The cost of the
The great end-of-year homecoming is not as simple as ‘I’m back, folks!’
In my family, it all starts on a specially created WhatsApp group. Last year’s was titled “Xmas Lunch 2016” and there were no less than 15 members who, for months before December, sent all manner of texts, gossip, selfies and (church, car, driveway or mcimbi outfit) portraits, inspirational quotes, “funny” videos stereotyping people from Limpopo and countless other vibrating interruptions that had nothing to do with the planning of the Christmas lunch for which the group was created.
The idea was for all of us in the group (all women) to collaborate on a menu, delegate the cooks for the meat, the vegetables, the salads, the desserts and those responsible for beverages.
Miss Moneybags (one of my aunts) calculated the amount of meat needed — two sheep, a dozen chickens, pork, tripe, sausage and mincemeat — against the number of mouths to feed (at least four dozen) and a total monetary amount was decided.
We split the costs and, if I remember correctly, I ended up contributing R1200 in November. And that’s just the Christmas meal.
This measly amount doesn’t take into account the centuries-long costs of going home for amagoduka — people who live and work in metropoles such as Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban.
Take an Eastern Cape person, for example. I live in Jo’burg for most of the year and goduka a few times a year for imigidi nemicimbi such as weddings, funerals, unveilings, thanksgivings, anniversaries and Easter.
In addition to the travelling costs of going back and forth throughout the year, the cost of the annual Dezemba return is especially sobering, whether you’re a single person with no kids like myself, a married professional with children or a divorcee in her late 40s who is eternally filled by the fact that the children no longer spend Christmas with both parents — a guilt that is annually placated by a special getaway or an expensive gadget to outparent the other parent.
Although it was written in jest, a frighteningly accurate calculation of the costs of ukugoduka made its rounds on Facebook recently and inspired a discussion in our office about the money we spend consciously and unconsciously at this time of the year, an exercise I’m borrowing to illuminate this point further.
For the first time in more than a decade of ukugoduka, I sat with a calculator and counted the money I have spent in the past (and that I’m likely going to spend this year) so that family members can rest comfortably in the knowledge that “kaloku uyaphangela usisi”.