Wine From These Grapes

The last 24 hours have seen some pretty dramatic highs and lows for the gay marriage movement in the U.S.  North Carolina, a state that already had a statutory ban on gay marriage, overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment just to make sure that no gay or lesbian couple ever got the idea that their relationship was endorsed or protected by the state.  Contrariwise, for the second year in a row, a national Gallup poll reported that over 50 percent of Americans support the idea of gay marriage.  And just a couple of hours ago, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to say that he thinks gay and lesbian couples should be able to get married just like anybody else.

All of this has generated pretty passionate responses on all sides of the debate (if you don’t believe me, just take a gander at Facebook or Twitter – you can get your daily dose of self-righteous moralizing in about five seconds).  I myself had trouble organizing my thoughts along a coherent theme suitable for pithy status updates.  Instead, I present them here in no particular order, addressed to various parties and institutions:

To the people in North Carolina who voted for Amendment

One:  You are on the wrong side of history, and I think most of you know it.  That said, I have read that the campaign literature was very misleading and a lot of people didn’t actually understand what they were voting for.  I hope that when the repeal comes up a few years from now, you will have the courage to rectify your mistake.

 

To the people in North Carolina who voted against Amendment One: Thank you for coming out and making your voice heard, even with the odds against you.  That takes courage and commitment, and you shouldn’t be forgotten in the general anger and disappointment about the outcome.

 

To the people who drafted, designed and paid for the North Carolina amendment and all the others like it: What you have done is small-minded, cruel, and contrary to everything I think of when I think of America.  You’re going to lose in the end, and I hope someday your children demonstrate to you how wrong you are.

 

To the people writing generalized nasty/derogatory things on Facebook and Twitter (and elsewhere) about North Carolinians as a group: 

1) You know who you sound a lot like? The people who write generalized nasty/derogatory things about gays and lesbians.

2) North Carolina is not the only state to have thought up this constitutional amendment thing.  31 states have statutory or constitutional bans on gay marriage, which means that there’s a good chance that you live in/grew up in/know people who live in one of them.  If you really want to reverse this depressing trend, give money, volunteer, write a letter to the editor, call your Congressperson, march in a protest, put a lawn sign in your yard or a sticker on your car, sign a petition, explain your view respectfully to someone who isn’t already in the gay-marriage choir, or do any one of the hundred things that will actually effect change.

 

To the people who are writing generalized nasty/derogatory comments about religious people on Facebook and Twitter (and elsewhere):  Stop it.  There are plenty of religious people who support gay marriage, and plenty of non-religious people who don’t.  All you’re doing is showing that all kinds of people can be mindlessly hateful.

 

To President Obama: Thank you.  I know you’ve caught a lot of flack from the pro-gay-marriage community for not moving fast enough on this issue, but the truth is that you’ve done more to advance GBLT equality in 3.5 years than the other 43 presidents combined, while still demonstrating respect for the other branches of government and the many people in this country who do not share our point of view.  Now you’ve put yourself on the line, on a hot-button issue, in a contested election, which absolutely takes courage.  I, personally, am grateful for what you have done.

 

To the people bitching that Obama hasn’t done enough, fast enough:  Again: more progress at the federal level in the last 3.5 years than in the previous 230.  And guess what?  There are still a lot of people who do not think that gays and lesbians should be allowed to exist, let alone get married (cf: North Carolina et al), and as much as they hate it, Obama is their President too.  Also, a bunch of those people are in Congress, and it turns out that we have a government based on the separation of powers, not a dictatorship, so that’s probably slowing things down some.  If you want Obama to move faster, go out and help elect some friends for him.

 

To the young people complaining that the problem is old people who need to get out of the way: Unless you are a child of parthenogenesis who raised and educated yourself in complete isolation, you probably know some old people.  Instead of complaining about them on social media forums which, let’s be honest, they don’t know how to access, why don’t you go talk to them and try to change their minds?

