By hfirlein
Last Saturday all 11 members of York House traveled to Strandfontein, a township just up the coast from Muizenberg, our favorite beach, about 30 minutes south of Cape Town.
As volunteers, our job for the day was to prepare food for around 150 residents of the informal settlements of Klapteinsklip. The CIEE volunteer coordinator, Earl, dropped us off at the home of Auntie Charlene, or Auntie C, a retired mother of two (and very proud grandmother!) who donates her time every day to help the people of her community. Her house was warm and inviting and it was clear that she is one of the most well-loved women in her community. She runs a convenience store on her porch to supply the people in her neighborhood with basic pantry goods, and the few who stopped by that morning stayed to chat with her for a bit.
We were divided into two groups: one group made curry while the other group made fat cook (fried bread). I was in the curry group. I peeled and chopped what must have been a hundred potatoes, and ended up with blisters on my hands and fingers from all the peeling! I helped measure out the spices; getting the right mix is definitely the hardest and most important part of curry-making. Once the veggies had been chopped and added to the already cooking chicken and sauce, we left them to simmer and rejoined the fat cook group. They were waiting for their dough to rise and watching TV on Auntie C’s couch – she really made sure we felt at home!!
We watched old episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance,” and I realized that it is unfair to paint all township life with the same brush. Here I was, in the well-kept home of an incredibly compassionate, kind woman watching TV for the first time in 3 months! Her home was more "modern" than ours, yet she lived in an area that, before seeing it, I would have called impoverished. Just like in Cape Town and South Africa itself, townships have layers of wealth and status within them. There is no set definition for poor or wealthy or middle-class. On the bottom in the township hierarchy are those who lived in the informal settlements and lack basic plumbing and electricity. Then there are the formal settlements: concrete houses with electricity and kitchens, some with indoor bathrooms and some with outhouses. Within these groups there is still more diversity. Auntie C’s home was near the top, with a beautiful kitchen and two door refrigerator, several bedrooms, a living room, TV, and bathroom. And she was able to volunteer her time and money on a daily basis to ensure that those less fortunate than herself had food to eat. She is truly incredible, and the experience of cooking with her and learning from her example is one I will not soon forget.