Becoming More and Less American

Ok. Dang. A lot has happened in the past month. Sorry that it’s actually been that long, but for a while I had actually thought nothing had happened without realizing it. Therefore, I think for the sake of everyone’s sanity (but mainly mine as well as my hands/wrists from typing so much recently [I had a 3,000 word {10 page} paper due today that I basically researched and wrote in the past 24 hours]), I’m going to break up the weeks preceding Spring Break (I never know whether or not to capitalize this holiest of weeks – so I do anyway) and Spring Break itself.

Where to begin? I can’t remember, so I’m going to cheat and take a quick peek in my personal journal and remind myself exactly what happened with my life in the month of September that is share-worthy for the blogosphere.

For starters, I realized what I really want in the person I want to share the rest of my life with. For some, they’ve known forever. For others, it’s an ongoing process. Still others have already found that person. Without going into a lot of sappy details, I’ll suffice to say that sometimes bad or awkward experiences with other people (and spending time reflecting with real friends and yourself about those experiences) are what truly help you to discover who you really are and what you really want.

On the 11^th, my friend Carmen and I went to Menlyn Mall in a different area of Pretoria just to kill a Saturday (fun fact: we live in the Hatfield district and Menlyn Mall is in the Menlyn district). I had been to this mall before but we went into some different stores this time. The main store and focus of this story is one that I can’t recollect the name of. Just know that it was rather Walmart-esque: high ceilings, fluorescent lighting accompanied by skylights, wide aisles, a grocery and home section, entirely too much floorspace and way too many displays, etc. (Bear with me. This is, in fact, going somewhere.) You’d think that as an American, this store would be somewhat of a comfort. A shelter. A place to get lost in and one in which to get all your shopping done. I prefer Target, but hey. Sometimes Walmart is just more convenient. Shut up. You know you go to big box stores, too. Anyway, you’d think I’d be comfortable here. WRONG. I started flipping out after about 4.75 minutes (roughly) in that place. It was huge, full of artificial and natural lighting, and wide aisles. I don’t know what happened but in the past couple of months here, my brain chemistry has changed or something. I needed out. I left Carmen to her shoe shopping and went back out to the main section of the mall where I could breathe in a cramped, darker space again. Honestly, I still don’t know what happened with me in there. What the hell, Africa? Hopefully this was either a one-time thing or something I won’t take home with me.

Something else has happened to me in the past three months in South Africa. I’ve become an American. Part of me is ashamed to admit this, but I’ve begun openly defending my country in class. We get ragged on for our foreign policy all. the. time. here. So, with my fellow once non-patriotic Sooner, Brooke, I have begun discussing how much I love America and how sometimes our actions are justified. If you know me at all, well… I guess now you don’t. In fact, in the paper I turned in today regarding the International Criminal Court and Africa’s role therein, I scantly defended America’s un-signing of the Rome Statue.

Background: the Rome Statue was the treaty-based document that founded the ICC after being ratified by 120 countries. On December 31^st, 2000, the Clinton administration actually signed the Statue, effectively submitting the US to ICC jurisdiction, but in 2002, the Bush administration “unsigned,” the Statue under Article 124 (right before the invasion of Iraq which was illegal under international law, mind you).

Anyway, a main critique by African nations of the ICC is that Bush should be indicted for Iraq. Buuuuut I defended my country, citing the legal (though still questionable) nullification of the Statue. This isn’t the only instance in which I’ve defended the US recently, but it is the most recent and freshest in my mind. Therefore you got to read about it. It just gets somewhat tiring hearing about how evil we are all the time. I may not agree with all of our foreign policies (this is an understatement), but sometimes they actually can be legally or strategically justified (though almost never morally). Don’t worry, though. No Huckabee or Bush-like jingoism will ever come from this American (see Huckabee’s statement defending American exceptionalism and tell me he’s not a jingoist). Because I am not my country. I am merely one of its citizens.

In addition to these learning experiences, I have had experiences with learning. We started tutoring kids at the school in Mamelodi this month, and we all love it thus far. We each have a handful of kids that we were assigned the first week and are responsible for helping with reading every Wednesday afternoon. I received four girls, each in fifth grade. The first week we made rainmakers. Cute, but the kids weren’t really learning anything from it. The second week, we arrived to a locked library (where all them learnin’s be occurin’). We sat outside for a while, playing hand games like “Down by the banks,” (and other African hand games I had never heard of but loved anyway) till we received some books. Problem? They were in Afrikaans. Which is basically useless if you’re not Afrikaner. These children could read, write, and speak in Zulu perfectly fine, but needed to work on English, which is the language of choice at high school (school is optional after grade nine in this country) and university. One of my girls pulled out a workbook they had been using, and we began reading that. Or so I thought. I soon realized that the girls had actually just memorized parts of the book, as when I asked them to read sentences one at a time from a page of my choosing, one of the girls was completely clueless. When I asked her to sound out ‘house,’ asking what sound ‘h’ made, she had no idea. Another got it after some time, and the two others are at their level. These are fifth graders, mind you. Brooke, Madison, Carmen, and Clauida (the other exchange students volunteering at the school) all had similar problems. All of these kids are at completely different levels, yet all are in the same grade. And when I say different levels, I mean some are at a fifth grade level and some don’t know what vowels and consonants are or what sounds they make. Maybe South Africa just isn’t Hooked on Phonics? To me, learning to read and write phonetically and assessing and separating kids based on achievement level just makes more sense. But maybe that’s because it’s just what I grew up with.

Anyway, after talking to the other volunteers/students my age, I don’t think this kids have learning disabilities or anything. What I do think is that the South African education system needs some serious reform. This assessment is not based on two one day weeks of tutoring. It is based on collective discussion of experiences at the school in Mamelodi and at the University of Pretoria.

Well, that was a lot longer than I intended it to be. Sorry if it’s too boring. I’ve become quite the talker/typer when blogging. For my next entry? Spring Break: long car rides through the beautiful South African countryside, bungee jumping, ostrich riding, shark watching, Table Mountain, Cape of Good Hope, and close encounters with wild baboons and penguins. Now to leave you with that cliffhanger for a few days while I type up a scholarship application and rest my brain.