Two and seventeen.

Those are the magic numbers as of 11:21AM GMT+2, Wednesday, November 24th, 2010. Two days until I say goodbye to Pretoria and hello to Swaziland and seventeen days until I say hello to America and everyone I love (give or take a few days).

My time here has been everything I wanted and (this makes sense in my mind) more and less. It’s hard to believe that after my last exam (they call finals exams here and mid-terms are tests) on Friday, I will have just a few hours in Pretoria before a bus full of people I don’t yet know whisks me away to Swaziland where I will be volunteering in the town of Belembu for two weeks. My fellow Sooners/Americans Brooke and Madison left almost a week ago and with the exception of Carmen and some others, most of the other international students have left as well. It’s hard to believe, actually. Everyone has these analogies but it really does seem like just recently all the exchange students were meeting each other and having our first braai. It also doesn’t seem like our trip to Durban was three months ago and our attempt at Swaziland and epic spring break were months ago.

Brooke and Madison are home, and while I’d like to be, I definitely don’t want to be at the same time. I feel like I have unfinished business here (and I’m fairly certain those feelings aren’t from finals and having signed up for Swazi). I’m someone who can’t sit still. Long and short term. I want to go home but am also so excited for next semester in Turkey. After that I have two years at OU that I plan on enjoying thoroughly. I’m getting more homesick and more comfortable here at the same time. Walking on the right hand side of the sidewalk feels wrong now. Seriously, I tried it today and my brain was like “Wait. What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?” I’m used to walking everywhere and have adopted “Howzit,” “is it,” “as well,” (instead of too) and other mannerisms like a thumbs up as a greeting and am getting better at the extended handshakes people like to give here (I’ll shake your hand like a South African when I see you in ‘Murrica). There’s the deeper cultural stuff that I’m also accustomed to now but I’d rather tell you about that in person.

I have learned so much here, but I’d like to share all the good, deep things with you all in person when I get back. Even though I already have blogged about some of them before. If you’re reading this, I want to see you when I get back. If you’re not, I want to as well. I start packing today. Packing? Really? That doesn’t seem right. Granted it’s not to get on a plane, but I will probably never see this room again. It just seems weird. Other things that are weird: the weather here is becoming increasingly Oklahoman. Big storms and cloud cover. It’s summer and the rainy season but South Africa seems to want to have its transitions to try and re-acclimate me to Oklahoma weather. I’m fine with that.

I’m sorry this post was short and jumpy, but I’m sleep deprived from finals and my thoughts are going everywhere in preparing for Swazi and going home. This will probably be my last post until February. See you in 17 days or just a few more? Good.

This is strictly political (and historical).

I can’t believe I’m writing this after I literally just got back from writing that exam, but here it is. This post relates to some things I’ve learned in my South African class on apartheid. Yes, I’m about to relate aspects of apartheid with ongoing political issues in the US. I’ve considered several potential reactions to this post that include but are not limited to: outrage, agreement, empowerment, enlightenment, or any combination of the above.

As I studied and read for my Apartheid final last night, I couldn’t help but draw several parallels with ongoing political issues in the US. With regard to social apartheid in informal relations (sex) between ethnicities, I drew a parallel to women’s health in the US and with regard to petty apartheid (the segregation of waiting rooms, elevators, etc.), I drew a parallel to marriage equality. First, social apartheid and women’s health.

It should be noted that in the apartheid system, there were various pieces that affected the populations including the social, governmental, educational, territorial, and other aspects. Social apartheid mainly sought to legislate the private lives of South Africans and safeguard the “racial integrity” of whites. In addition to the prohibition of mixed marriages which was passed by law in 1949, the government under the National Party passed the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which was an extension of a 1927 law which forbade informal relations between blacks and whites. The 1950 Amendment extended that law to include interactions between ethnicities (blacks, whites, coloureds (that’s actually not insensitive/derogatory here), Indians, etc.). According to one of my books,

“There was a weak type of Italian immigrant on the mines of the West Rand, declared one delegate to the Transvaal congress of the National Party, who were particularly mischievous. To tantalise the police, they ‘walked through parks on Sundays arm-in-arm with Native women, and the police were powerless to act.’ Though Minister of Justice, Swart, found mixed associations disgusting and had in fact addressed a meeting on the issue in Hyde Park 30 years previously, there was little more he could do. Unfortunately, he said, it was not practicable by law to prohibit white and black consorting other than what had already been done under the Mixed Marriages and Immorality Acts. ‘To do so would be to land yourself in a maze, where you would not know what to prohibit and what not to prohibit.’”

Here’s where the parallel comes in. The debates between pro-life and pro-choice advocates are that one wants to protect the life of an unborn fetus and the other side wants to protect the rights and health of the woman, respectively. You’ll probably be able to guess my opinion after I make my arguments, but here goes nothing anyway. The parallel is that “you would not know what to prohibit and what not to prohibit” with regard to abortion. Pro-lifers advocate the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion decades ago. Most pro-life advocates if asked, wouldn’t know what to make illegal or what punishments to establish if their goals were realized. Arguments I’ve heard include punishing the woman or punishing the doctor (really the only options I can see) if an abortion is performed. Will this really solve the problem and stop abortions from happening? Probably not. With this desired prohibition comes the problems that came before Roe v. Wade. These problems would undoubtedly once again present themselves if pro-lifers had their way. So, just as with the “problem” in South Africa, what do you prohibit and what do you not prohibit? Maybe this was a stretch caused by my ongoing sleep deprivation, but there’s my two cents regarding social apartheid and abortion.

On to petty apartheid and marriage equality. Petty apartheid (compare with grand apartheid [economic, educational, territorial]) involves well, the petty aspect of apartheid: segregation of water fountains, waiting rooms, train cars, etc. In 1949, the National Party government

“sought to impose separation of the public facilities used by whites and people of colour… the Railways and Harbours Act was passed which empowered the government to reserve train accommodation for the exclusive use of persons belonging to a particular racial group. The act was challenged in court. In Rex v Abdurahman in 1950 the appellate division held that a regulation which reserved a portion of all trains for whites but did not restrict them to those sections led to ‘partiality and inequality in treatment’ which was not authorised by the Railways Act of 1916.”

“Partiality and inequality in treatment”. Remind you of separate but equal? Women’s suffrage? The Civil Rights movement? How about the ongoing struggle by the LGBTQ community? Obviously the LBGTQ community isn’t as oppressed as non-whites were under apartheid or women or blacks were in the US were in their fights, but the key phrase here is “partiality and inequality in treatment.” I’m going to let you do most of the thinking for yourself on this with regard to that phrase and the LGBT community but let me say a few things first. America is not a theocracy. In fact, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” The only argument against marriage equality in the US I’ve ever heard of are religious in nature. Additionally, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, federally non-recognized social security benefits between spouses, and harassment, violence and employment non-protection, among other things against LGBT people is further evidence of “partiality and inequality in treatment.” Yes, that phrase came out of a South African court decision but whatever happened to “liberty and justice for all”?

