"Just a fling"

Fifty kilometres from Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, is the quaint rural town of Alicedale, a town that time seems to have forgotten. I had never heard of the town before embarking on our class assignment and so I had no idea what to expect.

As we drove into the town, suspicious eyes followed us closely, no doubt wondering what a group of students were doing there. The harsh sun beat down on us and everything felt older, drier and slower in this ghostly town. Some people flashed us friendly smiles from home porches and others simply looked the other way.

Alicedale, like many other towns in post-apartheid South Africa is still severely divided along racial and economic lines. As we parked our cars at the Bushman Sands hotel, I began to realise the severe disparities between the rich and the poor that existed here.
A clear sign of this is the Bushman Sands luxury hotel and golf estate which is situated right across from the Alicedale township. Two completely contrasting worlds, side by side.

One of the benefits that expected to emerge out of the building of the hotel was to provide job opportunities to the people of Alicedale. However, this was never realized and the local community believe that their interests have been ignored as they have barely benefited from the business. Unofficial accounts put Alicedale’s unemployment rate at between 90-100 per cent.

Nadia Vrolik, is 18 years old and lives in Transriviere, the coloured township in Alicedale. She is a temporary employee at Jan Paul Barnard’s mohair factory and earns approximately R800 a month, when there is work available.

She seems like any other teenage girl, but she has a great deal of responsibilities. At home, she is the sole provider for her mother and her own one year old baby girl, Nuzzley. When her mother fell ill, Nadia had no other choice but to drop out of school and become the provider for her family.

Statistics show that in South Africa, 1 in 3 girls will have had a baby by the age of 20 years old. Nadia is not the only one out of her group of friends who dropped out of school and fell pregnant.

“I was very disappointed in myself for falling pregnant so young,” says Nadia. “Many people in the community judged me, but my friends could understand.”

The father of her child, Brenton cannot find work in Alicedale and so works in Port Elizabeth, however the relationship between them is not strong as Nadia says it was “just a fling”.
Nadia explains that the majority of the people in Alicedale cannot find work.

“We can’t get jobs, so every day people drink, the whole week they drink.”

There is clearly a need for sustainable projects in Alicedale and the community needs to work together and help each other in order to build a sustainable future for the town.
Education and the needs of the youth also need to be a top priority. Schools in Alicedale should be able to provide these young mothers with the opportunity to continue their education.
Although Nadia dreams of the day when she can return to school and eventually find a better job, she feels there is little way out of her situation. Despite her innocence, Nadia shows a tremendous amount of courage and maturity and is doing the best she can in her situation.

“I hope she doesn’t make the same mistakes that I made, I hope she doesn’t fall pregnant before she is ready,” says Nadia about Nuzzley.