 

To the countries that have already gotten their shit together and legalized gay marriage:  Sorry we’re so slow.  We’re working on it.

 

To my many gay and lesbian friends, and to the unknown person that I might someday want to marry: See above.  And don’t give up hope.

Tags: gay marriage, serious stuff

South Africa has always been a place I’ve desperately wanted to go to, not only because of the phenomenal landscapes and the mix of cultures, but also because a lot of the country’s dramatic recent history has happened in my own lifetime, and I feel deeply connected to the struggle for democracy and equality that is still taking place here.  One of my earliest political memories is Nelson Mandela’s historic election and the celebration that accompanied.  In middle school, we watched the movie “Cry Freedom,” which tells the story of anti-apartheid-activist Steve Biko, and although I have never seen it since, I can still remember the opening shots of Soweto as if I’d seen it yesterday.  In college, I was lucky enough to see Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak, which remains one of the most moving speeches of my life.

As I have grown older and developed a professional/academic interest in political development and transitional justice, South Africa has remained one of the most innovative and intriguing foci for my studies.  The country has many problems, to be sure, but it has built a reputation for itself as a pioneer willing to look beyond tradition and its own borders for solutions.  Its Truth and Reconciliation Commission revolutionized thinking about how transitional justice should be pursued.  Its legal system is a fascinating hybrid creature drawing on civil law, common law, customary law, international law and foreign law whose full potential has yet to be realized.

This long paean to South-Africa -the-Political-Entity occurs because on Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit the Constitutional Court (the Supreme Court of South Africa).  I realize I am not your average tourist, but on my List of Things I Really, Really Want to See While in South Africa, the Constitutional Court was definitely in my top 10.  For me, the Court is a symbol of all the things South Africa is doing right in its struggle for dignity, equality, and democracy.  But even my (perhaps inflated) expectations did not prepare me for the Court itself.

When we (we=Americans) think of the Supreme Court, we think of a big white marble building flanked by imposing statues of Justice, blind and impassive.  We think of a building that represents our purest ideal of justice: objective, future-oriented, egalitarian in a remote and untouchable way.  South Africa’s Constitution Hill, the complex that houses the Court, fulfills the same function, but it couldn’t feel more different.

The Court is built in the middle of the Old Fort Prison Complex in Johannesburg, which is South Africa’s oldest and most notorious prison (other than Robben Island, down in Cape Town).  When I say it’s built in the middle of the Complex, I mean that the building literally stands in the center of the prison, which has been preserved almost exactly as it was when it was operational (the prison ran from the time the Boers built it in 1892 until it finally closed in 1987).  To get to the Court, you must walk through the massive doors of the fort; past the courtyard and dank zinc cells where the black women were kept; and past the larger, private cells where white women were housed.  The Court is separated by only a walkway and a wall from Number Four, the notorious cell block where black male political prisoners (including both Mandela and Ghandi) were imprisoned, kept in solitary confinement, and tortured.  None of these buildings have been altered except for some informational signs and a series of exhibits designed by ex-prisoners describing their lives in prison.

Only one building was torn down to make room for the Constitutional Court, the Awaiting Trial Block.  Although the building is gone, the four stairwells were preserved.  Two of them stand open to the sky in the main courtyard.  The other two have been enclosed in the Court building, and the Court’s main chamber is built from the bricks of that demolished cell block.

It’s hard to convey with only words how powerful this symbolism is, how moving it is to stand in the chamber of the highest court in the land, representing all the future ideals of the new South Africa, but built (literally) from the bricks of the past.  It’s a completely different message from the US Supreme Court building.  There’s no impersonal, remote message of blind justice.  The bricks of the old injustice built the chamber.  The fundamental rights of all South Africans are carved on the door in all 11 languages, plus sign language.  The first 11 Justices of the post-apartheid Constitutional Court inscribed the central constitutional principles of “liberty, dignity, and equality” over the entrance in their own hands.  Everything about Constitution Hill is intensely, unrelentingly personal.   Everything about it says: We endured this. We survived this. We will build from this, and with this.

