Kimmy's Comments - Transkei Makeovers

Our friends Neen and Kev arrived all the way from the UK at the weekend and are the first friend to make it to our hospital door. We salute you. Was great for them to see where we’ve been living for the last 6 months. They dropped off their swanky BMW hire care by our accommodation and we headed for Bulungula in our big 4x4. It’s our favourite place to relax, and a real slice of Transkei beauty. We all recharged our batteries and the weather was heavenly making the scenery all the more breathtaking.

Neen and I spent Saturday afternoon painting our nails. I went for fluorescent pink polish and she had bright blue. Shortly afterwards two young local girls who were hanging about came to admire our toenails. We offered to paint their nails with much gesticulating and saying English words hopefully in an African accent , as if that helps them to understand. There is no language no barrier when it comes to girls and makeup! They quickly jumped up to fetch a pen knife to cut their nails in a roundish fashion, then we set to work painting their finger and toe nails. Seemed a bit weird with their feet bare and all dusty from scampering around the hills-but apparently it is a sturdy nail polish, doesn’t chip easily.

Unbelievably the girl whose nails I was painting was actually a very demanding ‘customer’ making sure I applied several layers and didn’t miss a spot. We then ran off to grab our full on makeup bags and gave them both shimmering eye shadows and Juicy Fruits pink lip gloss. Annoyingly the makeup looked so much better on their lovely full lips...so we decided to give them both a little makeup kit of our stuff to keep. They were so happy and ran around posing with their new looks. Their names were Atini and Andisiwe, great girls. We finished off the makeover by all dancing around together flicking our newly painted hands back to the rhythm of a drum in a new-age dance move. I guess you had to be there for that one.

It was great fun though to just have a cool interaction with some locals that wasn’t health related. When you see all the poverty you find yourself wanting to give people things, but when kids shout for sweets as your car drives past you know that is a result of hand outs from foreigners, and it isn’t the answer. But, I am starting to find subtle ways of helping, by hopefully changing locals perceptions of foreigners like me. I help mums on paeds with money for transport which is a little gesture too. But, I think a cool interaction where the foreigner gets down and paint a little local girls pinkies is totally all good. Break the mould and the divide a bit. You never quite feel like it is enough though.