I was hoping no one was watching my face – the only white one in the congregation of perhaps a hundred or more. If they had been, they might have seen tears forming in the corners of my eyes. It was the music that did it. When the service was to start, a woman’s voice poured from the front of the church. In response, the whole congregation sang back, improvising harmonies that filled up the sanctuary. Soon, they were on their way. Small cushions were dispersed, which were slapped in time, with complex cadences after each phrase. A djembe joined in, and then a tambourine added heavenly sibilance. It was freedom – the drum and the tambourine would periodically drop out on the player’s whim, parishioners danced in the pews, and everyone contributed their own embellishments to the music. This was my first service at Xenophobia Methodist Church.
That’s how my American friends and I sometimes refer to it, because on the front of the church hangs a large, colorful banner that simply reads,
Xenophobia
Rosebank Methodist Church
No one questions what it is referring to. This May, the word came to public consciousness after attacks on immigrants were carried out across the country. Workers from nearby countries come to South Africa for opportunities, and are seen by locals in the same light that many U.S. Americans see Mexicans workers. Zimbabwe especially has coughed up thousands of emigrants as it faces out-of-control inflation (a Zimbabwean friend showed me a “worthless” 10 million dollar note with an expiration date), and violence following the recent contested election. On May 12th, South Africans lashed out against these foreigners, and the violence spread quickly to other parts of the country, including Cape Town. At least 62 people died, and around 25,000 were made refugees. Churches like Rosebank Methodist did their best to protect, house, and feed them, but were overwhelmed by lack of resources. Other refugees were taken into homes of locals.
Alice, a chatty Zambian woman whom I met at a party, was one of these. A mob of people came to where she had been staying. “The brats,” she said, just as her phone rang. I didn’t get the rest of the story. Now she’s living in relative safety, but she can’t wait to go back to Zambia. Her other experiences in this country have not been redeeming. Once, she applied for a job and was sent for training to a place that was a day-long train ride away. She was made to work in the fields and given very little food. When she decided to quit, the company refused to pay for her transportation home. The police intervened and made them pay for a ticket for the next day. Facing resentment of her fellow workers, she slept in the train station that night. In Zambia, she says, even the Zimbabweans are welcomed.
It doesn’t even make sense, says Joseph, Alice’s host. The people who come here are good workers, and they are paying landlords good money. Local businesses benefit from their presence, whereas South Africans (who, according to another source, tend to be spoiled by hand-outs) contribute less.
It may have occurred to you that I am a foreigner here. This occurred to me, and to my parents, when I was planning my trip. But all of the people targeted have been living in poorer areas. American students are not of interest to the perpetrators, who want to drive out those who they see as taking the jobs they are qualified for. The closest I felt to fear of xenophobia was Tuesday at my first jazz ensemble rehearsal. After I approached the professors to ask about joining an ensemble, they decided to kick out a current student to open up a spot for me. They said his attendance was poor. Apparently they forgot to tell him that he was kicked out, because he showed up to our first rehearsal, and met the American student that was replacing him. I had been concerned about resentment when I heard what the professors decided to do -- American students are often seen as having an entitlement complex. But fortunately, this student was cool with it. “No beef,” he said, and the professor let him play drum set (not his best instrument) for the rehearsal.
Nor did I feel any resentment at church on Sunday. Yes, I felt self-conscious at times, listening silently as the rest of the church was caught up in Xhosa hymns. But I was made welcome. At the Pick n Pay afterward, two churchgoers recognized me and invited me to the Friday youth service. If I don’t go again on Friday, they’ll at least see me again on Sunday. Methodism isn’t necessarily up my spiritual alley, but music carries a theology of its own. Unity is among its tenets. I, a foreigner, felt right at home.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Ch. 3: Mountain Milk
The city of Cape Town is cradled by mountains and nurtured by the ocean. In the hazy distance sits the Twelve Apostles range. Table Mountain is right in the city, and her steeper neighbor, Devil’s Peak, waits on the other side of the sliding glass doors from our house’s common space. The Atlantic Ocean, on the far side of town, brings cooling winds in the summer.