So there’s my South African learnin’ being applied to real life situations in the US. I guess I don’t have much else to say other than to promote the other post I’m about to write and publish today that follows this one. Hopefully I didn’t piss anyone off too much. But I warned you.

Source (yeah, I’m bein’ all academic n’stuff on my blog, so what?):

Liebenberg, B.J. & S.B. Spies (eds.), South Africa in the 20^th century, pp. 322-24

(Dis)organization

Before I get to the blog/event stuff, I’m going to get a little personal here. (Please feel free to skip over this and on to the next paragraph.) When in doubt, I distract myself. I get online, wasting my air time, I start texting people at home, I try (and fail) to read a book, I Wikipedia stuff I don’t know about but am interested in, I take a shower or eat. But in today’s instance, I write a blog. Sometimes I doubt myself. I doubt who I am as a person, and why anyone would want to form and maintain a relationship with me. These thoughts quickly breeze over and I segue into the future. Will I be forever alone? The phrase “there are plenty of fish in the sea,” is to me, frankly, bullshit. How many people in the world (not even the world, as I realistically don’t have access to the world at large – really only where I live, so, in this case, Tulsa and Norman) will I be attracted to on a spiritual, emotional, romantic, and physical level and will they in turn be attracted back on these levels? And when these handful or less of people come along, will we be able to maintain something… Forever? Maybe I think about the future too much. I need to live in the present. But I’ve gotten to the chronological and emotional age where settling down sounds nice, so long as that someone and I will be able to continue to have fun and travel together with our potential family. By no means am I actively looking for someone thinking “holy shit, my time (for finding someone) is almost over.” I realize that at twenty-one I am in the prime of my life, but it’d be nice to have some kind of reassurance. Right now, my reassurance is with The Fray.

Anyway, now that that’s out of my system (sorry for that public display of humanness, but I do feel better – sometimes it takes talking to someone else my own age who feels the same and has the same worries, and sometimes it helps to just type it out for a blog when nobody around the world is online and hope people skip over it) I can move on to event stuff. I’ve decided to skip over the rest of spring break, realizing my laziness in that a week trip took me over a month to blog about and another weekend trip didn’t even make it into my personal journal. In fact, it’s been almost a month since I’ve written anything in my journal. I finished the one my friend Jami gave me before I left, wrote some pages in a new South Africa-bought one, and quit – pathetic. Life moves on and so will this blog.

So, earlier this week my friend Mark from OU who’s in SA independently now texted me asking if Brooke and I and the other international students would want to volunteer at a boys’ shelter this weekend. The shelter had organized with about eight other shelters in the area to put together a sports day for all the kids. Having nothing else to do Saturday morning and loving children, we said yes. We were picked up about a half hour later than expected (what they say about African time is true) and headed to the home on the southwest side of the city. We arrived to a field full of kids, boys and girls alike, just kinda sitting around in their own groups while we waited for instruction. We all stood around until we were told to move into the gym for orientation. Several people spoke about the day while some of the kids from the shelter in Pretoria that Mark knew played with Brooke and I in the back of the auditorium. Or rather, played with our phones. After the speaking and during the phone-playing, a traditional African song and dance was performed by two of the shelters’ kids. I love it when I get to see traditional African stuff performed. It reminds me that I really am in South Africa, on the African continent, and not in a completely Westernized part of the world.

This is Mesach. He pretty much sat on my lap and played with my phone during the whole orientation.

After orientation and the performance, we moved back outside and, again, waited around for about a half hour while the coordinators of each shelter collaborated on what exactly to do. A schedule had been typed up, but we were already an hour behind and nothing had really been organized. Brooke and I talked about life here and at home, about African (dis)organization, and compared cultures. After awhile, cones for track and field races were set up and Brooke and I decided it was time to move off of the field. We took a seat on the bleachers and watched a couple of races while simultaneously observing an adorable little Indian boy cuddle with a dog. It was probably only in the mid-80’s outside, but we were also in the African sun (which shines so differently and much more intensely here) and I felt myself starting to burn. I moved to the shade.

After a quick sit and cool-down, the lady “in charge” of the whole event came over to me and asked if I could supervise traditional games and chess which was being played back in the auditorium. Chess? Kids are interested in chess? No way. I don’t want to do chess. Chess is boring. Kids need to run around. Also, chess = a traditional game? Not really. Whatever. I had nothing else to do, agreed and followed her inside. There was one chess set and about twenty-five older boys who wanted to play. There was supposed to be a competition going but with only one set and so many competitors, I could already tell this was going nowhere fast. So this lady asked the other adults in the room what was going on and after a good five minutes of conversation we finally decided on something. Kind of. She counted kids interested (twenty-four) and coordinators (adults – four) and assigned six kids to each coordinator. “Register these children for chess,” she said. I was confused. Register them? This is a one person job, tops. “Oh, and we have these,” she said, picking up a grocery bag with about a dozen tennis balls in them. “Can you do anything with these?” “Wall Ball,” I thought. But I didn’t know how to play Wall Ball. I always just observed on the playground in elementary school. My friends and I were the ones who stood around and talked during recess. (I’ve always been a little different, I suppose.) “I don’t know if I can do anything with these, I’m sorry.” I said to her. She told me to get creative and that she would go get a marker so that I could label the tennis balls as king, knight, pawn, etc. What? 12ish tennis balls + no giant tennis-ball-chess-board + sixteen pieces in a real game = chess tournament? DOES NOT COMPUTE. She left and I pulled out the schedule I had been given earlier to start writing names down for registration, but had no pen. The kids around me (and ones with the other adults) began to disperse back to observing the chess game at hand. I also left but in search for Brooke, my fellow American who possibly knew how to play Wall Ball, wanting to be able to do something with the tennis balls turned chess pieces I had been shown.

I found Brooke near the shade tree I had sat by before I was called to do nothing and asked her if she knew how to play Wall Ball. “No, I used to in elementary but don’t remember how anymore,” she said. I felt a little defeated but was glad to be back outside. Brooke and I talked and played with some of the kids (Mesach, and some others. It should be noted that Meshach is from DRC and also has brothers named Shadrach and Abednego.) while waiting on something do to, of which that something never materialized. As I lugged some of the kids around on my back and tossed them into the air, I had flashbacks to childhood at my grandparents’ house in Oklahoma City and my cousins and I being launched into the deep end of the pool by my dad and uncles. I can’t wait to be able to do that with my own kids some day. After some play, a dance, and some more lounging, it was time to head back, as most of us international students had other stuff to do that day. We said goodbye to the kids and seven of us piled into two cars of Mark’s friends, and headed back to Tuks.

Abednego and me

While we literally did nothing to help out the whole time we were there (with the exception of Anna and Liu, who cut vegetables for lunch in the kitchen while we were outside), I’m so glad I went. I loved being with the kids and experiencing the ridiculousness of the (dis)organization at hand. The one thing I’ll miss about this place when I return home in a little over a month is the entertainment value of the society. That may sound nationalistic, but I truly to love the differences. And deep down, the disorganization.

