Sweet 16 or Justin Bieber & the devil

This weekend was the first time that we saw a little bit more of Soweto. We already went there two times before to fetch Louisa, another volunteer that lives in Meadowlands, an eastern district, and yet had to realize that Soweto is quite different than expected. I have to admit that in my imagination Soweto always was a huge and disordered accumulation of shacks without a real infrastructure. I expected many people to live without running water or electricity, but all of these pictures were forgotten when we actually went to Soweto. Now I can assure you that most people are living in stone houses that are bigger than imagined, have access to electricity and water and the infrastructure is also very acceptable as there are shops and malls like everywhere else. I don’t really know how I came to that wrong picture I had of Soweto but maybe it’s the expression township that arouse those associations in my mind.

However when we wanted to fetch our friend this weekend we were directly invited to her cousins 16^th birthday party. Alongside the 21^st the 16^th birthday seems to be the biggest in the entire of the Tswana, a Bantu speaking Southern African people that our friend’s guest family belongs to. On Saturday we could already watch the preparations for the big party that should take place the next day. Two sheep should be slaughtered for it and there was a big ceremony all around it. Two traditional healers, who are called Sangomas, were present and performed rituals with the animals and the birthday girl. It‘s quite difficult to explain because we didn’t really understand what they were doing but see yourself:

The next day we went to the real birthday party. The whole family was there - and in South Africa that means at least about 40 people – a big and colourful tent was built up in the court, everyone was dressed very nicely and a delicious buffet was prepared. Of course the highlight was the freshly slaughtered sheep! But also the other food such as traditional chakalaka, boerewors and different salads tasted very good.

We also had to take a lot of pictures that day but Louisa had already told us about that predilection. In Soweto you normally don’t see any white persons - except some albinos maybe. That’s why everyone in the streets without exception greets you and often wants to talk to you or just touch you – and if it’s possible also take a photo to use it as the new whatsapp profile picture.

All in all we spent a very nice day in Soweto and it was very nice to experience some family life and get to know more of the Tswana culture because that’s something that we don’t really have since we are living in our project and not a family.

At Cotlands we have to work a lot with toys for the moment. There is a lot of stuff that has to be finished soon so we unfortunately don’t have a lot of time to work with the children for the moment and do a lot of less exciting work. But that will hopefully change again as soon as everything is done! At least today I had a very funny conversation during the little time that we worked with the children. I was helping some 3^rd grade girls with their homework when one of them suddenly wanted to talk about God and Satan. At first she just philosophized about them in general, but then she came to the really interesting point: celebrities and Satan! I don’t know how it came to her but she was convinced that Justin Bieber is praising the devil. When he was younger he wasn’t, but now he is and Hannah Montana is obsessed by Satan too.

It’s never too late to learn!