I don’t think any trip to South Africa can be considered complete without a visit to Constitution Hill, if for no other reason than that here the vision of modern South Africa’s far-sighted and courageous founders shines out the brightest.  It’s painful to read the stories, and unbelievable that human beings could force other human beings to endure what prisoners at the Old Fort Prison endured, but the emotional distress you suffer as a visitor is necessary to appreciate the scale of the revolution that the Court represents.

Tags: law & justice, serious stuff

It’s been about a month, and I’ve saved up a new round of things that are unexpectedly different about South Africa:

• Squirrels: There are none.  Although that might be a good thing, after what happened with the novelty squirrels in Cape Town;
• University quads: Are all circles.  Maybe this is just at the University of Pretoria, where they are prone to strange architecture, but there isn’t a rectangular open space to be found;
• Roadside brushfires: Are free to burn, apparently; it’s perfectly common to be driving along the highway and encounter a fire in progress, or the charred ruin where one has been;
• Liquor ads in movie theatres: Mostly beer and whiskey, but the breakdown is approximately 40% trailers for upcoming movies, and 60% things that will get you drunk;
• Printer paper: Instead of your standard 8.5″ x 11″, the proportions here are 8.3″ x 11.6″.  This is way more disorienting than it should be.

Tags: unexpectedly different

Today, my colleague Susan and I engaged in that most revered of graduate student traditions: sneaking into a formal event to steal food.

In penance for our sins (or perhaps in advance payment for the free lunch we were going to make off with later), the finance director for the Centre for Human Rights asked ust to take some documents over to the administration building.  The Centre’s regular accountant, Fortune, was on leave, she explained, so we would need to take them to her replacement instead.  So, snickering into our sleeves, we trooped over to Finance & Administration to hand the forms over to Fortune’s substitute, Honest.  Who lied to us.

I am not joking with you.  The man stood there in the doorway to his office and told us that he was actually filling in for Honest, who had been called away to advise the Japanese government because of his expertise in nuclear finance.  Nuclear. Finance. (I nobly restrained myself from suggesting that his expertise was probably needed more urgently on Wall Street, where they’ve been dealing with the fallout from nuclear finance for a couple of years now.)

Moral of the story: names are hilarious.  And this free lunch is delicious.

Tags: difficult to say

Since today is the Fourth of July, it seems like a good a time to write this post, which I’ve been meaning to write for awhile.  It almost goes without saying that it’s hard to be overseas without spending some time thinking about being American, but it’s been up at the front of my mind recently because of a couple of conversations I’ve recently had with my housemates.

I’m not sure if I’ve said much about my housemates here before, so a brief introduction is probably in order.  I live with 6.5 people right now: a Dutch woman, an Austrian woman, a South African man, a French/German woman, an Egyptian/Saudi man, and two Frenchmen (technically, one of the Frenchmen lives with his father in another town, but he’s here so often we all think of him as a member of the house – hence the .5).  Having a such a diverse group is nice, because it leads to a lot of conversations that go along the lines of “Oh that’s interesting, because in [INSERT COUNTRY] we do it this way…”  Since comparative stuff is my thing, I pretty much eat it up.

In the course of these conversations, though, I am often forcefully reminded of how unique the American perspective is on a lot of things.  Sometimes it’s just in small ways (example: I am unable to communicate to anyone else how far away something is, how much flour I need to buy, my brother’s height, or the temperature outside, by virtue of America’s refusal to adopt the metric system), but often it’s about larger, less tangible issues.  At these times, I’m surprised not only by the ways that my American identity shapes my thought, but also by how strongly I react to situations where my American principles are called into question.

An example: last week, the Dutch parliament passed a law forbidding the slaughter of animals in the halal or kosher styles.  The bill was introduced by a tiny party, which holds only three seats and whose entire platform is about preventing cruelty to animals.  Therefore, it probably didn’t start out with any anti-religious ulterior motive.  (Unfortunately, the overwhelming support that it received probably had a lot more to do with tensions between the Dutch and the largely Islamic migrant community than with a societal desire to protect cows and sheep from harm.)

