Party at the Township (Langa)

This is the Birthday boy (Liya) and his older sister.
Justice (the driver of the Foundation) invited me to his son Liya's 1st Birthday party on Saturday. I was very excited to go because I did not know what to expect, my first party at a township! Well, it was a very interesting experience. First of all it was very funny that all the men are drinking outside in the garage (obviously at the end of the night they were all skunk drunk!) and all the women are inside, this is very traditional, the women are cooking or just sitting inside but they cannot go outside with their husbands. The children were all sitting and the music was super loud.. but it was good! the menu was fried chicken, pasta, green salad and lentils, it was pretty good. Peter and I where the only white people at the party (I had never felt soo white!). I also found interesting that all Xhosa women are fat. I asked Peter (he works at Amy Biehl and has lived here for the past 8 months) why was this and he said that in this culture a woman MUST get fat, because it means wealth, and that their husbands actually care for them and for their well-being. If a woman is thin it means that she has to work and that her husband does not feed her well... I thought this is hilarious, cause all the women at the party were fat.. Oh and men like fat women, they are disgusted by thin ones... I just think that is just so different from our standards of what is beautiful and what is not.
The party started at 1pm and I left at 9 and it looked like it was still going to go on for quite a while.. just like in Mexicooo....
Another funny thing that I learned this weekend is that children are not brought up by their mothers, but by their grandmothers. Mothers just go and do their thing and they kind of give their children to their mothers.. I don't know why this is the dynamic but I guess that young mothers do not have the experience and also they usually go out a lot and just keep living the good life while their mothers are the ones that do the raising of children.

This was the cake, a nice truck! made with cookies, gummy bears, licorice and icing... very nice.

The cousins of the Birthday Boy...