23. Matsheloni, Host Family!

Hamakuya Homestay Day 1: Welcome to Hamakuya; Meet the Family

Friday April 26

After breakfast on Friday morning, we met our guides/translators who would be with us throughout our homestays. My group’s translator’s name was Innocent and he was from the Hamakuya village of Khavambi. David let us meet him and talk to him for about twenty minutes before we had our water project lecture. Innocent is 21, unemployed, but has been a translator six times. He plays soccer a lot since he has a lot of free time. And he is the second oldest of four boys. He’s never left the Hamakuya chieftainship in his life. 

David instructed us on how to use our water testing equipment gear. We would be testing for E. coli presence in sources of drinking water used by people in the village we stayed in. We also had to conduct basic interviews at the water collection sites of people who use the water on their perceptions of the water’s quality, safety, and taste. We packed up our safari vehicles and set off to drop the groups off. Along the way, we stopped at the Tshulu Project Resource Center, which serves as a library and education center for people in the villages of Hamakuya. It is located in the main village of Hamakuya, simply called Hamakuya. Hamakuya is a cheiftainship under the authority of Chief Makuya. Ha means place of, so Ha-Makuya is the place of Makuya. The resource center was a tiny one-room place with book shelves of English books lining one wall, some desks in the middle of the room, and a giant map of the world on the other wall hand-drawn by some volunteer students from University College of Dublin.

            After our tour of the resource center, we squished back into the vehicles and made our way to Dotha, the first of the four villages our groups would be staying in. We had to ford another river to drive there and it took a while. The only resource center and clinic and store in all of Hamakuya are located in the main village. As we drove to Dotha I couldn’t help but think how difficult it must be for the people of this village to get to the main town to access health care or groceries. We said goodbye to the five students staying there and watched them meet their host mother and disappear into a tiny one-room round hut. And then we drove away. I had a terrified feeling in my stomach that within an hour or two, that would be me disappearing into a hut and the nervous feelings started becoming stronger than the excited feelings. 

 

Dotha homestay. 

Precarious roads between Hamakuya and Dotha

The next village we drove to, Khavambi, was just as far as Dotha, but in another direction. I had the same weird feeling when we dropped that group off at their homestay there. And I realized that this village was where my translator/guide was from. 

Khavambi homestay

We drove past the local village chief's house on the way to Fandani. (Not the same as the super chief, Chief Makua) Shortly after  we passed this, the power lines ceased to exist. 

Then we drove to the village of Fandani (I’m convinced it sounds Italian as do most Venda words), where I would be staying for the next three days. Fandani was very remote, farther away from Hamakuya than any other village I think. And the only one of the 19 villages to not have electricity. The village was small population wise, but spread out. There was a primary school right next to the road we had to turn up to get to “my” house. And naturally, the road was so bad that the vehicles got stuck on it and so we had to park and walk the rest of the way with our stuff. When our homestead came into view, I felt excited and happy. It was a cute little cluster of three homes, and they were painted orange, so I immediately knew my host family must have some personality.

            

My host family's home

David and the remaining group of students left us and I realized that I had the next three days to learn all I possibly could and to get to know my family as much as I possibly could. I didn’t have time for fear, awkwardness, or discomfort. Learning and enjoying had to begin immediately. So it did. I met our host dad, Bennett right away. He ran over to help us carry our sleeping bags and mats up the road when he saw us. I also found out that there had been a misunderstanding about when we would be coming…he and his wife were not expecting us until the next day. I felt so bad! But couldn’t really do anything about it.

Bennett 

Bennett looks like a 35-year-old Bob Marley, has a pair of shiny reflective orange sunglasses and a rainbow-y striped beanie cap. He speaks English since he lived and worked in a Johannesburg informal settlement shack as a migrant laborer for 13 years, returning to Hamakuya only a few times each year to see his family. The fact that Bennett spoke English was amazing because it meant we didn’t have to communicate through a translator all the time and we could treat Innocent more as a friend and companion than a constant, “Innocent, what does this mean? Innocent, please help!” As are most men in Hamakuya, Bennett is currently unemployed, so the family lives off the garden and the government grants provided them. After his 13 years in Joburg, he got sick and couldn’t live alone in a shack in a township, so had to return to his family in Fandani.  And he hasn’t found work since then. He worked for 11 years for a security company and had even completed the highest level of professional training in security.

            

Ndamurore driving donkey cart to fetch water. Having a donkey cart in Fandani is like owning a BMW. 

