UBUNTU in abundance

The red car slows down. In the thick thick sand, it swerves a little as it slows. Until it comes to a halt next to me. There is a woman with a young girl on her lap in the back seat. The passenger window is open and so I go on my haunches and greet them. The man asks me where I am going and I say nowhere in particular, but will be happy to go with them as far as they go. He chats with the woman in the back seat and leans over to open the passenger door from the inside. This is how I meet Solly and his wife, Jacqueline Matlou. The little one is 2 years old. Moloko. She eyes me suspiciously. Solly asks my business. I tell him the UBUNTU story. It has been 8 months on the road, so I am quite well-oiled in my explanation. He speaks with his wife in Pedi and say that I am welcome to stay with them. This surprises me, as he looks quite strict and in real words, well, unfriendly. That whole pre-conceived business again, Sonja! Well, I say it will be an honour, because I have not stayed with a Pedi family yet. Plus this is Pedi Trustland. Solly works at the mine and Jacqueline is a teacher.

As we drive, I sense that there is something heavy weighing inside him, since our meeting. I sit there, matching his silence, watching the mountain. Becoming as light as the breeze that teases the bushes on the giant looming ahead. When Solly asks the question that is obviously been forming over a much longer period that our short acquaintance, I will answer it as honestly and openly as I can. The  sand becomes thicker and the vehicle slows as there is less traction. I feel the resistance.

He turns to me and I see sadness, anger and frustration there. “Why is it that you, as a white woman, can come here, into this area, into our area, and you know that you can go knocking on any door, with the assurance that somebody will take you into their home? Yet, if any person from here will go knocking on one of your homes, in your area, what will happen? You know that no-one will take me in. Why is that?”

“I do not have the answer” I say. What do I honestly think? I look at him. “But I have a few maybes for you” One of the things that I immediately think of when he asks this question is a statement by an old Madala in a North-West township: ‘Crime is fostering artificial hatred amongst people’. In fact, his opinions go further than that. He says that government is feeding off this artificial hatred

So, I say to Solly: “Maybe, we still have to undo a lot of brainwashing that happened in this country. Like ‘Die Swart Gevaar’. Like ‘Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer’. Maybe, like a Madala I met on this journey said: ‘Crime is fostering artificial hatred amongst our people’. Maybe it is white guilt. Maybe we don’t expect black people to have forgiven us for Apartheid. Maybe this. Maybe that.” I have to learn that it’s ok to not have the answers

We get to t heir home.  A beautiful home. In the even smaller village of Berggerecht. I am taken to a room. I think that it is a spare room, but Solly and his wife decide to give up their room for me to use. Jacqueline asks if I have eaten today. Yes thank you. Solly is working night shift, so he is going to have a meal now. He will braai some Impala meat. He bought some to make Biltong. Whilst his wife is cooking pap, I watch him prepare the meat for making Biltong. We have the pap and the braaied Impala meat with Marogo for a late lunch. Whilst we eat, I am humbled when Solly asks me: “What do white people cook in their homes? What kind of food do you guys like?” How little we know of one another. And we sit and exchange a little bit of our cultures around the dining table. Afterwards, we go outside and Solly shows me his food store. He has pumpkin, watermelon and maize in there. We crack open a watermelon on the floor of the stoep. It is hot here in the Limpopo Province, even for June.

Jacqueline  fe t ches some binoculars and we look at the mountain. She says that it is called Blouberg. She loves watching it change shape and colour with the sun. Solly goes off to work. Not long after he leaves, Solly’s neighbour, and also his uncle, comes over. As one of the elders of the village he feels that it is his duty to welcome me to their village, as is the custom. He thanks me for coming. He assures me that my safety in the village is guaranteed. Also that I am in a good home, where all my needs will be taken care of. If, however, there is something that I need, I am free to come and knock on his door

Moloko has not warmed to me, so I decide to leave in the morning. The intention is never to upset anyone. Jacqeline walks me to the road. She is surprised that I want to walk. Walking is my meditation, and often, my sanity. Solly’s question about why it is ok for me to do this, but that it wouldn’t be ok for him, rattles me. I want some clarity. I walk a while into the day

The w hite bakkie slo ws down. In the thick thick sand, it swerves a little as it slows. Until it comes to a halt next to me. Farmers from Loius Trichardt (Makhado). I tell them that I have just spent a night in the Pedi Trustland. They look at one another. I see my bemused face looking back at me in the rear view mirror, when they ask me: “What kind of houses do they have? Is it made of bricks? What did they feed you? What kind of food do they like?”

