Between mud and bullets

On the Capricorn side of Lavender Hill there's an informal settlement. It was about 2004 when people started moving here. I asked two women who lived nearby where the new residents came from, they told me "all over. But mostly from backyards." There is one broad drive into the settlement, broader than most Cape Town southern suburbs roads and much, much broader than the tracks I used to squeeze my car through in RR-Section. Thing is, this sweeping drive is mud. I suppose in the summer it's sandy gravel, but these days, it's a thick dark chocolate mud. The wide muddy entry, matched with the tinned and wooden structures, makes the area look like my imagining of a turn of the previous century mining village. The area is called 'Overcome'.

Lavender Hill has been in the news recently, the gang violence in the courts has escalated to something resembling a war, which is why the premier's office is calling for the army to be deployed. One of my students is doing research in Lavender Hill, trying to find a meaningful link between school drop-out rates and, well, anything really. He asked the kids he's interviewing for the research what makes them feel safe. The answer was unanimous; the army. But, there are issues with just bringing in the defense force, for a start, it generally doesn't stop the gang activity, it just displaces the killing to another area.

Another student, who's gone back home now, was working with some primary school kids on setting up a school garden. She was talking to our class about these kids, and started with the analogy of a seed. A seed needs water, air, nutrients and such in order to grow and to flourish. Arguably, kids needs something similar. But not really see, and she threw out the analogy. Somehow, despite not having a particularly nurturing environment, the kids here grow. Between mud and bullets, they grow. She made a forceful point with fiery eyes, and told us all that whenever we spoke about Lavender Hill, about the malaise that haunts it, that we mention the kids who grow here.

So on Wednesday, as I drove with my visitors through that section of Lansdowne Road that gets flooded when it rains and the sewerage streams over the road like a swarm of locusts desiccating everthing in its path, and then later when we arrived in Lavender Hill, I told the skeptical faces around me that people don't just survive under these conditions, they flourish.

Despondency doesn't breed change, it breeds discontent, so it's probably worth being hopeful.