Do People Live Here?

“Do you know Jesus Loves Me?” *Manasiko asked me as I pushed her in the tire converted into a swing with a back and handles. 

“Yes, I know it.”

“Sing it.”

I sang through the song and she turned in the swing to watch me. It’s probably a song they sing often at the center in Mamelodi where children come for the after school program. 

“Now it’s your turn. You have to sing me a song,” I said.

“What song?”

“Any song you know. Sing me a song in Zulu,” I offered, hoping that an appeal to hear her mother tongue would result in a very African tune, complete with harmonies and clapping. 

She thought a moment before settling on a song. I listened attentively and she sang in a lovely voice I’ve found to be so common among Africans. I don’t know if I’ve met one that can’t sing, and most will oblige when asked. There’s not the same bashful refusal one usually meets in America. 

When she’d finished the cheerful little song I asked for the translation.

“It means ‘Every morning the men go to work, but my man is busy drinking alcohol. There’s no money for the children to buy food,” she said.

Not the answer I was expecting.

“That’s a very sad song!”

“Oh, you wanted a nice one?” Upon clarifying what I had in mind, she sang part of another song, one that I had heard before, which translated means hold on to Jesus. That was more like it. 

The after school program runs from Monday to Thursday and each day follows the same organized agenda. The children arrive at about 2:00pm and are fed a big lunch. There were only about 25 children present, and the leaders know nearly all of them by name. They’re regulars. They’re expected. After lunch, a crate full of toothbrushes with sanitary caps and drinking cups are brought out and each child finds the one with his or her name on it. The children appointed group leaders are responsible for wiping their tables down after lunch, a burdensome task considering that a game of soccer started up before all the children were done eating. It’s a pretty big temptation. 

At the table I joined, one of the girls took the hard boiled egg from a boy’s plate; he wasn’t sitting at the table at the moment. I eyed her with a sneaking grin, assuming she couldn’t really have been stealing it. Surely there was an agreement. 

“Does he not like eggs?” I asked innocently.

The girl shrugged as she began peeling the shell off. “He wants to go play soccer and we told him that if he eats an egg and plays soccer, he will fart.”

At this, we both laughed.  It must have been a convincing argument, as the boy didn’t seem sad to part with the egg, especially since it got him to the soccer field more quickly. 

After class time and devotions comes snack time which consisted of fruit, chocolate cake, and a “healthy” milkshake (made of nasty things like...like...vitamins! The kids at my table raced to see who could chug their nutrition fastest, getting it out of the way), and after snack it’s time to go home. Normally the kids are dropped off in groups in strategic locations, but on Thursdays each child is sent home with a big bag of food and dropped off individually. Most kids left in the center’s bus and 8 or 10 kids along with their bags of food climbed in the back of a truck and I sat with the driver in the front. 

I was in for a bumpy ride...and I mean that as literally as I can. You’ve probably never seen potholes like these.

I have never been anywhere quite like the neighborhoods of Mamelodi. We wound our way on trails through sprawling townships where row after row of little tin shacks served as homes for what must be thousands of people. There were people sitting around fires, talking along the side of the road, getting their hair done at one of the many tiny hair salons, or selling things like chips or vegetables in places that could hardly be considered shops. There were children singing and dancing, carrying smaller siblings, and pushing wheelbarrows loaded with what must have been close to 200 pounds of water. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve been around poverty, but it may well be the first time I’ve been around poverty to this extent and degree. There were so many shacks, so many people. It wasn’t the occasional run-down house; it was a never-ending, piled-up, dirty, crowded scene, and each shack represented a family who called it home. I was struck by the thought that the children we were dropping off, wearing their little school uniforms, lived here. This wasn’t where they came for a week or two to “do ministry,” or “experience” things. They lived here. I thought about one of the little girls we dropped off, *Aranti. I watched her mother come out of an incredibly small tin shack and the only thing I could think was how cold and miserable it must be to sleep there. 

Not all the children lived in tin shacks. Eventually we made it out of the townships and were in a place you could actually call a neighborhood again. It was still poor, but it looked more like places you could imagine someone (though not yourself) living in. We dropped Manasiko off at a house like this, and were told that her grandmother had passed away earlier that morning. She had custody of Manasiko and the man who told us the news (perhaps he was an uncle or family friend) wasn’t sure what would happen. 

They say that seeing real poverty will make you realize how rich you are, and it’s true; I am rich. How can my life be so different from the lives of the people I saw in Mamelodi, less than 30 minutes from my luxurious flat? I thought about my blessings as I walked upstairs to my fully-furnished bedroom—I used to call it spartan—where I knew I could sleep in comfort in a world far removed from the children I’d pushed on the swings...could it have only been a few hours ago?

*Indicates a change in name