SO MANY AMAZING THINGS HAVE HAPPENED IN SUCH A SHORT AMOUNT
OF TIME.
This past week, we packed our bags and headed to the rural
villages of Umtwalume and Impendle (pronounced oom-twah-loo-may and
Im-pen-dlay), just don’t want you to butcher my homies’ mainland.
We were each partnered with another student and put into
homestays within these villages. My roomie for the week was the beautiful
Victoria Ayres and we started in Umtwalume.
We arrived at our incredibly rustic looking home with a
loving and warm Gogo (grandma) offering to carry all of our bags. We soon
learned that Gogo is a Sangoma and a traditional healer, meaning she speaks to
the ancestors and can tell people what their sicknesses and ailments are and
then prescribe the proper Muthi to cure them.
She was absolutely amazing.
There are SO MANY kids in the home, Amahle who is 15 and her
cousin Samke who is also 15, Asanda who was our nine year old personal
translator for the entire experience, Mandisa who was a 6 year old little girl,
Olwethu was an amazing little 6 year old boy, Sandiso who was a 3 year old
grumpy pants who didn’t start loving us until the last day and it was
heartbreaking having to leave him!, and then a baby who seemed to disappear
from time to time.
Amahle the 15 year old cooked EVERYTHING for us and
basically ran the house with her mother Nomhlahla. They were so nice and adorable. The first thing they did when we walked in
was hug us and plop down 2 HUGE plates of food for us. It was intense to say the least. We began strategizing ways in which we could
take down our dinner. I ended up not
being able to even come close to finishing my rice mountain, and Victoria did
rather well.
We played games outside with the children. Regular jump
roping games and game called Teddy Bear that just consists of a lot of
hugging.
That night they gave Victoria and me Zulu names! They named me Mbali which means flower and
Victoria was given Thando the word for love.
We laughed cause we’ve met about a thousand Thandos, one being the
creepy serial dater in our area, but she still felt special.
We soon realized that we have yet to see a bathroom so we
decided to ask where to go before it was an emergency. They showed us the way to nearest bathroom
which is in another house’s garage, about a minute walk away from the
house. It had no toilet paper and was
pretty broken to say the least. But when
in Africa. We soon realized that they
were actually giving us special bathroom privileges and none of our family
actually used this bathroom, they used a long drop somewhere in the back of the
house that we didn’t find until the last day.
And of course, in the middle of the night they didn’t want
to have to walk to the bathroom, so in the room we shared with 4 people,
Victoria and I got to snuggle in a bed, they placed a PEE BUCKET by the
door. It was horrifying waking up in the
middle of the night to our homestay aunt peeing in a bucket. We ended up avoiding needing to use this
bucket our whole stay. It was just too
much.
The next day Gogo showed us everything there was to know
about being a Sangoma and taught us Zulu dancing and told us of her life. Gogo is such an amazing woman. She just wants the world to be healthy and
happy and is so sweet. We went to a
spiritual healer who prays over water and sells it to people. A spiritual healer also speaks to the
ancestors but they really just give people “blessed” water.
When we got home, Gogo had made us this colorful ropes we
are supposed to wear around our waists to protect us from sickness and other
dangers. It was so sweet. The kids wanted
to teach us a game “donkey fish” which we learned was just uno. We realized how many games kids can entertain
themselves with a half deck of Uno cards.
It was wild.
On heritage day, we walked into the house while Gogo was fitting a woman into all her Zulu beads and Gogo would not let us leave the hut dressed
so normally so she dressed us in traditional Zulu clothes and walked around
getting a ridiculous amount of stares. I wonder why. Were they not used to
a foreign Jewish girl in traditional Zulu attire?
That night, all the kids in our area including the kids next
door, put on a big show for us in their Zulu clothes and did some Zulu dancing.
It was so cute!
Hiking up the road in my Zulu attire
Our guide, Xoli!
