Confidence Part 3

"They take matters into their hands. That's how Diepsloot is." 

-Confidence 

This is part three of my interview with Confidence. You can find part one here and part two here.

Confidence will graduate with a diploma in accounting in March. Then, she plans to return to university for one more year (her fourth year) to obtain a degree. After that, she hopes to get a job in financial management. 

I asked Confidence about her goals for the future, the old "where do you see yourself in five years" and she replied, without hesitation, that she wants to get out of Diepsloot and that she wants to get her family out of Diepsloot as well. She wants to send her parents to live on a farm because "they love animals." She also wants to make sure her brothers attend university. 

I was a little surprised that she replied that way. Not completely surprised because I have been to Diepsloot and I can't imagine living there, but throughout our talks Confidence has never mentioned anything negative about Diepsloot. In fact, I am pretty sure she had told me once that she liked attending the Diepsloot Combined School and that she thought it was a good school. But in hindsight, it all made sense, how and why Confidence was able to survive the starvation, the rats and the disingenuous pastor, when I am pretty sure most of us would have given up, it's because if she gave up and left school she thought she'd be destined to a life spent in Diepsloot, and she's probably right. With 25% unemployment in this country being a hard worker and a loyal employee is not enough. You have to have skills and education and even with those things it can still be a challenge.  

This is the essence of Confidence, she is not just working hard for the sake of working hard, like a lot of us. She has a plan and even if that plan involves a lot of suffering or giving up hopes of a career in art to instead study accounting she will do it. Whatever it takes. 

Confidence has her learner's permit but she had never driven a car before, so I gave her a driving lesson in a practically abandoned parking lot.

To the casual visitor, like me, Diepsloot is overwhelming. It is a different world, one that is extremely crowded, where there is trash, dirty water and often sewage in the streets. There is also a lot of crime. According to crime stats SA in 2016 there were 68 murders in Diepsloot plus another 70 attempted. There were also 151 sexual offenses, 776 assaults with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm and another 494 common assaults. Also, 169 robberies and an additional 487 robberies with aggravating circumstances. And, there were 22 cases of arson. These are just the reported crimes of course and there are even more crime stats available but I think you get the idea. Keep in mind that in Chicago in 2016 there were 762 homicides, the highest number in 20 years, and Chicago has a population of 2.7 million. Whereas about 200,000 people live in Diepsloot. A better mathematician than me could analyze and translate that information for you.   

But the issue that Confidence told me about and the one that I think she finds the most upsetting is vigilante justice. My words, not hers. 

Confidence said that one morning when she was in matric (grade 12) she heard noise outside of her house. When she went to investigate she saw a mob of people chasing and beating a man. He was hit in the face with a brick and he was killed as Confidence and her brother watched. He had been caught trying to steal a car. 

Another time, there was a rumor that a man was raping children and so members of the community killed him by necklacing. Meaning a tire was pulled over his head, pinning his arms to his body, he was doused in petrol (gasoline) and set on fire. Confidence didn't see this happen but she said she smelled it. 

And then once, after a series of robberies where electronics and appliances were taken from homes in Diepsloot, the suspected thief's shack was burned to the ground with him trapped inside. 

The day after Confidence told me these stories, I was with Gift and I mentioned this mob violence to him. "Oh yes," he said, " I once saw a group of people beat a man in Diepsloot (Gift once lived in Diepsloot.) "In Diepsloot" he told me, "you must not break the law."

Students at the Diepsloot Combined School

Love on the Rocks

A glorious view from our room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. 

Last weekend was a three day holiday weekend here in South Africa. The holiday is called Day of Reconciliation and it's purpose is to celebrate and promote racial harmony and unity. The holiday was first celebrated in 1995 after the end of apartheid. 

Mr. Deep and I took a trip to Kwa Zulu Natal one of the South African provinces. Affectionately called K Zed N, remember a Z is called a Zed here, Kwa Zulu Natal is in the south eastern part of the country and has a lovely, long coastline along the Indian Ocean.  Last year, we visited Durban in K Zed N, but it was winter and it was rainy and cold. This time, however the weather was perfect. 

We stayed in Umhlanga Rocks, located north of Durban at a fancy schmancy hotel called the Beverly Hills. 

My suggestion is that you run, not walk to the Beverly Hills Hotel. It is luxurious and every room faces the ocean. They give you champagne when you check in. They give you more champagne at breakfast. While you are laying in the sun a guy comes by and asks you if you want your sunglasses cleaned. Then later another guy comes by and asks if you if want a popsicle. If you want, you can also get a massage right there overlooking the beach. 

