Umbilical Nomi – the first week

‘No!’ Lisa swears that she will be traumatised if she has to watch me leave. I don’t like to see my friend distressed so I set off for the local taxi rank to see if I can find someone to whom Lisa can ‘hand me over’.

I am explaining the concept of what I’m about to do to a woman selling anything from loose cigarettes to oranges, Coca Cola, rat poison, umbrellas and sweeties. She smiles as I gesture wildly. Maybe she thinks I’m having a nervous breakdown, or that I am on drugs. She just keeps smiling at my story. Not so much with it. A woman standing nearby is listening attentively. She moves closer and asks when I was thinking of starting.

‘Well, tomorrow if possible,’ I answer.

She invites me to tea the following day. Her name is Nomi and she is a domestic worker. We exchange numbers and she gives me the address of the house she shares with her employer, John.

When I arrive the tea is already brewed and John and Nomi have baked a carrot cake together. We sit around the dining room table as they try to convince me not to go ahead with my journey. ‘Our country is too dangerous for a woman to travel alone’. I swallow the cake and firmly state that with or without their help, I am doing this!

After a few minutes at a taxi rank Nomi decided to concern herself with the plight of a complete stranger, the wellbeing of an unknown fellow human who is now reacting to her with a little attitude. She invites me to her home in the local township, Scenery Park, in two days’ time.

Lisa smiles with relief when she hears that I am not going to just walk out of her front door. Though the house of Nomi’s employer is only a block away, she drives me there.

It is Saturday, 31 October 2009, when I wave goodbye to my friend of sixteen years and set off on my adventure.

Nomi’s friends collect us to go to church before we leave for Scenery Park. As I climb into the taxi in central East London I feel liberated. I have no idea how I am going to get around, or how far on R100. This is it. This is the beginning of the journey and there are no rules. I’m bursting at the seams to tell everybody what I am about to do and the taxi driver is no exception. He looks bemused as he listens to my story, then he leans towards his ashtray and picks the R7 for my fare from his personal money stash. What is going through his streetwise mind, I wonder?

Nomi sends her fare to the front. The other passengers add their money to hers and send her change back. How can the taxi driver keep track of this constant flow? I am in awe that he knows exactly how much money he needs at any given time, as people hop on and off.

My presence generates some interest. Nomi and I sit in the back, which gives me a perfect vantage point. This is only my second minibus taxi ride ever, so my eyes and ears are wide open.

Haibo! There’s a gogo who is none too impressed with the driver – where’s the respect – but a general feeling of camaraderie prevails. When someone calls out Sho’t Left and the driver doesn’t hear, the fellow commuters sing it out in unison (with some underbreath tsking).

We arrive at Scenery Park and Nomi takes me to her house. Since she lives with her employer in town she rents out the four rooms in her house and two outside rooms. There is one bathroom to share for all the tenants.

I get the impression that Nomi would prefer to see me back in East London, instead of leaving me here. Arms folded and with a defiant glint in her eyes she says, ‘Go on. Go and tell these people what you are doing. See what happens.’

I accept the challenge. While she waits outside I enter the house and confidently knock on one of the closed doors. There’s no answer. I give a slightly less optimistic knock on the second door. Again no answer. Finally, my tentative tap on door number three is greeted by the disarming smile of Phumza.

Warm eyes. Home. After listening to me she says that I am very welcome to stay here with her and her two children, Phumlani and Lilitha. Their double room reveals a space with capacity for little more than the double bed and a wardrobe, a fridge-freezer, the cupboard that serves as their pantry and a two-plate stove. The lives of three people are contained here. But don’t worry: this is Africa, there’s always room for one more.

I’ve almost forgotten about Nomi. We find her sitting in the lounge with one of the other boarders. The rest of the day is spent getting to know the people who live in the house, before Nomi takes me to meet some of her friends. For most of them it is the first time that they receive a white guest in their home. Tea sets are fetched from cabinets as though it were a Sunday. I feel completely overwhelmed, unworthy and ashamed by the respect that is shown to me. I do not understand the social dynamics. It seems to me that this hospitality has been waiting since the end of apartheid, but when nobody came, display cabinets were bought.

