Day 48: We don't expect much, so everything is great

I was slightly livid when I went downstairs, bags and blankets in hand and ready to load, to find out that there were only four of us going in a baby SUV that seated seven. I was more livid when I found that we had purchased the deluxe version of insurance and even more livid when I found out that we had rented the car for five days when we only needed it for three.

I had already been ignoring my wallet’s plea to sit this trip out. I thought, Okay, yes, I’m going broke; but this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! When will I ever get to watch the Swazi king pick his fourteenth wife?! I have to go!

So after I found out all of the above, my wallet let out a shrill scream of agony. And I almost let one out, too. Begrudgingly, though, I piled my bags and blankets into the back of the car and went around to find my seat in the back. It was about 11 a.m. before we pulled out of Tuksdorp – really having no exact idea where we were going or how to get there – and started on our way to that very vaguely known destination.

Our car was a manual, so our only capable captain was Madison. We, unthinkingly, allowed the only guy in our car to be her left-hand navigator. Carmen was the back-up navigator, and I was in my own world during the entire trip. (That’s what Africa has done to me. In all other circumstances involving a road-trip, someone else driving, and needed navigation, I would have been either a backseat driver or the navigator – but only since I can’t drive a stick, otherwise I would be driver. But in Africa, I don’t care about anything. I don’t care how long I have to sit in a car. I don’t care if we get lost. I don’t care if we get in a near-wreck. I just sit happily in my back seat day-dreaming or reading or closing my eyelids.)

It felt good to be in a car again. We all agreed on that. It has a certain freedom about it. And living in Pretoria makes us long for that freedom. Although we were driving on the wrong side of the road in our minds, it still felt like home to be driving ourselves where we wanted to go. It felt like home to be cruising along the highway for miles and miles and miles. Even if we were miles and miles and miles away from home.

Me and my wallet were still kind of fuming for a while. We tried telling each other to relax, that everything would be fine, that we would be able to work out the budget and still go on a great spring break. But nothing seemed to be helping. So I enlisted the therapeutic help of Elizabeth Gilbert. And for another hour or so, I sat in my own world of words – trapped and jumbling about in a box that was taking me to another land – and that did the trick. Liz calmed me down, and after I finished Committed, I was perfectly happy and smiling again.

Meanwhile, as I was still reading my book with a half-smile on my face (it was just too good!), our male navigator led us in the wrong direction – several times. Back-up navigator Carmen was struggling to find where we were on the map after she decidedly took over navigating. Because I was so ensconced in my book, I really have only a faint recollection of being lost. But I believe we were on the wrong track for a little over an hour. All I could hear was cursing and questions like, “What road is this?!” and “How do we get to N11?!” and “Dear God, where are we?!”

I quietly and calmly informed the frantic others after several wrong exists and turns and whatevers that if we would like to stop somewhere so that I could pee and so that someone might be able to ask for directions, I would greatly appreciate that.

So we did that. And I peed, and Matthew asked for directions.

Somehow we then found our way again. We were able, then, to turn on the radio and begin our jam. It isn’t a road-trip without a mixture of oldies, classics, country and hip-hop. That is exactly the amalgam of music that our South African radio gave us. We all sat belting out the songs together. Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel Like a Woman” came on and the Americans sang with all the attitude Americans possess. We were giddy that SHANIA TWAIN was playing in SOUTH AFRICA. Songs like that came and went, and we let our voices be heard.

The drive was pretty – a kind of dry Saharan beauty about it. The expanse was colored with browns and golds and pockets of green. Some fields were charred from fires. There were valleys and hills and forests. The animals were not your standard cows and horses, although they had those too. There were antelope and ostriches, a meercat crossing the road, some goats and sheep, among others. Signs told us to beware of domestic animals, which, unlike pedestrians, here have the right-of-way on the road.

The highways in South Africa are not continuous. They go through towns and require you to meander your way through those towns to, at some point, pick up the highway again. For every town we traveled through, we went some wrong way in trying to find the highway that we had just been on. Signs are unclear or sometimes inexistent. We often never knew which road we were on or where the one we were on was taking us. It was mostly guesswork, and I’m surprised we ever made it through. But we did and we carried on, through more landscape and good songs.

