Land of Ten Thousand Sheep

I never thought it would happen, but I am now, officially, a small town girl. For the last month I have been living in Richmond, a tiny farming village in the middle of the Great Karoo Desert, where we have been working on the initial stages of introducing GRS to the community. We drove the nearly five hours from Port Elizabeth, crossing over from beautiful coastal city into barren desert landscape. The final leg into Richmond took us onto a dirt road, with nothing but sheep and the occasional farm house. In the nearly two hours of driving this road, the only vehicle we passed was a horse-drawn buggy. The following is a little depiction of my home for the next several months…

First, a little perspective as to how much I do, quite literally, live in the middle of the nowhere: if I ride my bike for more than six minutes in any direction, I emerge from town or township, and into the desert…thousands of acres and miles and kilometers of beautiful, sprawling, endless mountains, valleys, flat prickly bush and cactus, and a lot of damn sheep. One of the farmers, Johan Bezuiidenhout, owns 25,000 acres of land and 3,000 sheep, and he is only one of 60 incredibly wealthy farmers who work the land surrounding Richmond. Johan took me on a tour of “the veld” on the back of his bakkie, passing jackal, kudu, hemsbok, springbok, hundred of tortoises, and a hell of a lot of sheep.

The town of Richmond was partially founded as a religious center point for the Afrikaans farmers settled in the area. “Town” itself is composed of two long streets, and a third dirt road; it’s the type of town where you can walk down the middle of the street because there are never any cars. Only on Sundays do cars line the streets, when the white farmers come into town for Church. There is a grocery store and two restaurants in town, one convenience-type store, and the “Chinese store” – the only place in town to buy any clothes (those who enter it are viewed with disdain for supporting a store owned by a Chinese family. Who knows how a Chinese family ended up in Richmond, but they need to make a living, too). A small “stream” (usually a dry riverbed, with occasional water running through it) divides the town and the township, connected by a rickety footbridge.

I live in town, which is incredibly, disarmingly quiet; the only other people I ever see who live in town are the old lady across the street, the pastor and his wife, a loopy, middle-aged self-professed “flower child” who owns an abandoned book store (which has sold 7 books in 7 months), and a few colored people. While the town is almost deserted, right across the stream the township is bustling with thousands of people, a mix of colored and black (Xhosa), most of whom speak Afrikaans. The official-unofficial population is 9,000, three hundred of whom are white and mostly live on the surrounding farms, the rest of whom live in the townships. I am just getting used to using the term “colored” given its distinct racial implications in the States. But here, it’s a commonly accepted term to describe a person whose racial composition may be any combination of white colonial, black African and Indian. During apartheid, the distinction was made between whites, coloreds and blacks, and rights were distributed in that order.

There are almost no job opportunities to speak of in Richmond, except the lucky handful who work in the few shops or become farm workers. Almost everyone is unemployed; young men spend their days walking aimlessly through the township, while women stay closer to home, usually sitting outside their shacks, talking, watching. The widespread unemployment explains the rampant alcoholism in the township, as well as the spread of HIV (there is quite literally nothing to do, so people turn to sex, usually unprotected). Parents often begin drinking as soon as their kids leave for school, in one of the 30+ shebeens (illegal pubs) located behind store fronts or in people’s homes.

The alcoholism strikes me as quite ironic considering the religious foundation of Richmond, with 30 churches meeting regularly in the town and township. My second day in Richmond, I attended St. Matthews Anglican Sunday Mass with a group of visiting Americans; I was the only one who did not stand up to receive communion. The next weekend, Beth and I got invited to the Harvest Time Church, for self-professed born-again Christians. I’ve attended church before, and while I am always respectful, each experience has reinforced my own values about the concept and institution of religion. But this time, I couldn’t not be uncomfortable in the small, cement room, as the congregation sang and prayed, eyes closed and reaching for the sky. Toward the end, several women came to the front, presumably to confess their sins; as the preacher held one woman’s shoulders and powerfully sermonized over, she began to convulse and collapsed to the floor. At that point, I left.

Richmond has three schools - a primary school, middle school and high school - with about 1500 black and colored students; white children of the farmers are sent away from an early age to private boarding schools. There is a youth hostel for the children of farm workers; kids of all ages live in “dorms” and return to the farms on the weekends. It’s primarily high-school aged kids, and given the fact that it is fairly unstructured, poorly resourced and maintained, it has been dubbed “the red zone.” A group of poor, hungry, uneducated teenagers, living together with minimal supervision – strikes me a breeding ground for unsafe, unhealthy behavior.

I recently went to meet with the principal of the middle school, Ikhaya Primary, and I arrived at 10am, just in time for “lunch.” Each school has funds for a feeding scheme to provide one meal per day, and one plastic plate per child. They try to feed the children as early as possible, because for many it’s their only meal of the day. Some may eat breakfast or dinner at home, but most kids will not eat again until the next day. At the beginning of each term, the school tries to provide breakfast for those learners who are really bad off, but that only lasts until the money runs dry. As the food was brought out to a dusty courtyard in massive buckets, the kids formed a long line for one scoop of pasta with fish sauce, and a cup of juice. I almost asked about silverware, and then immediately felt silly and/or completely ignorant when I saw the kids grabbing at the food with their hands.