The last night, Gogo and the kids and everyone in the house
was so loving and kind. They told us
they were going to miss us so much and I ended up giving away my gifts I had
prepared for Impendle because I just loved them so much. Gogo made us bracelets and the kids were just
all around us being so adorable and nice and we felt SO LOVED :) and please
remember I have still not showered at this point.
So, after attempting to steal some of the children, we were
hoarded into a van on Wednesday and driven to Impendle. Although I was so sad to leave our wonderful
family, I was really excited about Impendle.
We arrived pretty late for dinner but our new mama had made us FRESH
VEGETABLES! I haven’t seen those in
quite some time. It was such an amazing
fresh dinner. We enjoyed a wonderful episode
of Generations, which is a very popular soap opera here that is some weird
dialect that is half English half Zulu, with our homestay brother S’bu. Then it was off to bed in our hut but not
before learning where the outhouse was.
Here is the view from my hut at like 6 in the morning!
The next day we spent wandering around impendle going to
town, speaking with Social workers, going to a clinic, and visiting the library. The young locals, our Host Guide
Interpreters, showed us around and fed us an amazing chicken curry lunch with
steamed bread that we picnicked under a tree.
That afternoon, a woman came with our professor, Clive, to
have a group discussion. Her name was Samantha.
She had dreadlocks, piercings, and an awesome kid with her named Kai. Whatever her story was, I knew it was
interesting, so after our generic conversation with Clive, we begged her to
tell us about her life. She was the
coordinator for our Rural homestays. She was previously an SIT student in Ghana
and knew she was not meant to live in the US. She moved to South Africa where
her and her partner now live on a piece of land they’ve named “Rainbow
Homestead” with their daughter, Oriah, and adopted son, Kei. So we decided to
ditch all the plans we had for the following day and get a tour of her house
instead.
IT WAS INCREDIBLE. She lives a sustainable lifestyle on
acres of land that was just grass when she first arrived. They built their own house that is all solar
powered, planted trees and several other plants, and use herbs and the plants
they grow for all of their injuries and ailments. There was a contraption meant for drying
fruits if they have an abundance, and an outdoor solar generated shower, and a
worm garden, and a real garden, and a tree nursery, and SO MUCH MORE. They built yurts where they “unschool” their
children and accommodate house guests.
Their was basically a tree house and was incredibly homey and wonderful
and you had to climb ladders to get to the bedrooms!
She made us an amazing tea all from plants from her garden
and they all helped with women’s health.
I immediately knew that I needed to learn more and live her life. So I dropped my original idea for my final
research project I’m doing at the end of my program, and asked if I could live
with her. So for the entire month of
November I will be living on Rainbow Homestead studying the way they live and
how their lived environment creates a holistically healthy body and positive perceptions of self purpose.
Here is their treehouse home! There is a legitimate tree running through the house
This is their outhouse! Even that is beautiful
Here is the beautiful Sam showing us her garden!
Here are her children in their yurt where they learn! Sam "unschools" them
Here is part of the tree nursery
Picture of part of their home. Does not do it justice it is so beautiful inside!
Afterwards we went to a group of Zulu women who hand-make beaded items and sell them! They were so beautiful and they were so sweet I obviously spent so much money there. After we bought beads they showed us some traditional Zulu dancing it was so cool!
This week has been so many adjectives. Wonderful, loving, spiritual, fun, eye
opening, I could keep going forever. I
have learned so much and have truly realized that everything really is
relative. When I first arrived in Cato, I
thought it was pretty rough living, but boy was I wrong. I was so excited to come home to a gigantic
loaf of steamed bread my mama made me, and sleep in my comfy bed, and be able
to wake up in the middle of the night and pee without having to trek through
the wilderness infested with frogs and other wildlife. Although it is nice to be home, I cannot wait
to go live like a hippie with an amazing family and learn everything about
them.
Sala Kahle BoSunshine :)
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