Thank you for reading

much UBUNTUness

Sonja Kruse

+27 72 308 8116      

ubuntuabundance@gmail.com

Twitter: @theubuntugirl

www.theubuntugirl.co.za

LinkedIn: http://za.linkedin.com/in/sonjakruse

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theubuntugirl

Skype: skruse2

Ubuntu Greetings,

This artcle was published in the following publication

Ubuntu Magazine

June 2012 Issue 15

Youth Edition

Cruising with Kruse

?

It is the kind of heat that can cause one to hallucinate. Either that or I am really standing in front of a giant hand with a thumb’s up. I am in Galeshewe Township in Kimberley, Northern Cape and learning to find shad. I circle the hand and notice how it changes mood, depending on how the light reflects off it. The one minute it looks like it is punching the air defiantly, Umkhonto Isizwe style and the next it seems so vulnerable, as I glimpse beyond the brave façade and read the insecurities there.

I am about to take a few shots, camera at the ready, when I notice three youth sitting on a bench, watching me, watching the hand. There is something in their countenance that makes me forget about the presence of the hand and as if by magnetic force, one foot places itself in front of the other until I find myself standing next to them. The bench seems slouched under the weight of the young men, slight of build as they are. Though they are joking and smiling, their bodies seem burdened, tired and dare I say, defeated.

“Are you guys from here?” They exchange looks. “Yes” I notice that they all have papers in hands. Perhaps they are studying or have just written exams. I point to the empty spot on the corner and raise my eyebrow. Their nods say it’s ok for me to sit on the already tired bench. We chat and through lively, laugh filled conversation about the hand and the tourists that come from all over, it becomes clear that they share a strong bond.  I notice a bold heading on one of the sheets of paper. CV. Curriculum Vitae.

“How is the job hunting going” They shrug, the air fills with sighs and the bench seems to sink deeper into the ground. “Sometimes you hand your CV in and wait for a response, only to hear that the job went to the cousin of the person that posted the position” says Ismail, who sits next to me. “After a few months of not even having an interview, I am wondering; why did I bother to get a Matric” says the quieter one on the end. What they tell me fills me with sadness and a sense of powerlessness. Ismail can see me downward-spiralling and tries to cheer us up. “Don’t worry. We are in the darkroom of the soul. Right now we can not see the image. But the details will come as we develop”

“Ismail, that is beautiful! Are you a writer?” He writes as often as he can. I ask him to never stop because he has a gift with words. “You are a wordsmith” It is time for them to go. We greet and I offer them a traditional Zulu handshake: My left hand cups my right elbow, my body is slightly bent and I am making no eye contact. Then I offer a conventional shake, followed by clasping thumbs around thumbs and finally another conventional handshake.

As I walk back towards the hand, my mind is in the darkroom of Ismail’s soul. Curriculum Vitae is Latin and means: ‘The course of my life’. Where will Ismail and his friends’ lives course if it is this challenging for them to find work? If one wants to make a contribution to society, yet there are mile upon miles of barriers to entry, how does one keep oneself motivated?

According to the South Africa Survey published by the South African Institute of Race Relations, 51 percent of all 15- to 24-year-olds are unemployed and the longer young people are unemployed, the more unemployable they become

These thoughts are milling through my mind as I half-heartedly place the camera between myself and the memorial. I look at this giant hand through my viewfinder and press the shutter. I get the distinct feeling that the hand is trying to tell me something. I have not even bothered to find out what it is all about. There is a plaque and I bend down to read it. “The Mayibuye Uprising”. In 1952 the young people of Galeshewe rose against the apartheid system. The police opened fire on the crowd, killing 13 people and injuring many more. There is also a Casualty List – Thirteen names. These names are some of the earlier blood sacrifices by our youth in their stance against injustice.

The hand has me in its youthful grip. It is indeed brave, punching the air defiantly saying: We are here to stay. At the same time it is a big vulnerable question mark, asking for guidance from our leaders. Are we failing to recognise that we are not giving our youth the hand up that they need? We are not talking about hand outs, but rather the lifting of the very individuals that we expect to be the baton carriers of our future. Are we helping Ismail and his friends in to develop in their darkrooms?

