01-05-2011

Happy (belated) New Year, Internet. Unyaka omusha omuhle (omu-belated).

It has been raining for almost thirteen hours, and I have watched almost ten episodes of 30 Rock in the last two days. I also invented a new exercise called the Tarzan. It’s a pushup where you see how many times you can beat your chest after pushing yourself off the floor. It’s still in testing.

Christmas in South Africa is…unique. One guy I met in Durban summed it up nicely: (and I quote, because I agree with him) “it’s just too damn hot in Africa for Christmas.” Totally agree, and I’m from South Florida. Christmas at 70 degrees, with A/C? Fine. Christmas at 104 degrees, and a tin roof? Not so much.

I think most people in South Africa realize this; I was invited to stay with an Afrikaner family near my site for Christmas. Instead of Bing Crosby and Jingle Bells, we listened to Neil Diamond and house music. Instead of It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, we watched Get Him to the Greek. Not…quite the same. But the family was there, so really, it’s the thought that counts?

I had a great time. Mike, his wife Amanda and their two daughters live on the outskirts of town, in a neighboring village. Mike is fascinating, and probably certifiable. Born and raised in Morningside, one of the wealthier residential districts of Durban, he became disillusioned with the rat race of the business world he felt groomed for. He had some choice things to say about “the mortgages and the laptops”; it takes an articulate man to use certain words in the English language the way he did. In the end, he decided to quit his job, sell everything, and carve out his own piece of wild South Africa with what he could fit in his truck. He moved his family into the village, lived with them in a tent for two years as he built – with his own hands – his house overlooking the lakes. And now? He runs a generator repair business in town. He has become fluent in Zulu, and respected by his neighbors (we spent part of the day on Christmas delivering gifts to some of the households nearby). His house is completely off the grid; land purchased flat out from the induna, electricity from the generators he fixes, water from the bore hole he dug, no phone contracts, no cable, nothing. His greatest pride seems to be the fact that, if he wanted to close his shop tomorrow and leave forever, he could. All he needs room for is his family and his dogs.

After dinner on Christmas, we had a fairly in depth discussion on what his take, as a white South African, was on the HIV epidemic and how it’s being addressed by the new government of the country. At one point, he said “for an American, you and I have a lot in common.” I laughed it off. “Not so sure about that, Mike.” The man shoots crocodiles, for God’s sake. But it did make me think about packing up my own life into the Santa Fe in Gainesville, days before flying to Africa. I had donated about eighty percent of my stuff to either friends, Goodwill or the Solid Waste Authority (there’s a joke in there somewhere), and as I pulled onto 13th street from Bivens Cove for the last time, I realized that everything I now owned in this world was packed into my car…strange until I condensed it again, the night before Philly. Everything I needed or thought I might need now in a suitcase, a back pack, a laptop bag and a guitar case, leaving everything else behind. Maybe, at least partially in this way, we had sometihng in common.

Getting back on topic, Christmas was lekker. New Year’s will be another blog post, maybe. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and New Year’s celebration. I say this a lot, but know that you are loved and missed.
Happy 2011.

-Ryan

Oh and, total side note while I’m typing about packing, imagine it’s ten o’clock at night, there is a pile of clothes and books around you, and you’re holding a pair of socks trying to picture what walking through a stereotyped African village is like to know if they’re durable for two years. Actually, don’t imagine it; try it. Skip the pile of clothes / books though.