Construction workers watched us pass and made us stop because the highway had become one-laned in some places, so cars had to go in opposing directions in intervals. Most of the workers, we noticed, were standing around and listening to iPods or MP3s and watching everything happen. And most of the workers were women, who, at most, waved a flag around.

But once we passed the construction, we came upon a mountainous scene – with incredible, enormous mountains and massive valleys. It was in every sense defining of the word majestic. A fog had lain across the landscape, so that everything was bathed in a gray tint. The backdrop of mountains was just barely visible. Little shacks were lined along the road, just before the valley dipped down, and we thought how incredible it would be to wake up to that view every morning.

As we drove along, tall and lanky pine trees stood like soldiers in an assembly to our left and right. They were replaced along the right by lush green trees with yellow budding tips. They were the most beautiful trees I think I have ever seen. Signs cautioned, “CRIME WARNING DO NOT STOP.”

We were all taken by the beauty of everything, despite foreboding signs. Evening was quietly falling on us. The sun melted into orangey flames. We were still clinging to the hope of getting into Swaziland before it was dark. We were definitely close, anyway.

YEAH RIGHT.

At 4:30 p.m., after five and a half hours of driving, we finally arrived a few miles away from the border. Trucks had their own lane, and cars had no lane. The people of Africa – at least in the south – don’t know what a line is, and they certainly don’t know the concept of first-come-first-serve. Well, they at least know it in a different sense: first-cut-first-serve. So while there is a legitimate and official lane for cars to remain in, legitimate and official mean nothing to these people. This, in other words, means there is nothing but stand-still chaos when southern Africans are asked to wait in line.

The highway that leads to the border is two-laned. There is a going-to lane and a coming-from lane. This two-laned set up, however, somehow turned into five lanes. There were four lanes going to and one lane coming from. Those cars in the legitimate, official lane were joined on both sides by cars in the made-up, unofficial lanes – the cutters. At one point, as we were encouraging Madison to drive like a South African, we joined the ranks of the cutters. I kindly asked another driver if we could cut back into the official lane, and he kindly let us. But that was the end of our cutting, and we maybe cut less than 20 cars. It still didn’t get us anywhere close to the border.

So we sat.

And we sat.

For a good two hours.

Without moving.

At all.

Carmen and Matt left the car to walk around and see what was going on. They bought some drinks at the little store on the side of the road. But we mainly sat there waiting for absolutely nothing. There was no one in sight to direct the traffic of the unlawful cutting cars. People were mad, people were honking, people were singing Jesus songs, people were yelling, people were peeing on the side of the road, people were crazy. There was absolutely no order, no fairness, and no system. It was a whole-scale bureaucratic failure. Some random men who were waiting in line got out of their cars to direct the traffic and to ensure that all the cars in the official line were not letting in cutters from the unofficial lines. They directed each official line car to be, literally, bumper to bumper because cutters were aggressive and, give them an inch, they’ll easily make it fifteen feet.

The police man made a minimal attempt to enforce fairness by sending two cutting cars back into the official line where they had come from. But that was the end of that, and he soon after was nowhere to be found. When another police man came, Carmen got out to ask him if he could make sure that these cutters didn’t get in. He explained that he wasn’t a border patrol officer, he was simply there to ensure no accidents occurred. Well awesome. Glad you could help.

Furthermore, we witnessed the very reason why there isn’t any order in this country.

Because the cops don’t work for the state; they work for themselves. Anyone with money can pay a cop and get his or her way. We saw this happen. We watched as people exchanged words and papers with cops and then go right on in. It was more and more evident the closer to the border we came. Cops are crooked creatures in this country. They’re just men with authorized guns and a uniform. They do what they want, on their terms, oblivious to any notion of rule of law.

Meanwhile, we watched a bar fight, which was occurring at the bar on the hill to our right. A man – probably 6’6 or so – was strangling another man, much shorter than the former. We were actually terrified that we might witness someone die. The most incredible part of it all was that as I was watching those men fight, and as I was thinking one of them might die, I didn’t even have any ounce of shock in me. The man’s death would have been an expected and inevitable outcome.

