A Shack load of love. Njekanjalo.
A Shack load of love. Njekanjalo.
When living a simple life for a week the return to the “normal” world seems blasphemous.
Driving into Stellenbosch central the last morning of my visit to Kayamandi I saw something out of the taxi window I’m normally blinded to. People chasing after wind. People using cheap Grace to justify their search for meaning in “stuff” that won’t ever have the effect they want it to have on themselves. People are looking to fulfil an empty feeling inside, trying to fill it up with paper cash, sex, drugs and church.
To them, nothing else matters.
The scariest feeling is identifying that same feeling inside myself. The search for something to satisfy the thirst.
Pieter Truter, Conroy Terblanche and I met up with Yamkela Nqevu who has been living in Kayamandi since 2009 after moving there from the Eastern Cape. Yamkela invited us to come and stay with him for a week in Kayamandi living the way he has been living for all his life. Zone O was the areas name our shack was in. Close to Temba’s spaza shop and on our arrival I could smell the chicken feet (Amanqina) on the braai and tasted one for a shy 50c or as it is better known in Kayamandi, five bob.
This wasn’t an outreach where we went to teach someone something “we” supposedly knew or a time where we could go and see how “they” are living compared to “us”. This was a friend who lives in Kayamandi inviting his friends to come and chill with him at his house for a week. And chill we did.
What I learned about the simple life was significant. Each night the group of friends would go and stand on “their” street corner across Temba’s spaza shop and just chat with the people passing. The streets are busy the whole time, except when Muvhango came on then suddenly everyone goes missing. But the community is tangible. Everyone knows everyone and soon the news spread that there was Umlungu’s (white people) living in Kayamandi. Everyone smiled and greeted us even if some starred at first. After greeting all the ladies we went into our home and cooked food for the seven of us. Whoever is there when the food is busy being made (chichipoto) gets to eat. No one is left hungry. It was beautiful. The first night the sausage was made in a tomato and onion “smoor” in one bowl. All seven of us grabbed a slice of Sasco Sam and digged in. One bowl. One hunger. One feast. Ubuntu.
“Njekanjalo. This is the Xhosa word for the Afrikaans “Net so” and that’s how it happened the whole week. Net so. We slept in the same room, we ate out of the same bowl and we looked after each other in the way we all needed to look after each other.
After going through three days of rain, which is quite wet and uncomfortable if you need to use the bathroom which was 30 meters away, getting to know the shacks’ pet rats and having a evening out to a nearby tavern until 4 am, we had become friends. Gaz’lam. Meaning blood brothers. Our skin differed. Our language differed. Our ways differed, but our blood was the same.
The empty feeling was filled with a shack load of love and Ubuntu.