Langa

Life has become very busy in CT with school in full swing. This past weekend we did a homestay in the Langa township which was quite an experience! Another IES student, Denise, and I were together with our family. My family had two parents Sapho and Phmla, a 21 year old girl Fika, 9 year old boy Lizo, and 6 year old girl Zonke. We got to the house around dinnertime on Friday night. Fika was at work until late that night so we didn’t meet her until Saturday. The two kids were friendly and we played play station with them for awhile. Phmla was in the kitchen cooking with her best friend who was over at the house. The parents left and said they would be back in a few minutes. The concept of a few minutes was more like several hours! They served us a lot of food and meat and it was similar to what we eat in the States. Lizo saved me the whole weekend because I would give him all the meat I couldn’t eat from my plate and he loved it! I was a little worried before the weekend because I thought they would be serving us traditional Xhosa food which for some reason I haven’t gotten used to. I really enjoyed Ugandan and Ethiopian food, but the Xhosa food isn’t my favorite! Some of the IES students ate some scary things such as sheep intestines and African salad which uses sour milk and some kind of grainy substance. I was very fortunate in the food department! Saturday was a very interesting day! We woke up in the morning and asked the family what the plan was for the day…well there wasn’t a plan! Lizo had left earlier to go play cricket and Zonke ate breakfast with us before she went and played with her friends for several hours. Sapho wasn’t at the house that morning and Phmla said she was just running to the store for a few minutes but those minutes turned into about 4 hours! Fika was at the house but was cleaning and wouldn’t let us help her do anything! We kept offering to help but she insisted she didn’t need help so we sat on the couch while she was cleaning around us. We asked her if we could go walk around outside and she looked at us like we were crazy and said that would not be safe so we continued to sit on the couch! She later said she was just going around the corner but she was gone for quite awhile so we were at the house by ourselves a lot that morning! Then around 2 Phmla came back and we ate lunch then left to go to Canal Walk. Canal Walk is the most amazing mall I have ever seen. It is massive and incredibly nice. Sapho dropped Phmla, the two kids, me and Denise off at the mall because Phmla needed to return some shoes. Well, this was quite an ordeal! They wouldn’t take the shoes back so she made a really big scene which was embarrassing! The kids were running around everywhere and people were staring at us. I was very glad when we left that store! We walked around for awhile and then ate some pizza and ice cream. By this time it was 6:00 and Phmla told us we would be at the mall until 9:00 because that is when Fika got off work and we needed to give her a ride home. We about died when she said this because that meant six hours in the mall! The kids wanted to play in the big arcade so they kept begging us for money which got old after a few minutes! While they were playing, Denise and I walked around the mall and tried to figure out how to spend three more hours so we went to the bookstore and looked at magazines! About 8:45 Phmla called us to meet back up and leave and told us Fika didn’t actually need a ride home anymore! We ended up waiting until about 9:45 before Sapho got there to pick us up. The father’s relationship with his family was very interesting. He had been working in Joburg since the beginning of January and had just arrived back on Thursday and was leaving again on Sunday until the end of March. Even though he was only home for a few days he was never with the family. Not once did they do anything as a family and he was never at the house. Sunday was a fun day! We went with the kids to mass at the Catholic church which was a good experience. When we got back Lizo let us play with him and his friends which was a lot of fun. We rode their razor scooters on the sidewalk and I had a lot of people laughing at me as they walked by! We played street soccer and I loved it. It was really interesting to see the different rules they had invented in order to help prevent any arguing or fighting. We ended up in a tie and I scored a goal! Later we had handstand contests in the drive way which was a lot of fun. A little boy was walking on the sidewalk and he wanted to come do a handstand so his dad brought him over and I helped him!
Overall the weekend was a wonderful experience and a good opportunity to see how people from another culture live. There were a few differences that really stood out to me. The first is time...there is no concept of being on time. We were about 45 minutes late to church and a few minutes always turned into several hours. To an extent this is true in all of CT, but was even more so in Langa. Also there was no sense of personal property or space. Denise and I stayed in the little kids room and they would constantly walk into the room and get in the beds and go through our bags. They found where Denise kept her camera so they would always come get it out of her bag. The family was very nice to us but we never felt welcome or that they wanted to get to know us. We were never able to really have a conversation with the parents or Fika which was a little disappointing, but I’m really glad I was able to have this experience!
This past Monday was my birthday which was very fun! A big group of us ate dinner at a place called banana jam. They surprised me with a pecan pie with candles which was really sweet. After dinner a bunch of people came over to our house for a party which was a lot of fun. We played spoons for hours and it got really intense with guys wrestling each other for spoons. I felt very loved on my birthday and I’m really grateful for such great friends here.
The pictures are of me and the neighbor doing handstands in Langa, two of my housemates Sasha and Elizabeth at my birthday dinner and me with my wonderful pecan pie!