I’m generally in favor of preventing animal cruelty where possible, but when my Dutch friend, an ardent animal-lover, told me about the bill, I instantly became very upset.  As I explained to my friend,  a bill that bans a practice central to a significant minority religion seems anathema to the idea of a government based on the right of individuals to express their identities.  This is especially true when you consider that 1) halal/kosher slaughter is culturally as well as religiously important, and that a ban forces observant Muslims and Jews to either import their meat or become vegetarian; and 2) there are many, many practices in the commercial meat industry that are more horrific than halal/kosher slaughter.  In my opinion, this bill places unnecessary burdens on devout Muslims and Jews, both in terms of their freedom to practice their religion, and their right to food.

My Dutch friend followed my logic, but she couldn’t identify at all.  For her, practicing a religion is something you do only if you are also satisfying societal norms (such as avoiding causing pain to animals); society doesn’t bend its norms to make room for your religious expression.  Moreover, she couldn’t really put herself in the shoes of someone whose religious convictions would lead him/her to condone an act of which society generally disapproved.

Now, this is all purely anecdotal, and I don’t want to present my friend as The Voice of the Dutch Nation.  This is more a comment on my own reaction, which surprised me in its intensity.  I don’t think of myself as a particularly religious person; large holiday feasts are about as close as I come to joining the organized faithful.  But even so, I was incredibly disturbed by the idea that any group of people could be deprived of a food source and a cultural touchstone just because it involved a practice that made the majority group feel uncomfortable.  In addition, it was really brought home to me how deeply religious freedom is enshrined in our American identity but isn’t essential to the national identity of other countries, even ones we generally think of as enlightened and progressive.

I’m terribly grateful that such a law would never stand in the United States (not that some people wouldn’t try, but the courts would almost certainly strike it down).  I’m glad that religious and cultural practices, however bizarre, are permitted, as long as they don’t harm other human beings.  I’m also glad that I was able to talk about this with my friend, without whom I might never have had the opportunity to realized how much I believe in the principles that serve as the foundations of our identity.

So, as the Fourth of July winds down cold and windy in Pretoria, here’s to America, and here’s to pluralism, both at home and abroad.

Tags: americans abroad, serious stuff

This is only the first of a couple of blogs about Cape Town, which I visited last week, and which completely stole the show, as far as my trip to South Africa is concerned.  It is an amazing city, totally deserving of all the hype it gets.  I have a lot of things to say about it, most of which have nothing to do with this particular blog entry.

The animals in Cape Town, they are crazy.

Animals are probably not the first thing you hear about if you ask Google about Cape Town (I know half of you are now going to test my theory – let me know if I’m wrong).  The first things you hear about are Table Mountain, Robben Island, and the winelands.  I know this is true because every single person I have talked to about Cape Town for the last three weeks has talked to me about those things, in that order.  Nobody thought to warn me about the animals.

Our first encounter was during our (absolutely, stupendously, mind-shatteringly fabulous) drive down to the Cape of Good Hope (about which more later).  My traveling companion and I had hired a guide to take us wine tasting and down around the Cape.  He was a friendly guy with a lot of good stories to tell about his years as a guide for people like us.  Over the course of the drive, we saw several signs warning us not to feed the baboons, because they were dangerous.  Every time we passed one of those signs, our guide would nod sagely and say something to the effect of, “Before the day is out, you will believe any crazy thing I tell you about baboons.”

We didn’t see any actual baboons until just before lunch, when we caught sight of this guy eating chips on our way up to the Cape Point lighthouse:

Our guide took one look and said “He probably stole those right out of somebody’s hand.”

I am ashamed to say that we laughed at him.