He didn’t die though. After watching for too long, some other men broke up the fight, and the smaller man bounced back up to stupidly get in his last word before turning back into the bar.

Cars were still at a complete halt. The only movement was the new coalition of cutters coming to cut the first cutters. It was like a breeding ground of cutters, a breeding ground of inefficiency.

I don’t remember when it happened, but at some point we all kind of just broke down. We absolutely did not car that we had been waiting in line for almost three hours when the others who had gotten here earlier only waited for an hour. We didn’t care that people were cutting. We didn’t care that this was inefficient.

Frustration melted into pure hysteria – and we all laughed, and really didn’t stop laughing, until it ended. It was funny that we took an extra long route to Swaziland in the first place – five and a half hours when it should have been only over four. It was hilarious that we were just one car in a line (or multiple) of several hundred cars. It was hysterical that we were witnessing the absolute chaos that crossing an African border could be.

So Matthew turned on his iPod and grooved to his own music. Carmen smoked a cigarette outside and peed in the bush. Madison turned off the car and commentated on the events. And I sat in my corner with my headphones on and bobbed my head to Maroon 5. We were happy. We were content. We were stuck. And we were dealing with it. I loved everyone in our car at that moment. No one was fuming with frustration; no one was carrying on and complaining, whining that we had been in a car for eight unnecessary hours. No one cared.

After four hours waiting in line, we began to move forward. Eventually we were close enough to see everything and to watch cars being admitted forward. We were giddy with delight – this was it! We made it! We were going through to Swaziland! Finally, finally, finally!

The police officer waved us forward after all those hours in the line, and we surged on through the gates where we stopped for a woman to hand us a piece of paper. Let it be known, that there were four lanes of cars and ONE lane through the gate.

And then there was a line of people.

A long line of people.

“Wouldn’t it suck if we had to wait in that line of people, too?” someone in the car asked.

“Yeah, I would be so pissed. We better not have to get out of the car.”

“Oh, I doubt it, those are probably the people that got dropped off by the buses.”

“Yeah, we probably just drive through and give them our passports there.”

The lady hands us the papers, makes note of our tag and the number of passengers, and then motions us forward.

“Why are the cars parking, guys?”

We ask the lady if we, too, have to park. She nods, annoyed, and motions us forward again.

So we drive through the gate and into a parking lot, where we quickly find a spot to park. And as we drive through we see just how long the line of people is, and, well, we all want to die. We all hate life again. And we are all very much not happy and giddy anymore.

We are pissed.

And we are cold.

And we are standing, waiting in another long line of hundreds of people.

As I’ve said before, time in Africa is different. Maybe it’s a Southern Hemisphere thing, but when it gets to be dark (which happens around 6 p.m. here), time jumps ahead two hours. So when it’s six it feels like eight; when it’s nine it feels like eleven. So as we’re waiting in line at 9 p.m., we have 11 p.m. frustrations and fatigue.

And then, at around 9:30, we get our 11:30 second wind. Matthew and I are standing behind Madison and Carmen, and we, suddenly, think everything is funny again. We’re moving through the line slowly. We’re watching an officer in the window doing absolutely nothing but staring off into space, and we think he’s hilarious. We think everyone is funny. We think we’re funny. And we’re giggling and carrying on.

As we get closer to the doors to the border officials, something happens.

It starts with me. I suddenly can’t breathe. I am overwhelmed by the inability to suck in good air. My lungs are caving in. I’m silently choking. My eyes are watering, my face is scrunched up like something horribly sour flew into my nose and mouth. I look at Matthew and he looks at me. I can’t breathe.

There is something rotting and dying behind me, and the smell is killing me too.

The man is straight African, and I know this because he is all up on my grill. I have no personal space with this man. He is defending his place behind me, unyieldingly. I move forward, he moves forward. And all the while, as he breathes, his breath is making me green and blue in the face. I can’t get away from this smell – this rotten smell of body odor and halitosis. Matthew knows exactly what the problem is by the look of angst on my scrunched face.

I need to cough or gag, or I need an oxygen mask, stat. I can’t move anywhere because he follows like a ghostly, deadly smell lingering above and around me like a thick fog.

I MIGHT DIE HERE!

