10/13/2010

I've been pretty bored today. I've been working on revisions in math, physical sciences, and English for the grade 12 learners (see my previous post for some info on what physical science is like) alongside my normal observation period...but since I still don't have my own classes yet, I've got a lot of free time on my hands while the other educators are busy marking exams. Free time is bad when you're me. I'm kind of Bon Jovi, minus the hair and voice and money: all I do is think. Want to know about what? No? Well, then skip this post.

I said in a previous post that I wouldn't talk about my feelings during PST until some time had passed. This is only fair. PST was a microcosm of Peace Corps experience as a whole, I'm inclined to believe, although seen through skewed, bloodshot eyes. It's supposed to be a way to dip your feet into the waters of South Africa without the shock of the freezing plunge. And yet, despite their best efforts, we were submerged. You could call it a baptism, admitting and perhaps cleansing the preconceptions you did not know you had. Enough time has passed on this, that I think it's safe to look.

I've been wrestling with a couple ideas since PST that are, I feel, not unrelated; the concept of Who is an African and the concept of Feeling the color of my skin. I can't cover both of these in one post. I can't cover both of these in one lifetime. They are fed by outlooks prone to change, adapt and evolve over the course of my service in South Africa and beyond. So this post is only going to be about Feeling White. About the sensation - never felt so prevalently before - of literally wearing my skin. I remember walking the streets of my village and hearing children yell "kua, kua!" after me. Men and women only cared to approach me - or distance themselves from me - because of my race, and told me to my face. I was seen only for what Being White meant for them. It's not a battle I ever thought I would fight, inside my own head. Coming to my homestay one day after training at the College, I told my host mother (in broken Zulu) "I am not kua. I am Ryan."

One exercise during training was to create an agreement spectrum - two extremes were chosen (I agree or I do not agree) with the statement read, and every trainee walked along the spectrum, distinguishing themselves by how much they agreed or not. When the statement "I'm proud of my race" was read, I was the only white person who agreed.

I suppose I could be controversial...this is the Internet, so why not? I'm proud to be white. There is history and culture, ancestry and tradition, sorrow and love and loss and hope inseparably infused into who I am and where I come from. I am not proud of injustice. I am not proud of segregation, of genocide and discrimination which smears a people's stereotype on a person's inner truth. But I did not come to Africa to turn my life into an apology for racial injustice by teaching English classes; to me, this implies the belief that the people of rural South Africa cannot stand on their own without foreign help. I believe they can. No, in fact, I know they can; I see them do it every day. My job is to help them realize this potential. When all is said and done, humanitarian work should not be about what I do for them; it should be about what they have done for themselves. Africa does not need to be saved. She is far too proud for that.

It's taken my time in South Africa - and what little time it's really been - to even broach this concept for myself. I have heard about it extensively from the African American perspective back in the States; where a black man consciously feels black, and the weight that history and prejudice brings with it. It's not a burden I would choose.

I will never be an African American, and I will never fully relate to that experience. But, as one PCV put it, I am becoming an American African, and I can begin to feel this new weight growing. And I wonder, is it new to me here? Or has it been there, unrealized, all along?

Welcome to my South Africa. Send me peanut butter.
Ryan

Officially a Volunteer :)

It happened. Finally. I finished training. I'm a PCV.

Oh...how rude of me. Hello, how are you? Sanibonani, ninjani? Dumelang, le kai? It's been awhile, friends. So the last month and...well, and a month, has been - everywhere. I can't come up with one single adjective to cover it. I wash my clothes by hand now; I bathed in a bucket, and pretty much handled all my other business in a pit in the backyard. It's not so bad, really. No splashback.

So what can I say for training? About 40 hours a week of information, ranging from the local language (Zulu for myself) to technical sessions on being an effective teacher in the South African context, to safety and medical sessions. I don't want to write too much about my experience in PST, as it literally finished yesterday and I haven't had enough time to digest it, process it, and prepackage it for your entertainment. Give me at least a month on that one; but don't worry. It'll be good.

So I'm stuck. I have serious writer's block right now. No joke. Hard to believe, right? I guess I could write about the incredible dichotomy between the first world standards in the urban sprawl of Pretoria and the rural outpost villages where witch doctors are still common and feared. I could talk about the 4 hour wedding, and dancing to the spontaneous singing that filled the church. I could talk about pap and chicken....actually, I'd rather not talk about pap and chicken. Not yet.

I could talk about the first time I felt myself as 'white' for the first time in the village. For the first time, I felt self conscious of a trait that I had no control over. I think this is one of those unexpected road blocks that comes up in cultural collisions; I could get past the lack of water for four days, my host mom's constant nagging to iron my clothes, and even the huge spiders that stalk me...but that feeling, that was tough.

I could talk about my experience at the Voortrekker Museum, and my experiencing the Afrikaner culture. How I have asked myself, who is truly an African? How many generations of family living in South Africa before you were born are required to consider yourself an African? Does someone of white descent have any less claim to the land now than indigenous Africans? Would that, in turn, endanger my claim of being American? These are all questions I still wrestle with.

I could talk about playing teaching about a hundred 4th and 5th graders how to properly dance, the Ryan way, in a school courtyard at lunch. They were pretty good, I have to be honest. Not as good as me, but they're getting there.

I could talk about slaughtering my first cow. Actually...nah, I'll wait on that one. Didn't smell though. Aren't you glad? I sure as hell was.

There's a lot I could talk about. But I've got a while, so I'll space it out. For now, I'll just say its had its good moments, its had its bad moments.

I scored an advanced level on my Zulu language skills. Sorry, I have to brag. :)

I miss you. Yes, you. Homesickness - and I probably don't really need to go off on that again - comes and goes, but really, I feel somedays like I'm missing a vital part of myself, without the people I care so deeply about to share the experience directly. I guess that's what the internet is for; talking to the wind, and hoping it answers back.

I'll leave it at that, for tonight.

Ngikuthanda nengikukhulumba.
:)



-Monaghan