Khayamandi

Outside the warm, European vibe of Stellenbosch - beyond the shimmering, white buildings and slim blondes sipping dry white wine at street cafes - there is another section of the area. It is called Khayamandi and it is where I am spending my Friday mornings.

I'll be blunt: On a typical day, we're the only white people in the town. The language here is mostly Xhosa rather than Afrikaans (an indigenous African language that uses clicks to communicate; if you've seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, you know the kind of clicks I'm talking about). While it's wonderful to listen to, it's spoken out of necessity: many people here do not speak English.

Khayamandi is one of the "townships" I alluded to earlier, and as townships go, it's doing better than some of its counterparts, such as Khayalitsha in Cape Town and Soweto in Johannesburg. Nonetheless, it is populated by much of the scenery one typically thinks of when "poverty in Africa" is mentioned: Mangy dogs lying in the shade, ramshackle houses built of aluminum sheets and plywood, debris blowing through the streets, etc.

Khayamandi is a Xhosa word meaning "nice place", a bit of bitter irony by the blacks who were forced to settle there in the 1950s with the entrenchment of apartheid policies. It is the poorest region of Stellenbosch.

Most housing is "unofficial", meaning that it is made out of whatever is available, such as shipping containers, tin sheets, and so on.

 

Yet Khayamandi's poverty, as explained to us by our guide on the first day, is a little paradoxical: the housing is the only thing poor about it. Clean, glistening Volkswagens are parked in front of dilapidated plaster houses. A burned-out, makeshift store built out of a shipping container advertises that cell phone airtime can be found here. A four-star restaurant is situated next to a brick bunker-like community center.

The impression one gets is that of a tough, school-of-hard-knocks community that has always done what it can with what it has, and has started to do very well.

After a scrumptious lunch at that restaurant I mentioned (at which you may find Afrikaner food as well as African staples such as chakalaka and pumpkin pastries), it's off to meet our service group.

The NGO for which I will be working is called Prochorus, and it offers community support to the township: daycare for children, counseling for rape victims, career services and a plethora of other services. I will be working in computer literacy, hopefully teaching basic skills to adults from the area.

My supervisor is a short, fiery Xhosa twentysomething named Anga Bonene, or as he introduced himself to us, "Bonez". I am working under Bonez with two others guys from Northwestern. Here is the transcript of our initial conversation with Bonez:

Bonez: So you are all from the same group from your university?
Us: That's right.
Bonez: Is it all boys?
Us: No, there's ten girls and four guys.
Bonez (irate): Ten girls? Ten girls?!?! And they give me all guys? Only four guys and I get all but one? And no girls? I can't believe it. Ten girls, and they can't give me one?!?!

I think that's all I'll say about Khayamandi for now, but more to come soon.