Spring Break '10, part II - part II

Ok, so I’ll have to admit that the reason that updates aren’t coming in frequently is due to my laziness, not a lack of experiences. With that said, I would like to continue to recount my spring break adventures. (Which were almost a month ago, which really doesn’t seem possible. Time really does fly.)

So, after our bridge jumping adventure, we continued along the southern coast, The Garden Route, and up through the mountains to the quaint little town of Oudtshoorn. The Garden Route was perhaps one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in South Africa. We ended up at the most beautiful hostel I’ve yet to stay in and topped it off with a delicious Italian meal. One of the most perfect days in my life, to be sure.

The following day, the 26^th, we had a nice breakfast at a B&B and proceeded to an ostrich farm on which ostrich riding was the highlight. First we had a tour of the farm, feather duster factory, the hatcheries, and saw the farm’s two prized pygmy ostriches. After that, it was over to the fields and the riding. First of all, let me start by saying that ostriches are terrifying close up. To put it in Madison’s words, “They have velociraptor eyes!” They really do. Not to mention their freaky three-toed-feet and giant talon-like fingernail on the middle finger. Anyway, once we all sat on William the Ostrich for pictures and just to get comfortable, “saddles” were added to others to ride (saddles = pieces of tarp). Jami and Brooke went first, squealing with delight and fear the whole time. Next it was my turn. I got on, legs wrapped around front, held this dinosaur-bird’s freaky talon/arm/wing and I was off. The guys running the place had to chase him around to get him to run, but it was fun anyway. I unconsciously remember hearing “Hold on! Don’t lose your balance!” “I’m doing great!” I thought to myself. But soon I had lost my balance and was toppling forward as my ostrich rounded a corner. Hitting the ground wasn’t painful at all, but being stepped on by the ostrich that was behind mine was. I remember seeing it come at me and thinking “That thing’s talon/fingernail is going to tear my fleshy leg apart.” Later, checking myself in the bathroom, I realized that it really only left my pants a little dirty, tore my underwear, and left my inner thigh in a lot of pain. Days later, I would realize the extent of that step in seeing a pink, purple, and black bruise grow to the size of both of my hands. Whatever. I still rode an ostrich.

On Monday we (and by we, I mean Madison) drove from Oudtshoorn to Cape Town, leaving at around 6 and arriving at noon. We checked into our hostel, went in search of lunch to no avail, and ended up at Table Mountain. We saw that a tram ride to the top and back cost around R180 or about $25 and decided to skip that and save our moneyz instead. The view from where we were was gorgeous anyway. After this, we headed back to the hostel where the girls took naps and I decided to walk around the city. It was nice to be on my own in this big, safe, new city for a bit. I made it downtown and back, and then down the other side of the street our hostel was on. After arriving back at the hostel, we went to the Waterfront, which is mainly a shopping district on the water. No beaches. We walked around the mall a bit, saw a movie, and then attempted to find a Mexican restaurant and ended up at a Spanish place instead.

Tuesday we headed to Cape of Good Hope. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful drive through several beach towns. On the way, we passed baboons on the side of the road. This wasn’t my first time seeing this in South Africa, but I don’t think monkeys on the side of the road will be something I would ever get used to. All along the drive there were signs that read “Warning! Baboons are wild animals that are not to be fed. Lock your doors and roll up your windows.” Once at the national park of Cape of Good Hope, we had a little of a drive till at the Point. It reminded me of Oklahoma in its rolling plains, but was so different in that it was rocky and had the Ocean in the background. This place is truly gorgeous and may be at the top of my list of places to see before you die. Truly beautiful. The wind was blowing hard and white-capped waves were crashing on the shore and the rocks and then transitioned into beautiful blue ocean. And somewhere way out there, thousands of miles away, was Antarctica. On the drive back was a sign for penguin viewing. We parked and the car guard told us if we just stayed on the boardwalk, we didn’t have to pay to get to the beach and see them. Free wild penguins? Cool. Thanks, man! Anyway, we walked the boardwalk and saw dozens of penguins just chillin’ in the shade on the sand. We got to the end and decided to keep going anyway, which was a good decision seeing as how we got to the beach and had some pictures taken. Once back in Cape Town, we had Mexican (the first time in two and a half months for all of us), which was delicious. After that, gelato (also for the first time in 2.5 months), and back to the hostel.

I’ll stop here, as the rest of spring break has both detailed days as well as plain ones.

Spring Break '10, part II - part I

I guess it’s about time that I tell you all about my Spring Break now. Or at least the first part, because let’s face it, Spring Break 2010 part II was jam freakin’ packed full of activities. So here goes part one…

Thursday the 23^rd we left Pretoria at about 7AM with every intent on getting to Port Elizabeth, on the Southern Coast, before dark. But this is Africa. It doesn’t have time for your plans. In fact, it has so little (care for) time, that it has all the time in the world. The drive was easy. Jamie and I sat back and relaxed while Madison did all the driving (she’s the only one who knows how to drive a manual car – I hope to fix this before Turkey next semester) and Brooke navigated (and planned every stop and activity). The African countryside in this central region reminded me of West Texas meets Monument Valley Utah meets the Australian Outback if the outback had shrubbery. In other words, dry yet bushy, hilly yet flat, and plateau-y. I hope that was confusing enough for you. Anyway, the terrain was beautiful and unique, but all the towns we drove through had one thing in common: they all had a township. I couldn’t help but think as we drove passed each one that here I am, this rich white kid from America, seeing the world, about to do all the things on this trip that I am about to do, while most of these people will probably never get out of these situations, out of South Africa, or possibly even their hometowns. On one hand it was a little depressing, and on the other it made me really think about how privileged I am to be born when, how, and where I was and appreciate what life has given me. The day ended beautifully. As we continued our drive southward, the sun was setting in the west behind the mountains with a beautiful transition from yellow to red, purple, blue, and black along with Venus and Mars while a full yellow Moon began to peek over the mountains to the east with some thin clouds and a bright Jupiter. We could see each set and rise simultaneously. Absolutely beautiful.

Friday the 24^th we had planned on going to Addo Elephant National Park, a park with, allegedly, the highest concentration of elephants in the world. We got there with four reservations to ride horses through the park for three hours, but when we got to the front desk, Jamie wasn’t wearing the proper attire nor did she have much experience. Madison also felt like sitting out, so soon it was just Brooke and me left to go. We headed out for the stables with the oh-so-loving, stern, and overly dramatic warning of “Be safe. You could die,” from the ranger in the office. Nice. Thanks, bud. Will do. After we were given our horses, we just kinda sat on them nervously in a fenced area next to the stables. Then came our two other riding mates. Two large middle-aged German men with think German accents who claimed to own ranches in the south of Germany. Sweet. So these noobs were going to be riding with ranchers. “Let’s just act like we know what we’re doing,” Brooke said. “Um, duh,” I replied.

As we rode through the “wilderness” of that nature reserve… Well, honestly, nothing happened. There were power lines crossing the plains and the only fauna we saw were springbok, a rather large tortoise, zebra, and some ostriches doing what animals do in the springtime. With the exception of the ostrich coupling, we had seen all of this before. No elephants. Only their leavings. Old, dry leavings. Oh, and a fenced off monument of elephant bones. “If you see an elephant in this section of the park, you should go to the casino. Because you are very lucky,” said our ranger at the beginning of the ride. Brooke and I gave each other this look like “What? Are you serious? That’s what we came for.” So, on went our eventless ride. And came back. And that was the end of that adventure. Back in town, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner, walked the Port Elizabeth Boardwalk, and went back to the hostel early to rest up for what had the potential to be the last day of our lives.

Today was the day. We were going to drive from Port Elizabeth to just east of Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, where the ride/fall/jump of a lifetime awaited us. On the way, the first high bridge over a gorge we drove over, we all freaked out a little bit. “Holy shit! Holy shit!” We had no idea. These were babies compared to the Bloukrans Bridge that awaited us. Upon pulling up the side of the gorge with the business that ran the bungee jumping, Face Adrenalin, we saw people getting their harnesses on, and checked out the bridge from what could be called a viewing ledge. Immediately upon seeing the bridge, Madison had decided she was out, but she had been scared about it since this activity was first proposed over a month ago. There were about fifteen or so other spectators watching people jump from a distance. A body fell from the bridge. At least, that’s all we could tell from the distance we were watching. Brooke, Jamie, and I took a collective gasp, and began to scream and freak out on each other. “Do we really want to do this?” “Of course we do! We’re gonna jump off a freakin’ bridge!” “Oh my goooooosh!”

Bloukrans Bridge - 216 m

We went to pay. “Has anyone ever died doing this,” Brooke asked. After a quick reply and assurance that no, nobody had ever died and it was totally safe, her next question was “What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?” (A quick note: before we even left Pretoria, Brooke had researched every risk involved and had seen that some people go blind from increased blood pressure in their brain.) With a smirk that suggested “You don’t want to know,” the lady at the check out chuckled under her breath and handed us our indemnity forms to sign. Brooke, Jamie, and I filled out our emergency contact info, weight, signed, paid our 600 Rand, and were weighed. We were assigned what we called our Death Numbers, and they along with our weights in kilograms were written on our right hands. “In case they need to identify the body,” I said.

Hysteria

We headed over to the harness station and got all harnessed up. Here’s where it starts getting good. I wish I could tell you all about this in person, because even as I think about the rest of this venture, a huge smile comes to my face and I want to laugh with you and tell the story. Anyway, with harnesses on, we began to laugh. Hysterically. Maniacally. According to Brooke, harder than she had ever laughed before in her life. “WE JUST PAID! WE HAVE TO DO IT! WE HAVE TO DO IT!” At this point, Brooke was weeping from laughter. Our faces hurt. Our stomachs hurt. Laughter consumed every fiber of our beings. And it was wonderful. But terrifying. We were about to jump off of a 708 foot bridge (higher than the Seattle Space Needle) with nothing to save us from certain death but a giant rubber band rope, after all.

After twenty minutes of letting us calm down (Or freak out more. Or change our minds [nah]. Or hype ourselves up.), it was our groups turn. After a briefing and instructions on how to jump (Arms out like a ‘T,’ knees bent, jump forward, as onto your bed. DO NOT go feet first. The rebounce won’t be fun.), details on how big the bridge is and how high the jump is and what to expect, we headed down the path to the side of the bridge where a catwalk awaited us.

Beneath us, the Earth became farther and farther down as the bridge went farther and farther out over the gorge. For the first time in my life, I experienced vertigo, as I looked through the holes of the catwalk down to the craggy rocks and gnarly trees below. I focused on the beautiful ocean through the hillsides and to my left instead. Once on/under the bridge (see pictures), we were again told how to jump. A rather bored and boring looking man and his weight, 92 kilos, were called. He would be one of the first. Brooke’s name and weight, 57 kilos, are called. She would also be one of the first. After the shock had subsided, she began to freak. Again. “WHAT?! FIRST?! NO! I’LL EAT A HOTDOG! ANYTHING BUT FIRST!” She did not want to go first. In fact, I had actually volunteered to go first, but weight was considered before wants. There were different bungees for different weights, after all. Whatever.

We got to the main part of the bridge. “Jamie! You’ll go first!” we hear. Jamie looks at Brooke and me. Terrified. Timidly, she takes off her jacket, gets the ankle pads on, and they tie the cord around the pads. By now my poor friend is crying through her laughter. “Tell my mom I love her!” she says. It’s hard to tell which is emotion is stronger, fear or excitement, but they help her to the ledge anyway. Toes over the side and music blaring we hear from the crew “5! 4! 3! 2! 1! BUNGEE!!!!!” Over she goes. Not gracefully, stricken with emotion. But she goes nonetheless. Next, the bored and boring man does his boring jump and then it’s Brooke’s turn. She is freakin’ pumped, man. She pulls a Rocky by jumping around to the music, gets ‘ankled’ up, as I have named it, and goes. A perfect swan dive. As if into a pool. Only over the side of a 708 foot bridge and into the seemingly unending air.

After she and Jamie are up, we talk about what they felt, what I should expect, and the wait begins. Only it seems to never end. A fair amount of our group goes during my wait. Over half. After about a half hour (or so it seemed), the first group of jumpers was asked to leave the bridge. What? But my friends are included in that group. “Do we have to?” asks Brooke. They had to. Damnit. Now I’m alone up here with nobody I know. But soon it didn’t matter. It was my turn (finally).

They put the pads around my ankles, and a rope that’s connected to the bungee cord around the pads. “This knot and rope I’m tying around and through your legs can hold up to three tons.” “Well that’s good,” I think, “because I’d prefer not to die today.” The bridge guys help me up, feet tied together, and perch me feet over the side of the bridge. I look down. I look down a long ways. Finally my heart starts racing and I’m second-guessing what I’ve signed up for. Seriously. That’s a long. freakin’. way. down. But before I know it, “FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE! BUNGEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!” Over I go. I am falling. I am falling. And falling. All I hear is the wind going passed my ears as if I have just stuck my head out of the window of a speeding car. (We were told that, in fact, we would reach a falling velocity of the equivalent of 75 MPH) “How am I still falling?” I like to think my subconscious was thinking. At the bottom,  I can feel all the blood rushing to my head, as my eyes water and vision blurs. “I AM GOING TO GO BLIND!” I think, remembering Brooke’s research. But I didn’t. I bounce. And go what seems like a long ways up. I fall again. Again a delayed reaction from me as I finally scream at the end of this second descent. “HOLY SHIIIIIT!!!! OH MY GOOOOOD! WOOOOOOOHHHH” I say over and over (or something like that), as it finally hits me as to what I’ve just done. I’m laughing, alternating reaching for the bottom and holding onto myself and screaming more expletives as I continue to bounce several times.