Thank you for reading the unedited blog stories
*my story is your story is our story*

Sonja Kruse

+27 72 308 8116      

ubuntuabundance@gmail.com

Twitter: @theubuntugirl

www.theubuntugirl.co.za

LinkedIn: http://za.linkedin.com/in/sonjakruse

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theubuntugirl

Skype: skruse2

There are so many people to still write about. The wheelbarrow man is one of them. We met during the first week of the UBUNTU journey and I had not yet learnt how to take notes correctly and he so captivated me that I forgot to write down his name:

Notebook:

“It is early, the house is quiet and I find my way outside for some solitude. In this moment I am alone for long enough to try and absorb the experience of my first stay in a township. Everything is unfamiliar yet the sounds of people and livestock rising to meet the day feel like a homecoming.

We meet on the stoep. The man is heading inside for water. He rents an outside room on the property and shares it with his wife and their 1-year old toddler. She is with him and her baby talk is added to the morning air. It is a Sunday and her mom is at work. After the usual polite enquiries, we start talking about the meaning of Ubuntu and he questions whether it is still alive in our society today. “The problem with us South Africans is that we are lazy. Foreigners are taking our jobs because they are prepared to work hard for little money. Whilst we want hand outs” It is such a powerful statement and I simply nod my head. My silence hangs between us as I stretch my ability to really listen to this man. He is speaking with an urgency to be understood.

“It’s like this” he is leaning into the conversation. “It is like we are sitting in a wheelbarrow. Whilst we are sitting, we are expecting the government to push us. But what we don’t understand is that we have to get out of the wheelbarrow. We have to push for ourselves!”

His eyes follow the toddler as she moves around the garden. I see the fierce protectiveness there as his body relaxes; his voice has been heard”

The image of the wheelbarrow stays with me and has become a powerful vehicle in my Ubuntu garden. This simple story reminds me that sometimes we get so caught up in protecting our little vegetable patch that we fail to notice that exact same sense of protectiveness in others for their own turf.

Every day I meet people who are getting out and pushing

Thank you for reading the unedited blog stories
*my story is your story is our story*

Sonja Kruse

+27 72 308 8116      

ubuntuabundance@gmail.com

Twitter: @theubuntugirl

www.theubuntugirl.co.za

LinkedIn: http://za.linkedin.com/in/sonjakruse

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theubuntugirl

Skype: skruse2

Besides the fact that I get to walk, which is my transport, my meditation, exercise and counsel, one of the other great joys of having no vehicle, is that I get to use public transport.

I am standing next to the yellow line on Platform 1, Newlands, eagerly awaiting the train and avoiding the man trying to sell me crystals. I like crystals, but apparently I am not in the mood for a salesman, especially not one whose cigarette smokes wafts over me as he talks, in between heavy breathing of the health properties of his goods.

Perhaps I am not in the mood because it has been an emotionally draining day. Admin. Yuck! Sarah and I have completed and posted the Non-Profit Application. My head aches as it seems like I have to make left-brain sense on a day that I have two right brains.

It is that time of the afternoon when people want to be home already, instead of making their way there. The train approaches and the benches sigh with relief as we collect ourselves. The man with the crystals becomes just another face. The train stops. There are more of us getting on than off, which is a slight problem – the train has swallowed rather more than it can chew. Choo choo, not so much as the complaints rise up. “Why do they not have another train?” “They should put more carts on this train!” “The trains are running every 15 minutes. It is not enough!”

At the next stop, the train doors can’t close because there is a man half leaning out. Somebody shouts: “Move down the aisles!” I lean into my fellow passengers instead of raising my arms to grab onto the support tabs above. I joke: “Well, at least we can support one another” The fullness of the journey lasts for another two stops, one of which fills the train with the sound of excitement and a colour explosion from the uniforms of a local school. It fascinates me how we differ. There is a young woman entrenched in her seat, unaware or uncaring of the elderly lady standing less than a meter from her. There is a man helping a woman with her luggage. It won’t fit through the window, so he holds onto it whilst she plows through the other commuters, sending it after her, overhead, passed on from person to person – Score! As she disembarks, luggage and all.

I’m shifted down the train and almost do not see the Gogo (Grandmother/elderly person) next to me, because she is surely a head and a half shorter. I scan the train to see if there are any vacant seats available for her yet. At Mowbray, there is a mass exodus and some reshuffling. The Gogo and I eye a seat that is becoming available, but we are being swept up in the swirl of the direction to the doors. We hold onto each other’s hands and wait for things to calm. She looses her balance and we direct her bum towards the seat. She half sits, half falls into it and we could not help but laugh at this. I wink at her and turn around to go and stand near the doors.