Where I live is just blocks from the base of the mountains. If you were to walk down the east face of Table Mountain you would first reach the campus of the University of Cape Town. You would follow the stream of students past the rugby fields, through the muraled tunnel, and down to Woolsack Drive. You would cross over the road on a footbridge, pass through a gate into a parking lot where there are giant daffodil-like trees with trunks for stalks, pass the soccer fields, turn down a residential street, and then another in a few feet, marked “CUL DE SAC” on the pavement. The last gate on the left is ours, with a wooden fence guarded by thorny vines. You would ring the doorbell and I would let you in to a small yard with a table and two chairs. We would enter the house, greeted by a large map of southern Africa. We would pass through the living room with 194 books (the landlady did a thorough inventory), and through the dining area with a circular table, on which you will find this week’s paper and an empty wine bottle. The kitchen is quite large, with a semi-functional stove, microwave, fridge, and the indispensible electric kettle. Out the back door is a courtyard with an avocado tree and a clothesline (we have a washing machine, but no drier). Another structure holds three rooms, the last of which, on the right, is mine. In my room is another electric kettle, and I will make you a cup of Rooibos tea, because you just walked down Table Mountain.
Over its lifespan, Table Mountain has been gawked at by many eyes. In 1652 when the Dutch landed here in Cape Town, they saw the mountain through European eyes. To them it was a table; find a picture and your eyes will agree. But for thousands of years it had been something else. The San people have lived here for literally all of human history, and the Khoikhoi moved in before the Europeans did. The San were hunter-gatherers and the Khoikhoi were pastoralists, but the fluidity between them led to the encompassing term Khoisan. Then there are the colonial terms - Bushmen for San, and Hottentot for Khoikhoi – both derogatory, both commonplace.
I am here on the Telluride Association Reese Miller Exchange Scholarship. This scholarship is open to all University of Michigan students, and covers tuition, room and board, airfare, health insurance, and a stipend for a year of study at UCT. In return, I must complete a service project while I am here. For my service project (I will henceforth drop the term “service”), I am working with a group of musicians called Khoi Khonnexion, which works for and from the tradition of the Khoisan people. I will be recording an album for them, and we will sell it to benefit the San people in the Kalahari desert in Botswana.
I met with the group last Sunday: Glen, a scholar and organizer, Garth, a renowned visual artist, and Jethro, who lives in a township and is known as “the ghetto poet.” They told me about South Africa. In colonial and post-colonial times, the Bantu people such as the Zulu and Xhosa have always been the majority of the South African population. So the Khoi and the San today are minorities among the indigenous people – Glen calls them vulnerable indigenous people. It is their culture that is the most in danger, so to affirm and raise awareness of this culture, the Khoi Khonnexion makes music.
The San of the Kalahari are an illustration of the vulnerability that Garth speaks of. For tens of thousands of years, the San have been living in the Kalahari desert, which stretches outward from Botswana into Namibia and South Africa. Unlike Western peoples, the San in the Kalahari take part in a balanced ecosystem, requiring only the desert, its flora and fauna, and millennia of wisdom. The government of Botswana set aside the Kalahari Game Reserve for the San and the ecosystem of which it is a part, until diamonds were discovered in it. Then relocations forced them into ghettos where they lived in poverty. Finally in 2006 the supreme court overruled this decision, and they were allowed to return. However, they have no means by which to return, and the ones who do return face further persecution.
Weekdays this semester, with the mountain always in my periphery, I will trace backwards the steps you took to reach my house. At my meeting with the Khoi Khonnexion, Jethro told me how the mountain is viewed in his San heritage. Table mountain is not a table, but a woman giving birth, to me. To you, he said. Every morning I must greet the mountain mother, Khorikama, and she will take care of me.
I have been greeting her, and she has been taking care of me. Often she will be shrouded by mist. Other times neighboring clouds will bread and butter around her, inviting the mountain to be part of the sky. On her slopes are stone pines and, allegedly, zebras. She has watched as I have cautiously joined her other children in the valley, as I have gone from a helpless infant to a member of the family. I know she will not always offer bodily or emotional protection, but she will see to it that I will not leave the valley until I have grown, and learned a thing or two from my brothers and sisters.
