Black, White and Shades of Grey

South Africa is not simple. The persistance and tension of race issues has complicated my stay here and made navigating cultural cues nearly impossible. Everything is entangled in misperceptions, life experiences and history. I don't know how to even begin to describe my time here.

I visited the Apartheid Museum, like any good tourist, my first week here and was overwhelmed by the multimedia presentation of the rise and fall of Apartheid. The display was both inspiring and daunting. It touched on some of the intricacies of race relations here in South Africa--the distinction of Afrikaaners from other white people, the fraction of the black community into racial groups, the lack of acknowledgement of mixed race and Asian persons, and how all of these distinctions were toyed with under colonial rule. It is with this foundation that I was introduced to modern day Johannesburg and Pretoria.


Pretoria is relatively quite and staunchy, with persistant racial segregation (it used to serve as the seat of power for the Apartheid Regime, so plenty of old school Afrikaaners). I have literally encountered persons who refused to speak English to me and just went on in Afrikaans as if I was expected to know it. Luckily, I met some young folks here through couchsurfing.com who have made my time here in Pretoria feel much more vibrant. Coincidentally, there were two folks from Seattle who were couchsurfing with one of the girls in the group--small world!


I also went to Jo'burg for two days to visit another friend I made through couchsurfing.com (quite possibly the best resource I have ever stumbled across for travelers). Hendi ended up working for South African Broadcasting Corporation, although he had just quit, so most of his friends were in the music (i.e. hip hop artists, promoters, etc.), tv and film industries. Our first day was spent carting around a local emcee name Ben Sharpa and an artist from New York name Wordsworth. For dinner we met up with the whole crew of promoters, djs, artists (including the winner of the Emcee Africa competition), etc, and afterwards at the bars, folks would just buy the whole group rounds of drinks. We ended up getting fairly drunk. Ok, not fairly, REALLY drunk! That's when the trouble started. Somehow two very intoxicated girls started arguing with one of the guys and I saw how explosive racial tensions can be.

My time in Jo'burg was still fabulous, though, and I was introduced to youth subculture that I wouldn't otherwise have been aware of (who knew that hip hop, urban street artists and film could be such important vehicles for youths' voices).

Today we visited Kliptown Preschool in Soweto, one of the townships of Jo'burg. Pam, the woman who runs the show gave us a little tour of the community there, explaining what life in a shantytown is really like. I, being the over-thinking hyper-critical analyst that I am, felt quite awkward guaking at people's lives. There was a group of students from San Diego State University on an alternative spring break that came with us, and many of them were snapping photos of the kids and the shacks as if it were Disney Land. Again, I am clearly too critical!

One of the highlights of the trip was the performance put on by the children, ranging in age from one ot five. Each age group gave a short performance of songs and dances sung mostly in Zulu. The cutest part was to see the little three-year-old girls shaking their booties or the boys chopping the air and stamping their feet. Later on during the day, some folks broke out the drums and a few older kids performed some dances. The sounds of the drums made my heart go "ba-bump," and I realized I was having one of those "ahah" happy moments where I realize why life, despite all the crap, is still great.

I'm hoping to meet up with a friend who is doing Peace Corps here in South Africa before hitting up Kruger National Park and then taking of on some proper travels. Ngeyavalilisa!