A little while after that, we ate lunch at a restaurant by the lighthouse.  It was a touristy place, but in the upscale vein, so equipped with linen napkins, flower arrangements on the tables, and a lovely view out across False Bay (a misleading name, actually…oh, the irony).  I give you all these details so that you will appreciate our incredulous reaction when two baboons showed up on the balcony railing out the window, and our guide told us: “Keep an eye on those two.  They’re going to try to sneak into the restaurant.”

Sneak into the restaurant?  Come on.  How could a baboon sneak into a place like this?  Probably just having them out on the railing was giving the Health Dept. long-distance conniption fits.

But sure enough, two minutes later, one of them made a break for the door.  There was a lot of shrieking and waving of aprons on the part of the staff, the baboons decided to reconsider their agenda on top of the awning, and everyone in the restaurant had a good laugh and went back to their meal, thinking the danger had passed.

Nobody was watching the back door.

This became a problem about 10 minutes later, when it became apparent that a baboon had taken advantage of our complacency to sneak in.  And when I say “taken advantage of our complacency,” I mean that we only realized there was a baboon in the restaurant when it jumped onto a table about 8 feet away from me, stole all the sugar packets, and ran away again.

We turned astonished faces to our guide.

He nodded wisely.  “They always go for the sugar and the coffee,” he said.  (Evolution is apparently a caffeine addict.)

I was really looking forward to sharing this story with all of you as evidence of the wild times we get up to down in the Southern Hemisphere.  Little did I know that the very next day, we were going to have an even more personal crazy animal encounter, with an even more exotic animal – the North American grey squirrel.

Yes, this is going to be a story about a squirrel.  And some pigeons.  I’m really exploring the outer limits of exotic wildlife, I know.

Squirrels are not native to South Africa, and there aren’t any in most of the country (which is a weird feeling – imagine parks and university campuses without squirrels).  But apparently Cecil Rhodes (founder of De Beers, the Rhodes Scholarship, and Rhodesia) encountered some on a trip to the US and liked them so much that he brought a few home with him.  Several hundred years later, they still populated the Company’s Gardens in the heart of Cape Town.

My companion and I visit the Company’s Gardens on a pleasant Saturday afternoon.  It wasn’t too chilly, the sun was out, kids were running around, and when a squirrel came up to my companion looking winsome, it seemed perfectly natural for her bend over a little and make cutesy noises at it.

Then it jumped her.

I don’t mean that it ran up on her shoe.  It took a flying leap at her leg and ran most of the way up to her shoulder before we were able to dislodge it.  As soon as it hit the ground, it ran around and jumped her from behind.

All the fuss attracted several more squirrels and a flock of pigeons, who heard the shouting and came around to see if we looked like easy prey.  We had to practically jog through the gardens; anytime we slowed to a stroll, she got jumped. (They didn’t try to board me; I must have that look in my eye that says I’ve thought a lot about the most efficient way to skewer a squirrel.)

Now, I’ve been in public parks before.  I know how constant feeding leads certain animals to grow comfortable around humans.  I’ve been in the middle of the feathery hurricane that results when you hold a piece of bread up in the middle of a flock of geese.   Until last Saturday, however, I’d never been stalked down a path by a totally focused, and eerily coordinated, platoon of pigeons and squirrels.

We escaped with our lives, but needless to say, we were extremely wary of any wildlife we saw after that.  If I learned nothing else in Cape Town, it was that I will never feel comfortable feeding a pigeon in a park again.

Tags: animals!, difficult to say, getting around

Before I start this story, I need you to think back to the distant days of yore, when cell phones featured only in sci-fi stories and telephonic communication was conducted through the arcane technology of the Landline.

In those days, if you had just moved into a new area, and your new number had been abandoned and recycled recently, you might get a number of  callers looking for someone else.  With the advent of the cell phone, of course, this charming phenomenon has almost completely disappeared.  This is true in South Africa, just like in the US.

Except, apparently, in some extraordinary circumstances.

