Gcinsizwe is a very responsible, hard working and kind person. He does all he can to find work so that his family can scrape by just above the level of starvation. So when he asked me to help him buy a television I was baffled by the request. Here is a man who looks after his entire extended family in terms of work, food and money, yet as dedicated as he is to his family's well being they were still going days on end eating only water and when flour was available, bread. In my mind I questioned his request, how could an intelligent man such as him waste valuable money on something so stupid as a television? Now let me tell you, the television he wanted was something that you and I would find in the dump, it was decades old and it only worked after the family gathered around it's fragile exterior carefully playing with wires and jumping when sparks flew. He found this television and a third hand store, something we do not really have here in Canada. Basically, when every last bit of usefulness has been drained from the object it is taken to the third hand store and some poor soul buys it for a few dollars in hopes that by miracle it will work again.
So there they stood, hungry, exhausted, and gathered around this television trying to make it work while at the same time trying to avoid being electrocuted. Now let me paint a picture, we are not talking about electricians here, not even people who grew up watching their parents carefully dissect electrical appliances, no, they are the first people in their families to have power, and the power is only on a few days a week or even a month, if they can afford it. When I was there one day I walked into the room where Gcinsizwe's mother sleeps to find a group of men huddled around a radio that looked to be at least 40 years old. They found it in a dump and were trying their best to revive the retired radio so that they may listen to the news and perhaps some music. I realized very quickly that they had no idea what they were doing, first of all they were digging the inside while the darn thing was plugged in! When I saw an arch of electricity I jumped in to help, really, I just didn't want to have to take someone to the hospital to have their heart restarted! Even the power is crude, we are not talking about the work done by Nova Scotia Power, no, it was installed by someone who grew up in the bush, has never seen electricity before and had carefully roped together a few wires from one house to the next, most of it dangled precariously from roof "beams" which were in fact pieces of wood that you and I would throw in the dump.
So back to the issue of the television! I asked Gcinsizwe one day, careful not to offend him with my clearly uneducated question, how is it possible that you are starving yet you are so excited to buy a television rather than food I asked. The answer hit me like a brick wall in the face and I felt embarrassed to have asked. I grew up in a middle class Canadian family where I have never once gone a day without food.....
Gcinsizwe said to me "Catherine, I live in a place where hunger is as common as the sun rising into the sky, it is my reality, but to have a television will give my family an opportunity where for at least a few minutes we can forget the sadness around us, the pains in our stomachs and the throbbing in our heads, and for just a few moments we will feel freedom from this place where survival does not always seem possible."
It was then that I gave him $10 to go buy a television so that on those very few days a month when they have power, at least those days they can experience freedom.
