My Life Update

Hello again! Sorry it has been a while since my last posts, I’m kind of getting caught up in my life here. It doesn’t feel like a vacation anymore, it really feels like I live in South Africa. I’m figuring out this culture slowly and I really do love a lot of what SA has to offer. Everyone is so honest and open to talking about race and foreigners and their culture (whether its praise or disgust); it’s awesome. But there are definitely aspects of this culture that really irritate me. First off, in my Understanding Violence class we talk a lot about “xenophobia”, which is a term used to describe the tendency to discriminate against foreigners. I definitely feel a lot of that, they assume that Americans walk around with a sense of superiority. That makes me laugh because that is probably the last emotion running through my head as I walk through campus. Racism is definitely a part of that as well, I get these intense stares from mostly older black people here. They won’t look at my face, they’ll look at my body as if I can’t see them doing it, and they make a face of pure disgust. Every time this happens, I look down at my shirt thinking I spilled something nasty on it. Sometimes it gets really hard to deal with because I just want to scream “I came to your country to learn about this awesome culture and society, I want to be here, I love it here, and I’m taking Zulu! I love your language!” But I just smile and say hello. And one more aspect here that is getting increasingly irritating is the lack of efficiency. It’s kind of cool because it makes everyone relax and not take things too seriously. But sometimes when I really need something done and a teacher is “out of office” for the day, it really messes things up. It’s kind of just a generally slower pace around here, I’ll explain with a perfect example of how things just don’t work when I tell you about my most recent weekend. So those two things are the only things I’ve learned to dislike about South Africa, but at the same time I love it because it is something I would never discover in the U.S. I’ve also adapted an attitude for dealing with the racism: If I come across a rude person, I just take him/her as just that; a rude person. I have stopped linking those faces with the color of my skin because that will just take away so many opportunities to meet wonderful, nice, welcoming black people.

I am obsessed with my Zulu class. It’s about a 15 person class, most are South Africans from different provinces who speak a different language. SA has over 10 official languages I think! Some of these people pick it up in a snap, as they speak a different but very similar language to Zulu. A couple other people are Afrikaans, which is a Dutch based language and is what most of the white people here speak. It is not a very pretty language and I’m really glad to be learning Zulu instead. Sawubona umama, usaphila? (Hello mom, how are you?) It’s a pretty easy language to pick up on, the structure is very simple. I’m absolutely loving it! So fun to talk with my Zulu friends about it, they see it as a very respectful thing that I’m doing which is awesome! That’s another thing about SA culture I love; respect, loyalty and pride are HUGE here. “Ngifunda isiZulu eThekwini” I am studying Zulu in Durban!

This past weekend a couple of us traveled to Drakensburg, right near Lesotho. We kept joking the whole trip that we were on the set of the Lion King. It was so nice to get away from Durban for a little and into a more rural look into Africa. It was amazing to be there. We stayed at a hostel at the base of the Drakensburg mountains and were surrounded by miles of open, flat fields. I took a bunch of pictures but none of them seemed to do this place justice. It just felt so calming being surrounded by nothing but nature. This place was so much in the middle of no where that we actually got stuck there for an extra night. The bus only runs at certain times and wouldn’t take payment over the phone/internet, so we had to take the bus a day later then we originally wanted. The day we wanted to leave things like this kept happening. We had to pay in cash but none of us took out cash, because it’s so stupid to travel with a bunch of cash. The nearest ATM was 3 kilometers away, and there just happened to be a massive wind storm outside. But we took it as an adventure, rented a couple bikes and took off. The dry, strong, sandy wind was extremely difficult to bike through, but we had no other choice. About an hour later we got to the little shop in town and the machine says “out of order, see attendant”. We ask the owner and she says “oh, right, the machine is out of money.” This is what I referenced earlier in the blog about how things just shut off or break and there’s no solution to fix it. So that day actually turned out to be hilarious, if we were more uptight it would have been a disaster but we just had a comical outlook. We definitely learned a lot this trip, we can’t be as spontaneous as we would love to be, because getting stuck in the middle of South Africa wasn’t exactly ideal. But everything worked out and it ended up being a very successful trip! Next time we travel there we plan to go into Lesotho, we just didn’t have the money to spend on that trip this time.

We’ve been spending some time at the township that our friends Tubs and Thando are from. At first it was not really scary but more embarrassing. We were clearly out of place and pretty uncomfortable, but our friends are so welcoming and fun about the whole thing. We went to a house party one night and at the end of the night the cops showed up (guess the cops crashing parties is a universal thing!). But they were terrifying. We were outside waiting for a ride home when they came, about 2 cars of them came and they all had guns, aimed! I don’t know anything about guns, but these weren’t hand guns they looked more like shotguns, they were slung over their shoulders. One of them posted up next to the gate to the house and had his gun positioned towards the crowd!! My heart was pounding watching this, which is funny because aren’t cops supposed to make me feel safe? But our friends explained to us that there was nothing to worry about. It was a really fun night!

Sorry this one was so long, didn’t realize how much I had to write about!! More soon I promise! Thanks for following

Classes!

