OrdinaryBloke

I have one of those USB dongles that allows me to access internet even in the townships. For the first three days it was like lightening, from Sunday to today it has been painfully slow and I have been unable to upload anything significant. Now however, I am in Formby, Merseyside so I have a decent connection at my parents so can get this rather long post up though it will be in two sections.

Sunday was a wet day in the Eastern Cape but I was up and into my suit by 6.30am as I knew i could not be late for the arrival of Lily’s mother’s body at 8am. The coffin hearse was right on time and the coffin was led into the front room of Lily’s sisters house where there were about 30 people crammed in. Outside, there was a group of mostly men, all in their sunday best suits and I stuck with them though I was clearly conspicious being the only white person for 30kms!

The preachers stood in front of the coffin and one by one delivered a firebrand style of sermon in Xhosa so I have no idea what they were saying. I just stood at the back with an inane fixed grin on my face as people came over an introduced themselves.

Pastor’s Preaching

All of Lily’s family was there, including her four daughter and the extended family. There was little weeping, the event really was treated like a celebration of her mother’s life and at the community hall there was easily a couple of hundred people. The singing in particular was awesome and Lily recorded this of three people singing in the community hall, one of which is Tulile (in the satin blouse) which typified the whole service.

The following day we were up at 4am and I drove 12 hours with no stops back to the Western Cape. Lily and the three girls slept periodically, as they had been up with family throughout the night but I just got into the driving groove and with the exception of fuel stops I just pushed on. The scenery was not visible for the majority of the time as they rain and wind hit us hard, so hard indeed that when we were on the mountain passes I was keeping the wheel on a 30 degree right lock to compensate!

We arrived back in Khayamandi around 6pm and by 7.30pm we were all in bed and sleeping. The girls had to be up at 5.3oam for school and Lily and I had a busy day of research ahead of us. In addition, our good friend Selwyn was bringing a group of tourists to her house for lunch. The night was interrupted however when news came through that some family and the Khayamandi pastor had been involved in a crash on their return, a common occurence. Their daughter had been thrown from the vehicle and had been hit by the following trailer. The news was received in typically stoical fashion, as in this house God would take care of it.

By 6am Lily was on her hands and knees scrubbing her home. The news from the hospital was positive and all had been discharged so Lily was in full preparation mood. The morning was a blur of cleaning and cooking and in between helping out, I turned on the recorder and we talked about her home. I will save the detail for the book but the very, very, very short version is that when Lily lost her job as a debt collector with a bank, she used her money to buy a small plot of land in the township. In her final days at the bank she had repossessed a stove from someone who had not paid the loan. The bank valued the stove and Lily thought it was worth buying. For the next six months, Lily and her four daughters (all of them children) lived in the shell of house with a zinc roof and nothing else during winter. Every morning she would wake up and bake scones, the recipe of which she found on the back of the packet of sugar. These scones were sold for R1 about 15 Singapore Cents or 1o US cents and the girls would sell them at school whilst Lily would wait for the children at lunchtime and sell more.

Like any business, Lily set targets and she wanted to sell 300 scones a day. More days than not she hit this target and day by day she bought the bricks and the timber to build the house. To this day, Lily is one of a small  minority that owns her home with no loans at all, all through human perseverance.

As the tourists were due, I departed the house and went off around the area. I did this little video to show you Khayamandi. It is not great as I was holding the flip as I was driving!

I returned at 4pm and the tourists were still all there listening to Lily tell her stories with her all dressed in her African clothes. I remember being a visitor to the township in 2002 with Selwyn, apprehensive but curious and I found it quite strange to be looking on at the goings on with this being my second trip actually staying here!

We hurried Lily along (you have to, Lily can talk for 5 hours without a break and I have the evidence) before we headed to the Ikamva Lethu Centre that Sandy and I helped start in 2002. Ikamva Lethu means “our future” and the centre was set up as a safe place for the kids to go after school and socialise as well as be educated periodically on HIV etc. It had grown considerably in scope over the years and my Boxing Challenge of 2005 had started off a school sponsorship program that now had 28 kids from Khayamandi going to good schools with the fees paid by the project.

