my house

my house

my street

race, race, race

Over the past few weeks I've definitely started to notice some of the bad aspects about South Africa. Well, not "notice," because I've always noticed them, but somehow having these things be a part of my daily life for so long has started to influence me. But I just try to remember to take a step back and look at everything as a whole. This sounds very generalized, so I'll try to make sense of it with some specifics. I hate the segregation and inequality in this country. Reading about South African history, I thought I grasped the concept of racial conflict here, but it is so much more complicated than I ever could have thought. Even studying here I didn't really grasp it, but I think I'm starting to now. It's not just blacks and whites. There are blacks, whites, coloureds (people of mixed race), Indians... even among whites there are Afrikaaners and then there are people of British descent. It's hard to wrap my head around, since I grew up in such a sheltered, different environment. When I first came here, I thought, 'wow, it's only been a little over a decade since apartheid, they've really made a lot of strides,' and that's what most people outside of South Africa think, because that's how it looks from the outside. But living here, living with South Africans, I've learned so much about racism. Racism isn't always blatant, it isn't always obvious, it isn't always white versus black. A lot of the time it manifests itself in a 'anyone-who-isn't-like-me' kind of way. Yes, there are bars in town that mostly white people go to, and other bars that mostly black people go to, but it's so much more than that. (I go to all of them.) I brought a black friend to a 'white' bar one night and she sat there uncomfortably and said, "Why am I here? I'm black." I looked around and she was the only black person in the whole place. I honestly don't know how to react when someone tells me something like "Indians don't tip," or calls someone who is taking a lot of pictures a 'Chinaman.' I always respond to things like that by saying, "Hey, that's not cool," or something equally as lame and ineffective, while my mind reels at the comment. But those are the blatant things. I don't know how to describe the other things. I think it has a lot - A LOT - to do with people's parents and how they were raised. It makes me really sad that I have friends who think and act like that. I have friends who are racist. I can't believe that I can say that. I have racist friends. Sometimes I think, would they be friends with me if I weren't white? Of course it's not everyone, and there are a lot of people who are open and friendly and love everybody. And those are the people I try to surround myself with. And I try to remember that this country and its history are so incredibly complicated that I can't even begin to understand the cultural dynamics after only living here for a few months.

how the world turns

So, I've been pretty bad keeping up with this blog thing. I've been working a lot, trying to save up. I'm having a great time with my friends - and making new friends from work - but I feel like I'm starting to get a little disillusioned with how the world works. For instance, all the beggars here. I used to always give them a couple coins. But there are SO many that it's impossible. If I gave to every beggar I encountered walking from work to my house, I'd have no paycheck left by the time I reached home. The worst is the street kids. They're so sad. But one time I gave this little eight year old boy my staff meal and the next day I saw him smoking a cigarette! It's turning me into a cynical person, when I used to be somewhat of an optimist. Also a lot of the time with the street kids, you give them money but their parents or someone just takes it all for themselves. (Think Slumdog Millionaire.) It's just hard to live my relatively care-free life when there is such desperate poverty surrounding me. At home, it's easy to forget stuff like this exists, but it's pretty hard to ignore when you walk past it twenty times a day. But what can I do? What kind of influence can one person really have?