Global Pathways IV
South Africa: Language: Now write to describe your experience in speaking the local language and the other ways you communicated
The country has a number of official languages, many of them Bantu-based [Bantu is a language family that arrived in southern Africa from western Africa in a series of migrations and conquerings], along with Afrikaans and English. However, most South Africans seem to mostly speak English. Interestingly, there is a group of people who call themselves 'colored' and in the Western Cape Province, this group represents the largest speakers of Afrikaans. Also, Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal Province, has the largest representation of Indians outside India, plus a British and Portuguese influence.
I learned a few words, which I always do, and also how to do the Bantu click-sounds. I was glad to have an American accent, not Afrikaans. It surprised some people that I was white and did not speak Afrikaans. However, in general, I learned little language because of how prevalent English was, and how fragmented the other languages were. For example, I was on a train from Johannesburg going west, which is a major train corridor passing through many regions. I was in a lower class car, and the train stopped. Eventually, someone came in and announced in a local language that the train was broken and why. Many of the passengers, who were all black, asked him to repeat it in English; which he disregarded. Some of the fellow passengers translated into English or another language after the train worker left the car. In another instance, a guy came through the car singing, and many of the passengers sang with him, but not everyone knew or understood what they were singing. Finally, there was a group in the middle of the car that chatted and chastised loudly in a local language. At one point while I was waiting for the bathroom between cars, one of this group came up and talked to me in English. We were equally surprised - he at who I was, and I at how easily he switched to English.
One other interesting story, was that I walked around Durban a good bit with a black American friend. She is dark skinned and was often mistaken for a Bantu-speaker. One time, we were on a train, and an older white woman poked into our compartment and said something in Afrikaans. I apologized and said that I did not understand, could she repeat in English? She looked at my friend, and asked, in English, "did you understand?" When she replied that she did not, the woman walked away!
Music would often be in Afrikaans, and the bar tender when we went for karaoke was surprised that we did not understand or know the songs.
Global Pathways III
Adjustments: Now write to explain how you adjusted your behavior, your views and perceptions (intellectually, emotionally, socially, politically, etc.).
I mentioned above that one way in which I changed my behavior with the refugees, relative to my normal traveller engagements.
I strive to move slow and listen much when I travel. I also try to engage locals in conversation as much as possible. I have rarely traveled in English speaking countries (only the UK and Ireland), so communication was much easier in South Africa; however, for the first time in my travels, I was glad to have an American accent. Racism runs high in South Africa still, although it is markedly less in Durban than other locations. I think this is greatly due to the large Indian population, and also that it was a stronghold of the British colonization of South Africa. However, my clear American accent demonstrated that I was not Afrikaans, nor British (a group I did not realize had such a large SA representation), and therefore I was outside the racial issues that are just below the surface. I felt many people would relax to know my origin, but not all. Some felt they had more to prove to me, or that they were generally confused and surprised by my presence. I have experienced this sentiment before, as I often travel in off-seasons and off-the-beaten-path. However, this adjusted my motivation to learn local languages. In fact, I found that often locals spoke different languages, and no one seemed to enjoy hearing Afrikaans.
One thing that cautioned me was everyone's concern over safety in the country. I adjusted behavior to avoid some cities and areas even in company, and to stick with locals, and mostly in daylight. However, as I was there longer, crime did not seem too bad. In fact, while riding in a taxi in Johannesburg (a mode of travel that I do not normally take unless for safety), the driver said that we were in a bad neighborhood. Johannesburg has a very bad reputation with South Africans, tour books, and the international press. Certainly, it has had some bad cases, but I began to wonder if the crime is more directed at locals and racist driven than at tourists. In fact, I was often a bit shocked and appalled at the fortress appearance of walls around even moderately sized homes. The neighborhood that we were driving in looked rather normal though, and I asked the driver if we should lock the taxi doors, while stopped at a stoplight (which they call robots). In South Africa there are often people peddling small merchandise between cars at red lights. He said no and asked why. After explaining car jackings in Florida, and seeing his expression, I wondered where was the more dangerous place.