Where I live is just blocks from the base of the mountains. If you were to walk down the east face of Table Mountain you would first reach the campus of the University of Cape Town. You would follow the stream of students past the rugby fields, through the muraled tunnel, and down to Woolsack Drive. You would cross over the road on a footbridge, pass through a gate into a parking lot where there are giant daffodil-like trees with trunks for stalks, pass the soccer fields, turn down a residential street, and then another in a few feet, marked “CUL DE SAC” on the pavement. The last gate on the left is ours, with a wooden fence guarded by thorny vines. You would ring the doorbell and I would let you in to a small yard with a table and two chairs. We would enter the house, greeted by a large map of southern Africa. We would pass through the living room with 194 books (the landlady did a thorough inventory), and through the dining area with a circular table, on which you will find this week’s paper and an empty wine bottle. The kitchen is quite large, with a semi-functional stove, microwave, fridge, and the indispensible electric kettle. Out the back door is a courtyard with an avocado tree and a clothesline (we have a washing machine, but no drier). Another structure holds three rooms, the last of which, on the right, is mine. In my room is another electric kettle, and I will make you a cup of Rooibos tea, because you just walked down Table Mountain.
Over its lifespan, Table Mountain has been gawked at by many eyes. In 1652 when the Dutch landed here in Cape Town, they saw the mountain through European eyes. To them it was a table; find a picture and your eyes will agree. But for thousands of years it had been something else. The San people have lived here for literally all of human history, and the Khoikhoi moved in before the Europeans did. The San were hunter-gatherers and the Khoikhoi were pastoralists, but the fluidity between them led to the encompassing term Khoisan. Then there are the colonial terms - Bushmen for San, and Hottentot for Khoikhoi – both derogatory, both commonplace.
I am here on the Telluride Association Reese Miller Exchange Scholarship. This scholarship is open to all University of Michigan students, and covers tuition, room and board, airfare, health insurance, and a stipend for a year of study at UCT. In return, I must complete a service project while I am here. For my service project (I will henceforth drop the term “service”), I am working with a group of musicians called Khoi Khonnexion, which works for and from the tradition of the Khoisan people. I will be recording an album for them, and we will sell it to benefit the San people in the Kalahari desert in Botswana.
I met with the group last Sunday: Glen, a scholar and organizer, Garth, a renowned visual artist, and Jethro, who lives in a township and is known as “the ghetto poet.” They told me about South Africa. In colonial and post-colonial times, the Bantu people such as the Zulu and Xhosa have always been the majority of the South African population. So the Khoi and the San today are minorities among the indigenous people – Glen calls them vulnerable indigenous people. It is their culture that is the most in danger, so to affirm and raise awareness of this culture, the Khoi Khonnexion makes music.
The San of the Kalahari are an illustration of the vulnerability that Garth speaks of. For tens of thousands of years, the San have been living in the Kalahari desert, which stretches outward from Botswana into Namibia and South Africa. Unlike Western peoples, the San in the Kalahari take part in a balanced ecosystem, requiring only the desert, its flora and fauna, and millennia of wisdom. The government of Botswana set aside the Kalahari Game Reserve for the San and the ecosystem of which it is a part, until diamonds were discovered in it. Then relocations forced them into ghettos where they lived in poverty. Finally in 2006 the supreme court overruled this decision, and they were allowed to return. However, they have no means by which to return, and the ones who do return face further persecution.
Weekdays this semester, with the mountain always in my periphery, I will trace backwards the steps you took to reach my house. At my meeting with the Khoi Khonnexion, Jethro told me how the mountain is viewed in his San heritage. Table mountain is not a table, but a woman giving birth, to me. To you, he said. Every morning I must greet the mountain mother, Khorikama, and she will take care of me.