On arrival we were greeted by a the usual hoard of kids aged from 2 to 6 who were not in the dancing classes inside. They jumped all over us and held out hands as we went inside to see what was going on. For the next 30 minutes we witnessed the kids do everything from ball room to salsa. They were aged from 3 to 15 and they attacked the task with passion and zeal. Clearly they loved what they were doing and whilst there was a wide variety of standard, there was also a common thread of enjoyment. The rules were simple, no drugs, no alcohol. Come along any day, start with your homework upstairs and then you can dance. Show tenacity and the desire to succeed in both and you will find yourself sponsored at a good school. It is one of many projects ran by the man who gave me my love of the township, Selwyn.

We left the centre as most township folk starting  heading home after a long day. I was being bombarded with questions from Selwyn’s guests, curious about township life, safety concerns, the prevalence of HIV (high) and life expectancy (43 years old). I tried to explain that I had walked the streets of the township in pitch dark and I felt safer than I would have done if I done the same thing in my home town of Liverpool.

Selwyn continued the trip around the township and I asked to get off as  I was confident I knew I where I was and could navigate back. Wrong! Rows of shacks upon shacks and I just got confused but I didn’t care. I stopped off to play football with some kids andcaught up with one of the guys I had met in the Eastern Cape . Eventually I made it back to Lily’s and who should be there but Samkelo! This young man had come over to London in 2005 with Yolande to see box. He was 12 at the time but now at 16 was nearly 6ft and it was great to sit down and catch up on what was happening for him.

The evening was spent with the usual stream of visitors. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this part of my trip. The warmth of the conversation, laughter and general sense of community was not something I had experienced before.

The following day was spent with Lily doing work on her life story. We did a total of five hours covering some difficult years for Lily, including a forced marriage which involved beatings like you could not imagine. Lily talked about the subsequent years in the New Cross Road which is was always a tough place to exist though these days is a complete no go area. This period of her life saw her witness kangaroo courts where the guilty would be beaten before having a tyre placed around their neck filled with petrol and lit. The courts were ran by the ANC Guerillas and it was an in justice seen by Lily that led her to become the voice of dissent when nobody else dared if she felt there was an injustice going to happen.

Difficult times

These were dangerous times in South Africa as the anti-apartheid movement took hold and the militancy brought much violence and civil disobedience to the streets. As we went through these times, Lily would introduce a friend into the timeline only to tell me later along the line that they had been shot or died in some other way. Lily could not tell me of one person that she classed a friend in those days that survived the period.

I will be back in 24 hours with the final installment of the trip to South Africa

This piece started out as multiple entries but every night I never finished due to some distraction in the house, exhaustion or just because it is winter here in South Africa and they don’t have heating in the townships!

I arrived at 10am, following a 13 hr flight via Johannesburg and after a few technical difficulties with the Vodacom people and the mobile modem , I was on my way to Khayamandi. The journey took me 35 mins and I was amazed how familiar it all was. It is not a new journey for me as Selwyn and I did it each day I was boxing training in the township of Khayalishta and staying in Khayamandi in 2005 but never the less it was a relief to find it familiar

As I drove into the township, Lily was in the middle of the road waving to me. That was a relief as I did not hold out much hope of finding anything once I got into the labyrinth of roads, jammed with the shacks and buildings.

It was fantastic to see Lily again, though characteristically her previous few weeks had been eventful to say the least and included being arrested, a court appearance and her mother dying. As we arrived at the front of her home, the first thing she pointed to was the damage that some intruders had done which she believed was related to the court appearance but more on that later.

Athi, Lily’s youngest daughter was home and it was great to see her . Nearly fifteen, Athi is a young woman now with a greal deal of poise, great communication skills and a certain elegance that is magnified by being very tall.  Lily has four living daughters with Athi and Tulile still living with her. I am very fond of the two of them. They are both very bright and have a great sense of humour which has got them through a lot of challenges.

That evening, myself and Lily ate dinner whilst Tulile, home from school, was cramming for an exam the following day. Lily and the girls are Seventh Day Adventists so not only was there grace before and after meal but then the bibles came out after the dishes were cleared. For the next 45 mins there was reading from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament before a discussion on some particular points. Once that ended, the first of a steady stream of visitors started which is a constant theme in a township. The sense of community is massive and it is not unusual for Lily to receive 5-7 visits from neighbours throughout the evening. I have to admit it brought home to me the lack of conversational skills people have when they are surrounded by one way mediums such as the internet and TV. Each guest was warmly received and an active discussion would ensue about the comings and goings of life. It was engaging and highly enjoyable.

I went to bed that night with the temperature plummeting. I put on three layers of clothes, two pairs of socks and slept with the blanket over my head to keep warm. The township went from the noise of people singing hymns, drinking beer in the shabeens and the screams of domestic argument to total quiet by midnight. Quite literally you could hear nothing, it was real silence brought on by the need for everyone to be up early for work the following day.