There is space to look out at the flashes of other people’s lives as we snake past them. I overhear two guys talking. “But it is Finders Keepers”. They are young. One Black guy. One Coloured. They notice my eavesdropping and nod with their heads in the direction of the floor. It takes me a while but then I see the ring lying there. I look back at them. We all shrug. “What are we supposed to do in a case like this?” I ask, picking it up. I hand it to them saying: “Do we hand it in at Security when the train stops?” They both look at it closely. “It’s a fake. Look at it” before one of them passes it onto me. As I take it, I make a ‘funny’ with as much seriousness as I can muster: “Aren’t you supposed to go down on one knee?” He was caught off guard, but only very briefly before he burst our laughing. The people around us are smiling. I look at the ring. It seems heavy’ish but, yes, fake. We are still only shrugging. When I hand it back to him, he asks: “Aren’t YOU supposed to go down on one knee?” Touche! We conclude that we do not know what to do. The train is almost at its final destination – Cape Town Station.

It seems that they also don’t want to be the keepers of the ring and with a crystal spark in the eye, the one guy walks over to ‘my’ Gogo and hands it over to her. I say that she seems to have an admirer at the same time as somebody in the compartment says: “Is nobody going on their knees today?” The Gogo was so pleased! I’m sure she was blushing. It was such a light way to end a squish squash journey. I helped the Gogo off the train and wished her a happy rest of the day. She said that when she left home this morning, she never would have imagined that she would end in such a full train. “Or that you end up with a ring, hey?”

Sometimes the times that we just want to go home and bury the day, are the exact moments that we need to reach out and find that jewel that can bring it all back around.

Thank you for reading the unedited blog stories
*my story is your story is our story*

Sonja Kruse

+27 72 308 8116      

ubuntuabundance@gmail.com

Twitter: @theubuntugirl

www.theubuntugirl.co.za

LinkedIn: http://za.linkedin.com/in/sonjakruse

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theubuntugirl

Skype: skruse2

Whilst I was still on the UBUNTU journey, one of my hosts told me a little about Osho. He said that I should type ‘Osho’ and the F-word (the actual word!) into google and see what happens.
A few months ago, I read going through the notes again and my curiosity got the better of me:
 

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/7376840/Osho_Fuck_The_Fucking_Fuck

I was not sure how I felt about this, having grown up in a home where sh*t is a swear word. But I became an instant fan of Osho’s work.
Yesterday was a very full and eventful day, and one that slammed me right into my relationship with this accursed f-word.
Events, as they happened 24April 2012:

It was about 5.20 pm and a warm day for this time of the year in the Mother City. I was on my way home after a successful meeting with the creative team working on the UBUNTU book. It might only be Tuesday, but it’s been a rough week with a lot of drama: a blast from the past; admin delays with setting up the non-profit ; a psychotic woman harassing me on facebook; and one of my favourite Bo-Kaap friends resorted to living on the street. All and all, I was not ‘feeling it’ so much.

I was nearing the corner of Darling and Sir Lowry heading towards the Castle when something just didn’t feel right. Straight ahead of me, and about 4metres away, I saw two men, with hard faces communicating with one another, using eye and hand gestures that alerted me to the fact that I’m about to walk into an ambush. It was too late to turn around and everything happened so fast. One guy at each side. We walked in unison for about two or three steps. My earphones were still in my ears, though I heard no music. They were so smooth, their MO well oiled, they knew who was going for what. I had two bags. One was a shoulder bag, criss-crossed over the front. The other was a bag I do not usually carry. Because it belongs to my dad and is a shockproof bag for his hard drive (also on loan to me). Instead of the hard drive, the bag carried a mock-up of our UBUNTU book, albeit my scrapbook version

I just snapped! This has been an unusual week of being pushed and I’ve had it! I grabbed onto the bags. Tight. Both hands. And started screaming
FUCK YOU! AND FUCK YOU! With both hands busy, I started kicking wildly, fending off shots from them both. Using the shock proof bag to moer (hit) them over the head as well. YOU’RE NOT TAKING MY BOOK!
Osho would have been so proud! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU rolled of my tongue and at quite a volume! Continuously
Kick moer kick moer.
I was not aware of their actions a much as being aware of my own.