The crowd is moving in around us – it’s no longer a line the closer we get to the magical doors. Everyone is crowding around, trying to push their way in.

ALAS I find a pocket to fill where he cannot follow me. I step aside, and the man with the smell of horror and death moves in behind Matthew, whose face immediately turns a shade of green and whose eyes immediately turn red with sickness. He looks at me like he wants to cry, and I, free from the killer smell, smile and laugh. Matthew coughs and groans in agony. He moves forward, and the man follows.

“OH LORD!” he says, “Oh LORD, OH LORD, OH LORD!” And then he coughs some more, while I laugh like a hyena.

This is Africa, baby. This is Africa in all its stench and disorder. This is the farthest thing from America that we could ever come across, and, in so many ways, it is glorious. We are lodged between bodies, pushing to get into the doors to get across the border. The police man are standing at the door and refusing, with mischievous smiles, to let anyone in until a line is formed. Men are yelling, arms and fists pumping in the air. African dialects are murmuring and shouting. People are shoving. We are like scared little white chickens mixed into a medley of mooing bulls. We don’t speak the language and we could get run over by some hoof.

In a surge we move forward, as people are pushing their way into the doors. We get nearer and nearer to the magic doors before a police man shuts them on us. We stand, again, in wait, among the mass of angry and impatient bodies. Someone tells us that there is a government workers’ strike, and therefore there is only one person on duty.

The policemen look smug behind the doors, laughing with each other at the impatient people. They have the gun. They have the authority. They have the power. And they’re not afraid to use it.

We all look at each other and someone throws out the idea of leaving.

Everyone’s ears seem to perk up. Yeah, maybe we should just leave. Just get our passports stamped for Swaziland and then turn around and go home.

“If we’re not in there by 10:30, I’m going home,” Carmen says.

But why don’t we just go now? Is this even worth it? We’re all standing around bouncing back ideas, bouncing around secret wishes to just go back home and see if everyone else is wishing the same thing. There is an almost definite consensus. In fact, we’re laughing already at the story we would have to tell about the time we drove the Swaziland, reached the border and turned back.

Anyways, who knows how long it will be anyway. What if people get mad, what if the cops fire off a gun or something. We could all see that happening. People are still shoving us around, Carmen is getting nauseated, we’re all tired and annoyed and excited about the prospect of turning around once we got so close.

And did we mention that we weren’t sure where we were going to go after we did get across the border? Undoubtedly, the reserve we were going to stay at wasn’t open anymore – it was way too late. No one had answered our calls earlier. Setting up camp in the dark would be a hassle – even if we could get on the reserve. And what if we couldn’t? We’ve have to park somewhere and spend the night in the car. No one was really willing to take that kind of risk in a foreign country in the bottom of Africa.

We looked around at each other, eyes imploring and subtly delivering individual votes.

“Okay! Let’s go home!”

And that was that. We got out of the crowd, took our pictures of the office, the line, and our story, loaded ourselves in the car, and made our way out and back toward Pretoria.

Once on the road, we spent a good while laughing hysterically. There was absolutely no regret among any of us in the car. We were thrilled that we had driven five and half hours, waited in a line for about that long again, and then turned around to go back home. And we were thrilled that it was something we did together – Carmen, Matt, Madison and me. There couldn’t have been a group with a better attitude about it all.

We stopped to get some gas, some dinner (which we had all been planning to have in Swaziland after we set up tent – how naïve we were) and some dessert (because we deserved it). It was about eleven before we were on the road again. With our bellies finally full of things other than car snacks, we began the journey home, this time with clearer and shorter directions. Mother Madison, whom we called MOM the entire way there and back, drove us safely through the dark and foggy night. She deserves an award.

We arrived home just before 3 a.m., unloaded our unused belongings from the car, and parted ways to find our own beds in our own rooms.

And it was wonderful.

Day 41: We're in a black and white film

Of course I knew race is an acerbic topic in South Africa. It’s obvious in ever dimension of this country’s social sphere. But when Chris told me that people still hate to see a mixing of races, I thought he was exaggerating a bit. He told me if he and I were to walk along the road, we would get looks and some might even say something.

