Off to Durban for the Weekend

This past weekend we took our Bing Trip to Durban, which is the largest city in Kwazulu-Natal and it was quite an experience. Many parts of the trip were great for different reasons but the one that probably made me change my whole mindset was the homestay. The first night in Durban, we all stayed in a backpacker’s lodge, which was a lot of fun. Now, I’ve never been in a hostel before so it was a lot different for me, but that doesn’t even compare to the following night.

The Stanford program thought it’d be great for us to get a feeling for actual life in South Africa. Many of the other abroad programs have homestays where the students live with local people during their entire time away. The Cape Town program is housed altogether though so all of us live in one house. I was so excited for the homestay because I was so curious to be immersed in a new culture. We were all housed in Cato Manor, a Zulu neighborhood where the people are pretty much low-working class. The first thing we had to do was buy all of the mother’s we were living with a thank-you gift which we had to present to them when we first arrived, out of respect. Torie and I were rooming together so we decided on a beautiful tea set for the family. All of our gifts had to be within a certain budget because they wanted all of them to be practical things that the host families would be able to make use of within their means.

Then, we got a briefing from Mama Zandy who told us a few of the customs in the houses we’d be living in. The first thing was that we’d have to call each of our hostmom’s “Mama _____”. That wasn’t negotiable. Torie and I were living with Mama Lucy who lived with her 23-year old daughter, her 15-year-old granddaughter, 6-year-old grandson, and 3-year-old granddaughter. Mama Lucy, along with a few of the other hostmothers walked to our bus to get us and take us home. She was a lady of few words, who we soon realized didn’t speak English very well. We got to the house, which was small and cozy, and she showed us to our bedroom. We met the rest of the family and then awkwardly sat on the couch waiting to hear what they had in store for us. Mama Zandy had told us that the family would pretty much have us for the afternoon and night and they should all have some type of program for us so that we wouldn’t just sit in the house. But, Mama Lucy started dinner and couldn’t really communicate anything to Torie and I so we went to our bedroom to chat.

The 6-year-old grandson, Simpiwe joined us in the room and he quickly turned from the innocent kid to the demon child. As mean as that may sound, that’s honestly the nicest way I can describe him. He started out by pulling on my hair, then moved on to trying to break Torie’s suitcase, and eventually just resorted to terrorizing us anyway that he could. Torie and I were eventually screaming hoping his mom or grandmother would say something to him but that never happened. Eventually the 15 year old walked by, saw what he was doing and made him leave out of our room. But, that was shortlived. He returned about 15 minutes later to the same shenanigans. I was over it.

I know his mom and grandmother could hear what was going on because there were no ceilings in the house. Not one. Every room was basically combined because you could hear what was going on everywhere in the house. We later realized we had no electricity in our bedroom and no water during that first day there. I tried washing my hands before dinner and Mama Lucy came by and shook her head at me saying, “Tomorrow”. So, I couldn’t communicate with people, had no electricity, and no privacy. For the first time this whole trip I felt angry. Some of the other students were texting us about going out that night or how great their hostmom’s were and ours was strict and could hardly talk to us. I was finally in Africa. At dinner, it was just more awkward as I tried finishing the foods I didn’t like but wouldn’t dare consider wasting. Eventually, Parth and Keith came to the house and Mama Lucy let us go outside with them for a little bit. I don’t know what I had been expecting from my homestay but by the next morning I was glad it was ending. I had never felt so uncomfortable and out of place before. Not being able to communicate was probably the worst thing. But, even if Mama Lucy had understood English, I would not have said anything but thank you for her hospitality. She’d opened up her home for us and for that I was extremely grateful. Now I see what people mean when they say homestays can either make or break your abroad experience…