The creche in Phillipi

To me, Phillipi still looks like any of the other townships, Langa, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, and Gugulethu are made of miles of shacks. Shacks that are houses, shacks that are grocery stores, shacks that are hairdressers, shacks that are clinics, shacks where they sell cell phones. Electricity, running water, paved roads, and privacy are luxuries not enjoyed by everyone. Goats graze in an open field, crowds of kids walk to school in uniform, women carry babies on their backs anchored with blankets. “Third World Beauty” is spray-painted on a cement wall.

Apartheid is over. Poverty, however, is not, and the races still experience huge differences in the quality of education, healthcare, treatment by the police, and access to all kinds of services, with whites generally getting the best of things. Many communities are still completely segregated, which plays a role in the general lack of concern for those from different backgrounds. In Cape Town, black people generally live in black townships and speak Xhosa, Coloured people live in Coloured townships and speak Afrikaans, and white people live in the city or suburbs and speak English or Afrikaans. By law, people are free to live wherever they want, but clearly it takes a country more than 10 years to recover from centuries of forced poverty and institutionalized racism.

My housemate Zane (Zah-na) has asked Emily and I to come with her one Wednesday to do some musical games with the kids at her creche. There were over 90 children with 3 teachers supervising them; a room of babies, the 3-4’s, and the grade R’s (5-6). The actually teaching is a blur now, kids jumping up and down, enthusiastically mimicking my ridiculous dance moves, a million sticky hands in my hair, a stampede at snack time. I notice one albino boy in the 3-4’s class. At lunch, he is at my table. “Mlungu” the other kids keep saying to him and then to me, touching our cheeks, lifting our hands. Mlungu means white person in Xhosa. The little boy seems unfazed by the attention his skin is getting, so I figure it’s fine to let it go on and naturally die out.

I step into the kitchen to make myself useful. Dozens of plastic bowls are spread out on the table and one teacher, Thalalo, is busy filling them with rice and Zane is topping them with a stew of potatoes, carrots, and meat (I think). I help her take the finished bowls out, stacked 2 high on trays. I anticipate complaints because everyone cannot be served simultaneously - nothing. I also noticed this earlier at snack time, the sharing. I remember one boy holding his sandwich up for another boy to take a bite, watching patiently, making sure he didn’t pull away too soon. As he chewed, the other boy gently spooned some yogurt into his friend’s mouth. I was personally offered juice from at least 2 thermoses.

As we tidy the kitchen, I ask Thalalo her baby’s name. Sunshine, she says, glancing back at the sleeping bundle on her back. English name Sunshine, Xhosa name Khanyo. She opens her eyes abruptly at the mention of her name, big eyes with endless lashes. She is one year old, says Thalalo, but she’s sick. Too small. Only wants the breast still. Thalalo takes the baby off her back and holds Khanyo to her stomach, facing forward. Now I can see that she is small for one year. I would have thought she was only a few months old.

Thalalo changes the subject.

“How old do you think I am?” she demands, cocking her head.

Emily and I make nervous eye contact. I let her take this one.

“25? 26?”

“I am 37! I am old!” Thalalo smiles for the first time.

“Wow, I would not have thought you were over 30! Really!”

Thalalo motions for us to come out into the big room where the children are now napping on mats on the floor. We join Sitho, another teacher, taking a seat on the little plastic chairs I laugh (softly) at the sight of all these 4 year olds stacked in neat rows, like books on a shelf. Thalalo starts nursing Khanyo.

“You are laughing at me?”

“No, no never! That is so cool! Breast-feeding is so cool!” I overcompensate for my mistake.

“My brother, he breast-fed until he was 5.” I hold up 5 fingers for emphasis. Emily raises an eyebrow and Thalala laughs.

“The breast-fed children, they don’t get sick.”

“Yeah I know! Isn’t that cool? Your milk is magic!”

“Mm. Where does it come from?”

“Your milk?”

I ask Emily if I’ve understood.

“Yep, she’s asking you where breast milk comes from.”

“Ok…so yeah it comes from the glands inside.” It’s hard for me to leave out the word mammary, but I do.

Thalalo laughs at this explanation. I’m unclear as to why but I laugh as well.

We watch the kids sleep for a little while, then get on the topic of Christianity. Thalalo is not a Christian, and Emily and I tell her we are also not Christians.

“Maybe I should start going to church, maybe God is mad at us. All the young people are dying. The old people, they don’t die, only the young.”

“You mean children?”

“No, my friend, he got sick and then the next day he was dead. My other friend, same. Maybe God is angry because we are smoking and drinking and sleeping, sleeping with men.” She says “men” like you would say “smog” or “bad breath,” squinting her eyes and looking away.

Sitho is not a Christian. She is fully Xhosa.

“See?” She holds her left hand in front of us. The ring finger has a wedding band and the top segment is absent.

“Oh wow, I’ve heard about that! How old were you when they did that?” Emily asks.

Thalalo has to translate because Sitho speaks limited English. Apparently, Sitho had this done to her to remedy her bed-wetting when she was newly married, per her husband’s request.

“Did it work? Did you stop wetting the bed?” I ask.

“Of course!” Of course.

“How did they do it? Did they do it with medicine for pain?” Nope, not numb at all.

Sitho explains the shape of the knife with her hands. She appears to be describing a sickle.

“A sickle? They used a sickle?”

“No, not that big one! Small one.” They used a small sickle.

This is the first time all day that I’ve felt seriously different from these lovely teachers. I don’t get it. Cutting off your perfectly good finger I mean. I suppose Americans have been known to get nose jobs and calf implants, so it’s not like we’re so reasonable about our bodies either.