Probably not, I thought. That would just be going way overboard with the racial integration thing. I mean I know there’s some tension between black and white South Africans, but that’s just because things have been made awkward between them because of the history.

Awkward is somewhat of an understatement.

Francis, from the carwash, and I always have great conversation. He’s intelligent, and we always talk about our perspectives on South Africa’s state – socially, economically, culturally, etc. – and about our perspectives on the world at large. I love hearing from his Zambian point of view and he too loves hearing from my American point of view. We have grown up in two different worlds; and we share a mutual fascination because of it. He asks me questions about life in America; I ask him questions about life here. We learn from each other, and we always find something new to discuss – every day that I see him.

Zambians like to talk, and Francis is indeed a Zambian.

The gate to my residence is a 30 step walk away from the carwash at which Francis works. On slow days he likes to walk with me to my gate, especially if we’re having a conversation. Yesterday was one of those days.

My residence and Francis’s carwash are situated right alongside a main road. So as he and I are walking on the sidewalk, cars are passing or are stopped at the intersection. Yesterday we began heading back at around 5 p.m., so traffic was heavier than usual. The cars were stopped at the intersection. As we’re walking I heard yelling from one of the cars, and I turned to look and saw a man yelling at me. He was white, gray-haired and angry. His face was screwed up, and he was yelling in Afrikaans. I looked at Francis and asked him what the man was saying, but Francis doesn’t speak Afrikaans either. It dawned on me, though, that this man was yelling at me because I was walking with a black man. His yelling was relentless, and he continued to yell even after we walked past his car. Francis said, “Don’t worry about him. Just don’t look at him. Ignore it.”

Francis has been here for only 3 months, and already such racism is cavalier to him. He was completely unaffected by this man’s hatred of him. But I was affected. I was shocked – stupidly so – at the audacity of a white man to do such a thing. That man could have been verbally degrading me but it was only because I was associating myself with someone that man had already deemed unworthy and filthy. In that moment, I was thrown back in time to the era of racism and hatred. It was horrible. I only tasted a tiny spoonful of it, but it made me sick.

“That’s so sad…” I said to Francis, and that’s all I could say. He just shrugged and kept smiling his big, relentless smile.

The next day he kindly asked me if I was okay from yesterday. He thought it had scared me or something. It didn’t scare me, I assured him. I just feel sad that that is the reality of this country – still. I wanted it to hurt Francis because it isn’t something he – or any other black South African – should ever be desensitized too. It should never be something so cavalier and unimportant. But it is. That treatment of blacks was and still is accepted as something to be expected. That is sad. I could never take that lightly. It disgusts me – no matter how widespread it once was or still is. It disgusts me. And it will always disgust me when people see the world in black and white. It will always disgust me when they defend the separation of those races. It will always disgust me when they think color is indicative of superiority or inferiority. Sometimes I feel like being white in this country is shameful.

Because until they hear me speak, I’m automatically associated with that horrible history – as the villain.

Day 34: Roses have their thorns.

I think I love Saturdays most of all. Saturdays are more my days than any other day.

I wake up almost as if on cue, every day at around 8 a.m., if not woken earlier by a my Miley Cyrus alarm clock song. I hate when I wake up at 8, knowing that I don’t have to wake up until 9:30 or even 8:30. It’s harder to fall back into a nice, deep sleep when you know you’re waking up in an hour more or less.

But on Saturdays, it doesn’t matter when I wake up first. Because I can close my eyes and go back to sleep for as long as I want. Saturdays mean my kitchen is a mess, my house is quiet, and my neighborhood is taking the day off.

On this Saturday, I woke up at ten thirty. I took my time eating my breakfast in my room. I pushed the curtains aside and let the bright morning light into my room. I opened the window and felt warm air outside. I did some reading for class in my bed, took some notes on various philosophers, and looked over the South African constitution.

Madison came over and we walked to the grocery store. I stocked up on gluten-free noodles and pancake mix, and she stocked up on those rare tortilla chips, which only one store that we know of has. I came home to warm up leftovers of rice and shrimp for lunch, and then I made some coffee.

