One of the most hilarious things about South Africa is the constant mixing of “1st” and “3rd” worlds. I guess this is really common for the majority of Africa these days, it’s just that it is incredibly apparent here. It is a likely scenario that in a village a well off family (let’s say of a person who works in town or maybe a teacher or something) won’t have running water or an indoor toilet but will have satellite television where they can get CNN, Al Jazeera, and the E channel. The best example I can give at the current moment is the fact that the office I am working in with 2 computers, a scanner, and big old copy machine is being housed in a mud building. We don’t even have electricity yet—it’s all running on a generator. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of people in my village live in mud buildings, so it isn’t something new to me. However, it is pretty funny that when I get to work I have to sweep big chunks of mud off of the desks. The walls in the main office haven’t been finished yet (by filling up the cracks with mud to make the structure more long term. We are going to plaster them as well once we get the money) because we have been using the space until the new buildings are finished. The printer that usually works in our office (the other one breaks every other print job or so) currently is on the fritz. I have tried to stress the important of covering up the appliances at the end of the day, but it really hasn’t taken. My recent fix for this is to turn the printer over and try to shake the mud out. Anyways, I think, finally this time the printer has a huge clump stuck in it that no amount of (safe) shaking will fix (I say safe because, obviously, if you shake a printer too much it will break…). I think that the local computer guy will even find this situation hilarious, and he only lives 25 KM away.
South Africa is definitely not what the majority of Americans or people living in the "1st" world for that matter would imagine it be. You do get the general African "vibe" in rural villages here, "vibe"meaning tribal cultures, use of Zulu only, traditional healers, etc. However, people who live in cities and don't have family members living in villages live completely different lives, lives that can be characterized as very American. It's amazing to me that most of these people can just speed by informal settlements and villages where people are struggling to feed their families in their fancy cars and then just arrive at their homes that have fancy security systems to keep the real world out.
Sometimes I think that this is why the crime in this country is so high. At my last house by Pietermaritzburg, I explained to my host father this reasoning, and, after acting a bit astonished and remarking that I "don't act very white" he agreed with me. It must be so difficult for a person who is struggling to survive and provide for his or her family to see the millionaire's homes and cars and totally foreign existences. It makes that a person might react that way in order to get what they need. I know that this isn't why most crimes are committed, but I can understand that kind of desire and greed taking over a person when they live in a house that doesn't have electricity but see a person driving down the street in an Audi (very popular here). Most everything is available somewhere in South Africa. Sure, what I want might not be easy for me to get all the time, but I can definitely get it 3 hours away in Durban. The fact that everything is available here but the majority of people don't have the money to buy it is so awful and unfair. People here are OBSESSED with KFC but going there for a meal costs exactly the same as it does in America. Feeding your family costs R150 ($15) but the unemployment rate in my municipality is 89%.
Sometimes the world just baffles me I guess. Sorry this beginning of an upbeat post went so serious and on a random tangent. I just don't understand why life can be so unfair sometimes.
<3
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I remember that, when I was living in Manhattan, when I was 22 years old, this happened: I took the bus to work at East 54th and Lexington. I got off the bus a block or two from my office, and walked across Park Avenue, in the cross walk, with the light in my favor, crossing in front of the bumper of a huge Cadillac (what the wealthiest people used to drive in those days). As I looked up, I saw an old man, very poor (what people used to call a "bum" in those days), crossing the street in the opposite direction. The disparity between that man and his obvious needs for, at least, clothes to upgrade the rags he was dressed in, and the Cadillac with tinted windows whose occupants we couldn't even see, broke my heart.
I wanted very much for the differences between the Cadillac owner and the rags wearer to be "smoothed out", for the Cadillac owner on Park Avenue to understand that he didn't need all the stuff that he had and that other people -- not just that man -- needed some of it.
I have always said to myself -- and other people if they were interested to hear -- that I call myself a "small s" socialist, and that what that means to me is that everyone should have about the same amount of stuff. I have spent my adult life trying to do some little things which would help "smooth out" those dramatic economic differences.
My grandmother used to tell me that, if I wanted to help the poor, the best thing to do was to become rich and then give away money. I would have to say that, probably, she was right. George Soros, Warren Buffet, and Bill and Malinda Gates have much more power to do things to help smooth out these differences than I ever have had or ever will have.
So, I understand what you have seen and what you feel when you think about the differences between Durban and your village. And, if your PMZ "father" is giving you a complement when he said you don't sound "white", blessings on you. If he meant that you were seeing things in a way that a black South African would not expect a white person to see them, then your USA mother is very proud of you.
This is a heartbreaking reality which you are seeing and noting. And I bet that it would appear the same in Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, Bangkok, etc. as it appeared on Park Avenue in NYC in 1970 and appears to you today, in and around Durban.
Jesus said, when he was trying to get his disciples to pay attention to something he was saying one day, but they were paying attention to a poor person begging near them, "The poor you will always have with you. But the Son of God is here with you for only a short time." I hope he was saying this in a very specific context, and not making a statement about human life from the beginning of time to the end of time. I would like to think that humans are NOT sentenced to always having poor people in the world, and that something can be done to smooth out these dramatic differences in income and economic power.
Thank you, Therese, my daughter, for noticing these differences and noting them and working to smooth them out. I'm very proud that you don't sound "white".
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