You've got to have Faith

I was chatting with Gerard, the lovely Zimbabwean guy who works as a security guard in our building. We met the last time I was visiting South Africa, and became friendly chatting about books. He's also a writer, and I always lend him whatever I've brought out with me. The price of books in South Africa is astronomical. That’s one of the things that delighted me when I went to the UK. There you can buy a book for the same price as a sandwich. Here in South Africa, new books cost as much as/more than a day’s wage for many South Africans.

I told Gerard about my project and my hope to find families that I can stay with and encounter real rural South African life and opinions. He said his pastor was from the Eastern Cape and he would mention my project to him. The next day he came back and said that the pastor’s wife, the pastrice as they call her, was fascinated by what I wanted to do, and that she wanted to invite me to her home in Khayelitsha to talk it over.

So early yesterday morning, just after Gerard had finished his nightshift, we drove out to Khayelitsha and were welcomed into the home of the pastor and his wife - Faith. It turns out that the pastor is related to one of the greats of the apartheid struggle, Walter Sisulu, and Faith wants to take me to their home in Ngcobo and to her family's home in Tsolo.

We've set a date for our road trip for the third week of January. I feel better now that I have Faith.