I have been greeting her, and she has been taking care of me. Often she will be shrouded by mist. Other times neighboring clouds will bread and butter around her, inviting the mountain to be part of the sky. On her slopes are stone pines and, allegedly, zebras. She has watched as I have cautiously joined her other children in the valley, as I have gone from a helpless infant to a member of the family. I know she will not always offer bodily or emotional protection, but she will see to it that I will not leave the valley until I have grown, and learned a thing or two from my brothers and sisters.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Ch. 2: Living in Boxes
“Unfortunately, you will have to check one of the boxes in question eight.”
The “unfortunately” was the first concession that the invigilator had given to us as human beings. I was still uncomfortable checking one of those boxes, but I felt less polarized by this woman who would have been more comfortable teaching a an old-fashioned Catholic primary school. After all, we were all college students, some of us even graduate students. Most of us were from the U.S., but we were being forced into taking a long and poorly written English proficiency exam designed for South Africans. Before we could start the testing, we had to fill out a detailed survey of our secondary schools – which province were they in? did they have running water? And now in question eight we were asked to answer a question that had always been strictly optional, and we were faced with a ghost of a South Africa whose death we all welcomed.
8. Race:
__ Black __ White __ Coloured __Indian __Other
To South Africans, this would be much less strange an encounter. And most would have no question which box to check. Before 1994, “other” was not an option. The entire population was registered as Black (Africans of Bantu descent), White – (those of European descent), Indian, or Coloured – a term that meant basically the same as “other,” most of whom were lighter-brown-skinned descendents of non-Bantu indigenous people or of slaves taken from Southeast Asia and Mozambique. Whites have always been the minority here, but were allocated an inordinate amount of the resources. Below them were the Indians and the Coloureds, and at the very bottom rung was the majority of the population – those labeled as Black.
This system of classification, called apartheid, was started in 1948 the National Party, which was composed of Afrikaners – white people of Dutch descent. Two years later, the Group Areas Act began the racial zoning of living areas. From there, it only escalated. But so did the resistance – the African National Congress gained momentum and developed as a highly organized political force. Finally, in 1994, after broiling between internal resistance and international pressure, the National Party government turned over the country to the ANC, under baton of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela became a worldwide icon for bringing the country from the oppressive state of apartheid to a new democracy which is constitutionally bound to embrace everyone – the Rainbow Nation. Yesterday was his 90th birthday, and it was celebrated worldwide. Here at home, the media is filled with praise. The headline placards hung up and down Main Road celebrate him, calling him by his popular nickname, Madiba. I picked up a copy of the national paper, The Mail and Guardian, when I went to the Pick n Pay today to buy my groceries, and found this letter from a 14-year-old from Soweto: “Madiba deserves an aeroplane. I am tired of seeing him on TV coming out of big Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs. I want to get him a small aeroplane he can use to go anywhere, even to Pick n Pay to buy his groceries.”
South Africa does have a lot to celebrate, but, as I was reminded by the English proficiency test, the legacy of apartheid is far from over. On Monday the university took the international students on a tour of the peninsula. We saw African penguins on Boulders beach, and baboons, ostriches, whales, and two oceans at the Cape of Good Hope. For lunch we pulled into a town called Oceanview, where the Coloureds had been settled after being forcibly removed from places like District Six in the heart of town where, in 1966, the homes of 60,000 Coloureds were bulldozed to make room for white settlement. Our huge coach buses pulled into the parking lot of a high school, and we went into the gymnasium where we were served lunch. Afterward, we were treated to a variety show put on by students – talented and passionate singers, dancers, and musicians. The principal then invited us back. The kids need encouragement, he said, when only student in three will graduate, and the others will face stifling unemployment and rampant opportunities for crime.
