Curious Traveling

My host mother, Molaba, had just celebrated her 60th year in Langa. Langa was a neglected neighborhood, a tin roof and chain link township established in the apartheid era, far removed from the thriving, elegant heart of Cape Town.
Molaba would always speak affectionately of the pride and ambition she had instilled in her children. They had college degrees, well-paying jobs, and homes near the city center. Her warmest tone was always reserved for the city itself. Cape Town - hostile as it had been to her for most of her adult life - was her heart and home.
I told her how much I adored the city. She simply wore her undecipherable smile. “This is my home and I love it. But there are two Cape Towns here. Maybe one day…”
One day, I saw the divide.
The asphalt cut into my back as I opened my eyes to find myself on Langa’s main road, all sense and memory temporarily erased.
Footsteps ran towards me, and faces appeared above me one by one. As I looked down upon bruises, cuts and an oddly-angled left leg, an image came rushing back to me; the front grill of a cab inches from my left side.
I lay back down, my mind clouded by adrenaline, waiting for the ambulance.
One of the men made a joke about the driver to lighten the tension. “He must be cursing himself that he managed to hit a white girl in Langa.” I laughed, despite the tragic subtext. My host mother’s sturdy, gentle face swam into view. She would pray for me, she said.
The ambulance finally pulled in, and I was loaded onto it. Before the doors closed, I saw the local clinic out of the corner of my eye. People were sitting outside in fold-up chairs or on the pavement, under the baking sun, waiting all day to see a doctor, and if they were lucky, to receive affordable treatment.
There would be no pavement sitting for me. I was taken to a private hospital in Claremont, part of the upper middle class ‘Southern suburbs’. My treatment, my surgeons, and my amenities were exceptional. Nurses hovered over me at all times, and doctors stopped in every day to check on me.
My Cape Town was not Molaba’s Cape Town. She called Cape Town home, and I was an outsider, yet the city had chosen to extend its hand to me. I had spent two months mesmerized by Cape Town, but that day I felt like an intruder, and it choked me.
Then I remembered Molaba’s pride in her children, their lives, and their progress. I smiled and hoped for the city I had fallen for, and for Molaba’s home. Maybe one day…