Not your average honeymoon
Townships are gritty places. Much like you would think of a ghetto in North America, they can be filled with crime and violence and unbearable injustices, all in the same space of family homes and schools and churches. There is a heightened sense of the strange possibilities that can visit an otherwise average day. Most people that live in the settlements learn very quickly to survey their environment and to think like a criminal. Think I’m exaggerating?!?
The week after Abigail’s wedding she didn’t show up to work. We had agreed that she would take three days off and come in on Thursday. My first thought when she didn’t arrive to work was annoyance. I thought maybe she was taking advantage of me , a common story here. However, when she finally turned up the following Monday , her explanation was something I could have NEVER imagined.
As I mentioned in my previous post, a fairly generous amount of money was collected at the wedding reception to help pay for Abigails’ wedding and to start her married life. Anyone within 2 blocks of the reception hall would know full well of the wedding celebration going on , making them an easy target. To that end , a trusted friend snuck the money off the premises well before the evening was over and took it to the church for safe keeping. The evening ended without incident, however Abigail and Jimmy were still being watched and were not safe to return to their home...for a week! The newlyweds had to hide out at a friends house until they managed to go around and pay all their bills, stopping at the church daily for small amounts of cash. Coming from the first world of UBER convenience ,try and imagine what that would be like if you had to pay all of your bills in person?!?
Getting a bank account is one of the great challenges here, particularly for foreigners, people without valid passports, or people with no fixed address 🤔 Abigail has an expired passport and is trying to save money to travel home to Malawi (approx 3 days by bus) to renew it. Conservative numbers estimate 32% of people in South Africa do not have bank accounts. This sheds a little insight into the fear of carrying a weeks worth of wages home on a Friday afternoon! In fact I just made arrangements for Abigail to leave early on Thursday’s from now on, to do her banking early , and hopefully put her at less risk.
These brave women are so ‘next level’ to protect what they have, most of them carry two phones. A dummy phone that they pretend to use at the bus stop , and their ‘real phone’ that is down their shirt or in their waistband .
Nothing but respect for these savvy warrior Mama’s💪