The rocks in Umhlanga Rocks

It looks like a face

Rock close up

I mentioned in this post that Mr. Deep and I only recently became aware that you can sit around on vacation and do absolutely nothing. Why it took us so long to learn that lesson I am not sure. But nothing is precisely what we did for three days. Because we didn't DO anything this blog post is not going to be chock full of content. But we got some great photos and I wanted to share them. You might notice that most of the pics appear to be taken from the same exact vantage point. That's because I rarely got up from my chair. And what I found out is that if you just sit in the same spot for a while interesting things will actually happen right in front of you. 

I mentioned we didn't move much right? 

A wedding took place out on the pier. Luckily, I had my zoom lens and could remain comfortably seated and still get some photos.

 

You can probably guess who took the next two photos. 

Eventually, we did get up an explore a bit. But don't worry we quickly returned to the comfort of our chairs. 

It was Mr. Deep's idea that we snap this pic because there were so many shades of blue.

More Confidence

This is part two of my interview with Confidence. If you missed part one you can read it here. 

"Sometimes it was hard to listen in class but I always called my crying tummy to order."

- Confidence Tshivhula

Confidence answers my questions thoughtfully, slowly and carefully pausing to contemplate each answer before replying. I can tell that certain topics are difficult for her to talk about. Here is more of her story.

Eventually Confidence got an electrician to reconnect the lights in her shack but she still had to endure the dirt floor, the holes in the walls, the door that she couldn't lock, the rats and the faulty roof. Because she couldn't lock the door and was afraid, Confidence stopped sleeping at the shack, using it only as a place to store her belongings, and began sleeping in the lecture halls at school. After studying at the library until late at night, she'd go to her hiding spot for a few hours sleep. Other students sometimes noticed that she hadn't changed her clothes from one day to the next but when they commented she told them she "didn't like washing clothes."

Confidence had no money to buy food and went days without eating. At night she would visit a nearby market after closing and search the bins for discarded food. Sometimes she'd find carrots and tomatoes still fresh enough to eat. Sunday was her favorite day as lunch was served following the church service she attended. She volunteered for the task of washing lunch dishes so she could eat the leftover food from people's plates. 

I asked Confidence how she was able to concentrate in class and sleep at night when she was so hungry. She said it was difficult at first, but after a while her body adjusted, "I wasn't used to food anymore." Although now her situation has improved she says she cares little about eating and doesn't have the same appetite that she used to.

One night Confidence returned to her shack to retrieve some clothes and her landlord was there waiting for her. He was tired of her late rent payments and he chased her away. Confidence begged him to allow her wait until morning to move out but he would not and so in the middle of the night she went to stay at the home of her church pastor and his family.

Confidence loved and admired the pastor and his wife and she was happy for the chance to live with them and be a part of their family. But instead of treating her like family she says that they treated her like a servant. While she was allowed to live in their house rent free, she was expected to do all of the cleaning and housework. The family had a washing machine but Confidence was not allowed to use it and had to wash her own clothes by hand. They also did not share any of their food with her. When she talks about this time I get the feeling that living with the pastor was a more difficult experience for her than living in the shack as she was so hurt and disappointed by people she thought were nice but proved not to be genuine. After three months Confidence moved out of the pastor's home and she no longer attends that church. 

She was also disappointed and surprised by behavior displayed by some of her fellow classmates. She witnessed students dressed in fancy clothes and shoes that she describes as "breathtaking" being dropped off at school in expensive cars. At first she thought these students were being dropped off by their parents but later she realized that some of them had much older boyfriends who were paying for a high end lifestyle in exchange for sex and younger companionship. 

Since her first year at varsity (she is now in her third year) Confidence's financial situation has improved a bit thanks in part to a monthly stipend of R500 (approximately $35) that she she receives from the Edu Fun Further Education Program (FEP.)  Edu Fun is the same organization that I volunteer with at the Diepsloot Combined School (DCS) helping younger children with their English. Through the FEP arm, Edu Fun supports approximately twenty varsity students all graduates of DCS. The students receive a stipend to help them with food, transport and living expenses while they are at university. Confidence didn't learn about FEP until she was in her second year of varsity. Edu Fun's website seems to be under construction currently but here is a link to the Facebook page.

Spoiled in Joburg

Sometimes I write blog posts that cast me in a good light and use the blog to give myself a public pat on the back. This is not one of those times. Recently I noticed some things about myself that aren't all that flattering. If you live or have ever lived in South Africa I am hoping you can relate. Part of me can't help but think that what is happening to me is South Africa's fault. At least a little.

I am becoming lazy and spoiled. Not lazy like I don't go to the gym. I do go. Not lazy like I sit around and watch TV all day. I don't. Not spoiled like I don't appreciate how wonderful my life is. I do. It is not lost on me that I have just written about a young woman who is trying her hardest to improve her life by going to university but that in order to do so she has had to go without food or a safe place to live because she has so little money. 

