Two men, a white man from the suburbs and a black man from the township, live in each other’s reality, writes Nosipho Mngoma.
Durban - He wakes up before first light and carefully steps over his room-mate sleeping on the floor of the 4 metre square mud house they share. He brushes his teeth, spitting on to the grass before taking a bath in cold water in a plastic basin.
“Like a marching ant, I join the masses of people catching taxis across the poverty line for a day’s work in the suburbs.”
The suburb is where David Leslie lived until three weeks ago, when he decided to move to Ntuzuma to experience a Normal Life? on the other side of the poverty line.
Leslie, 32, has been living on R2 500 for the month he will be at the informal settlement, hosted by his friend, Zakhele Mpini, 32.
All this to challenge perceptions of a Normal Life? and garner an appreciation for people of different social backgrounds.
The journey is being filmed for a documentary called Normal Life?
“I marvel at the dignity of the millions of people, young and old, who carry themselves with such grace and courage in the face of the torment of the suburban life they work in,” said Leslie.
“As if in a way it would be easier to live in poverty if there wasn’t the constant necessity for crossing the line and being forced to compare. Like salt in a raw wound.”
Sitting next to his friend and host, Leslie periodically turns to Mpini, calling him bhuti (brother) as he recalls his first day on the other side of the poverty line.
The pair met at a church hall and struck up a friendship. Mpini works part time as a film grip at Tomfoolery, an advertising agency where Leslie is a creator and director.
For early-morning shoots, Mpini has often had to stay the night at Leslie’s home in Glenwood, Durban.
“The way he lived was new to me, his beautiful home which even had an office, a toilet inside and the food he ate, was normal for him but not for me,” said Mpini.
“When the work was over, I used to think – eish, now I have to go back to the township and leave this good life.”
Through their conversations and Leslie’s memories of growing up with the “love and support” of helpers Flori and Joseph, Leslie said he became curious about life on the other side of the poverty line. “This has been on my mind since about a year ago.
“My brother said ‘go for it’. As film-makers and storytellers it made sense to film it.” Thus Normal Life? was born.
Mpini admitted he was initially so ashamed of his mud home that he was scared to take Leslie there. “He kept insisting and I thought ‘let me at least take him there once’.
“I was sure that once he saw my house he would change his mind because it is not easy to live like we do, it’s very different from how he lives.”
Leslie also had some reservations, and when he first got to Ntuzuma he was fearful.
But after meeting Mpini’s family, “life was back to normal” and he was “hundreds”. He moved in, and started sleeping on Mpini’s “dirty bed with broken springs poking my back and thigh”.
After three weeks, life in Ntuzuma has become Leslie’s Normal Life?
He says the taxi stop “egqumeni les’bili” with a perfect click and travels to and from work by himself most days.
“The point of this experience and the documentary is to provide information and show that it’s the human variable which makes normal normal. Between the haves and the have-nots, there is a barrier of fear. That is what we want to chip away at.”
Although they are still filming, post production has begun on parts of the documentary.
Leslie maintains he is not the subject of the documentary, but the catalyst for the subject: what is normal for South Africans on different sides of the poverty line.
The film could be viewed as exploitation and intrusion on the lives of Mpini and his family which, once done, would do nothing to shift their position along the poverty line. But Leslie says he distances himself from malintention.
“The purpose of this experience is to engage with each other as human beings in a loving way because our lives may be different but they are the same. The barrier of fear influences how you treat people and we want this to start conversations and challenge these fears.”
Leslie is staying at Mpini’s for 28 days because that is generally how long it takes for people to change their mind on something.
A film crew of three joins them in Ntuzuma.
They return to the suburban office of Tomfoolery with the footage, leaving Leslie to enjoy a dinner of phuthu at Mpini’s.
“I used to hate phuthu, now I love it because by the time we eat supper I am so hungry and it’s so filling,” he said.
Mpini’s own life story will feature prominently in the documentary, too.
“Things have not gone well for me,” he said. “I was naughty from a young age and I had thrown my life away when God showed me grace.”
Mpini usually makes the family’s evening meal on a Primus stove.
“When I wash dishes or clean, David will be right here helping me. He is not a visitor, he is my brother and I have got so used to having him here I will miss him when he is gone.”
Mpini hopes people will learn from this film that the poor are not lazy, they don’t all drink their money away and have many children.
Nor are they criminals.
While he looks at Leslie’s life as the ideal normal, Leslie looks at Mpini’s life with envy because “people who are better off have lost the sense of community and love”.
Leslie writes a daily blog usually typed on his laptop in a room lit by a single candle propped inside a bottle.
“It is easy for me to cross the poverty line, I dress down and by the love and grace of a community am well received. When I am ready I cross back and doors fling wide open. Nothing has changed. If anything I am esteemed for my social consciousness,” he writes.
“But Zac (Mpini) has a standard three school qualification. From his perspective and tens of millions of others, the poverty line is worse than the Berlin wall.
“A casual crossover is just not an option.”
Daily News