My time in Africa is perfectly embodied by a leisurely pace. It’s like I casually stroll through life here at a speed dictated by no demands. I can walk as quickly or as slowly as I like, and most of the time, I walk the latter pace. I have nowhere to be, nothing to do. Time just isn’t of the essence. Days float by like bed sheets hanging on a clothesline. They blow in the wind, but they promise not to go anywhere, and they are certainly in no hurry to dry.

Every day is the same here. But that, and the fact that I can walk by at a pace slow enough to notice what I pass, allows me to learn of new things each day. It lets me become further established in my life here. It allows me to teeter on the edge of new and familiar.

Beyond the gates of my residence, my nerves are, for the most part, on edge. I worry that each man that passes me by is going to pull out a knife or a gun and put it to my head demanding that I give him everything I have. It seems almost comical that this is my fear: but it’s not a joke and that means it isn’t funny. I look around like a nervous dog as I walk down any sidewalk. If I hear steps behind me, my own quicken. I don’t look anyone in the eye, and I have learned not to say hello and smile kindly. I’ve learned to pretend like I know what I’m doing, to pretend like I have a purpose, to pretend like I’m not nice, to pretend like I don’t have a heart when they come begging.

Despite having to remain in this constant state of paranoia, though, I have never felt so at peace than in this place. Here, I know what it’s like to breathe. I know what it’s like to sit and have nothing to do but think, be still, write, or just listen to music. I go to bed early here because I want to and I can. Not because I need to. I don’t have American-Dream demands tugging at both my wrists. My shoulders feel less tense than they have in, seemingly, years. My time doesn’t need to be planned out and delivered in portions to demands I am obligated to fulfill.

And this, I have a feeling, is the way much of South Africa lives. I can infer this from the literal pace they walk at every day. We Americans have had a tough time walking behind a native; they walk like they have nowhere to be. And though we don’t either, we feel we should at least look like we have somewhere to be and things to do.

This leisurely way of life is nice, yes – it’s even rejuvenating. But it seems to come at a cost.

~|~

South Africa as a destination for study abroad is a destination only because there is a wealth of information to be learned by just living here. It requires that you have already an understanding of the global economy and a base understanding of developing nations.

South Africa is not a destination for study abroad because the education is top quality. It’s not.

Frequently, Matt, Madison and I find ourselves commenting on the lack of standards in a university that is supposed to be of high caliber. Our professors expect little of us. They tell us what to read and they tell us what we read when we get to class. Going to class may be “compulsory,” but it’s really not. You don’t need to go to class to learn here. The professors, save for a rare few, hardly add anything to the quality of education. There is a sad lack of dialogue between students and professor. Questions asked by students are basic, asking only for clarification. It seems that they are not encouraged to critically think on their own. Classes here revolve around a textbook.

Students here lack the basics – those basics that we, in America, learn even before high school. On one of the first sessions of one of my senior-level classes we had a lecturer come in and tell us how to write a paper. She told the class what an introduction and conclusion must contain, how to link paragraphs using transition sentences, and how to cite sources – things we learn no later than our freshman year of high school and hone throughout the rest of our educational career.

Madison had a professor address her students because in some papers turned into her students had cited themselves as a source. That same teacher complained out loud that the standards of the university had been lowered because half of the students in the humanities faculty failed.

The frequency of testing is much lower than I have experienced in classes at home. I have one class that has five-question tests every week over one chapter in the book. He is sure to tell us that these are difficult tests and that students need to study for them as they would any other test. But come the test, the questions ask nothing that involves thinking beyond what is plainly written in the text. If you read, you’ll do fine.

There is a sense of apathy among students. This is revealed in the absolute silence that follows when a professor asks a question – even a question about the current affairs of these students’ own country. Students’ low standards for themselves are only reinforced by professors that don’t seem to care one way or the other. There is hardly any relationship between professor and student here. And it clearly hurts the education of the students.

The University of Pretoria is considered the top university in the nation. We are at the Harvard of South Africa. And yet we struggle to find the school challenging. The professors only direct our eyes at what we need to see, and other than that they are unnecessary. We teach ourselves everything. Going to class has become a waste of time – so I don’t go. I go to two of my four classes because attendance is taken. The content and lecturing of the other two are elementary.

We are not students of our professors, or of the institution itself. We are students of South Africa while we are here.