After the last bounce, as I dangle there on a rope like a whole chicken on a Chinese street market, all I can focus on is the tree directly beneath me. “This is the last thing I am going to see before I die. I am going to land in that yellowish-green tree when my feet slip out of this thing,” I think. It should be mentioned here that Brooke, Jamie, and I each recall this feeling at the bottom, like our feet were going to slip out. I was flexing those suckers like they had never been flexed before. Not even my years in band and lifting my toes could top this. Thank you, adrenaline, for allowing me to sustain for as long as I did. It should also be mentioned that I (and every other jumper) had a backup connection that my conscious mind completely neglected to remember as I dangled there like a fool, flexing my feet for all they were worth. As I continued to flex, I started talking to myself aloud, wondering when the guy was going to get there. “Where’s the guy? I wonder where the guy is. I’m going to slip out and die if he doesn’t get here soon. I wish the guy would get here.” It went on like this, me talking to myself dangling from a bridge, with some variance, for what seemed like forever. But soon he came. I heard a voice. “There you are!” I said. He began pulling me up and I remember thinking You are my favorite person in the history of all time.

After I was up and reunited with my friends on land again, we watched our replay videos (I jumped feet first in my excitement – oops), were handed our badass certificates, bought our souvenirs, and went to lunch. We were famished, after all, from jumping off a bridge.

That night, as we each sat journaling in our room, Brooke and I rekindled the laughter that consumed us at the harnessing station. It was relentless, loud, and full of joyful tears. Laughter was our narcotic. Completely addictive and carefree. “What did we do today?!” “WE JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE!!!” we manage to say through our laughter.

We jumped off a bridge.

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.

A few things on race.

So, I’ve been in South Africa almost two months now and I keep hearing about experiences friends have had with race and how South Africa is coping sixteen years after apartheid ended. I’d like to share a few of these with you.

I’d love to write about everything I’ve been learning about in my Segregation and Apartheid class, but that would be a post in itself given the amount of information I’ve been reading and writing about for it. It’s all really interesting material and can probably be read about by picking up a book on South African history from about 1900. While white legislators usually disguised their motivations for implementing segregation as paternalistic, they truly were about white supremacy and growing the white economy. It should be noted that there is a difference between segregation and apartheid. Segregation was an early form of separating races into distinct territories and can mostly be viewed as based on tradition. Segregation by 1948 was engrained into the society and became apartheid. It was all about separating ethnicities via harsh legislation and movement controls. Apartheid was ended in 1994 but the racism caused by it still remains in 2010.

My friend Brooke has made friends with a couple of Zimbabwean guys down the street who work at a car wash. They talk about life, South Africa, Zim, and the US, among other things. Francis usually likes to walk Brooke back down the street to the gate of our apartment complex just to accompany her and make sure she gets back safely. One time on their way back an old white man on the road started yelling angrily at them in Afrikaans. Francis told Brooke not to pay attention to him and it occurred to her that he was yelling at her for walking with a black man. The fact that people have desensitized themselves to blatant racism is absolutely absurd to me. Maybe it’s the fact that mass racism died decades ago in the US.

I met, Lerato, a black South African, through a volunteer service we both participate in. We went to get coffee one day and had a few stares as we walked down the street together. And I still smile when I see two races walking together, as you don’t see it as often as you’d think given the proportions of the population. Lerato introduced me to his friend Tom after thinking we’d hit it off. Tom doesn’t think much about politics, but he’s an activist without knowing it. Tom and I have been hanging out a quite a bit recently and the other day he told me that he and Lerato were the first interracial roommates in University of Pretoria Residences. That was in 2008. They had been friends before and wanted to room together as first years (not freshmen, sophomore, etc. – here everything is first, second, and third year). They had to go to the resident advisor and request to be put together because housing looks at race when determining placement. They ensured the advisor that they, a black man and a white man, were perfectly fine with rooming together. The resident advisor had to call their families in addition to this to make sure they were okay with it. They were eventually placed together despite the administration’s concerns. Tom said that since then there have been no other interracial roommates, but I find this hard to believe. The University does, however, still take race into consideration when placing students together so as not to upset families back home.

We have also discussed where Tom comes from in the north of South Africa. He says that it’s a very traditional part of the country. Black and whites still don’t mix, and if they do, bystanders are usually pretty shocked. It seems to me that as you get closer to the equator, the more afraid people are of that which is different from them (note homophobia in the American south, race relations in northern South Africa and in Zimbabwe, and ethnic conflicts in several central African countries).

I’ve said it before but though apartheid has been over for sixteen years, the remnants still exists. The scars run deep. This generation gives us hope, though. You see more young people than older generations mixing and accepting people for who they are. I can only hope that this spreads to the rest of the world. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

An African Weekend. In Africa.

This past weekend was probably the best weekend I’ve had since in South Africa. The weekend we spent in Durban three weeks ago is a close second.

The plan for the weekend was to go to Swaziland to participate in and see the celebrations taking place for the King’s wedding to his 14^th wife. The plan. But what are plans when you’re in Africa? On Friday morning, Madison and I took a minibus to Budget car rental downtown at 8:30 and left the parking lot around 9:45. First just let me say how nice it was to be in a car with a friend going down the roads in Pretoria, free as a bird: it was nice; I was absolutely giddy. Madison, Brooke, Carmen and I left Tuksdorp at around 10:30 and headed south to Johannesburg on the N1 where we would connect with the N17 which heads east and leads right into Swaziland. Again, that was the plan. We got lost in Joburg attempting to navigate the interstates for about an hour until we finally found the N17 in the direction of eMbalenhle (there are no N, S, E, W directions on highway signs, only which major towns the highways go through – this proved difficult, as we had to scramble to find what towns were where in our atlas before taking a ramp). After a five hour drive on the N17 through towns and over mountains and plains, we ended up in the town of Hartebeeskop which is about seven km (4.3 miles) from the port of entry into Swaziland of Oshoek. For miles outside of Hartebeeskop we saw signs that read “Domestic animals, no fences.” It was true. There were cows and goats wondering the roads just grazing like nothing was going on. We were in Africa. When we arrived at Oshoek, it was about 4:45 PM (it gets dark here around 5:30) and there was a line of cars about half a mile long waiting to get in. It only went downhill from here (literally and figuratively – see pictures to follow). We waited on the road in the car for about four hours. During those four hours we walked around the road, witnessed a bar fight on the hill, got snacks at a convenience store before the border, listened to our iPods, and laughed at the situation we found ourselves in. But mostly we witnessed lots of people jumping the line, oftentimes driving on the wrong side of the road to get ahead. There was bribing, too, but not to the extent that there was just outright cutting. When we arrived there were about 60 cars in front of us but with the cutting it may have gotten all the way up to 150. Eventually we got passed the fence border cop and into a parking lot where we had to get out of our car that contained all of our belongings and get in another line with just people. That was at about 8:30 PM. We stood in line (this time no cutting) here for about an hour and a half. This is where we started to lose it. The man behind Brooke and I apparently had not heard of the magic of bathing. He was rank. I almost gagged. Several times. We covered our noses with our sweatshirts and mostly laughed about that half of the time we were in line. At some point we learned that there was only one immigration official working for the thousands who were in line both in person and in cars that by then extended about a mile and a half down the road. The border would close at 10 PM. People in line (more like people in mob, but whatever) were shouting and pushing, demanding to be let in or for someone else to come and stamp passports. All the cops were doing was laughing and further pissing people off. It was getting serious. It was suggested further back in line by Brooke and I to leave. “It would be funny,” we said. And in our delirium, it was funny. We left. We were over Swaziland by then. While attempting to leave the direction we came, we almost had to run people over in line to get out. The pedestrian line had gotten longer, the mob of cars in the front was thicker, and the line in the back was longer by about half a mile. We laughed for quite awhile on the road about how we had gone to the Swaziland and waited in line 5.5 hours only to turn back virtually at the window. It was worth it. We witnessed the occasional inefficiency of African government first hand. That was Africa. It was the African experience. And we loved it.

After getting home around 2 AM and sleeping until about noon, the plan for Saturday was to go to the Lion and Rhino Reserve outside of Pretoria. Carmen, Madison and I (Brooke, who is allergic to gluten, had something on the way home the previous night that didn’t agree with her) headed out and after some searching the countryside for signs that didn’t exist, finally found the reserve. We wound around the reserve’s main road for about a kilometer (half-mile) and came to a stopped vehicle ahead of us. They were looking at a warthog. At which point so were we. Pumbaa (Lion King reference, anyone?) was grazing on some grass and looked oh-so-shappy and content just being alive and munching away. We continued driving and stumbled upon a feeding area with more warthogs, ostriches, antelope, zebras, water buffalo, wildebeest, and other animals I don’t know the names for (see Facebook pictures for visual). We also drove by some rhinoceros and ostriches before entering the predators’ enclosures. We had to agree to a waiver that we wouldn’t exit our car and would leave our windows up 66%, among other stipulations in this area. We drove by vultures feeding on a carcass and hyenas wondering around the road. Once we entered the lions’ area, we saw they were all feeding on a carcass (presumably dumped for them by the reserve). A lioness and some juveniles walked by the car once they got bored with dinner. We continued to the cheetah enclosure where once we arrived where all the cheetahs were lounging, had one walk right passed the car within about three feet. I could have petted a cheetah if I had stretched far enough and didn’t want to risk losing my arm. After this, we drove to the nursery of sorts where they keep the baby and juvenile lions until they can be released to be with the rest of the pride. There was also a zoo of sorts for other animals like tigers and leopards, but because of my opinion of zoos, I’ll leave this depressing scene out. All over the area there were signs not to touch, mock, or feed the animals. There was also a sign that read “Lion petting R30.” Okay, I’ll pet a lion for $4 even though you’re telling me not to. And we did. Madison, Carmen and I petted (I’m starting to realize how much I don’t like the word ‘petted.’ I would prefer the past tense of ‘pet’ be ‘pet’. Petting as present participle is obviously still okay.) baby lions. They were adorable. Remember the scene in The Lion King where Simba trys to imitate his father Mufasa’s roar? They did that. They were adorable. They wrestled with each other and wrestled with us to the extent that they could. They were adorable. Did I mention that they were adorable? Because they were. I want a baby lion. Kthanks. Over all, the day was really great. We had our African drive-thru safari, although the drive-thru safari in Grapeland, Texas will always hold a special place in my heart. That night we went out to eat and had a great (and entertaining/awkward/funny) time dancing in the club down the street till about 2 in the morning: a typical 20-something end to an otherwise out of the ordinary day.

Sunday we all slept till around noon and left for a reserve just on the outskirts of Pretoria at about 1 PM. We hiked around for about an hour before our 3 PM appointment to go horseback riding (notice my American preoccupation with time? Yeah, that’s proved difficult meeting Africans in the past several weeks. Note to self: eventually write a post on the concept of time and how Africans keep time, because it’s true what they say.). All the horses’ shoulders came up to about my shoulders and had English saddles. Western saddles, I learned, are bigger and much more comfortable and practical. I realized that I like Western saddles better. We all chose our horses and took off. We walked at first but because we all had experience on horses before (Madison and Carmen even have their own at home), we soon started trotting, and then cantering (this term I also learned on the day – a canter is the pace at which only one foot is one the ground at a time whereas a full out gallop is when all fours are off the ground a lot of the time. In a walk, only one foot is off the ground, and a trot is where it’s two on and two off.). I liked walking, cantering, and galloping. Trotting was painful. Whether that was due to my lack of experience or that the saddle and stirrups were uncomfortable is unknown to me. I like to think it was a combination of the two and not solely my fault. We soon came upon a couple of giraffes walking around the plain. There we were: on horseback staring down the mother of all horses and the tallest living animal. We snapped some pictures and continued only a few hundred meters where we came across a herd of zebras. Okay, maybe not a herd, but there were about eight of them. Yet again, horse and rider meet another African horse. We didn’t see much after that, but it didn’t matter to us. We all absolutely loved being on horseback riding through the African nature reserve. After an hour, we returned, dismounted, and walked, awkwardly and bowlegged, back to the car. We were all sore, in pain, bruised from the saddles, and sweaty but had huge smiles on our faces.

Again, this was probably the best weekend I’ve had since I’ve been here. Nothing went according to plan and it was all improvised, but I loved every minute of it. It was truly a weekend in Africa. I look forward to Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls in a week and a half, and Spring Break in four. I’ll keep you updated. Have a great week and love your life! Every day is an adventure.

The plusses and minuses - so far.

Here are some of the bad and the good differences I’ve found in South Africa compared to the United States, so far (cultural, social, legal). Please forgive the seemingly ethnocentric statements contained in the following paragraphs. I’ve saved the good for last, though. I can’t leave my readers on a bad note.

I think my biggest complaint so far would be the education system. I don’t really need to go to class here, even though I do. Slides are just read out loud in class and you really only need to read the book. There’s no such thing as critical and independent thinking. One teacher I have a problem with specifically is our new Diplomacy teacher. Before and after our first test, she kept emphasizing that we need to repeat what the text says. “Pay close attention to the text,” “Make sure you know your text.” Nothing on read and then develop your own opinion. Basically, the test was how well do you know the book and what the author thinks. And this is an international relations test. Not a biology 101 class. There is room for leeway in the answers. One would think politics are relative and would vary as much as peoples’ various ideologies, but apparently not. Another problem I have with school here is that students are just outright rude. They talk during lectures, ask mocking questions, and get up and leave five minutes before class is over. Segueing instantly, I am at my next topic: students’ education. Last year, half of the University of Pretoria students in the Humanities Department failed. Half. In one class, with the exception of the Americans, the class voted to hear a lecture explaining what an abstract, introduction, and conclusion are. Those are things I learned in junior high. Another class gave examples of bakeries, churches, and butcheries when asked what public buildings were. The list goes on. But I will not. You get the idea.

