As they walk on the pavement in front of me, they talk loudly with elaborate hand and head gestures to emphasise the importance of what they are saying, all the while throwing their plastic food bags and empty cooldrink tins on the well-kept and clean pavement under their feet.
When we reach the traffic-light crossing, having to wait for the green pedestrian light, I greet them in isiXhosa. They look at me with surprise and ask, “You speak Xhosa?” I nodded and said, “Ewe ntombazana”. One of them smiled and said, “I like you umama.”
As we are now on friendly terms, with the green traffic light completely forgotten, I asked them where they lived. With one voice, speaking in unison, they answered they lived in a nearby informal settlement. “What is it like to live there?” I asked.
“It is very different from what you have here,” one of them said. “We have no tarred roads, pavements or road signs. Just the soil of the earth.”
After saying goodbye to them, and pondering over what they said, I realised we look at their behaviour with disdain when they do not adhere to our rules and regulations while in our midst.
But how can we expect them to behave “properly”, and adhere to our structured environment in our living space, if they live their daily lives, sometimes even from birth, in an unstructured environment with no rules and regulations?
