Stretched Money
Our household’s income comes from my pension, one child-support grant and two foster care grants. In the first week of the month I buy rice, Weet-Bix, mielie meal, sugar and everything the children need for school; by the second week there's no money left.
We go borrowing R200 or so from a friend and when that's gone, the borrowing starts again. Then we must pay it back when the pension comes. Most of my children stayed in the Transkei after they grew up. My one surviving son, Sakhumzi, who is a teacher, helps his sisters financially because they have not been able to find work in the Transkei or in Cape Town.
I also send them some of my pension money. My granddaughter Sesethu, one of the grandchildren who are staying with me in Cape Town, is 21 and is studying at Pentech in the city. I am very glad about that.
She had a job interviewing people for the government's census last year and she got paid for it, but I didn't want any of the money she earned because she needed it for her studies. I don't know what she is studying, exactly. I don't understand that. What I do know is that she is doing what she wants to do, and that is good.
Eastern Cape Plans
I don't want to stay in Cape Town. I want to go back to the Eastern Cape because it is the place of my background, where my father lived. But the rondavel that my father built, in which I grew up, is falling down. We can't live in it. We are staying next door, in our relative's house, while we fix it up.
Nomanani, my eldest daughter, who is living there, is putting in a proper floor and we are planning to put in bigger windows and a new door, because our door is broken. We are also planning to build a proper brick house to replace the corrugated iron building that is next to our rondavel. My son Sakhumzi, the teacher, said he would build it.
He has bought the bricks and they are there in the yard. We are just waiting to see when he can do the building. Then we would have enough space for the whole family to stay when they go there in the holidays. Nomanani wants me to go back to live in the Eastern Cape, because then I can look after her two sons and she can look for work in Queenstown, which is not too far away.
But my other grandchildren are in Cape Town and they won't go back to the Eastern Cape for good. You know what young people are like. They want to be in the city, because that is where the jobs are, and that is where they enjoy themselves.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham