I just got back from my friend Thandie’s homestead (rural home) where her mom and brothers and their families stay. It’s on the land that belongs to their family and each of the brothers has their own house and her mom has her house – there’s 18 of them on the homestead. I’ve come to realize that until i learn the SiSwati language, i’m limited in what i can do here. Although most speak English there is just this unexplained connection when I speak SiSwati and although people might speak English when i try and talk about deep things or theological things i run into words that they aren’t familiar with. I went out to Thandie’s homestead for 3 days to force me to speak SiSwati and build my confidence and fluency.
When i say rural, i mean rural. No electricity (a.k.a. no refrigerator), the only running water was from a tap outside in the middle of the 3 houses, 1 outhouse, 1 coal stove…i mean rural, are you picturing it? I thought, oh, i’m going to have so much free time on my hands because there is going to be nothing to do…haha, I worked more in those 3 days than i had in the last 3 months. When i would wake up at 6:30 everyone else was already awake doing beginning their tasks – letting the cattle out, harvesting the corn (I got to do this for the first time in my life), starting the fire in the coal stove to boil water for bathing and for tea (different water was used, but the way i wrote it made it looked like the same water was used for both, haha, how do you think they flavor the tea here…okay, back to the story). As soon as we finished one meal and washed the dishes we began preparing and cooking for the next meal. After breakfast, we went and picked vegetables from the garden and the kids slaughtered the chicken (i accidentally looked out the window at the wrong time) and then the cooking began. I kept thinking, what do i do with all the time I save from all of my modern conveniences?
My favorite part was that everyone had a job, even the little 3 year old had her job that she helped with. Each one in the family was needed to do their job in order to keep the farm running and to make sure everyone ate that day and i felt like they appreciated it more because they helped somewhere in the process. And while they did their jobs, they sang and danced, i loved it! Well my other favorite part was that the youngest, Sne (pronounced “Snay”), who is barely 1 year old, speaks no English and very little SiSwati but they taught him my name and he would yell it and would laugh so hard when i would turn around and respond to him, it was so cute!