When we first arrived and Christine began coming to clean for us twice a week, I was a little freaked out. Not that I wasn't incredibly excited to have a clean home, as that is all I've ever wanted in life, but I was worried that it would be strange to have someone cleaning while I was home and clearly doing nothing of importance. In the beginning, because I'm American, on the days that she came to clean I would do a little pre-work before she arrived and make our bed. Really, it was just a display (refer to beginning of this post) to reassure her that I was not a useless spoiled brat who couldn't or wouldn't make her own bed. I soon noticed though that Christine was remaking our bed even after I'd made it, so after a few months, I conceded to the power play and stopped. 

It gets worse. For about a year I hurriedly washed the blender containing our morning smoothie and the glasses that we used to drink the smoothie before Christine arrived. Sometimes it would really get down to the wire and security would call to say she had arrived and I would have to use the five minutes that it takes her to walk from the gate to our house to wash these items. I did this because after making a smoothie the blender is gross. It's covered in a thick green pulpy film. While very healthy to drink, it's yucky to clean especially if you didn't make the smoothie and you're not quite sure what the green slime that you are touching actually is. But then I heard from other people that they were leaving their dinner dishes from the NIGHT BEFORE for their cleaning lady to wash upon arrival the next day and while this news shocked and horrified me it did make me think that washing a small freshly used blender and two glasses wasn't so bad and that was the end of my blender washing.

As I write this, Christine is on vacation for several weeks and so I am left to clean my own house and do my own laundry. As the best offense is a good defense, my strategy is to make as little of a mess as possible and try to keep the house looking presentable for as long as I can without really having to clean anything. If I see a smudge or an area that needs to be wiped, I will wipe it, but my goal is not to have to break out any heavily machinery such as the vacuum or a mop. When this inevitably fails I will enter phase two of my plan which is to ensure that no one comes over and sees what a mess we are living in. The first two phases of my plan should get me to within a week or so of when Christine is due to return at which point I will either break down and clean the house from top to bottom myself or stick it out for the duration. 

This is our second holiday season spent in South Africa and I am now realizing why so many people from Joburg go away during the holidays. It's not because they love the beach or viewing the big five but it's because their domestic staff have left town and it's no fun to sit around at home in squalor for three weeks. 

The other task I am handling while Christine is away is our laundry. In the grand scheme of household chores I really don't mind doing the laundry but Christine not only does our laundry...she irons and she irons everything. She irons our sheets, our gym clothes and our t-shirts. She may even iron our underwear. She also perfectly folds every item like they do at The Gap. She stacks the ironed clothing in our drawers and cupboards and the piles look so beautiful that I only want to wear the top article of clothing so as to preserve the perfection of the stack.  

When South Africans visit America the first thing they must notice as they get off the plane is how wrinkled every one's clothes are because in America most people do not iron t-shirts or jeans. When I lived in America I didn't even own an iron. If something was wrinkled I would send it out to the dry cleaners. If I didn't have time for that I would take the wrinkled item with me on a business trip and then use the iron in the hotel. 

So while the festive season is merry and bright, it is also a hard slog as I wait until January when Christine returns. Mr. Deep by the way is completely oblivious to my struggles. He is not trying to maintain our inventory of freshly ironed clothes. He is taking the approach of wearing as many of his clothes as possible in any given day and then after removing them he is throwing them on the floor to quickly wrinkle. I am running after him trying to catch his still presentable and wearable clothing item in mid-air before it hits the floor but I don't always get there in time.  He also doesn't take his clothes from the top of the pile. Instead, he grabs a shirt from the middle painfully disrupting the zen that Christine has created for us. She'll be back on January 9. 

With Confidence

"I was just a tennis ball. Even when people press me down I will always bounce back and the more I felt pressed down I would bounce back even higher."

                   - Confidence Tshivhula

Confidence Tshivula is 22 years old. She grew up in Diepsloot and graduated from the Diepsloot Combined School (DCS) which is the school where I volunteer twice a week. 

Confidence is studying accounting at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and she will graduate with a diploma in March, 2017.  A few months ago I read an essay that Confidence wrote about her experiences as a varsity student. I was fascinated and asked if I could interview her for my blog. I told her that my blog has a relatively small readership as I didn't want her to get overly excited thinking a book or movie deal would be forthcoming. Fortunately she agreed to talk with me anyway. 

When I saw Confidence for the first time she was standing outside of the Mugg & Bean where we had planned to meet. She was dressed in a black dress and a short sleeved black shrug sweater.  I was immediately struck by how cute she is. She's short with a pretty heart shaped face. 