A week or so after I arrived here, I went to get a South African cell phone.  Since I’m not staying long enough to sign up for a contract, I just got a prepaid phone and SIM card (newsflash for the Americans: our cell phone system is as weird and unique to the rest of the world as our systems of measurement).  The phone was the cheapest model they had, and I was kind of worried that bits of it would fall off the first time I tried to call someone, but the salesman assured me it would work just fine.

A couple of days later, my SIM card was activated (it has to be registered with the government first, as part of some crime-fighting scheme I don’t understand), and a few hours after that, I was surprised to receive my first South African text message!  I say surprised, since I hadn’t given anyone my number yet.

Of course, I was more surprised after I read the message:

Your Discovery Life premium for policy ######### is in arrears.  Please pay this to keep your valuable cover.  Please ignore this if you have already paid.

I’d been running a lot of errands over the previous few days, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t signed up for a life insurance policy during that time.  I chalked it up to crossed signals on a cell phone tower somewhere, and forgot about it.

For forty-five minutes.  When I got this:

Call us for a generous settlement discount on your ABSA MCI LEGAL account. Please contact our office.

Okay, even if I had somehow accidentally purchased life insurance, I definitely hadn’t been here long enough to get into legal trouble with South Africa’s largest bank.  At this point, it seemed clear that I had inherited someone else’s phone number, and that this person was in some financial difficulties.  But who could they be?

I only had to wait until the next morning to find out (no emphasis added):

Mrs. Raghunath, NEDBANK is trying to Contact YOU. FAILURE to CONTACT NEDBANK will Now RESULT in LEGAL ACTION.

Whoa there, Mrs. Raghunath.  I was beginning to understand why she might have given up her phone number.

Over the course of the last three weeks, it has become clear that Mrs. Raghunath (and possibly several of her compatriots) are in some serious legal trouble.  We’ve moved on from the comparatively polite messages posted above to the more abrasive

CONSTANT FAILURE TO PAY YOUR CMS WOOLWORTHS CREDIT ACC MAY HAVE A NEGATIVE CREDIT REFLECTION

the ominous

Our records reflect that you have NOT made a recent payment to your overdue Standard Bank account DESPITE previous attempts to enter into a suitable payment arrangement.  To avoid legal action being taken against you as well as the possible negative effect on your credit record you MUST make a minimum payment of R150 BEFORE 27 June 2011 AND contact us to enter into a suitable repayment arrangement.

and the downright threatening

Please contact Absa Bank within 24hours to avoid your credit card account being handed over to our attorneys.

At this point, the Raghunaths (and friends Moonsamy and Grovenor) have lost their life insurance plan and had at least three credit card and their Telkom account handed over to lawyers.  As of this week, the lawyers have begun to call me, and they are very suspicious of my claims not to know any of the aforementioned people.  Today, in fact, I had to inform one persistent paralegal that I was an American and give her a detailed itinerary of my travels before she would concede that I probably wasn’t the person who had racked up nearly R7,000 (approximately $1,000 USD) in unpaid credit card charges.

The moral of the story is this: if I for some reason don’t return from Pretoria, assume that Mrs. Raghunath’s creditors have found me.  I’ll be back as soon as I work off the outstanding debt from her Woolworth’s card.

Tags: arrivals, difficult to say

One of my biggest frustrations since I’ve come to South Africa has been the difficulty with getting around to see things.  In China, there were always buses, taxis, moto-taxis, pedi-cabs, bikes, trains, subways, etc, and I thought it would be a similar situation here.  In fact, South Africa is more like the US; you really need a car to get around, especially if you want to see any cool nature.

