Peeping with purpose

Besides the doors never being locked, the curtains of every house were always wide open. Now, most of the curtains in the street are closed. Not surprising, when you consider that the houses on the opposite side of the street are less than 10 meters away - if you don't cover the windows, you practically live in with your neighbors!

That used to be how people lived together in the Wolmarans. “The street was one big family”, Ton recalls. “Everyone could walk into each other’s houses and peep at each other.” Apart from hilarious moments such as the not-entirely-voluntary renovation of the kitchen, this closeness also provided other advantages: many meals were cooked and consumed together.

Perhaps the best example of this are the barbecues that were held in the street - literally. On summer evenings, the entire street came together. The residents took out the center tiles of the street and dug in the ground. The trenches were then filled with coal and grids were placed on top, creating a makeshift barbecue. This way, the whole street could eat together in the street. However, says Ton, the last street BBQ was over 20 years ago.

The adults in the street were also structurally addressed as 'uncle' or 'auntie' by the children, and mothers could safely let their children play alone in the street since a neighbor would probably look after them. Therefore, with all these mutual ties, there was a solid social safety net for people who fell ill, for parents who could no longer feed their children due to poverty or for parents who had to leave for a day..

No such things nowadays: the Thuisbezorgd e-bikes flash through the street, and if you are sick, you simply order groceries via Gorillas. Life increasingly takes place behind closed doors, and if something goes wrong behind those doors, the curtains are drawn.

This also removes a certain degree of social control. In the past, people were much more aware of what was happening in all families. In Ton's words, joy and sorrow literally lay on the street. Marital quarrels were fought out in the streets. One time, a pregnant girl along with her mother appeared on the doorstep of the house of a family whose husband had been unfaithful. Moreover, people in the street cheated on each other with each other.

Ton also recalls how the whole street showed up when a woman was beaten by her husband. The police were called immediately. And if a child received a slap on the wrist from, for example, a grandfather, all the aunties in the street immediately jumped on it. Turns out all the peeping did serve an actual purpose...