'Afrikaans Kos' and more

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"What is this? This is for you, daddy told her. Because it is your birthday. It has four thick feeth. Two ears that look like towels which have been eaten. On his back and head there is a a bump full of thin red small hairs. Hanging from his thick behind, there is a tail hanging, longer than Ping's plait. But craziest of all, this crazy dog has a nose that is hanging till the ground. This is not a nose, this is a trunk, said daddy. And this is not a dog, Marthe , this is an elephant. " Antjie Krog was reading out of a 'miraculous' Flemish children's book "Sam, a true story of a daughter and her elephant" written by Ingrid Vander Veken and translated in Afrikaans by Antjie Krog. Lapa uitgewers organized its annual meeting where African writers could present their book. As the annual tradition wants it, there was also a Flemish writer invited. This time Antjie, renowned South African writer, had chosen the book. She stayed at the 'writers' apartment in Antwerp, and found on the book shelves this nice booklet Ingrid wrote. It is a story about a girl who received an elephant for her birthday. It is a story based on true facts. It was organized at the premises of the literary club of Dutch - Afrikaner literature. There has always been a close bond between South Africa and Flanders of which the meeting was a prove of. Is it the language or is there more? Afrikaners are natural descendants of Dutch and Germans but there is still a certain complicity with Flemish people. The language is closer to the Flemish than the Dutch. Ingrid told me that she thinks there are many similarities between West - ,East Flemish and Afrikaans. The sk-sound (instead of sch) for sure and also the double negation and words such gezei (said), seun (son) but it is not only the language, there's more. When I entered the building, I was thinking of a conversation with a South African friend, who has been visiting Belgium recently and was asked to make a work of art that is typical for Flanders but also to bring the different cultures together. The artwork still needs to be revealed, but food and drinks are involved. He told me that he was struck to see that people seem to find each other in restaurants, tea rooms, cafes and that these are the places where Flemish, Belgians and other cultures do not care about differences. We all eat Chinese, Flemish, Belgian, Turkish, Spanish. And just this is what strikes me about South Africa as well. Afrikaners also love food and drinks. You have to admit that receiving a glass of white wine at a literature event at 9:30 am, might only happen in Belgium as well. Although in Belgium you'd rather get a glass of beer instead. Not only wine was served to tickle our taste buds but also delicious dishes were being served. They all are the result of a history of several cultures as their names suggest. Huge platters with bobotie sosaties, samoosas, vetkoek and of course the melktert, sweets, koeksisters, malvapudding, tambo  colored the tables. And as it happened I just read the book of Antjie Krog "Change of Tongue". She describes the importance of the kombuis (kitchen) for Afrikaners. Her Ouma once made a feast for the English Governor General, the enemy of the Afrikaners. The love for eating radiates from the letter that her Ouma wrote about the the event: "Klasie presented this enormous pudding to him in a Newley painted wheelbarrow. With the coffee we served milk tart, koeksiskters and Aunt Stoffie's feather-light jam puffs and paper -thin slices of guava marinated in port. " Much has been written about Afrikaners and they very definitely have a complex history but now when I will return I will associate the Afrikaners, just like my South African friend says for him the Flemisch identity is associated with the food culture, with the delicious dishes and a glass of wine. And perhaps here lies our complicity, in the ability to experience the culture of the other in our own culture through the food culture.

Frustration

South Africa, a changing country, but also a country full of frustrations. The images of the past few days about the shootings are shocking and a lot of the analysis as well. Politicians fight over who is to blame. It is the fault of the ANC, it is the fault of the police, it is the fault of the unions, it is the fault of everyone ... but perhaps most of all of poverty. The riots last week in Cape Town as well. During my stay in the past few weeks I have been constantly trying to wonder how I could survive in these circumstances. People try to be creative, some try to make something out of it, others try to make their dreams come true ... but we can try to romanticize, the harsh reality remains that many have no running water, many no electricity, no plumbing and alcoholism, drugs, abuse of women is rampant. Take the miners, they live in similar settings, working in very unhealthy conditions and earn a mere 400 Euros per month. In all honesty, I have to say that in all my despair, frustration and anger I would protest as well and probably would do stupid things. Because, what have  have you got to lose? If you no longer have human dignity, what remains? Twenty years after apartheid, the weak still have to battle. All their hope was aimed at having a better life but still a lot of people are waiting for it to happen. Twenty years after apartheid, apartheid still remains. Not necessarily the white against the black, but the rich against the poor. And yet change must come. That's what this is all about, 'change'. Hopefully the political leaders will realize that change must come for everyone. Talking to people, the main tone of the conversation is frustration. There are probably political theories, economical, and certainly also anthropological, but sometimes when one witnesses images as the mining killings, one must be one's reason aside and let the heart speak. Once again, the poor Africans are the victims. Let me end with one of the figureheads of the negritudebeweging.

Aime Césaire

those who have invented neither powder nor compass

those who could harness neither steam nor electricity

those who explored neither the seas nor the sky

but those without whom the earth would not be the earth

gibbosity all the more beneficent as the bare earth even more earth

my negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day

my negritude is not a leukoma of dead liquid over the earth’s dead eye

my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral

it takes root in the red flesh

of the soil it takes root in the ardent flesh

of the sky it breaks through the opaque prostration with its upright patience

Eia for the royal Cailcedra!