As a result, I haven’t seen much of Pretoria since I arrived, other than the walk from my house to work or the grocery store.  This past weekend, I was determined to see something I couldn’t see at home, and to find some way to get there.  This is easier said than done, since the public transport system in Pretoria is about 85% wishful thinking (and 15% local knowledge). There are five means of transport available:

• A car: the best and most convenient option, but with obvious barriers – my American drivers license will let me drive here, but they follow the English traffic laws, and I’m not ready to brave driving on the left-hand side, even if I did have a car;
• Taxis: I have heard they have them somewhere in the city, but I’ve never seen one, and I’m told they charge European (read: exorbitant) prices;
• The train: goes to some places, but not all, and universally considered not safe, especially for women;
• The bus: runs…occasionally. Somewhere.  At some time.  No one’s really gotten around to making a schedule or route map;
• Minibuses: By far the most common transport choice for working South Africans – as long as they’re black.  Run by independent operators, minibuses look like modernized VW buses, run on defined but unpublicized routes, cost about $1.75, and drive like demons.

So, the minibus it was.

This is how you ride a minibus:  You go stand somewhere on the street.  It is better if it is a place with a wide shoulder.  (Maybe there are defined stops, but if so I have no idea how they’re marked.)  Eventually, a van comes skidding up to you, honking.  If you don’t want it, turn around and walk away – otherwise, you pull open the door, squeeze your way past the people who have inevitably filled up the first three rows, and cram yourself into a seat in back row between a skinny man in construction clothes and an elderly woman in a dress that screams “family matriarch.”  Pass your fare up to the front, and then crane your neck to see out the window.  When you see your stop coming up, ask the driver to stop.  He won’t pay any attention, but fortunately the matriarch sitting next to you has greater lung capacity than you and is accustomed to being obeyed.  She will make the driver stop.  Dismount, thanking everyone whose feet you step on on the way out, and proceed to your destination.

It’s actually pretty enjoyable.

There are risks, of course: there are plenty of stories about people getting robbed on minibuses, and there’s a standing rule that if you are a woman, you should never get on a minibus holding only men.  But if you use common sense, avoid obviously sketchy situations, and have sharp elbows, you’ll probably be fine.  The sheer novelty of having a white person on the bus deters a lot of the normal harassment I think I’d get.

The vast majority of white South Africans have never, and would never, set foot on a minibus.  When my friend and I were waiting for the bus on the side of the road, the white people driving by gave me the most appalled looks I have ever received from other human beings (and for those of you who know me well, you know that I’m no stranger to appalled looks).  I’m talking about 90-degree head turns, jaws hanging open, eyes wide as if they could see rapists and murders creeping up behind us at that very moment.  It was pretty clear that some of them hadn’t seen anything so horrifying since apartheid ended.

Needless to say, nothing bad happened.  My friend and I rode the minibus to the National Botanical Gardens, had a lovely afternoon looking at crazy plants, and rode the minibus back.  I probably wouldn’t ride the minibus alone, and I definitely wouldn’t ride it after dark (but then, nothing in Pretoria is safe after dark for a woman here), but it’s nice to feel like I can get out and see something outside my immediate neighborhood.

Next time…how I broke the South African cell phone network.

Tags: getting around, race

In many ways, South Africa – or Pretoria, at least – feels very much like the US.  There are modern grocery stores, people drive everywhere, English is the common language (since my first stint abroad was in Spain, and my following trips were to Asia, I’ve never been abroad where they speak English before – it’s a little weird), etc.  However, all these similarities mean that when something is different, it stands out.  There are some obvious ones:

• Traffic: follows the British model, which is to say that everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.  I’m still learning to look in the right direction when crossing the street, which makes walking to work every day an adventure.
• Temperature: There is no central heating.  This is sad for me.

And then there are some…more quirky difference:

• Street parking: Nonexistent.  Fortunately, the curbs are low, so the sidewalk works just as well.
• Pedestrians: More commonly found in the middle of the road than the sidewalk, probably as a result of the creative parking situation.
• Sunglasses: Nobody wears them, even though it’s sunny 29 days out of every 30.
• Entree: A word that means “appetizer” on menus here.
• Pub crawls: Done on horseback, for some reason.  The horses don’t participate in the actual drinking, obviously.

I’m sure this list will only grow, as things progress here.  My goal for the weekend is to get out of my small guesthouse-university-grocery store bubble, so hopefully I will have some truly different things to report.

