unit and quality time spent together without an agenda, but the cons include people not having separate interests or developing separate talents. I know for myself, and this obviously has a lot to do with the culture in which I’ve been brought up in, I need the space of my work in the week or my own room to read at night, the space to be my own person. This is no new observation, “Western” cultures are caricaturised as individualistic whilst African as communalistic (not sure if all of the former are actually words, but I'm sure the meaning is understood). However, this seemingly different notion of personhood intrigues me.  

SILALA We sleep

This evening I went up to the hospital accommodation to babysit the kids of some doctor friends of mine but  most evenings at home, we go off to our separate beds around 7ish. Thembie, baby Lithemba, mama and the little boys share a bedroom. The two oldest sons each have their own rooms. I have my own room and the twins sleep in the communal hut once everyone has gone off.

Rhythms of the day and time are very different here. It’s been a challenge and learning experience for me, who is quite a busy-body and semi-obsessed with the “constructive” usage of time, to explore different conceptions of the above. All in all, I thought today whilst chasing Lutho around with a bucket of water ready to splash him, that I‘m going to miss these rainy Saturdays.

Me and Mama Nonyaniso

"Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi..."

On Sunday night I was introduced for the first time to the tradition of “iintsomi.” “Iintsomi” are basically stories, but form part of an ancient Xhosa folklore tradition. An “intsomi” (singular) can be an old story or one that is just made up by the teller on the spot. The purpose of “iintsomi” is obviously night-time entertainment (I read that children are told that one can grow horns if they tell “iintsomi” during the day- I suppose a clever way of deterring kids from pestering for stories during working hours. I don’t know if this is so common anymore as the next day, whilst walking to the shop, little Lutho recounted the previous night’s intsomi in broad daylight); but also seems to often have a moral or life lesson built into it or an explanation for perhaps why a certain animal is the way it is.

My favourite one was an old, well-known “intsomi” about ‘Sinyologondwana’ (not 100% sure of the spelling of that), which from what I gathered is a fictional animal; and a small cheeky child called Nomvulazana. I’ve asked Thembie to write it up for me so I hope to put it up here soon.  It had some beautiful parts that were sung and involved little Nomvulazana being swallowed by a frog (don’t worry, she was later regurgitated at her parents’ home)!

Most “iintsomi” start with a standard opening line, the one I heard most often was  “Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi” and then the narrative unfolds to end too in a standard ending “Phela, phela ngantsomi.” I liked this template of an opening and conclusion. Not only does it frame the story well (and save the teller from an awkward “ahem...that’s the end”); but it invites the listener into the “iintsomi” world for a while. Silence fell as those magical words that every child longs to hear are uttered “Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi...” and the story begins, audience captivated as if spell bound, to be released by only upon hearing the next magical phrase: “phela, phela ngantsomi.”

All round, it was a pretty special evening. After the first “intsomi,” 8-year-old Lutho asked me to tell an intsomi that I knew so I began a fairly dodgy rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which became Xhosified and little-boy-ified to sound something like: “Gaw-dee-loks”). He loved it, despite my poor story-telling skills and massive improvisation halfway through (Goldilocks visiting the bedroom twice because I forgot that she had to be found sleeping AFTER she’d eating the porridge, oops...).

Last night we began another “iintsomi” session. This time mama was home and she told a long and lovely one. I was fascinated by how captivated everyone was,and how quickly we all huddled round, even the twins (who are 15 year old  teenage boys) and not a word was uttered the entire length of the story, except for sporadic group efforts to explain certain words to me. Sihle, one of the twins, succeeded mama’s “intsomi” with some progressively silly “iintsomi” that he concocted (typical for his mischievous sense of humour), primarily to goad his 2 younger brother’s. In the one, Buntu got cheated into receiving a bag full of snakes. The twins and I thought they were very funny but mama, Thembie and the little boys weren’t terribly impressed  My dad once told me of a book about “Shadows” and their place in a traditional African homestead. I’m not sure the details of the book or what it said about shadows but I did think of the idea last night as we sat together telling and hearing stories, lit only by a single paraffin lamp. I thought as I looked at Sihle’s face, only the side silhouette of his mischievous smile fully visible, that shadows were so integral to the story-teller. Even in my attempt to tell an “intsomi,” I felt somewhat protected by the semi-darkness and in this felt more free to tell my story and not be shy or embarrassed.  Shadows are an important characteristic of night-time communication. The dynamic is different when you can’t fully see the other person or people, when their face, body and even words are softened by the slide and settle of shadows.

Phela, phela ngantsomi...

First things first...

So, having been here for almost 5 months I realise it is quite late to start writing a blog. However, seeing as my time to leave is rapidly approaching, I began to reflect on the myriad experiences I’ve had, things I’ve learnt and people I’ve met during my time in Zithulele, Transkei, and wondering how I could consolidate all this somehow. A brief summary of where I am and what I'm doing: I've been living in the former Transkei region in the Eastern Cape. Incredibly rich in history, natural beauty and resources, the Transkei is deperately poor materially. I've been living with a Xhosa family, the Mdaniswas in their mud-brick homestead in a village called Zithulele, learning to speak Xhosa and experiencing a different way of life. We are very near to an old mission hospital called, aptly, Zithulele Mission Hospital which is a thriving rural hospital, currently growing from strength to strength. I've also been working for an NGO called Jabulani Rural Health Foundation, which was established by some of the long-term doctors here. 

I think it must be a normal human reaction when we experience something novel, out of the ordinary or mindset-shifting: we want to figure out some way to pin it down, order all the thoughts and experiences and perhaps share some of it with other people. This is how I’ve arrived at the point of writing a blog. Despite the undeniable self-indulgence of splashing my opinions and vanities all over cyber-space, I’ve decided to venture into the blogging world; write what I like and trust that you, reader, will be discerning enough to just click that convenient little red cross on the top right hand corner of your screen when you’ve had enough of my waffling!