Eia for those who have never invented anything

for those who never explored anything

for those who never conquered anything

Pink Boots

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‘God created the rose in the likeness of Woman '. It was written on the card Kamilla and I received on one of our visits to the townships of Strand. Five ladies in blue t-shirts, accompanied by their male colleague in police uniform, handed the cards out . They visited the school to wish all female teachers a nice Women's Day. This is was not the only Women’s event we witnessed that day. When visiting the school, we noticed all female teacher were absent.  The school principal had taken all of them out to have a cop of coffee. Should this this have happened at a Belgian school all kids would have been shouting and having a party. In this school, children were working and this without having a teacher in front of the classroom. ‘This would never happen in Belgium’, said Kamilla. Elsa, the lady who was my guide for the day, is very proud of the township school. She contributed a lot and invested a lot in the school. She even is paying for a music teacher who started a choir, but she also made sure there were computers and a lot more. The school principal  is proud to say that the number of pupils has tripled in recent years.

I would like to dedicate this story to celebrate Women's Day and you can be a witness of these  'wonderful women' as they are called. In my quest for stories about people in post-apartheid, I was brought into contact with Elsa. She was a doctor in psychology in Potchefstroom. Like many others, when she retired, she traded the dryness of the desert for the coastal beauty of Cape Town. She is a convinced member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and precisely because of her faith she thinks it is her duty to care for the less fortunate. My first conversation with her had me baffled. Stories of people who have experienced apartheid as Afrikaner and were part of a system, evokes ambiguous feelings. At one point, she told me that during the eighties the Cosby show was shown on TV, people realized that 'blacks’ also could be intelligent. It became clear to her that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. It kept playing my mind ‘How could a teacher psychology (psychology) think like this?’

Like every Afrikaner I talk to, she is convinced that getting rid of apartheid was a good thing and at least everyone gets an equal chance now. This opened up a whole range of possibilities for a lot of people but it also the gave opportunity to people that has been so haunted by their history to re-profile themselves. Although religion is declining, South Africa is still a very religious country. There are so many religions as there are people and despite the many problems in this country, between different religions, there appears to be no conflicts. Elsa is a convinced member of the Dutch Reformed Church and finds that in the present circumstances it is her duty to help the less fortunate. She raises funds for the local school in the township to buy food, organizes food handouts in the hospital for HIV-patients who have to take their pills with food, she wants a daycare center for children in the poorest township in Strand, Casablanca . Casablanca has an exotic name but it is a sad sight of deteriorated houses. Elsa shows me the plot of land where they want to build the daycare center for children. Now they make do with a small container without water and electricity for the children. There is only room for 12 kids from the neighborhood and it is Elsa’s dream to be able to house all the kids of the neighborhood. The poverty of the area is hard to describe. Not only Elsa is doing a lot but the women of the district are putting in their weight as well. Irma is one of the people who are better off in the neighborhood. Her husband works in construction and they have build a 'proper' house. It is not huge but cozy. She also has a stove on which she prepares soup. Elsa provides the ingredients and Irma prepares the soup  twice a week in her Sopkombuis (soup kitchen). The locals can get soup for free. At least they eat healthy twice a week, she says. Last Friday we helped at the 3-monthly second hand clothes sale in Casablanca. The magnitude of the poverty struck me at that moment. The sale had the same effect as sales In Belgium. The people rushed onto the clothing and for 0.2 cents a piece, they could get a whole outfit. Elsa said she had to ask money because the first time when everything was for free, people started fighting  and burned down the place.

There was a kind of roughness in the room. Boys rushed to our car upon arrival, hoping to earn some money by helping us carrying bags. The cringing behavior, sir, madam ... I do not get used to it. Yet, there was also some happiness. Adolescent girls found a pair of pink boots with very high heels and this was reason enough for them to spend some time in a dream world and have the illusion to be a model.

I talked to Jennifer that day. She also lives in Casablanca and is considered the mom of the neighborhood. She also helps with the sopkombuis because she wants to care for the people. ‘I love people’, she says, ‘I do not have anything but I like to give because I know what it is to be hungry.’ She has three children, and has already known a lot of misery in her life. Her son was hooked on tik, a type of drug, and he even robbed her of what little they possessed, because he needed the money. Luckily he gave up on the drugs, she said, and now has a job. Her youngest daughter was pregnant when she was 15 and now Jennifer takes care of her four year old grandchild. She is so proud that despite her daughter's pregnancy, she is a good student at school. This could not have happened without the generosity of the people from church, she says. She really wants her daughter to get her diploma so she can find a job. ‘I keep faith in the Lord above. He means the best with us ‘ she continues. She is a member of an African Christian church and this keeps her going. ‘God is there to take care of us.’

I only had one thought in my head when we drove away. God can never have wanted all this misery.

And yet it is moving. Elsa with her group of volunteers from the church, living in the nicer part of ​​the city, trying to give their fellow citizens in the slums a dignified life. The religion as a bridge between two parts of the city. Many questions still haunt my mind but for now I stick to the testimony of women who get the strength from their faith. One to help each other, the other to give meaning to her existence. And if only for one hour, a few teenage girls get pleasure from a pair of pink boots ... 'God created the rose in the likeness of Woman '