Today was my first day of classes and it was interesting, mostly uncomfortable and a little scary, but definitely interesting. Since registration didn’t happen on the day it was supposed to, I went to my classes unregistered. Which wasn’t a problem except that it was really difficult to find the classes I wanted to sign up for. Today I went to my psychology classes: Community Psychology, Youth Risk and Intervention, and Understanding Violence in South Africa. Community Psychology was pretty boring, I’m kind of annoyed that I have to take classes that get me credit at home because what’s the point of studying abroad if I’m just taking classes that I can take at Miami? But I try not to think of it that way and sign up for the most interesting classes possible. My Youth Risk class didn’t seem very interesting today but hopefully it will get a little better; it will focus a lot on how and why adolescence get them into at risk events (unprotected sex, drug abuse, violence). It seems like it will focus a lot on HIV/AIDS because that is one of South Africa’s major problems. It’s really difficult because I love participating in class; one of my least favorite feelings in the entire world is when a teacher asks a question and not one student answers. So in my Youth Risk class the teacher kept asking questions that no one would answer and I so badly wanted to answer, but I felt so nervous. I know hat you guys are thinking, I should just be myself and participate in these classes but it’s scary as hell!! I’m the only white girl in most of these classes and I’m terrified for them to hear my accent and assume all these horrible things about American students. One of the questions she asked was “what does social well-being mean?” and no one answered! Can you believe it, such a simple question. So I raised my hand and answered to have social well-being is to surround yourself with a supportive, happy community/social structure. The answer was fine but my heart just about stopped mid sentence when the entire class turned around and looked at me, because of my accent. I can’t really adequately describe how scary it was. I know they weren’t judging me but just to know that for that time every single person in that class was thinking about me and looking at me, scary scary scary!! So I was kind of shaken up, I know I’ll participate again soon but maybe I’ll make some friends first and get to know the teacher before that happens.
For the last class of the day I had Understanding Violence in South Africa. And this will hands down be my favorite class. I don’t even care if it doesn’t transfer, what I learn and experience in this class will be enough to call my study abroad experience a success. He started out this class talking about how the subject matter doesn’t appeal to everyone, and he wants to know what we’re getting ourselves into. I mean, “Understanding Violence in South Africa”, I’m preparing myself for the worst. He starts a discussion about what violence is and we talk about rape on campus and he asks us what he thinks the percentage of female students who get raped is and the lowest percentage someone called out was 20%...the lowest!!! Someone said 70%! I just sat there in awe. The class dismissed the 70% pretty quickly, but I was astounded that the lowest estimate was 1 in 5 girls. It’s just really interesting to hear about all of this, and how I am sitting there trying not to have my eyeballs pop out of my head, growing up in Ross and then going to college in small town Ohio. But I had to tell myself during this whole class this is exactly the reason I chose South Africa. I wanted to step outside of my comfort zone and see how other cultures experience life. My peers here have grown up in South Africa, these statistics aren’t surprising to any of them. As if that question wasn’t eye opening enough, the next question asked was “How many of you have been held to gunpoint with your life threatened?” and TEN people raised their hands!!! It’s about an 80 person class!!! So crazy, I can’t really explain what it felt like to be in that room at that moment but I’ll try. I have never felt more far away from home but it wasn’t a bad feeling, I felt like I had instantly become more open minded and a wiser person. If I had ever come close to being raped or held to gun point (I’m so sorry to put that image in your heads but this is what was going through my head in my class today!) I can’t imagine my life ever being the same, yet these people who I will soon call my friends have experienced just that and it’s not an unlikely experience to have growing up in this country. It kind of blew my mind, it will be really interesting talking openly about my experience (or lack their of) with violence in America, because I have been fortunate enough to grow up in safe communities. Classes were scary but such a great experience, I can not wait to learn more. I’m also trying to get into a Zulu class, I would love to learn some Zulu so I can figure out what my Zulu friends are saying about me in front of my face!

On a happier note, we met our president, Q (her name is actually a Zulu name that starts with a “click” but I can’t pronounce it!) of our Residence Hall today and she invited us to a brie (I mentioned earlier, it’s like an American BBQ 2.0) that she is throwing this Saturday! She’s so sweet and welcoming, she talked to us about race here. It’s still very much segregated, walking around campus it’s crazy to see how segregated the groups are. Whites hang out with whites, blacks with blacks, and Indians with Indians. It’s a weird concept because I know there is very much still a feel for racism in America but it’s not so openly admitted, or talked about. Q told us that everyone is very open to meet international students, its just more of the locals that segregate themselves. White South Africans would love to meet us and hang out with us but would give our black South African friends weird looks if we ever tried to hang out all together. Which is a concept that almost brought me to tears. I absolutely love this loud, flamboyant, fun South African culture and they seem so forward in so many aspects except this race thing, which is understandable once you think about when the Apartheid ended. In America the civil rights movement occurred half a century ago, here its so fresh in everyone’s world its too hard to let go of so quickly. Which I understand, I just hate it. Q told us to keep an open mind, and that “some people you meet will try to close it, but keep that thing open!” I look forward to all these obstacles I’m about to face, and have started to face, because I really think I’ll grow so much from them!!