My only other huge complaint is the traffic laws. Or lack thereof. Namely the fact that pedestrians absolutely do not have the right of way. It seems crazy to me but this is Africa, I guess. On my way to class about a week ago, a car was stopped across (diagonally) from me at an intersection. I began to cross, and when I was in the middle of the street, the car floored it and proceeded to honk as I ran out of the way and on to the sidewalk. I smiled and waved sarcastically, though somewhat startled and annoyed. Friday I made eye contact with a car stopped behind another at a four way stop, thinking it was my turn. The second car tailgated the one in front of it through the stop sign so that it didn’t have to wait on me to cross the street. A local, Ruben, told me that you never assume a car will stop for you as a pedestrian. Assume they will run you over first. Because oftentimes, they do.

People walk at the speed of glaciers here. And I’m not talking about the melting ones of today’s time. Slower. Seriously, there are times where I want to push people out of my way to get where I need to be. We did not evolve bipedalism so that people can walk at the speed of the now extinct South American Giant Ground Sloth. If we were living 10,000 years ago, a predator would have eaten some of these people first simply due to the complete lack of urgency they have in their steps. It was nice being on African time on our mini-vacation in Durban, but now that it’s back to school, I have somewhere to be, thank you.

I’m on the fence about this one, so I’m putting it in the middle: Unions aren’t as restricted or as controversial here as they are in the US. For the past two Wednesdays, a few of my international friends here at Tuksdorp and I were supposed to go to an elementary school in the Mamelodi Township to tutor kids in reading and writing English. The problem here is that for the past few weeks, there have been mass public sector strikes going on in South Africa. The main demand of the workers is, of course, wage increase. The teachers specifically want 8% and have been offered 6% (as of a week ago). While I support the rights of workers to organize and protect their rights, the kids are suffering at the same time. Teachers are undervalued in almost every country and the same is true in South Africa. But with teachers striking, children suffer as well. They don’t get the education they are supposed to be getting and in the case of Mamelodi, sometimes they aren’t getting good food or attention needed. Mamelodi is still very much a township and as a result, school can potentially be safer, more comforting, and have better food than home. There have been tutoring programs set up in lieu of the striking teachers’ absences, but I’m sure the quality is not the same. I remain neutral on this issue. Mainly (maybe selfishly) I want the strike to end so that I can get my bit of tutoring and interaction in with the kids too.

Now to the positives: they are mainly legal and not cultural, unfortunately.

Marriage equality and adoption are legal nationwide in South Africa. I know there’s a push for marriage equality currently going on at home in the US via California’s Prop 8 going through our justice system. And with the exception of religious reasons (which, if actually thoroughly investigated, would be found in favor of equality and acceptance – contact me for reading material on this matter), there is no legitimate reason the LGBT community should not have equal rights in any country that claims to be a liberal (traditional, not ideological) democracy (see the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision – read the first ten pages, if not the whole thing.). While equal rights are legal, the South African public is still deeply divided. Regardless, the Constitution protects the rights of all people residing in South Africa.

Another provision of the South African Constitution is that “the National Assembly… results, in general, in proportional representation.” (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa No. 108 of 1996, Chapter 4, section 46d) This ensures that, as has been the case in US up until recently, it isn’t only straight Christian rich white men running the country. Which is actually how it was under segregation and apartheid. Muslims, blacks, whites, Christians, gays, tribal ethnicities, women, or any combination of these are, theoretically, represented in the National Assembly and Judiciary. There are also “State Institutions Supporting Constitutional Democracy,” that protect the people, such as The Public Protector, The South African Human Rights Commission, The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, The Commission for Gender Equality, The Auditor General, and The Electoral Commission (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa No. 108 of 1996, Chapter 9). My political science class partially covers the South African government, if you can’t tell.

So, there you have it. The complaints. The praises. I won’t make this any longer than it already is and leave it here. Once again, my political and philosophical views have spilled out onto the blogosphere. Next time I’ll try to keep it event centered for ya’ll.

English: the Language Within the Language

Over the past month (it’s hard to believe I’ve been here that long – it sure doesn’t feel like it), I’ve come to really appreciate the English language. I live with three guys from the Netherlands, and one from Rwanda. One of the guys upstairs comes from the US, one from Germany, two from the Netherlands, and one from France. Then there are the girls, who come from the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, China, Austria, and the Czech Republic. We all speak English, though in slightly varying forms. The Dutch students are all American-influenced English speakers because of Holland’s American cultural influence via music and film. The Mexicans and the girl from Singapore are also more American-English sounding simply based on listening to them. The rest are all hybrids of their respective home languages and English. The South Africans here, however, are all British-English speakers. South Africa was at one point colonized by England, and as a result, language is one influence of that.

Examples of British-English are the obvious ones: French fries are chips, potato chips are crisps, the bathroom is the toilet, etc. Then there are the ones I wasn’t expecting: a traffic light is a robot, a syllabus is a study guide, “Pleasure” instead of “You’re welcome” or “No problem”, and people drive and walk on the left side of the street/sidewalk (not language but still derived from British influence). I know there are more good examples, I just can’t think of any right now. But now I can talk about the accents: the main source of struggle for me.

I knew Afrikaner (Afrikaans speaking South Africans with heritage dating back to the 17^th Century) English speakers had really thick accents, but had heard some in person before and could understand them. Since here, I’ve met a few as well and they’re intelligible for the most part. There are also the folks who grew up speaking English who are mostly understandable. Then there are people who speak their native languages growing up and learn English in school. These are the one’s I’ve had the most trouble with. Checkout at the grocery store, ordering at a restaurant and asking for directions can be difficult. And I don’t believe this is any problem with learning English later in life (if elementary school is considered late) – it’s simply an accent difficulty. I’m all for keeping heritage and languages alive. It’s part of what makes our world great. Want to speak Spanish or some other language in the US? Please, do. You have that freedom. I would love to be fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, and possibly Hindi and Swahili. Maybe in time. Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that language is a very fluid thing. Accents at home include Southern, Northern, Bostonian, Chicagoan, Valley Girl, New Yorker… you get the idea. We’re all speaking the same language, just with different twangs and unique characteristics. The same is true in South Africa.

Real-life example:

This past weekend a few of my friends and I went to the port city of Durban on the eastern coast. On the way back from dinner on the beach on Sunday night, we got a minibus (taxi) to the Workshop, an area of Durban where most minibuses stop to make exchanges of passengers to other busses. We got off our beach shuttle and started looking for a minibus that was going to Ridge Road, a main artery where our hostel was located. Finally we found a driver who said, yes (after we asked several times to make sure), he was going to Ridge Road. We hopped in with a few locals and were on our way. Jamie and I took note at one point that we were getting on the highway but thought nothing of it, as the driver was local and knew what he was doing. I wasn’t paying attention at the time but eventually we found out that we were not in fact going to Ridge Road, but rather Ridgeway, a suburb of Durban. After some intense and stressful arguing between a couple of the guys in our group with the driver, we were turned around heading in the right direction (the girls and I sat calm and entertained, believing hostility usually gets you nowhere faster than patience and a smile does). Eventually we made it around Ridge Road and were let off near an Italian restaurant and pub we had eaten at earlier in the week. Which was nice, because we all needed a drink after the ordeal. Believe me when I say it was a lot more frustrating and stressful at the time than it sounds en blog.