 We met our host mom next. She came out and lay down on the ground and put her arm out in front of her and her head down on top of her arms. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen and it made me feel really uncomfortable, but it is how Venda women greet each other. It is a sign of respect not of shame or humility as it seemed to be at first glance from my Western worldview perspective. We soon learned that the appropriate way to reciprocate this greeting is to get down on the ground and do the same thing and just kind of crouch there for a while saying words of greeting, hello, how are you, I’m fine, etc.

            

Our host mom was busy preparing food and preparing for us to be there (since we had arrived a day earlier than she had anticipated). Bennett introduced himself to us officially and told us that he had three cows, three donkeys, five goats, some pigs, and chickens, and a huge garden. We asked him more about the garden and he offered to take us on a walk there as well as to his son’s secondary school to fetch some water for our testing purposes. In general, I know it was important, but I found the water testing to be a rather annoying feature of our homestay. It was awkward and inconvenient to fetch the water and test it every four hours (including overnight) to check for E. coli growth.

We went on a walk to see his garden and it was pretty huge. He grows peas, sweet potatoes, bananas, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and tobacco and spices/herbs. Then we walked for about an hour and finally arrived at the place where his son’s secondary school is and we collected water from the tap there. That is also where Bennett sends his son to fetch water for their household.  Pretty crazy. By this point, we were all starving, so were glad to walk back to the house and were all hoping for food. Along the way, we met a man who asked Bennett if he could have one of us as his wife or girlfriend. He didn’t specify whom; he just wanted one of us. Along the way back, we also stopped at Bennett’s neighbors homes. His mom is one of his neighbors and his sister is his other neighbor. We stopped at his brother-in-law’s pig pen to look at the malnourished pigs and saw one of the piglets was dead because the mother was so emaciated. We also stopped and picked yellow oranges off the tree in the yard and they were delicious despite my hesitancy at their yellow color. We saw an avocado tree and a papaya tree too.

            

Neighbor's pigs

Tea

Stirring the pot of pap. 

When we got back, we had tea and bread and peanut butter, which provided a burst of energy to last us through until dinner. Bennett also brought us some baobab fruit, which was powdery and bitter (it was only bitter if you accidentally bit the seeds like I did, Inexperienced at eating baobab fruit, I guess). I didn’t really know how to get the edible fruit part out of it but he showed us how, and it wasn’t bad. The powdery thing was weird, but it was yummy. We met Bennett’s son Ndamurore who is 14 and then spent the rest of our day playing with kids and helping our host mom cook dinner. We helped grind peanuts into peanut flour for the moroho, boiled spinach mixture to eat with the pap. We also helped stir the pap (pronounced ‘pop’) pot. Pap is cornmeal boiled in water. Everywhere else we’ve had white cornmeal, which is softer and sweeter, but my host family only had yellow cornmeal since the white corn had suffered in the last drought. Stirring the pot and grinding the flour were both ridiculously harder than they looked. Our host mom, Nkhumeleni, must be so fit and have muscles of steel. We also rinsed maize for future grinding.

Rining maize

Innocent had taught us a few Venda words and I got to practice them all day. Matsheloni (l’s sound almost like r’s in Tshivenda) is the morning greeting. Masiari is the afternoon greeting. And Madekwana is the evening greeting. The response is always “Matsheloni/ masiari/ madekwana avuti” meaning a good morning/afternoon/evening or something along those lines. Everyone says it all the time. So I said those phrases a lot that day, and the whole weekend in fact.

The grandmother, Bennett’s mom, gave each of us a Venda name since our names were too difficult for them to pronounce. My Venda name was Azudowe, meaning ‘thing that will never be again.’ I guess I truly am one of a kind.

For dinner, we had pap, chicken, and spinach moroho. We ate inside our little hut, the five of us plus Innocent. In Venda culture, guests do not eat with the family. It was dark by the time we ate, and Fandani has no electricity, so we ate by candlelight. We were all deathly afraid of knocking over the candle onto the straw mats that covered the cow-dung floor and lighting the thatch-roof hut on fire. But we were fine. No fires were started inside the house. All the food was cooked over the fire outside the house in the same pot.

After dinner, we played more games with the kids and Bennett roasted some peanuts he’d grown in his garden for us. Mmmmmmmmm. So good.

Some of the games we played with the kids were hand clapping games – those are indeed universal. We also played a version of ring around the rosy, a version of duck duck goose, and a version of tug of war. I was exhausted and sweaty and covered in red sandy dust by the end of it, but it was so much fun. If you realize you can’t wash or take a shower or anything like that, and just accept the state of dirtiness, it’s really not that bad. The kids were so cute and sweet and loving. They fought over who got to hold the makuas hands. They asked us to dance American dances for them…so we danced the Macarena and the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey. Classic Americans.