In many ways Confidence is similar to other 22 year old women. She grew up in a family with her mother, father and two younger brothers. She has big hopes and dreams for her future. Sometimes she gets frustrated with her parents but she never argues or fights with them as that is not permissible in her culture (that part is definitely not similar.) She wants to get her driver's license, loves art, likes to draw, paint, sew and make pillows. She can also play the guitar.

The first question I asked was about her name. I learned that her African name is Ndivhuwo and her English name is Confidence. She told me that it was her father that named her. It is not unusual to meet African people with all kinds of interesting and quite honestly AWESOME names like Beauty, Surprise, Polite, Blessing, Sonnyboy, Tears and more, but I have never met anyone named Confidence and Confidence told me that she has never met another Confidence either. 

In 1999, when she was five, Confidence came to live in Diepsloot from the rural South African province of Limpopo. She'd been living with her grandmother as her parents had come to Joburg to look for work. When she arrived and joined her parents she only spoke Venda, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, but she attended a creche (nursery school) and quickly learned to speak Zulu, Xhosa, Sepedi and English.  

In Limpopo, the family lived in a large shack with three rooms. In Diepsloot, their shack was much smaller. They lived in the small shack until 2001 when they were granted an RDP House in Diepsloot. RDP stands for Reconstruction and Development Programme which in addition to other things, provides government subsidized homes for poor people as part of a larger plan to try to address the consequences of apartheid. Confidence still remembers how excited she was to move into a real house and to have her own room. Her parents still live in the same house and Confidence still has a room there although her family has turned it into somewhat of a storage area as she is living away from home much of the time attending university. 

As a child Confidence wanted to become a doctor. This dream began when she and a childhood friend were playing and the friend fell and cut herself. Confidence cared for her friend and bandaged her cut. From then on everyone told Confidence that she should be a doctor when she grew up and so she decided that she would. 

Although she enjoyed attending DCS school was not easy and she says she was only an average student. She worked hard but when she applied for university she was told that her grades were not good enough to study medicine. She and her father went to a meeting with an admissions officer who made this point clearly and definitively pulling a stack of transcripts out of a drawer and showing them to Confidence and her father saying, "look at the grades of these students, these are the people who can become doctors, not you." 

Confidence thinks that her dad was disappointed to hear this news but Confidence quickly bounced back and decided she would study to become a fashion designer.  At DCS she was known to be an excellent artist. She was so good that the principal gave her the keys to the art room so she could access it at any time. In addition, leading up to the 2010 World Cup there was an art contest at school. The student with the best drawing would win a ticket to the event. Confidence was the winner. 

But when Confidence told her father that she wanted to become a fashion designer he said no, that there was no money in it and it was then decided that Confidence would study accounting. As a person who possesses absolutely no mathematical skills, I am impressed by people who can do even simple calculations. But when I asked Confidence if she liked accounting she only replied "I am doing accounting. I am doing accounting." As we talked, I mentioned that I agreed with her father, that it might be difficult to earn money as a fashion designer or an artist. I felt badly immediately after I said it because her whole face changed and she looked really sad. I guess I forgot what it's like to be 22.

After graduating from DCS Confidence was excited to begin attending university. You would think that if one could somehow survive life in Diepsloot with all the drugs, violence, dirt and crime and if one could achieve grades good enough to be accepted to university that things would then be o.k. Unfortunately this is not the case. Even if students from Diepsloot are accepted to university and even if they somehow manage to find the money to pay their school fees through financial aid and bursaries, they still have no money for books, transport to school, student housing or food. Many talented students have had to drop out of university because they simply can't afford to live while going to school.

Confidence attends university at the UJ campus located at Klipspruit Soweto. Klipspruit is about 45 kilometers from Diepsloot so in her first year she had to live near campus as she had no money to pay for transport. Confidence and a friend rented a small one room shack with one window and a dirt floor in Klipspruit. The landlord promised them that he would put down a real floor with tiles. He also promised that he would fix the holes in the roof and the walls but he never did. Every time it rained water poured into the shack and all of their books and clothes got soaked. Rats entered the shack through the holes in the wall. Eventually the roommate moved out taking all of her furniture with her. Confidence was left with nothing except for the rats, who she admits she talked to when she was lonely, and a dirt floor to sleep on. 

Confidence continued to have problems with the landlord as her rent was due at the end of each month but her parents did not get paid until the 2nd of the following month. She tried to explain this situation to the landlord and also tried to earn her own money by offering her services as a hair stylist but there was never enough money to close the gap and she never paid the rent on time. After her roommate moved out the landlord cut off the electricity to the shack and he took away her keys so that Confidence could no longer lock the shack door. She studied by the light of her cell phone but she was too scared to sleep in the shack with the door unlocked. Dogs from the neighborhood would chase the rats and the noise would wake her up at night. She would often wake up to find the shack door wide open.  

More to come from my conversations with Confidence in my next post.