Saturday August 9, 2008

On my last full day here in South Africa, I decided to take my little sister Zinhle to Johannesburg. She rarely ever gets to leave Zonkizizwe, so I thought it would be treat for her to get out of the township and have a little fun. Back home in the United States, my immediate family is rather small. I have an older sister, but she is much older than me. She was 16 years old when I was born, and moved out of the house when I was 2. Because of that, I have always been raised as an only child. I had a lot of cousins, but it was never the same growing up. I always wished that I had little brothers and sisters to play with. Coming to South Africa, and living with the people I am working with has given me a chance to extend my family. Nomusa, who I now view like a second mother, has three children—Zinhle who is going on 12, Sphe who is 10, and Sinethemba who is 5 months. I think of them like my little brothers and sisters now and use every chance I can get to spoil them! I think of it as making up for lost time…

Before Zinhle and I left for Johannesburg I had her ask Gogo for permission to come. Gogo gave the go ahead, so Zinhle quickly washed up and we were on our way by noon! We took a taxi from Zonki to the MTN taxi rank in downtown Johannesburg. I was afraid that Zinhle would get car sick, because she is not used to riding in cars, but she did fine. She must have been very excited. We got off at the MTN station and she quickly grabbed my hand. She certainly wasn’t used to all the commotion of the streets of Johannesburg, despite the fact that Zonke streets can be pretty crowded sometimes.

We walked quickly through the rank to Noord Street where there was a huge marketplace. Before we went shopping we stopped at Chicken Licken and I let her order whatever she wanted. She ordered the biggest sandwich they had on the menu! I just smiled and placed the order. We finished eating (and I finished eating her meal, because as I suspected she couldn’t finish it—“Nicole, I’m so suthi (full). You can eat this…”) and headed out to the marketplace. I told her that she could pick out any one thing she wanted, but to keep a look out for a South African flag for me. It’s ridiculously hard to find a flag in South Africa, unlike the US where even gas stations have flags for sale. At first she wanted jewelry but when she couldn’t find anything she wanted she changed her mine to shoes—not just any shoes but a special pair of white shoes with hot pink straps and flowers on them. We went up and down the streets into all the stores and looked through all the stands trying to find her size. I didn’t want to venture too far away from Noord Street because we weren’t in the greatest part of Johannesburg and I wanted to make sure we stayed close the taxi rank. Now that I look back on it, we probably shouldn’t have gone to some of the areas that we did. We were put into one particularly shady situation when I went into this tent to ask if they had South African flags. One guy told us to follow him because he knew where they sold flags. Two other guys start yelling at me not to go with him because he is a tsotsi (gangster). “If you go with him,” the one man said, “you’ll be finished.” That was a cue to get the heck out of that area and to get Zinhle out of danger by staying close to the main road.

The entire time we were walking Zinhle was holding my hand and talking up a storm. She’s usually so quiet, so it was nice to see her talking and laughing. We kept laughing because people were looking at me and yelling “HEY UMULUNGU!” People were probably wondering what a white girl was doing in downtown Johannesburg with a little Black African girl. A few people asked Zinhle who I was and she proudly answered: “She’s my sister!” One Indian man had the nerve to contradict her and tell her there was no way I could be her sister, I was white and she was black. Zinhle just shrugged and smiled. We walked past him and I said “Like they say, that’s democracy man…” He just shook his head and watched us walk away. Our skin colors had never been an issue between us—it was invisible. I love her and see her as my little sister. The fact that people kept pointing it out to us wasn’t surprising to me, as the country still has a lot of healing to do since the end of apartheid, but sometimes it did catch me off guard. When will people understand that love doesn’t discriminate, that love comes in a color all its own?

Finally we found the shoes in a shop a few streets over from Noord. We had been everywhere but still couldn’t find a flag—we decided we had enough of shopping and it was time to go home. I found the taxi back to Zonke and Zinhle fell asleep in the taxi, head on my shoulder and hand still pressed into mine. I couldn’t help but smile the whole way home.