On Thursday we were shown that this was not, indeed, the worst of it. Shawco, a huge volunteer organization at UCT, took us into the township of Khayelitsha. Townships in South Africa are generally poor areas near cities where Blacks flocked to find work. Most homes are small and made of corrugated metal. Running water and electricity are rare. Education is drastically inferior to other areas. Khayelitsha is the third largest of these in the country, with up to one million residents. Again in coach buses, we drove past endless rows of shacks, patched together from thin sheets of variously colored metal. Again we pulled up to a school and disembarked – a swarm of mostly bleached faces and mostly straight hair, a spectacle for the children playing in the schoolyard, who gathered at the fences. Of course they had seen white people before, especially there in a place where Shawco runs many programs and regularly ships in college students. But mostly on TV, where the bleach runs through every valley. Hollywood Americans are the real ambassadors to the townships, imbedded everywhere a TV set and some electricity can be found. And the message they bring is a welcome one – in The Real World, resources are not an issue. Cars are big enough to house two families, and each home is a village.
Those who would check the White box do not live in the townships. 90% of Khayelitsha lives in the tiny box beside the word Black. It is another symbol of the power of this country’s past. Yesterday amidst celebration and praise, the world was quietly reminded of Madiba’s mortality. There is still a long battle to be fought.
Note: I have some pictures up: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/natepmay.
The “unfortunately” was the first concession that the invigilator had given to us as human beings. I was still uncomfortable checking one of those boxes, but I felt less polarized by this woman who would have been more comfortable teaching a an old-fashioned Catholic primary school. After all, we were all college students, some of us even graduate students. Most of us were from the U.S., but we were being forced into taking a long and poorly written English proficiency exam designed for South Africans. Before we could start the testing, we had to fill out a detailed survey of our secondary schools – which province were they in? did they have running water? And now in question eight we were asked to answer a question that had always been strictly optional, and we were faced with a ghost of a South Africa whose death we all welcomed.
8. Race:
__ Black __ White __ Coloured __Indian __Other
To South Africans, this would be much less strange an encounter. And most would have no question which box to check. Before 1994, “other” was not an option. The entire population was registered as Black (Africans of Bantu descent), White – (those of European descent), Indian, or Coloured – a term that meant basically the same as “other,” most of whom were lighter-brown-skinned descendents of non-Bantu indigenous people or of slaves taken from Southeast Asia and Mozambique. Whites have always been the minority here, but were allocated an inordinate amount of the resources. Below them were the Indians and the Coloureds, and at the very bottom rung was the majority of the population – those labeled as Black.
This system of classification, called apartheid, was started in 1948 the National Party, which was composed of Afrikaners – white people of Dutch descent. Two years later, the Group Areas Act began the racial zoning of living areas. From there, it only escalated. But so did the resistance – the African National Congress gained momentum and developed as a highly organized political force. Finally, in 1994, after broiling between internal resistance and international pressure, the National Party government turned over the country to the ANC, under baton of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela became a worldwide icon for bringing the country from the oppressive state of apartheid to a new democracy which is constitutionally bound to embrace everyone – the Rainbow Nation. Yesterday was his 90th birthday, and it was celebrated worldwide. Here at home, the media is filled with praise. The headline placards hung up and down Main Road celebrate him, calling him by his popular nickname, Madiba. I picked up a copy of the national paper, The Mail and Guardian, when I went to the Pick n Pay today to buy my groceries, and found this letter from a 14-year-old from Soweto: “Madiba deserves an aeroplane. I am tired of seeing him on TV coming out of big Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs. I want to get him a small aeroplane he can use to go anywhere, even to Pick n Pay to buy his groceries.”
South Africa does have a lot to celebrate, but, as I was reminded by the English proficiency test, the legacy of apartheid is far from over. On Monday the university took the international students on a tour of the peninsula. We saw African penguins on Boulders beach, and baboons, ostriches, whales, and two oceans at the Cape of Good Hope. For lunch we pulled into a town called Oceanview, where the Coloureds had been settled after being forcibly removed from places like District Six in the heart of town where, in 1966, the homes of 60,000 Coloureds were bulldozed to make room for white settlement. Our huge coach buses pulled into the parking lot of a high school, and we went into the gymnasium where we were served lunch. Afterward, we were treated to a variety show put on by students – talented and passionate singers, dancers, and musicians. The principal then invited us back. The kids need encouragement, he said, when only student in three will graduate, and the others will face stifling unemployment and rampant opportunities for crime.