I have no idea how long this lasted. Perhaps one minute? The earphones were no longer in my ears and I heard noises streaming in again and started hearing voices. The fighting stopped a quickly as it started. The guys were running away. I saw them leave but don’t know which direction they went into. The space around me was suddenly filled with people. I looked around. Vehicles had pulled over, people were leaving their vehicles, engines running, to come and see if I was ok. Some people stayed in their cars. I presume that I’d stopped shouting FUCK YOU by this stage, because I vaguely remember going up to the cars and saying  ”THANK YOU ” …for stopping, I’m ok”. With as much dignity as I could muster, I searched the scene. Am I still wearing my shoes? Yes. Oh, that’s the leather strap for my bag. Bend. Pick it up.  Straighten. Walk on. Smiling and saying: thank you, I’m ok.

One of the vehicles that pulled over, was a taxi. “Thank you, I’m ok”
No! We must go to the Police Station and report this. The driver, the gouchie, the passengers and a few witnesses from the scene, were not going to leave me there on the sidewalk. I was resistant. The fight still in me. A security officer, Mongezi, got out of the taxi, put his arms around me and told me that I would also need a paramedic. “You’ve been stabbed” The words “…with a scredriver” followed in slow motion

The taxi driver was seething with anger. They’ve even apprehended a woman who they believe is an accomplice in the incident. The passengers were saying: ‘This should not be allowed to happen!’ Everybody dug into their bags to find tissues to stop the bleeding. Mongezi appointed himself as my personal carer. I mumbled something about him having to take care when dealing with blood. He gently tucked at the shockproof bag, which I was still cluthing under the stabbed arm, not wanting to alarm me, but wanting to tend to me. I had not lost anything. Even my sunglasses were still on my head.

And then it hit me. The worst and the best in our humanity. I was completely overwhelmed by the fact here I was experiencing UBUNTU in it’s purest form in the light of the ugliness that we just witnessed: If somebody attacks you, they attack me. Tears. Sobs. Comforting hands patting me.

They dropped me off at the Police Station. Thank you. Baie Dankie. Enkosi kakhulu. Siyabonga. The procedure at the Police Station was quick, the paramedics were there in 10 minutes. I overheard one of the witnesses, Mark say: “Yo, she was fighting. She was so funky!”Mongezi stayed around until the paramedics arrived. I say no thank you to going to the hospital, the cut does not seem that deep. With a new found respect for the paramedics, I thank them and hope their day improves. From their stories, it’s been a rough day. I ask Marc on more than one occasion: “So, I’m funky, hey?”

And then I made a call. A call not to call my flatmate. It is now about 6.20 pm and just gone dusk. These are our streets. The voice in me rising, defiantly: you are not a victim. As you were. Not ‘their’ streets or ‘my’ streets, but our streets. I was walking home with the most liberated feeling of freedom I remember the blogpost I wrote about fear and I wanted to reconcile what happened in the dream and how different I reacted today – http://letterdash.com/skruse/fierce-some-dreaming

When I got home, the first words to Liani, my flatmate, was: “Don’t freak out. I’m ok” before giving her a rundown of events. My blood soaked dress and graze on my toplip, did very little to comfort her. Yet another angel on the day, as she helped me into a change of clothes, a cup of tea and arranging for her boyfriend, a a doctor, to come over and give me a check up, tetanus injection, and a thorough cleaning and dressing of the wound. When he informs me that it’s quite a deep cut, about 2.5 cm deep, I must have seemed disappointed, because he says: “More like 3cm” He suggested some stitches, and I watched in awe as he sewed me up, with Liani as ‘nurse’.

So getting back to the f-word. According to Osho, it is a magical word, which just by it’s sound can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love. Well, this event certainly had it all. In my shouting of FUCK YOU, and in protecting myself, I can’t help but wonder at the images that flooded into my mind. The book that I was so fiercely protecting, is the carrier of the lives of 150 South Africans, all bearing their pain, pleasure, hate and love. And the question I suppose I really will want myself to answer is: Why not let it go? Were these not the exact guys that need to read our story?

What is the moral of the story? Or, what is the bottom line?

Well if it’s a question of math, if our humanity is tied up in numbers, then ubuntu is alive by a ratio of 2:22+ (number of attackers, number of rescuers)

If it’s a matter of the heart, it is 1:1.
You attack, I attack
You are attacked? I am attacked.

We are in this human condition together

Time it took to type this with one hand: 2 hours 55 minutes

As always, thank you for reading

 Sonja Kruse

+27 72 308 8116      

ubuntuabundance@gmail.com

Twitter: @theubuntugirl

www.theubuntugirl.co.za

LinkedIn: http://za.linkedin.com/in/sonjakruse

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theubuntugirl

Skype: skruse2