Are those heads?!

I was driving to East London with a couple flat mates a week ago when suddenly I whip my head back around and say, “are those goat heads?!” Thabo nonchalantly states that, “no, they're sheep heads.”... Picture a South African women standing on the side of the road with a sheet of plywood in front of her, on the red dusty earth, covered with sheep heads. Nothing else around, no freezer truck maintaining health board regulations, no ice around them to keep them chilled, no sneeze guard like you’d see at a buffet.... just heads on the side of a hwy. Thabo then said, quite sincerely, “they are really good, should we get one on the way home?” .... let’s give that about 6 months shall we?!

         The sheep head story basically summarizes my first week in King Williams Town. I am constantly amazed by what I’m seeing, often shrinking into a little ball in the front seat of the car as people swarm around the car selling wares, walking, talking or driving without any respect for the rules of the road. The towns are full of people everywhere. Vendors are set up along the sides of the street selling oranges, carrots, potatoes, shoes, watches, belts and other basic wares that you may have a need for. The taxi drivers, which are men driving 16 seater vans, rule the road zipping in and out whenever they please, while getting quite irate with people like me following the rules. My second day driving here, I was with a colleague, driving her car, and she thought I should see downtown. I was driving so slow, just putt-putting along the road terrified that I was going to hit a pedestrian. It’s normal here for people to be walking amidst traffic, just walking down the dotted line trying to sell you freezies or cell phone chargers (I don't know why you would choose to buy your cell phone charger at the red light , but I guess it might be convenient for some...). Meanwhile I’m driving and laughing out loud / muttering to myself about how crazy this is! Aren’t these people worried I’ll hit them? This would never happen in Canada! Where are all these people going?! Where are all these people coming from? Why are all these people here?! Then, I see a crosswalk with people walking.... so I stop for them. Picture any movie you have seen that includes a crosswalk in New York and put me in a car in the middle of that crosswalk surrounded by South Africans... Never stop at a cross walk in South Africa unless there is a robot (stop light) telling you to. My car was immediately surrounded by people crossing this way and that... some even just standing there thankful for the extra space, some just stopped where they were and looked at me – I’m sure they were thinking, ‘I wonder why that crazy lady stopped?’ I stopped because it’s a crosswalk and people wanted to cross! My car was completely surrounded and I just started laughing. The people I was driving weren’t as impressed, I’m sure they thought we would never get moving again because the flow of people showed no signs of stopping! I got us moving again, slowly eking forward trying not to hit anyone and subliminally trying to convince people to let me pass... silly foreign white girl.     

            South Africa has been very good to me so far. I have arrived at the house where I’ll be staying. There is a main house and six flats, I have a flat and the others are occupied by people my age who work in the area.  Everyone has been super welcoming, especially the three kids who live in the main house. At any point that my door is open one of the two boys are whipping through the door and scooping up something that I left lying around. The boys’ main target is my photo album. Over and over and over they point at my family and friends and state, “Aunt Lezee, dis?” and I state my families’ names over and over and over. It’s nice to have walked into an already formed family unit.

Work has already proven interesting. On my first day out testing people the group I was with said, “hi, nice to meet you, are you ready? Okay let’s go, we are off to a shebeen (pub).” We walked into the shebeen and I immediately drew a crowd. Shebeens open at 0800, so by the time we got there at 1100 (when we normally arrive at 0900) most people were intoxicated and super chatty. One man playing pool actually missed his ball while watching me cross, shouting, “you must not be from around here!” with a huge grin on his face.  Another gentlemen came up to explain that my being white and in that particular shebeen was a big deal, as white people usually (as in almost never) don’t go there.  When we got in and realized that most people were intoxicated we decided to leave, but not before a man came up asking me where I was from and what was I doing there. When he heard I was volunteering he asked if I was a missionary. I laughed and replied that, ‘no I didn’t think of myself like that. ” “oh, well then are you a nun?”  “Haha, nope, I’m not a nun.” He was stumped by the fact that I was a volunteer from Canada and not a nun J. He went on to thank me for coming to help and told me sincerely about how his family had been hit hard by HIV. He requested to be tested, as it had been while, (being tested for HIV here is scary business as the chances of being positive are so high, so people put it off) and told me about his uncle who is palliative with AIDS and asked if I could please go visit him, I wasn’t able to get too much info about his uncle – due to ‘shebeen type’ distractions...but at least you have a picture of what the first hour, of my first day on the job was like.