The next day, against the advise of some, I took local transportation into the center of town on a Sunday (considered more dangerous on weekends), and walked to the train station. A gentleman next to me on the bus offered to accompany me; he turned out to be a school teacher, the streets were crowded and friendly, and no one seemed to notice me and my bag, even though I was a clear minority. I was very paranoid, much more than I have ever been travelling, and it made me quite paranoid to walk around Tallahassee after I returned.
Also, while in Johannesburg, I visited the Apartheid Museum. It is well acclaimed...and sickening. We spent 2 hours and saw about 1/3 of it, and I was almost catatonic afterward. I could not take anymore, I did not feel well, and I had a headache. I could not believe the nature of it all, and how everyone genuinely seemed to think that what they were doing was best. The most amazing thing was to see young black girls taking pictures in front of the statue of one of the prime ministers that engineered Apartheid in a garden in Pretoria. I could not understand if they did not know what he had done or did not care. I could not bring myself to ask.
While in Durban, I visited the Shark Board to learn about their shark nets. These are a fascinating and seemingly effective aspect of South African beaches. However, I learned that I was engaging in some risky business in my daily swimming and stopped.
Also, while in Durban, we got to witness the political process of an election. The politics and history of the country, which I learned much of, are really fascinating. I definitely asked more about politics than I normally would. This was also because I met some locals who were politically active. The most interesting was politics in reference to the informal settlements and townships. The people there do, in fact, vote and have a say, even running their own candidates. They also get water subsidies and are supposed to have trash collection, though this seems insufficient or often neglected. Often people in settlements are there to be closer to jobs where housing is insufficient. It seemed that often they have a homestead somewhere else in a rural area. Even most of the hotel employees lived at the hotel to alleviate this problem. This was not what I thought the situation was like before I arrived. In all, I learned that South Africa has had an extremely complex history, even before the arrival of Europeans. Nothing is straight-forward or clear cut.
Global Pathways II
The Experience: Now write to briefly describe how you put yourself in situations so that you were able to experience a cultural exchange. Be sure and include a statement about your living arrangement (i.e., home stay, FSU study center).
My experience had three distinct parts. For the first, I was part of an International Program in Durban with Professor Teasley of the College of Social Work. We stayed at the Blue Waters Hotel downtown by the beach. We did not have a kitchen, so we had a big British/Dutch/South African breakfast with all the other hotel guests, then I shopped at the local market to prepare afternoon and evening meals in the room. I got to know the local products better this way.
The second part was independent travel to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Knysna, and Capetown. I stayed in hostels in these places. As it was going into winter there in May, the hostels were very quiet, but that made it easier to get to know the owners and operators as well as a few non-traditional guests. I again would usually have one meal out and the rest street food, sandwiches, or cook in the hostel. I made a lot of soup that month, which impressed several people.
The third part of my stay was with my friend, Blia. We stayed at her apartment outside Capetown for a couple of days and then went back to her Peace Corps site in Swaziland for several days. While in Swaziland, we stayed two nights in a hostel and another two with her host family. We saw the very small capital, the valley of the kings, lots of monkeys, and where the current Peace Corps volunteers hang out. We got to meet several of her Swazi friends who showed us all around the country.
One additional experience was a trip with Dr. Teasley and another student, Bonnie, to the mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. We traveled there by horseback with a guide and stayed in a local village, where we got to interact with several of the locals. The store keeper asked me to mail him a dollar bill to see it; he had trouble writing his address.