I try to refrain from being a “typical American” who thinks that everything should be done our way. I don’t believe everything should be done our way. But I do believe, and the other two Americans agree, that the American institution of education – and especially university-level schooling – is something worth praise. While the quality of education is not evenly dispersed among Americans, generally speaking it is high.

Our elementary schools and high schools may be at a lower level than other countries’, but we at least have top-quality universities to reinforce our lower-level education institutions. The university culture that has been created in America is one in which all parties involved are dedicated to high standards. There is an atmosphere of competition in American universities, something I don’t sense in our South African university.

I had a long discussion about this with two of my new Zambian friends who work at the car wash right beside my coffee shop down the road.

Immediately upon meeting them I felt they were different than other people. They were warm and congenial – asked me questions, remembered my name, stood around to talk to me for a long time. It wasn’t that they were “interested” in me; they’re grown men, one even introduced me to his wife. That one moved to South Africa eight years ago from Zambia; the other moved only three months ago.

Their English is clear and grammatical. They seem well-educated and have a firm understanding of the world. The one, whose name I have completely forgotten so we’ll call him John, has been all over the world. They are both fascinating to listen to; their perspectives on things in South Africa, as outsider insiders, add an interesting dimension.

They asked me what I thought of South Africa and how it compared to what I expected from it.

I hesitated in my answer.

What I had expected was something I thought would be more “African” – warm and inviting people. Other than that I had no expectations. And that one expectation I had, I told them, was greatly defeated. I have spoken with the other Americans, and we all agree that it has been a challenge to find our way into “society” – into our university’s society. People are rooted in their own niches, and they aren’t looking to invite anyone else into them.

The Zambians wholeheartedly agreed with me, saying for them, in their country, people are always looking to greet each other, to invite each other over for dinner, to talk and talk and talk. Coming here, they told me, took some adjustment – no one looks at anyone else, no one says hello, no one cares to care. We hang out with each other, they told me, because it’s hard to make friends with anyone else. And furthermore, they say, it’s impossible to trust anyone else.

To look across campus in the student center, where everyone lays in the grass and sits at picnic tables, is to see a racially and sexually segregated population. There are black, white and Indian, separated by race and ethnicity. And those groups are further separated into male and female, save for couples. The divided history that has bred them is revealed conspicuously in their present lives. Even in class, the international students have all noted the separation. I looked across my classroom one day and saw blacks on both sides and whites in the middle. The mingling of our races is minimal.

There is not one international student who has found a niche in the wider Pretoria society. We have befriended each other, and these, the people who are our neighbors, are the people we spend our time with. Beyond that, making friends is difficult. There isn’t an outreach to the international students – not a tangible and effective one. So we sit on the sidelines and watch the racial interplay – or lack thereof. And it’s fascinating.

But I can’t paint such a terrible picture of this nation. As John and I agreed, this place has so much potential. But a wheel can spin when it’s stuck in wet mud. Even if the engine on the vehicle is working, it won’t go anywhere. Foundational reparations need to be made – starting with the educational system.

John and Francis, the other Zambian, told me that only fifty percent of South African elementary students make it through school; only eighty percent through high school; and one percent through university-level education. Those statistics are probably rough, but I wouldn’t think reality to be far from them. There are always jobs in the paper, John said, asking for employees. But those jobs require high-education, which a vast majority of South Africans don’t have. Such a lack of education has, it cannot be doubted, contributed greatly to the critically high (documented) unemployment rate of 25 percent. And beyond that, such educational deficiencies have inevitably contributed (among various other historical and current international and domestic factors) to the fact that South Africa remains at a status of “developing nation.”

Maybe my faith in education is too overplayed, but its effects can empirically prove lasting and beneficial results. There is, I think I will forever believe, nothing greater than education. It is the key to possibility. Its inexistence or deficiency is just a locked door, behind which opportunity stands waiting idly. This philosophy is what drives me to dedicate my life to being that teacher that delivers keys out to children who will inherit their towns, their cities, their states, their nations, their continents, their world.