Back to language: because of our American accents (yes, Americans have accents to the rest of the world), our driver mistook “Ridge Road” for “Ridgeway”. Language is a funny thing: it can unite people to do great things like organizing for a cause or spreading worthy ideas (see Invisible Children), or it can divide and even cause death (see war). And, sometimes, it can get a bunch of foreigners lost in the South African port city of Durban.

Is It You, Africa?

Hi, everyone! I apologize for the amount of time that has passed since my last post. For my excuse(s), I’m going with classes starting and just being in South Africa. I’m currently taking a comparative politics class, international relations and diplomacy, segregation and apartheid, globalization, and cultural history of the Cape colonies. I would also like to apologize for the length of this post. Now for what I came to write about: the past week.

In the past week I have gone to classes, painted a classroom and played with children in the Mamelodi Township, and other things like gone to movies and the mall. Or in other terms, what OU sent me here to do, what I came to do, and what I could have done at home. Prepare for a little length, as I would like to describe each of these events for you and add a little of myself at the same time. Note: adding a little of myself involves some worldview opinions as well as emotional issues and opinions.

Classes have been going for two weeks now, and I love all of my courses. There was a little confusion in the beginning as to what I was supposed to be taking and how often I was to go to class, but that’s all cleared up now. In each of the first few days of my classes the United States took a subtle stab from each of my professors (with the exception of history of the Cape). Now, some of you reading this might think the US is always defendable, but from the talking I’ve done with my new international friends and heard from my instructors, there’s usually a well-founded reason for these criticisms. I won’t go any further with this so as not to piss some of you off, but let’s just say we all have our own reasons for our own beliefs and nobody is ever 100% correct. Moving on. This past Thursday, the subject of how the US is allowed to occupy Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a country we have virtually no diplomatic relations with, came up. Our professor knew there were American students in the room and asked us if we knew. I gave a quick answer I knew was incorrect and she asked if we could report about it in detail the next day. (I won’t go into detail about this for you, a quick Wikipedia search on Guantanamo Bay and the Cuban-American Treaty will reveal the answer. It’s really quite interesting; I’d recommend you do it if you have a few minutes.) Suffice it to say I felt completely ignorant of my own country not knowing the answer. But I quickly realized there was no reason to feel shame. The United States has been the world superpower for the past 200 years, far outreaching any empire before it by all means. There are state histories, a national history, histories of international relations with the world’s 150+ countries, scientific and technological histories, and historical figures… You get the idea. It is literally impossible to know everything about a country as vast in every facet as our own. Some would say this is a cause for national pride, others not. My main point is that there are billions of people all over the world with perhaps as many well-founded opinions of an entire nation vis-à-vis their country. Wouldn’t it be great if they just looked at our nation and ignored the actions of our country? That is one thing I’m trying to do here.

On Wednesday the 28th, my friends Brooke, Carmen, Daniela, and I went to a school in the Mamelodi Township with the purpose of painting a schoolroom that was in disrepair. As we drove through the part of the township in which people were living in structures that looked less livable than the shed in my backyard, I was filled with sympathy and memories of Haiti from my trip there in December 2007. The school we arrived at was for grades K-8 (I assumed from looking around at the kids). Because there was another group of international students that went and worked the day before, we only painted for about an hour. After that we were free to interact with the 7^th graders whose classroom we were painting. They loved being on the computers, se we did that for a while and I taught one boy, Leon, to play Solitaire. At lunch we had a plate of pap (a rice-grits kind of combo) and spicy noodles from which we ate with our hands like the students. However, soon Mr. T. (yes, that’s really his name), the vice principal, brought us KFC. On one hand, we felt guilty having such a nice lunch in front of the kids in the schoolyard, but on the other hand it would have been fundamentally rude not to eat it. So we ate it, occasionally sharing with the kids. We played various games with the children the rest of the time. Obviously they don’t know any different, but it was so emotionally moving to see these kids have such joy in their hearts despite living in the monetary poverty that they do. Every time I get to play with kids, I think how much I’d love to be a father some day. To me, I just see a child as a huge bundle of joy (I get the phrase now). Not now, but after I graduate and find a proper home in a city and state I love, I wouldn’t mind finding someone who shares the same values and beliefs and would want to adopt children. I used to tell others and myself that it wasn’t for me, but that was just fighting what I’ve known I’ve wanted for a long time. In some ways, settling down for me could be one of the bravest things I do with another person (I don’t think being brave means you’re not scared. It means that if you are scared, you do the thing you’re afraid of anyway). I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I loved being at that school with the kids and being surrounded by pure joy. And that’s what I want someday.

On Friday, I presented (stood up where I was seated and spoke loudly; no PowerPoint presentation or anything) about Guantanamo in our international relations class. It went better than expected given the fact that I am a horrible public speaker. But I think I’m getting better at it. Who knows, maybe some day I’ll present something about human rights to the UN and Friday was a prelude to that. After classes were over for the day, I stayed home and read for a while and then went to see Inception with nine of the other international students (Two weeks after it was released in the US, it was released in South Africa, so I had heard it being raved about for just as long. Also, movies cost R20 or about $2.75 here. A big win.). If you haven’t seen that movie, go do it. Saturday I went to the big mall here with Carmen, Madison, and Jamie. We shopped a little bit in the most crowded mall I had ever been in in my life. It reminded me of the streets of China. The reason I am telling you these boring activities in this paragraph that could have been as easily accomplished at home is because I want you to know that the world is Westernizing. According to Noam Chomsky, and I agree, globalization in theory is the idea that groups of people should come together and learn and grow from their various cultures, values, and beliefs. In practice, it is the expansion of global corporations to the developing world in hopes of growing profits. With the exception of one, all the movies in this South African theater were American (the same is true in the Netherlands, Germany, and Mexico according to my new friends) and all the stores in the mall were comparable to stores at home. On the way to the mall, there was a man standing on the side of the road holding a large cardboard sign that read, “I would rather die hungry than starve to death. Please help.” I keep being reminded that along with the improving quality of life for South Africans after the end of apartheid, for some it has stagnated. And I’m still struggling with how to deal with that.

So, the past week has involved thoughts on how I and my nation and country are viewed by the world, what I want for myself out of life, and how to deal with poverty in a growingly Western world. I apologize if at any point in this post you were offended, confused, or lost by my words. I am a work in progress.

Your continued thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated.

Until next time,

Matthew