Wednesday August 22, 2007
Here I am at Charlotte’s house in Observatory, Johannesburg. She has a wonderful garden, full of pots and birds. There are incongruous daffodils amongst the succulents, reminding me that this is the beginning of spring. I am using her office to listen to my recordings, update the blog, write and muse. The inevitable fight with technology has cut down on the musing…
Charlotte and I talked yesterday of the challenges and contradictions of aspects of society here. Most people have black domestic staff. Wages are now regulated and conditions supposedly much improved, but there is still abuse.
If you have a housekeeper, she may well live in your home. The relationship needs to be boundaried but is inevitably intimate. Nowadays, a lot of domestic staff are professionals who are economic refugees from Zimbabwe. A housekeeper could be supporting up to 10-12 people, and unemployment is high, so there are undoubted benefits. Especially to women, and women who missed out on education. They have families back home; relatives who have come to SA and may well be destitute. Lines need to be drawn and re-drawn, mindful of being fair and respectful but also negotiating some very tricky cultural corners. For example:
A brother of a housekeeper rings her to say that his sixtteen year old daughter has gone to South Africa and cannot be found. It is cultural practice that she is ‘the other mother’ and therefore has the responsibility to find her niece and look after her.
She is found, but is pregnant, with boyfriend and in another city. She has come to South Africa as many young women have; by sleeping with truck drivers in exchange for lifts. Truck drivers are renowned as carriers of HIV. The housekeeper’s employer has to point out that the girl cannot come and live in the house. The employer would inevitably become responsible for the mother and her child – both potentially HIV positive and illegal immigrants and as such not eligible for any health care in SA. Therefore, the housekeeper has to ring her brother and tell him that his daughter is his responsibility.
So – the housekeeper is bucking a cultural custom of her people, albeit one that is unfair to women. She has risked her standing with her family, but stood up for herself as never before. It is complicated, very complicated…
Sunday August 26, 2007
I’m back in Johannesburg after a day or three in Durban. Whilst there, a couple of mosquitoes decided to have a feast on my left arm, hand and face. Only one paid with its life. My left hand now resembles an inflated rubber glove and my arm has acquired the hills and dales of a bubonic landscape. Even after citronella, lavender, eucylyptus, tea tree and yes, antihistamnine, it all itches like crazy. Typing is a challenge…
Durban is lush. Jacaranda, hibiscus and bougainvillea grow untrammelled even in winter (I use the term in the South African sense, not the Northern European). If you stick a stick into the ground, it will grow into something, probably with enormous leaves and a straight, smooth trunk so tall you will have to inform the airport. And full to the brim of birds.
I went there to meet Dr Kate Wells, Head of Graphic Design at Durban University of Technology. She has run an amazing project called Siyazama, working with Zulu craftswomen for over ten years to produce tableaux and dolls symbolizing the suffering of the community through HIV/Aids but also to educate and empower the women with information about the condition.
The craftswomen were coming in to the University for a day of conversation, making and marketplace activities – and to meet me. They come from two different parts of the Kwa-Zulu Natal province. It takes them 2-3 hours to journey to the project. They bring their wares with them; dolls and tableaux produced to order for exhibitions and retail outlets, plus Kate has built a chronological collection of their work that is housed in the Graphic Design Department.
The women arrived with their mats and towels, ignored the chairs and set up camp on the floor of the staff room. They got out their current work and began beading. With the help of two students who translated, I chatted to the women and learned a lot, as much about my naivete as anything. I was asking questions of them as individuals but soon sussed that they thought in a much more communal way. They are not a collective as such but one will represent another, take dolls and deliver her wages, irrespective of the amount. There were natural leaders in the groups but no detectable competition.
I recorded conversations that I will unpack back at home and reflect upon them in the light of Kate’s Phd thesis which is packed full of fascinating cultural detail.
We all shared food, and I was invited to stitch a motif on to a tableau. My hands were sweating, but I passed. It wasn’t unpicked. In the midst of the room, Kate and her colleagues met with each of the women in turn, doing the business of the market place. Their mutual regard was apparent; an ease developed over all these years, in spite of a lack of mutual language.
Kate has gone to Uganda this week to further connections between RSA, Uganda and Northumbria University. They are working with basket weavers and bark cloth embroiderers there on a parallel project and will be based in the School of Art at Makerere University.
There’s a lot more to be written when the hand is recovered. Watch this space…
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