On Thursday we were shown that this was not, indeed, the worst of it. Shawco, a huge volunteer organization at UCT, took us into the township of Khayelitsha. Townships in South Africa are generally poor areas near cities where Blacks flocked to find work. Most homes are small and made of corrugated metal. Running water and electricity are rare. Education is drastically inferior to other areas. Khayelitsha is the third largest of these in the country, with up to one million residents. Again in coach buses, we drove past endless rows of shacks, patched together from thin sheets of variously colored metal. Again we pulled up to a school and disembarked – a swarm of mostly bleached faces and mostly straight hair, a spectacle for the children playing in the schoolyard, who gathered at the fences. Of course they had seen white people before, especially there in a place where Shawco runs many programs and regularly ships in college students. But mostly on TV, where the bleach runs through every valley. Hollywood Americans are the real ambassadors to the townships, imbedded everywhere a TV set and some electricity can be found. And the message they bring is a welcome one – in The Real World, resources are not an issue. Cars are big enough to house two families, and each home is a village.
Those who would check the White box do not live in the townships. 90% of Khayelitsha lives in the tiny box beside the word Black. It is another symbol of the power of this country’s past. Yesterday amidst celebration and praise, the world was quietly reminded of Madiba’s mortality. There is still a long battle to be fought.
Note: I have some pictures up: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/natepmay.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Ch. 1: Find Me in Africa
I should have said I was going to Africa. Just to see what the responses would be. “Europe” would surely be different. Those who asked, “Where in Europe?” would expect a list of countries – not just one – that had been grouped together for their geographic proximity. How many would have asked, “Where in Africa?” And if they did, what would they expect from my response? Sure, some would be familiar, but I imagine for many my answer would simply be cross-checked with a list of alarm-bell countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe. For others it would put me in the green part instead of the brown part. I am predicting this because I always said I was going to South Africa. The responses – lions, spears, missionaries – how much did they depend on the South part?
I do not speak with disdain. A year ago I was one of them – only wise enough not to trust my pre-judgments. And I can’t blame it all on ignorance. “Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika” is the national anthem here – “God bless Africa.” What other country has an anthem that praises the continent and not the country? If there is another, I bet it is in Africa. There is something of a shared experience that didn’t end when Europeans sat around a table and drew lines on a map. There is a shared exploitation, a shared diaspora, shared poverty, and shared resistance. It is a point of pride that the lines the Europeans drew did not slice open a people.
Unity is not homogenous. That’s why I’m both in South Africa and in Africa. But there’s more – I’m in Cape Town. “It’s striking how un-African Cape Town looks and sounds,” says my travel guide. But I am looking to experience Africa the only way something big can be experienced – by seeing a small portion of it and understanding how it fits into the rest, without projecting it onto the whole. That’s not a preferred method of the tourism industry which fathered my guide. The truth is, my trip to the grocery store today was as authentic an African experience as any Kruger Park safari, but we all love canons, and if there’s going to be a canon, the Mowbray Shoprite is not going to be in it.
Through all of South Africa right now it is 3:23 am. At least at the time I am writing this in a notebook – I don’t yet have an adapter to plug in my computer. My first attempt to adjust my sleep schedule was foiled earlier by the timid tinkle of my alarm clock, which allowed me to sleep from morning until mid-afternoon. Any sleep in the two days leading up to that could have been called “nodding.” I flew from Charleston, WV, to Washington, then overnight to Frankfurt, Germany, then overnight to Cape Town. In two full days I ate three total meals. But I only ate again after sleeping, arranging my room, grocery shopping, dueling with a pay phone, and meeting my neighbors. I guess I hadn’t burned many calories adjusting my tray table.
In Frankfurt I met a family of four from California on their way to visit relatives in Iran. They were pleasantly open as we waited for our flights. The fifth-grade boy, Daniel, showed me some of his drawings and stories depicting his favorite superheroes – Egyptian gods. I introduced him and his brother to the art of drawing a portrait without looking at the page. Of course, I got a free portrait out of the deal, in which I appear to have been buried in a pyramid for thousands of years. I now have it hanging on my bulletin board next to my map of Cape Town.
