Yesterday morning I spent some time with the bead ladies for an informal Xhosa lesson (they sit next to Coffee Shack on the way to the beach and sometimes ‘harass’ the backpackers a little, cause if someone buys beads from only one of them, the others get angry!).
Anyway, I’m trying to let them understand that I’m not a backpacker, so I can’t buy their beads every day. I’ve made at least 2 friends there now, Mpatane- who I met first and Uniswa, who also turned out to be a very helpful Xhosa teacher. They made me an arm bracelet- very pretty- while I was sitting there. And I think my Xhosa is making slow but sure progress! I’ll have to do some revision though, cause these words are so quick to be forgotten again! I have one Xhosa storybook that I found a long time ago somewhere in Cape Town, the thing is like gold to me! The other day, I read the story to some kids, but I didn’t know much about what I was reading!! So, yesterday Uniswa helped me with that…Thanks!!
Later I took my car to the river where I saw the guys washing their taxis. My car has been super mud clotted! I was going to let Joe (the Xhosa guy who works at my future camping site) wash my car, but earlier the day we kind of got into trouble about that when I asked if he could wash my car – there’s another guy living at the campsite and he didn’t think it was such a good idea, especially not while Joe was supposed to do other work. Of course, I wasn’t really thinking! Sorry.
Anyway, so I went back later, but on the way, 3 boys wanted a lift and asked where I was going. They were then so eager to wash my car that I wouldn’t have been able to stop them by force. They sure aren’t lazy!
Luckily Joe was still working, so it was okay that they’d already started. I promised Joe, next time and he was quite happy with that and R4 (just about everyone here asks for R2 when they pass you by). Joe is quite a character, he can’t speak English, but he speaks a little Afrikaans, most of which are swear words…
I gave the 3 boys a mere R21 (to share) and a couple of dates (which is new for them, but they like it!). The money was a bit of an issue for me, (still is, I suppose). Before I went, I just asked a couple of people what’s the going rate and they said R15, sho, I don’t know, I’m new here and everything. I guess I’ll still have to see about that. I don’t want to start a slave business.
It’s difficult to say what’s too much or too little around here, cause some people really have nothing and for them a couple of rand is actually worth something. Earlier the day, I bought some amangwi (vetkoeke – hey anybody, what’s a vetkoek in English?) for the beading ladies and they were only R1 each! And the ladies were sooo thankful!
Some things are of course more expensive here than in the city. (Oh by the way, you can buy eggs here for R10 -It says Athlone farm on the box. I really hope they aren’t super hormone filled, cause I’m going to have to eat lots of them. They are nice and big and seem fine. How can I tell?)
I also met the three boys that I’m going to help with extra English and reading classes. They are orphans and live by themselves. They’re ages 17 (Grade 3), 15 (Grade 5) and 14 (Grade 4). They only started attending school at the age of 10/12…
They didn’t go to school yesterday, because the water at their house ran out and they couldn’t wash their school shirts. (Each boy own only 1 school shirt). When the water runs out, it also means there is nothing to drink.
The Coffee Shack owners started to help out the boys in 2007. I’ll give more information about the boys later on, as I figure it out. All I know now is that it’s not good to just give them handouts, because they don’t really know how to look after anything. (I know it sounds a bit harsh, but one does need a sense of pride instilled and perhaps you don’t get that if stuff just gets given to you and you don’t have the skills yet to manage it responsibly. I might be wrong, but I think it needs to be a work in progress).
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