Boot Dance
Stepping carefully to keep up the rhythm of daily life in a South African township
By Katie Shullman Gerding
Thandi awakes to the sound of rain on the roof. The melody, plonk, plonk, like a melancholy tapping on a steel drum, means the floor of her one-room shack will be even wetter than usual. The thrumming on the corrugated metal sheet that serves as a roof for Thandi’s family means the floors won’t dry at all today.
Even on days without rain, when the South African sun blazes through azure skies, Thandi’s floors are flooded. She lives at the wetlands’ edge of Masiphumelele, a township in the Western Cape Peninsula, and each morning, rain or shine, the wetlands creep into Thandi’s home. Nearly six inches of water usually covers the dirt floor each morning. But on days when the roof plays its rainy morning song, the water can rise to a foot. And in this cold, muddy water, Thandi and her three children, Luthando, Nezeka, and Zukiswa, dance the dance of the Wellington boots.
In Thandi’s home, mornings revolve around this single pair of bright yellow Wellington boots. Each morning the eldest child, Luthando, wakes first from the bed that all four family members share. He places his feet into the boots. As the boot dance begins, the first slant of light peeks through a crack in the wall—a crack that Thandi has tried to repair with garbage bags, plastic sheeting, and stray pieces of wood. But all to no avail. No matter how many Band-Aids she uses to cover the wound, it never fully heals.
Luthando, with the too-large boots on his feet, puts on his school uniform. Delicately lifting each foot from a rubber boot and slipping it into a pant leg, he balances on one leg with the ease of a ballet dancer; he has danced this dance before. Now slipping a uniformed leg back into the boot, he does the same with the opposite leg, lifting it high above the waterline so as not to get the bottom of his pants wet. Luthando then awakens 8-year-old Nezeka with a tap on the shoulder and a nudge on the side. Nezeka sits up and groggily hops onto Luthando’s back. He gives her a ride through the front door—the dance, for a moment, becomes a duet. There he steps on a group of cinderblocks, with surfaces that sit just above the flood. The rain slows to a drizzle as Nezeka climbs off Luthando’s back and stands barefoot on the cold, concrete blocks.
Luthando pulls off the boots and Nezeka slips them on one at a time. She heads back inside to change into her uniform, one with a skirt instead of pants so she needn’t worry about getting the bottoms wet.
The Wellington boot dance nears its end as the neighbors’ chickens begin to cluck in the early morning light. Nezeka awakens her mother and 5-year-old sister, Zukiswa. Thandi shakes off the daze of sleep, pulls on the boots, and carries Nezeka outside. She then brings Zukiswa her uniform, and the young girl dresses on the bed, too young and too small to hold a starring role in the dance. Thandi carries Zukiswa out to the cinderblocks to wait with her brother and sister before choosing three pairs of heel-less socks, which she brings to each child with a pair of worn shoes. The children dress, their feet warmer now despite the holes, while Thandi goes inside to slice three pieces of brown bread. Outside on the cinderblocks, Luthando, Nezeka, and Zukiswa eat their breakfast.
The rain stops and they watch the sun rise over Masiphumelele. The children wipe the sleep from their eyes as the sunlight begins to chase away the tablecloth of clouds that drape the craggy blue-green mountains. With boots still on her feet, Thandi leans against the house and laughs with the children as they watch the neighbor’s chickens peck at one another. Luthando flaps his wings and “b’goks” at the chickens while his sisters giggle. The floodwaters begin to recede, and the children dust the crumbs off their uniforms in preparation for their departure. Finally, they stand with the smallest in the middle and tiptoe through the water to higher ground. They wave goodbye to Thandi and begin to walk the three miles to school hand-in-hand.
For now, the dance of the Wellington boots comes to an end. But it will be danced again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
Katie Shullman Gerding, a second-grade teacher in East Harlem, NYC, volunteered through WorldTeach (www.worldteach.org) in South Africa in the summer of 2006. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an M.S. in Childhood Education at Hunter College.