I am convinced that most of the kids in town came over to see the strange makuas from a faraway place. They asked us the oddest questions. Even the older kids. One girl who had already finished secondary school asked me if the United States was in China. And another guy who was also already done with secondary school asked me if America was as far away as Cape Town.  A twelve year old boy asked me what my English name was and when I told him it was Marie (South Africans ALWAYS pronounce my name Mary no matter how many times I say Marie…I have just come to terms with that), he said, “Mary? Are you the Mother of God?” in all seriousness. I laughed and told him that NO I definitely was not the mother of God. That that Mary was a different Mary. But he was confused because she was also from far away. I kept on laughing and the other members in my group laughed too when they overheard this conversation, so then the kids decided it would be hilarious to call me Maria Jesus Christo. The whole weekend. They asked me if I had an English nickname, and I told them that kids I babysat for like to call me “Re-re” for some reason that’s how two year olds universally pronounce my name. So the younger kids called me “Re-re” for the whole weekend. Both r’s significantly rolled because that’s how they do it in Tshivenda. Haha!

I was also asked if I believe in God or in sangomas (traditional/witch doctors). That threw me for a loop! They also asked me if wrestling as portrayed on TV in America is real. What? Anyway, there was a big obsession with wrestling. American TV wrestling. To be honest, I have never watched wrestling on TV, but I might have to do that when I go home to try to understand why of all things shown on American TV, wrestling is the ONE thing (aside from Tom and Jerry which is totally understandable) that made it to Fandani. Also, none of them have electricity to watch TV, so I don’t know how they watch it.

The bathroom...

The family had a drop toilet outside in the corner of the yard that somehow didn’t smell bad. However, we never saw anyone use it besides us. Mysterious. The little kids just peed in the yard, but I don’t know what the older kids and adults did.

Without electricity, darkness dictates a lot. Everyone told us we didn’t need light, we had the moon and the stars, “God’s electricity,” as they put it. After the other village kids left, some were still left around the fire, watching Tom & Jerry on someone’s tiny cell phone. They don’t have electricity but everyone has a phone. My host family had a little solar panel outside their hut and they used that to charge their cell phones.

I try not to have favorites, but the guy in the plaid button down was so shy when we first met him. He wouldn't smile and wouldn't make eye contact. But I worked on him and finally broke through. After which point he refused to let go of my hand. And cried when I left. 

Getting sunburned because these guys did not understand the concept of me wanting to sit in the shade. Crazy makua!

Let's play! Innocent is in the green shirt. 

Ndamurore, host family's son. 

These guys asked me to photograph them using their muscles. Typical. 

Muneiwa on the left and Jacarand (spelling?) on the right. A six year old handed me the baby. I couldn't understand what she said her name was. 

Puppy. His name is "X." 

Just before I turned in for the night, I looked up at the sky. The stars and moon were incredible. Absolutely zero light pollution in a world without electricity. It was breathtaking. There was a hill off in the distance to the southeast and two big trees that from a quick-glance profile looked just like the hill and two big trees by our ponds just to the southeast of my house in Kansas. When I was looking up at the moon and stars, that vague profile was all I could see of the horizon, and I literally forgot where I was for about 3 seconds. It was terrifying and weird. I thought I was at home for a second. And then I realized where I was and felt happy and content and secure, but also felt the tiniest twinge of homesickness. Ok, maybe it wasn’t tiny. But I told myself that it wasn’t the time to think about it, because O’Sheen had lectured us the night before about homestays posing the greatest risk of homesickness for study abroad students. For some reason a homestay throws you so far out of your comfort zone but attempts to be a home environment at the same time, so results in homesickness.

All the cows and donkeys and goats in Hamakuya have bells tied to their necks. Apparently, each family has a unique bell tone so that they can tell whose animals are whose and you can tell your animals apart from others from afar just by the tone of the bell. Remarkable! I couldn’t tell most of them apart. But it’s kind of cute and endearing, hearing a perpetual tinkle of bells as the animals wander the fields. Except when you’re trying to sleep and the symphony of bells and crow of roosters wakes you up every forty minutes. The five of us were lined up shoulder to shoulder lying in our sleeping bags on the cow dung hut floor. For some reason, I didn’t even mind the discomfort or thought that I was sleeping on cow dung. Our family was awake when we finally crashed at about midnight, and they were already awake when we got up at 6am. When do they sleep? I don’t know.