Tags: unexpectedly different

As I prepared to come to South Africa, one of the things I most anticipated observing was the way South Africans handled the issue of race.  I’m fairly familiar with the history of apartheid and its aftermath, but my understanding and perceptions are based on books and articles – secondhand, at best.  In addition, I’m sure I approach race in a fundamentally American way, born out of slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and affirmative action.  I knew that race had been a defining element of South Africa as a country, but I didn’t know how it would affect the daily life of South Africans today.

Before I go any further, I just want to point out that I’ve been here for less than a week, and that even if I lived here for a  decade I probably wouldn’t be able to just explain what race means to South Africans.  This post is likely just the first of my musings on this subject.  My second caveat is that South Africa is a diverse nation full of opinionated people, and so my observations should be taken as reflections of those people I’ve talked to, not as an expression of national, local, or even racial opinion.  Finally, I’m living in Pretoria, which is a fairly conservative part of South Africa dominated by Afrikaaners, and this will shape the conversations I have.

With that said…

My very first impression is that race is a much more socially acceptable topic here than in the US.  People are much more willing to talk about “the blacks” or “the white South Africans” collectively than I think most Americans would be about our own ethno-racial groups.  This doesn’t mean that people are going around making disparaging remarks all the time.   There’s just none of the shame or guilt I would expect from similar statements made by Americans; people here don’t feel the need to surround their pronouncements with caveats (see above) or assurances that they really do think everyone is a good person deep down inside.  Sometimes it shocks me when someone comes out with a blunt statement, but mostly it’s refreshing to have a conversation about race where no one is trying to cover their own ass.

There are five categories that seem to capture South Africans’ conception of their own diversity: black, white South African of British descent, Afrikaaner, Indian, and colored.  Black is a catch-all, obviously, but it is generally used to refer to either all black South Africans, or to the local black indigenous population (Xhosa, Zulu, etc.).  The distinction between white South Africans of British descent and Afrikaaners is something I hadn’t really thought about before I came here, but it’s more complicated and political than I would have imagined.  There is a substantial population of Indian descent in South Africa, although I have yet to see very many in the part of Pretoria where I live.  And finally, the coloreds are people with mixed ancestry (and yes, the casual use of that term make me very uncomfortable).  My friends here tell me that there is a movement to call these people “colorful” or “dual heritage” instead of the loaded word “colored,” but I haven’t actually heard anyone use the less pejorative terms in casual conversation.

One of the things that I think has been most interesting so far is the way race and language are intertwined.  South Africa has 11 official languages, and the language(s) you speak really define how you interact in South African society.  Everybody learns at least two languages in school – English is the first language, and the second language must also be an official South African language (the choice of which is usually dependent on location).  Students can also choose to study an “international language” such as French or Spanish for their third language, but in order to graduate from high school, you must be able to write at a fairly sophisticated level in at least two of the official languages.

This seems like a pretty good system on its face, but there’s a stark political undercurrent.  A student’s second official language choice seems to be pretty binary – either you learn one of the local “black” languages, or you learn Afrikaans.  Studying Afrikaans is a political and economic as well as an academic choice.  Many white South Africans of British descent learn English as their native language, but never learn any Afrikaans.  My friend Mzi, quoted in the title of this post, has told me that if a more conservative kind of Afrikaaner (the kind we have a lot of in Pretoria) encounters a white person who doesn’t speak Afrikaans, they will treat them the same way they would treat a black South African or an Indian.  I haven’t heard that it goes the other way, but in every conversation I’ve had about race, my companions have singled out Afrikaaners, and have emphasized Afrikaans as a thing that sets them apart from the rest of South Africa.

I can already tell that one of the main challenges of this blog is going to be keeping the posts to a manageable length, so I’ll stop there.  I have some other observations about race and language, but I’m going to see if I can learn more before I write about them.  I start work tomorrow, so you can probably anticipate my impressions on South African office culture in the near future.

Tags: half-baked ideas, language, race, serious stuff