Sometimes, things are what they are, though a mug is good enough for me. And so the learning starts.

Nomi returns to East London late in the afternoon, with a tear in her eye and firm promises that we shall keep in touch. ‘Yes, Nomi, I’ll send you an SMS and I’ll call you if I’m in trouble. Yes. And I won’t worry about airtime, I’ll send you a “please call me”. I promise.’

Balindile comes over in the evening. She shares a room with three others, two doors down. Balindile is a nurse at the hospital where Phumza works in the kitchen. Phumza starts making a chicken stew with rice. Between the bed and the grocery cupboard with the two-plate stove on top there is just enough space for her to sit on a low stool, using another stool as chopping board. My offer to help with the cleaning up is gently turned down with an incredulous smile that says, ‘Never, you’re our guest!’ Instead, Lilitha and I draw pictures in my notebook.

Phumza asks if I’d like to wash. The bathroom has a toilet, a basin and a bath, but no geyser. She selects a red plastic wash basin and fills it with boiling water from the kettle, adding cold water, Then she brings me a clean facecloth and a brand new bar of soap. Do I have a towel? Yes, thank you, I have my special towel that is small and quick-drying.

‘No, that’s not a towel!’ Phumza laughs. She leaves me standing in the room with a small, lost-looking red plastic basin right in the middle and returns with a ‘real’ towel. If I need anything I must just shout, okay? She leaves, closing the door behind her. Or is it behind me?

I slowly turn and face my basin bath. I submerge the cloth and fold and wriggle it around the soap, building up lather. Then I wipe it over my body.

Rinse, lather, wipe and feel clean.

Rinse, lather, wipe and feel even cleaner.

Finally, a latherless run.

Everybody else takes turns washing and preparing for bed. Phumza looks at what I’m wearing. While I was packing I remember thinking that pyjamas might not always be appropriate and that I should just use what I have. Phumza gives me a critical up-and-down, then reaches into her cupboard and hands me a nightdress.

‘Thank you, Sisi.’

Then she changes the linen. Fresh sheets and duvet cover, pillows fluffed, extra blankets at the bottom. Lilitha hops into bed, giggling as she pops up from under the sheets. Phumza fetches more blankets and duvets from the closet. It’s summer and I wonder what they do when winter comes, but I have it all wrong – she uses the extra blankets to construct a makeshift bed on the floor. Next to the high-and-mighty bed. In the narrow space where she chopped the veggies for our dinner earlier.

There is just about enough room for a body. This is my first night and Phumza is making a bed for me. I make ready to get in, but Phumza smiles and says that I am to sleep in her bed.

Is this woman really going to sleep on the floor while I lie in her bed next to her precious children? The amazement must be plainly visible on my face. ‘In our culture . . . this is what we do when we have guests,’ she explains.

The magnitude of this simple action takes a while to settle as a foreign concept in my mind. But if I’m going to be the uBuntu Girl, and a successful uBuntu Girl at that, then I have to fall in or fall out. And so there, in my first strange bed of many, I resolve to become a part of every family I meet. To adapt and adjust to their way of living. To accept, with or without understanding. I open my eyes to the journey, while shutting them for the night. It is the first night of many, and though not too much has happened today, I understand that my life has taken a significant turn.

For the duration of my stay in Scenery Park, neither my hosts nor their friends or any of the gogos in the community lets me out of their sight. They don’t deem it safe for me to walk around on my own, which results in a constant gaggle of self-appointed bodyguards of all shapes, ages and sizes. As far as they are concerned I am their guest and must be looked after. Food and drink aren’t offered so much as simply brought to me the minute I sit down in someone’s home.

On the third morning I make it clear that I need to take my new-found freedom a little farther. Phumza takes me to go to the police station to enquire whether they have any vehicles going into the rural areas.

‘You have a cheek, Sonja!’ I think as the commander signs the necessary authorisation that allows me to travel to Chilumna, a small town about 60km from East London on the R72 towards Port Alfred, in a police vehicle. ‘How’s this cutting the umbilical cord?’