I apologize for the lack of updates since the last apologetic post about the lack of updates, but ever since returning and getting stung by reverse culture shock, the routines of life here in the US have a surreal way of putting what was once something so moment to moment on the proverbial back burner. Well, that bubbling pot has been stewing long enough, so I will endeavor to resume more regular work on this blog, it's portrayal of our experience in South Africa, and where the project will soon head.
While dedicated to the cold truth of South Africa's poor, 80% of the previous blog posts make it seem like all we did was tour the countryside and take pictures of semi-wild animals and semi-wild people. It was intentional to highlight our experience this way to portray the desperate need of these families and individuals in an honest light, but our time spent away from the missions was actually the most insightful view into the South African social and cultural spirit. This post will be about the other face of South Africa, the one that isn't shown on travel brochures for game lodges nor staring at you with emaciated eyes from the television on Feed The Children charity drives. Because after the shock of everything new fades away parts of South Africa might as well be down the block and around the corner from wherever you are while reading this post. And in that weird transference, you are suddenly aware that the people around you are just like the ones back home, and only then do the problems faced by the communities we worked and lived with come into true focus. That said, I hope you enjoy the following posts. The theme explored only really came to light late in the trip, in that limbo where one slides from tourist to traveler and traveler to inhabitant. Once the country lost it's new car smell, only then could we make true comparisons to life both in and out of Africa, and what those differences mean.
To better give you the reader a grasp on what our daily life was like apart from the mission work, I will try to describe in both pictures and words the locations we spent the majority of the time at, the people we interacted with, things we did, etc. Some of this has been described in earlier posts, but I will try to summarize it here for sake of convenience. And so we begin...
Our first experience with South Africa consisted of us stumbling off of the last flight from Heathrow into Johannesburg's empty international airport, legs shaky after sitting for 12 hours and tired eyes being burned with the remnants of all things World Cup as we walked the halls of the concourse trying to find baggage claim. Yes, vuvuzelas were strewn about, and yes we all cursed them to ourselves, but after the bags had been collected the fact remained that our connection to Durban wasn't until the next day, and we were either going to have to set up camp in the terminal or try to find some kind of lodging. Each one of us contemplated another 14 hours of cold floors and aching backs, so we decided to ask the sole employee behind the tourist information desk about our options. We didn't have many, it turned out. 30 minutes and 1 halfhearted argument about the virtues of bunking at JoBurg Int'l later, we found ourselves bracing the cold mountain air of the sidewalk as we shambled to our waiting taxi to take us to a traveler's lodge 5 minutes from the airport. Having just come from posh London with it's metro, fish and chip shops, cute girls with cute accents and fine English ale, we left the florescent glow of the airport and were plunged immediately into the surreal void of our first South African night.
There were no street lights, no moon, nor stars; not even the headlights of opposing traffic to brighten the way save for one grisly accident scene we passed on the freeway where a car had careened off the shoulder and ended upside down in a ditch. The local police were there too, just kind of standing around, looking at it with indifference. I want to say it was on fire as well, but I truly don't know if that is an embellishment of my imagination or not. Passing the accident in a strange taxi and recounting horror stories of cutthroat Johannesburg life in our heads, we all silently wondered if we had made a huge error in judgement. "What was the name of the hotel?". "They didn't say". More silence.
We finally pulled up to a neighborhood however and our spirits rose slightly. No hotel or lodge in sight. They sank back down. We passed rows and rows of yellow brick houses behind gates and walls topped with shredded glass. No picket fences here. Our driver continued on until he stopped in front of a house like any other on the street, and the gate opened to let us in. We got our gear and were guided through the sparsely decorated living room and out into the back yard, where three little guest bungalows with sliding glass doors looked out over a dead lawn and a dirty pool. Rats the size of small dogs scurried on the border of yard and wall, and beyond that loomed what looked like an abandoned apartment building. We each tried to get some sleep, but paranoia made it nearly impossible.
We awoke after a few hours of fitful sleep to a slate-grey morning. In the early light, the area the guest rooms we had slept in looked like a prison yard, the wall from the night before had seemingly grown a foot or two and was outfitted with an electric fence. Already feeling out of place, we politely tried to eat the runny eggs and mealy breakfast sausages that the owner of the "lodge" put out for us, paid our bill and headed straight for the airport. The ride back during the daytime didn't reveal anything more than our ride in did the previous night: since it was the dead of winter the countryside was almost barren. The horizon was dotted with faraway buildings dressed in grey, and everywhere the brown earth looked as cold as the air felt. The few people that walked about were dressed in coats and scarves. Even though the more experienced travelers of us knew not to make the cardinal sin of having expectations, this bared no resemblance to what we had innocently daydreamed Africa to look like.
As if the surreal picture of Africa we were wading through since the previous night wasn't odd enough, our attempt to get out of Johannesburg took an even more bizarre twist. While trying to check our baggage the two ticketing agents for South African Airlines started to make a fuss, whispered between themselves and then finally looked at us and stated deadpan that a police hold had been put on Williams' ticket because the sniffer dog had alerted on his bag. As the color drained from our collective faces and our minds started to form the shocking expletives our mouths would soon hurl, the ticketing agents added that "we shouldn't get angry or try to run, it will only make you look guilty in court". I remember looking at John and then Ryan and seeing on their faces a kind of unnerved dismay I had never seen before. Since it was his bag in question, Darryl's face was delicately contorted, his reason trying to work out what was happening like he had just been told the sky was green, that up was down or some other fundamentally impossible fact. Drugs? Police? Are you f*cking kidding us? Our shock must have been total, because even after their stern looks melted into wry laughter not one of us seemed to process the change. "We joke, we joke!". "They ah no drugs, you may go to your plane", they said in unison while smiling wide. After several moments we all managed token smiles and thin laughs in reply, but their humor was lost on us. Being falsely accused of drug smuggling in a foreign country halfway across the earth was not the way we wanted to start the project.
To Be Continued
Words: Hamrock
