I walked over to three little girls playing with a grocery cart. I gave the smallest one a hair clip and suddenly from behind a cardboard house 15 small boys and girls came running out swarming all over me, grabbing at my clenched fist for the hair clips. Then when I opened my hand to show them there weren’t any more, they started to ask my name in Xhosa (their tribal language). When I didn’t answer, they asked in English. They were all mostly 5 or 6. One single girl was 10. Her name was Andisuwi. She wrote it on my hand. She was quite short for her age, like me, so I was surprised. Although I’m still technically 10, I say I’m 11, since there are about 40 days left until my birthday.
We walked down the dirt road for a ways when Daddy all of a sudden stopped short and said, “Someone give me the camera!” Mommy gave it to him and he pointed over to where an old woman was carving something. We walked a little farther and saw a cow’s head without the skin on. It was being butchered. Needless to say, I ate nothing of my hamburger for lunch.
We drove over to an even poorer township. Their houses were really–not joking–made out of cardboard and were an inch taller than I am. There was a boy in a black sweatshirt who was completely fascinated by the concept of sunglasses, and Mommy gladly put the glasses up to his eyes while he looked around smiling ear-to-ear. My sympathy for this boy quickly left when, as I was walking back along the road, he asked if I would kiss him–not exactly the guy of my dreams. So I kept walking, ignoring him, hoping that he was talking to some other girl. But he kept at it, and as all the other children were giggling, I would have gladly turned around and punched him, but his mother was right behind him.