These arrangements offered many ripe opportunities for cultural exchanges, and I am not sure how to capture them all. In Durban, I tried to travel only by local transportation. I toured many 'tourist attractions', but most were more cultural than the typical beach scenes for which most people travel to Durban: such as the Shark Board, where I met students from Oprah's school, and the Phoenix settlement, a social experiment in a township started by Ghandi. I was often traveling alone, or with one other student and many locals would engage us. We also became friends with the hotel staff, even going to karaoke with them one night (which was a regular activity for them). We met a very interesting couple of ladies on a pier one of the first nights. They turned out to be Quaker and they picked me up to attend Quaker meeting every week with them. The group is very small and were very welcoming to me, showing me a township where one works, facilitating my way into a big tourism industry expo, and walking me through the traditional healers' market.
While traveling, I did not move too quickly. I got to take an individual tour of some townships, explore Pretoria with an older Kiwi, have dinner with a Brit who had travelled overland from England through western Africa, meet a local fisherman, have dinner in jungle bungalow, and eat local foods like impala and Indian Sea fish. Blia, my friend in Capetown, is of Hmong decent and made me a traditional Asian dinner one night also. In Swaziland, we had roasted ground nuts at her training host family's homestead, then we had a traditional Braai with Swazi friends, and then a nice dinner with her second host family. I think food is such a great way to share a culture and I tried everything including termites and bread baked in a pot on a stove.
However, one of the best experiences was at in informal refugee resource meeting on a street corner in downtown Durban. The Refugee Social Service office there trains refugees to serve as community contact/information points. Many of them work in hair salons which are ubiquitous and are often a gathering place. We visited one, where we literally stood on the street, listening and observing. Then a heated debate got started and we were drawn in. If traveling on my own, I would have exited the situation very quickly for my safety, but as we were with the local agency, I allowed myself to get more fully involved. Eventually, they pulled us out for safety reasons. There was also heavy campaigning going on while we were there, and sentiments were running hot.
We also visited a museum about Apartheid Durban. Blacks were not allowed unauthorized into the city, but men lived in 'hostels' and worked for different industries. They were given rations and one was for Sorghum Beer, which they drank in a caged outdoor bar. I asked several people this experience, and they all said that the beer was good, but I could not find any to try (though the
Amarula liquor was great; I was told the best is the home brew just after the fruit is harvested). A friend of mine here in Florida and I are going to try to brew our own Sorghum Beer.
Global Pathways I
The next several posts are from a report I have to do for a certificate program called Global Pathways. They talk about my experiences in Africa. I guess I am never going to get around to putting up my own notes, so here are some instead:
List: Your key moments of the experience (a bulleted list of phrases is fine).
- class in the Florida round room, looking out at the ocean with the other students
- the staff at the hotel were wonderful and so friendly
- the Safari
- being on the streets, just walking around, not necessarily in any part of town
- Gift of the Givers disaster emergency agency
- Refugee Services of Durban (agency)
- Lesotho Horseback ride, galloping!
- Taxi (bus) Ride to horse stable (helping the local kid with his phone) and walk, then guy picked us up and wouldn't let us walk
- Phoenix settlement, where Ghandi started his work
- train ride to Johannesburg, the worst train/bus ride ever
- Walk with older hostel companion in Pretoria (plus the Namibian colored child welfare/avis VP and the unemployed cook with stinky shoes); seeing the weddings, talking to the student on the steps of the gardens, and folks in front of the architect of Apartheid's statue
- Tour of townships and dinner with the hostel folk (Brit that had traveled overland) in Port Elizabeth
- Walk in Capetown, right from bus station along Lonely Planet route. Saw so many different parts of the city.
- Drive to Swaziland in rental car (and around Swaziland)
- Visiting 1st host family
- Finally finding the San paintings after a long hunt
- Visiting the 2nd host family and staying with them
- site visit of Blia's Peace Corps experience - seeing so many sites that I had heard about before.
- the picture of her in her sarong with all the men standing around inquiring about fencing and the Swazi flag in the background
- Swazi candle making
Amazing Race
I am sure everyone that reads this has already gotten this message multiple times, but if not, WATCH THE VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpMWIx4jVlY