Globalization proves to be a problem. It intertwines economy with all other facets of domestic life and culture. States can’t join the ranks of global trade without permitting domestic changes, dictated by the economic powers at be, to happen. If a state wants to become a major player globally, it has to start at a foundational, domestic level, in compliance with – inevitably – Western principles. Such principles can only be infused into a population through mandatory education.

It means the slow-paced life of African countries, namely those seeking a valid position in the global economy, can’t continue on that way. There must be a dedication to work; there must be a standard of efficiency and healthy competition among the population. Young students must be given opportunity and encouragement to be ambitious.

What drives young Americans is a capitalistic dream. And as much as I hate capitalism, its defeat is not going to come about through revolution. It will come about because of inevitability if it is to come about at all. For a healthy economy and thus a healthy citizen life, a nation like South Africa must adopt those traits that can make it viable. From the perspective of empiricism, those traits are clearly American traits.

I don’t think I know what I’m talking about anymore, so I’m going to stop.

~|~

We couldn’t go to Mamelodi last week because there was a huge strike. Teachers want an 8.5 percent raise, but the president promised them 6. They aren’t happy. So school was cancelled.

~|~

New Character Introduction:

There’s Chris from Kenya, who lives in House 12 in my neighborhood. He is a riot. He’s like a host straight out of an American TV show. Like Ryan Seacrest but better. He thinks I’m like this sweet, innocent little “minor” – the “beautiful girl from Oklahoma!” He talks so fast I often have to do a double take. He asks a million questions at a time, wanting to know all about me – how’s my mom, where is my dad from, do I like South Africa, I must miss my family back home, what does my boyfriend study, how did I get such a fit figure, how am I doing today, what do I eat, am I a vegetarian, what do I do for fun. He’s a graduate student. He thinks I’m just “so cute!” and such a “good little girl.” He tells me I’m the “hot American girl from Oklahoma” with such Hollywood animation I can’t do anything but laugh when he says it. Every time I see him he’s with another girl, but he has a girlfriend. She’s very pretty and calmly at ease. He introduced her as his princess and then said her name, but I couldn’t say it again much less write it out.

I like Christ from Kenya. I think he loves women, but in a respectful way, because I think he loves his woman a lot. He seems to find people fascinating and it makes him incredibly outgoing. He will stop me every time I see him and talk to me, about me, for as long as I’ll let him.

Twice I saw him today, and I stopped for a long time both times to chat with him and the girl he sat with on the bench. We all went to his house for some nasty flavored blueberry cheesecake ice cream. Another girl came over and we sat around talking about religion and other things. They asked me if I go to church, and I told them I didn’t. They asked me what I believe, and I was reluctant to expound. They promised they weren’t judging and that they were just curious. I told them I believe in God but that I’m not a Christian. I told them I’m on the search and that I’m not worried about finding truth. The girl that had sat on the bench with Chris outside said she was in a place of questioning her faith, even though (or maybe because) she had grown up in a family of pastors and Jesus-freaks. We shared a mutual fascination with one another because of our individual foreignness and circumstance.

There’s Shepherd from +27 Design Café – the place I frequent every single day. Shepherd works there and makes my coffee. For him, yes means no and no means yes. He oozes sarcasm.

Shepherd has a sideways, close-lipped smile. I can’t imagine him outside the trendy café in which he works every day. He fits it, look, attitude and all, to a T. He has a quiet voice, and he talks quickly with a heavy accent. But he is kindhearted and good-natured. He wears patterned shirts, slacks and a brimmed hat.

He can’t pronounce my name, so he conveniently calls me “B.”

I order four things at the café: a coffee with hot milk, a chai-tea latte, a cappuccino or a Turkish delight. When I order, he says “No,” but he makes it. And he serves whatever I order in a simple mug on an artistically simple plate, and he draws a perfect picture of a flower or a heart or a dog or a dragon in the foam. If I ask for white sugar, he brings me brown, because he says “it’s healthier.” I roll my eyes and take it and he laughs.

When I finish my drink, he looks in the mug to see if it’s gone, then takes it while asking “A nudda?” Always, I say no, no, I can’t! He smiles because he always knows what my answer will be.

Shepherd and I have become friends. We display our sarcastic muscles at each other, make jokes and pretend to be mad.

I'm sure there will be more to come.