The next noise I heard was Tulile leaving for school at 5,30am, a Monday to Friday neccessity if she it to make the journey and be in school on time. I was up by 6.30am and after breakfast with Lily we planned to spend the day together to get the beginnings of the book together. First of all we had a quick trip into Stellenbosch.

On arrival we saw that one of the streets had been blocked off by Police. It took Lily 2 mins to find out that two drug dealers had shot each other but in their quest for violence had ended up leaving their drugs stashes in their cars which were now been removed from the scene.

That afternoon, Lily and I sat down and we started her story. There were no provisios, escape clauses or “off the record”, Lily wants to it to be told and I am honored that it should be me that does so. We allowed the story to lead us and so it did when we were discussing her children and I noticed there was one name I not heard before. She then went on to tell me the story of her teenage pregnancy (she was 15) by a teacher when she had no idea what sex or love was. A traumatic birth followed (some saying the revenge of the nurses for what she had done) before Thembakazi was born with massive brain damage. Thembazai died in 1980, aged 5.

The next hours flew by as we discussed jobs, attempts on her life (there have been two), her parents, and her experiences under apartheid. It was fascinating and I have picked a clip to introduce the voice of Lily.

Lily tells me about the birth of her first child

That evening the house became busy from 5pm as people arrived to take a combi taxi to the Eastern Cape for the funeral of Lily’s mother. Young and old, they all crammed into her front room, waiting for a 7pm arrival, that eventually arrived at 11pm, before setting off for the 12 hours drive. It is a notoriously dangerous drive so extensive prayers and hymns were sung before departure and as I still had the microphone on caught the singing for you to listen to.

Hymn being sung

The following morning we were up at 4.30 am and in the car ready to go (after prayer of course) to King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape. Lily wanted to go the same route as the others but I wanted to go the N2 route as I thought it offered more scenery and would be safer. Lily eventually agreed but spent literally the first 30 minutes of the drive telling us the benefits of the N1 route before her daughters begged her to stop.

A small issue of a bird strike aside, the journey was uneventful but full of beauty. I drove for six hours before Lily said we must go visit her cousin in the township of Port Elizabeth. I didn’t feel we could say no but the voices of descent were louder from the back of the car. It was only after we agreed that I heard Lily say we had better hurry as her cousin was leaving to the same funeral we were heading to! We got off the main road and headed down a road, that became a track, that became a dirt track, that became a nightmare! 3kms in with the rocks bouncing off the car as we drove over them, Lily said it was a trap and bandits would now get us. I will admit to being slightly alarmed by this proclamation until I pointed out that nobody knew we were coming this way as it hadn’t been planned!

We arrived in the township of Port Elizabeth where many people who watched the images from the apartheid struggles of the 80’s and nineties would recognise. Today it still has its issues and there remains thousands of shacks, but there are also some beautiful houses nearby that demonstrate the commitment of the black South Africans to develop their community.

Three hours later and after 12 hours on the road, we arrived at the home of Lily’s sister in a township just outside King William’s Town. I had driven for 12 hours with a 25 minute break and I was in my bed by 8.30pm and alseep.

I was running errands for Lily this morning and arrived back at her sister’s home shortly before 1pm. Lily was still at church as Saturday is the main day for Seventh Day Adventists. The older members of the family were in the house when I arrived so I went on in and spent a pleasant time talking with them about Lily and South Africa in general. Lily then rushed in to say that it was raining so I was needed down at church to pick people up. The road was a quagmire but I got through the mud and did my taxi duties before returning to the house.

I have been asked what the reaction is to me in the townships. I have been overwhelmed with warmth and absolutely love being there. The older generation are so friendly and willing to talk and I have not been hugged so much than when I was at a family wedding as a 7 year old. Sure, you get the odd look wondering why you are there, but once introductions are completed it is nothing but friendliness. It was like this when I was first in the townships 7 years, four years ago and remains so today.

Tomorrow Lily’s mother’s body returns at 8am for the funeral and I will be there for the day to help were needed. We will be up again at 4am on Monday and traveling the 12 hours back again. It is an immense privilege to be brought into a family like this and every moment spent with these wonderful people is providing information for the book. Not only that but the difference of environment and priorities is refreshing my mind and providing inspiration for some interesting charity projects.

I will be back with more on Monday.