la vie en Afrique du sud

In case you don't know, which is unlikely, this blog has switched over to travelogue mode. I mentioned this as a possibility early on so no surprises....

So here I am in South Africa and what to say? I have no idea. Cape Town is a bit like Greece. It's on the ocean, kind of modern yet it somehow mixes in something old and dirty (not the antiquities of Athens, mind you), it is quite dirty around the edges, and it's full of smog most days! There the comparison ends. The vibe (at least among the whites) is what I imagine the grunge scene in Seattle to have been like 17 years ago only acoustic and with little chance of making it big. It is an odd place. There are bars everywhere. No, not the sort that I frequent joyfully at home- though these are here and cheap- I mean bars of metal.

Every window has bars on it. There are stiff, bold iron bars, protruding bars that seem to encroach upon the sidewalk, decorative bars that try to hide their purpose, and discrete bars that simply try to hide; but there are always bars. All doors have iron gates on them that are locked at all times. The windows, however small and out of the way, are always barred (yet my neighbour's cat can somehow get in at night to scare the living piss out of me). One would think that after all this time that I'd have gotten used to it. Yet the feeling of being imprisoned in one's home is ever present. When my roommates come home at night I do not hear the sound of the key fumbling for the door lock. I hear the key fumbling through the numerous locks on the caged door then the main door. It is quite a warning in case you are up to mischief!

Everything here just seems a but run down. Where I live, in Observatory (quaintly referred to as 'Obs') this decrepit state, however, morphs into something bohemian and comfortable. This is where the students live. The sidewalks are still showing the wear and tear of decades of neglect with the small crunch of broken glass ever present under foot. There is garbage occasionally flitting about too (and the word 'recycling' appears to be a foreign one). But then there are the walls covered in plants and little cafes and pubs everywhere. My walk home at night may still involve persistent checks over my shoulder to see who might be following me but it is, I fear, as close to comfort that I can find here.

Crime is not, actually, all that bad. Sure, leave your radio in the car for even five minutes and it WILL disappear. And, yes, any unbarred window is really an invitation to take what you please. But it is all quite safe. It is the bars that frighten me. They are everywhere. Every view from a window that is not on the third or fourth floor (and even then sometimes) is, I imagine, what life is like viewed from a prison cell. Table Mountain, however beautiful it may be, is not the same when little bars punctuate and frame my view. These bars breed the fear that I feel. I have come to believe, however, that it is not real and that I just might be overreacting. Yet it persists.

The locals, however, make due. Don't carry what you don't want stolen, seems to be the motto. It breeds a comfortable sense of anti-materialism, however perverse that may be. That I envy. I've always felt that I have less attachment to the material things in my world than many others. But here in Cape Town I wonder if that is true. Perhaps it is. I do not worry about someone stealing my camera (been there, done that- Amsterdam) or even my wallet (hello Iowa, of all places). But I'm here to do work and so I carry my laptop. I try to comfort myself by telling myself that it is not the laptop per se whose loss I fear. Rather it is the loss of knowledge that worries me. My dissertation, every thought ever put down to paper (originating in Word Perfect, of course) is housed here. It is the culmination of years of study and a map of my thoughts as they've progressed. It is, in short, the sum total of my thoughts on the world, my place in it, and my contribution to it. Can I ever replace that?

But I digress. This is not about my fear... There is, of course, so much more to this city (Cape Town). Cars are virtually a necessity. Biking around engenders odd stairs that convey this message of 'why is he not in his car?' It is quite interesting to tell people here that where I live I do not drive. The astonishment is, I believe, part of both the stereotype of the gas guzzling American and the reality of life here- one always drives.

Then there are the ostrich steaks (yes, ostrich) and the biltong (dried jerky-like things often made with Ostrich or some sort of animal called a springbok that I can't quite picture). Once my illness passes (I never fail to get horribly ill at least once while abroad) I will attempt to grill (or braai, to use the local parlance) a slab of ostrich. I'll pass on my thoughts on that little experiment later! My search for zebra steaks, however, might have met a dead end.

Now let me touch on something that I think is most important for anyone spending time in South Africa: race. As an American I'm in no position to lecture anyone about race relations. Our own past with Jim Crow laws is no different than the apartheid past. Nor have racial tensions in the US ever been greater than today. But in South Africa, the white minority feels, particularly the young, as if the race question has been solved. They do not, so they say, see race anymore. Perhaps the larger distribution of dread locked whites and the common inter-racial relationships allows them to feel this way. Yet any time spent out on the town invariably leads one to make a very close comparison to the US. Whites and blacks (and coloureds to some extent- it is a category of identity here that is too difficult to explain for the moment) do not really socialise together.

I do believe, however, that race relations are much better here than in the US, don't get me wrong. Whites are in the minority here even if they are still exclusively to be found in the upper income brackets. And it is this little noticed fact that ends much of the comparison. Class matters more here than at home. The interesting relationship between colour and socio-economic status in the US is a fascinating one but it is not quite comparable to South Africa. In South Africa, wealthy and middle-class blacks and whites get along truly as if there exists no racial barrier. They all equally disdain the extreme poverty here and the sort of culture that can often be found at various and decreasing levels of socio-economic status. This I find truly fascinating!


But it is also this poverty and the gross inequality between the haves and have-nots that fuels the crime and, obliquely, my concerns. South Africa is the most inequitable society in the world (Brazil is second at times). Intolerable poverty exists literally side-by-side with a basic standard of wealth that cannot be missed. In Hout Bay near Cape Town one will find seaside villas across the road from shacks of cardboard and aluminum roofs (some times asbestos if they are old). Now, this is not uncommon in lesser developed countries. My time in South East Asia, among other places, has accustomed me to such striking and unfathomable poverty. But it stood on its own there. The villas for the rich exist but there are too few of them to find a good juxtaposition. Here one need only walk down the street to see a world of BMWs, fashionable clothing (often reminding me of France, at times), nights on the town, and people begging for anything and sleeping wherever they fall. Strangely, the beggars are not nearly as bad as I've seen in many other countries- even European ones!

But it is hard not to see these things. It is hard not to think of such things. It is hard not to want to understand these things. And it is hard not to, in time, attempt to inure oneself to these things either and succeed. Poverty is deplored, as always, but it is fully accepted here. Tourists even flock to the townships to 'see' the poor. They wander around these formerly apartheid era housing schemes in open top buses or on foot with guides. Sure, many of these people choose to live this way- they have developed a strong sense of community and the government has managed to bring in electricity and shared water pumps. But I cannot bring myself to go 'tour' poverty. Yet I feel that, at least for someone in my position, I almost must see it.

No one from my background could ever truly understand this sort of poverty. It is impossible. Even the poverty of every American student is mitigated by the knowledge that the edge can rarely if ever be crossed- our family and friends see to that. It is also a strange fetisization of poverty to hold it up to tourist display. Yet for teachers and, more importantly, the politicians with power it is very important to see this. However tired and banal the thought and statement may be, it is our job as educators to discuss the world around as and to show our students this world. If that borders or drifts in your mind into some well intentioned but nevertheless sense of 'liberal guilt', then so be it.