Perpetual Change

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.

posted by jjs @ 9:39 PM