On the way to Frankfurt I sat next to a woman from Hanover, Germany who managed a New Orleans jazz band in the States. When the flight attendant made an announcement, she remarked that her German was beautiful.
- “Can you tell where she is from?” I asked.
- “Yes. Hanover. That area.”
I’m sure most Capetonians would disagree with the statement in my travel book. To them Cape Town sounds exactly like Africa, just as, to my travel companion, Hanover sounds exactly like Germany. I’ll be writing to you periodically during my year here. My hope is that my isolated experience, put in perspective, will help you find this part of the world. For me, it will be a chance to reflect, and I accept the hopeless challenge of pouring my experience into the mold of the written word. Any time you want to hit the reply button to ask, comment, argue, or inform, it would bring me encouragement. Now I will leave off, because it is time I find Africa on the backs of my eyelids.
I do not speak with disdain. A year ago I was one of them – only wise enough not to trust my pre-judgments. And I can’t blame it all on ignorance. “Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika” is the national anthem here – “God bless Africa.” What other country has an anthem that praises the continent and not the country? If there is another, I bet it is in Africa. There is something of a shared experience that didn’t end when Europeans sat around a table and drew lines on a map. There is a shared exploitation, a shared diaspora, shared poverty, and shared resistance. It is a point of pride that the lines the Europeans drew did not slice open a people.
Unity is not homogenous. That’s why I’m both in South Africa and in Africa. But there’s more – I’m in Cape Town. “It’s striking how un-African Cape Town looks and sounds,” says my travel guide. But I am looking to experience Africa the only way something big can be experienced – by seeing a small portion of it and understanding how it fits into the rest, without projecting it onto the whole. That’s not a preferred method of the tourism industry which fathered my guide. The truth is, my trip to the grocery store today was as authentic an African experience as any Kruger Park safari, but we all love canons, and if there’s going to be a canon, the Mowbray Shoprite is not going to be in it.
Through all of South Africa right now it is 3:23 am. At least at the time I am writing this in a notebook – I don’t yet have an adapter to plug in my computer. My first attempt to adjust my sleep schedule was foiled earlier by the timid tinkle of my alarm clock, which allowed me to sleep from morning until mid-afternoon. Any sleep in the two days leading up to that could have been called “nodding.” I flew from Charleston, WV, to Washington, then overnight to Frankfurt, Germany, then overnight to Cape Town. In two full days I ate three total meals. But I only ate again after sleeping, arranging my room, grocery shopping, dueling with a pay phone, and meeting my neighbors. I guess I hadn’t burned many calories adjusting my tray table.
In Frankfurt I met a family of four from California on their way to visit relatives in Iran. They were pleasantly open as we waited for our flights. The fifth-grade boy, Daniel, showed me some of his drawings and stories depicting his favorite superheroes – Egyptian gods. I introduced him and his brother to the art of drawing a portrait without looking at the page. Of course, I got a free portrait out of the deal, in which I appear to have been buried in a pyramid for thousands of years. I now have it hanging on my bulletin board next to my map of Cape Town.
On the way to Frankfurt I sat next to a woman from Hanover, Germany who managed a New Orleans jazz band in the States. When the flight attendant made an announcement, she remarked that her German was beautiful.
- “Can you tell where she is from?” I asked.
- “Yes. Hanover. That area.”
I’m sure most Capetonians would disagree with the statement in my travel book. To them Cape Town sounds exactly like Africa, just as, to my travel companion, Hanover sounds exactly like Germany. I’ll be writing to you periodically during my year here. My hope is that my isolated experience, put in perspective, will help you find this part of the world. For me, it will be a chance to reflect, and I accept the hopeless challenge of pouring my experience into the mold of the written word. Any time you want to hit the reply button to ask, comment, argue, or inform, it would bring me encouragement. Now I will leave off, because it is time I find Africa on the backs of my eyelids.
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