Part 2 | 08.15.01 | A Study in Contrasts

LEEU-GAMKA — I awoke in a sublime resort town to eggs, cheese, buttered toast, muesli, yogurt, cereal, milk, cold water and coffee. I waterskied, took a hot shower, and packed my computer into the trunk of a VW. And then I drove and drove, talking on my cell phone as I passed gorgeous gorges, mountains and sunsets.

I drove into the Karoo, a dusty, dirty, windy plain, with miles of featureless flatlands broken only by tiny impoverished villages, none with a three-story building, none with paved streets that would merit regular streetlights. One such village, Leeu-Gamka (lyoo HAHM-kuh), was my destination.

Leeu-Gamka has an unemployment rate that surpasses 60 percent. Until four years ago, when the new African National Congress government reached it with development programs, its population lived in corrugated-metal shacks without running water or electricity. Until then, the only lights at night were the floodlights installed by the old apartheid government, which would allow watchful police to spot "mass assemblies" brewing — a euphemism for gatherings of three or more non-whites.

Leeu-Gamka's population is almost entirely "colored," the South African phrase (jarring to American ears) for a light-skinned, nonwhite person. Some colored people are descended from Southern Africa's native Khoisan tribe, while others are mixed-race. Perhaps a hundred blacks are sprinkled among its two thousand inhabitants, and no whites. The people of Leeu-Gamka are tiny — most of the women are under five feet tall, while the men are perhaps a few inches taller. South Africans are not a particularly short people, genetically. The short stature is the result of malnutrition, fetal alcohol syndrome and what clinicians call a "failure to thrive."

Leeu-Gamka is not a great place to grow up.

My first sight upon entering town was a rugby game. Every kid in the area was on the sidelines, watching and cheering. The participants were playing barefoot, enthusiastic and energetic.

The rugby players were, I found out, three years older than they looked. Throughout the day, people I thought to be 16 would turn out to be 21, and people I thought to be 70 would turn out to be 40. People here don't grow, they grow old.

Sports are one of five sources of entertainment for the youth in the town.

Two of the others, pool at the local "Game Shop" (a bar/disco/pool hall, filled with 14-year-olds, R. Kelly beats and ganja smoke) and dancing, could be termed constructive — or, at least, fun and harmless.

The next is drinking, which Leeu-Gamkers do in massive quantities. Violent crime, typically youth robbing the old, is fueled by alcohol. People must steal to afford the bags of wine that they consume, and once drunk are more ready to commit crimes.

The other pastime, of course, is sex. At its best, sex is both beautiful and fun. But where sex is often violent, often paid for and rarely protected, it is often neither.

A local man mentioned child rape as one of the town's major problems. This is not uncommon in South Africa. Though electrified and supplied with water, the houses in which people here live are tiny; constructed on $2,000 grants from the government, they often house seven people in a two-room construction smaller than my living room. In these houses, where two-to-a-bed and three-beds-to-a-room is the norm, uncles sleeping with nieces is an often unavoidable recipe for incest. Among youth, girls and boys seem to disagree frequently about whether no means no. And even in constructive, healthy relationships, it is difficult to be safe.

In Leeu-Gamka, condoms are only available at the health clinic; the health clinic is only open from 9 to 5, Monday through Thursday. HIV and STD awareness programs are limited to one-day-a-year classroom presentations on sexuality and condom use by nuns from the next village and a billboard on the wall of the health clinic that reads "Don't get hit by HIV — get educated!"

Besides omitting the actual ways in which one can avoid getting hit by HIV, the poster contains a simple error: it is in English, but the town speaks Afrikaans. As far as those in town know, Leeu-Gamka doesn't have a serious HIV problem yet; several youths guessed that only four or five people in town are HIV positive.

The most serious risk factor for an HIV/AIDS epidemic in Leeu-Gamka is its proximity to a major road. A short walk from the ill-defined city limits is a Shell station, frequented by long-haul truckers moving between Johannesburg and Cape Town. Truckers are well-represented by trade unions, and often pull in incomes an order of magnitude greater than those of the town's few jobholders; their disposable income represents a major source of cash flow. Young women trying to feed their families, as well as young women trying to feed their alcohol addictions, sell themselves to the truckers. They get to know them, and sometimes disappear with them for days at a time to accompany them on trips.

But besides money, many truckers also have HIV. Truckers stop at many truck stops, and some of them visit prostitutes at each one before returning to their families. Many blame Botswana's excellent highway system for its staggering infection rate (more than a third of all adults). Down the road, Leeu-Gamka might face a similar fate.

Despite their town's problems, poverty and uncertain future, the people I met in Leeu-Gamka were hopeful. Theodore, a Cape Town native who moved to Leeu-Gamka to care for his mother and stepfather, described a glacial drift in the right direction. Things have improved there tremendously since the end of apartheid, although none too quickly. Police are now there to help, rather than repress. Though many were concerned that people were merely waiting for the new government to come and help them, most thought that after waiting a sufficient length of time, people would shake off their apathy and begin organizing around their own interests. Indeed, electrification only came after local protests and lobbying.

In the evening, my traveling companion and I convened a meeting to discuss HIV prevention (the town has no money for treatment). A local HIV council, it turns out, had been formed about a year ago, but had fallen apart due to a lack of buy-in and initiative from its members. To improve on the previous model, our group was more inclusive, with representatives from the school, youth organizations, political parties and the health council. We talked about awareness strategies, condom distribution and the need to address gender inequities. An executive committee formed, a timeline was set up and I said that I would seek financial support for their work once I returned to the United States. Perhaps something will come of it.

At the end of the day, I drove out to the Shell station. Suddenly, five minutes from Leeu-Gamka, I was in the First World. Plastic signs advertised sweepstakes to win Ferraris. Every morsel in the gas station's convenience store was individually wrapped and stamped with a Western brand name. Everybody had shoes. Is it any surprise that young women, growing up in a town with nowhere to go, a few minutes' walk from a world fundamentally richer than that of their home, would enter the sex trade? And how can you demand truckers use condoms, where the truckers represent the world with all of the power?

Next: Life and Death in Leeu-Gamka