Orangpples

During training we would often hear that life in South Africa was unique because of a concept fundamental to its culture: Ubuntu. In Nguni languages (isiZulu, siSwati, isiXhosa, isiNdebele) this is most often expressed through the adage “Umuntu ngaumntu ngabantu” – A person is a person through other persons”. We were told that because of Ubuntu there is a closer sense of community and unity then elsewhere. Ubuntu is commonly explained as similar to the Golden Rule: “Love thy neighbor as they self”. But even if there is some overlap in the core sentiments invoked by both Ubuntu and the Golden Rule, there are also some key differences; which make translating the ideas between cultures difficult. Most importantly, embedded in the Golden Rule is a sense of “I”, and in fact that individualism is found throughout western thought – epitomized by René Descartes “I think, therefore I am”.  While embedded in the idea of Ubuntu is community and unity.

If you followed the link to the Wikipedia article on Ubuntu you saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s definition of the Ubuntu philosophy:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

As an American living among South African culture it’s often difficult to see the ideas of Ubuntu in daily life here. I’ve often participated in conversations with other volunteers centered around the idea that Ubuntu is dead. Perhaps the only times we are able to see it is at weddings, funerals and cultural events where everyone is invited and often times a cow or two is slaughtered. But these are big important events, when looking for Ubuntu in daily actions it’s elusive at best. Certainly in most aspects of the education system, the political system and the way children are treated and raised it’s nonexistent. Perhaps the the culture norm that bothers me, as well as other volunteers, the most is the casual way trash is discarded wherever one may be. If a sense of community and interconnectedness of all people is so important to the concept of Ubuntu why do people just drop plastic bags as they walk, unwrap a candy and let the wrapper fall to the ground where they stand, and throw coke bottles out the window. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve finished a snack or drink on a taxi and the person next to the window offered to through it out for me! Or the weird looks I get when I’m handed a coke can to through out the window and instead put it in my bag to place in a trash can. As American’s we take all these things to mean that Ubuntu is dead, but I think this sentiment comes our different cultural backgrounds. And every now and then an aspect of Ubuntu that we can relate to our understanding of the Golden Rule seeps through.

This blog post is really about one of those times.

Last week as I was biking to a school my chain locked up on the way down a hill. I’d never seen a bike chain get stuck like this one; somehow 5 chain links had got caught between the smallest and middle gears in the front. I flipped the bike over and tried pulling them out, which only served to get my hands dirty. I next tried to use some near by rocks to hammer the chain outwith out much luck. I’d been working on this for maybe a minute and a half before someone asked what was wrong. When I explained she stopped someone going someone going in the opposite direction and told him what was wrong. He immediately turned around and told me to follow him to his house, which was about a block away. There with the help of a screw drive and hammer we proceeded to unlock the chain (and luckly this hasn’t reoccurred). I thanked him for all his help and was about to jump on the bike and continue to school, but he insisted on taking me back to the sink and having me throughly scrub my hands. I’m pretty sure my attempts to unlock the chain with out real tools would have failed and forced me to walk back home, but thankfully I didn’t have to.

I think this is an important example of why Peace Corps is a 2 year commitment. I can’t help but think a similar situation would have played out if this had happened not after I’d been biking around the township for over a year, but in my first month here. I’m sure someone would have helped me eventually, but I doubt it would have been that fast. Having lived here for the last 15 months I am now part of the community and that has certain benefits. Maybe to much sometimes, because I also can’t help but wonder how fast someone would have stopped to help if it wasn’t “that weird umlungu American that lives in the township” and just your average person on a bike. But I can never know, for I can only experience life here being treated a 23 year old American and never as someone who was born and raised here. But I’d like to think the fact that I’m the only white person living in the township had little to do with the help I got, and that the same would have been extended to anyone.

There are aspects of your society that are so ingrained and habitual that you don’t notice them until you have the opportunity to live in another culture.  Some of these are major things and pretty obvious to anyone with knowledge of both cultures.  But some of them are really subtle and found only in the small unimportant details.  Here’s a story of one such aspect of American society that is so ingrained in me that even after five months here I just realized it today.

I went to the one of the local shops to by some crackers and candy.  The total came out to be R10.50.  I had a R10 and R20 bill in my wallet so I figured I’d try to get 50 cents out of my coin pouch.  My mind was on cruise control and thinking 50 cents though 2 quarters.  Now I know perfectly well that South African coin denominations come in 5, 10, 20, 50 cents and then 1, 2 and 5 rand.  But when I think 50 cents my mind defaulted to looking for two coins.  Since I only had one 50 cent coin, which I thought was 25 cents, I payed with the R20 bill.  Instead of handing me back 9.50 — which would have all been in coins — the merchant handed me a 10 rand bill back.  I immediately thought that at least I could give him the 25 cents if he wasn’t going to make me pay the 50 cents.  And then while I was handing it to him I suddenly realized that it was 50 and not 25 cents. Walking out of the store I felt pretty stupid.  The cashier must have seen my 50 cent coin in my coin pouch and couldn’t understand why I didn’t hand it to him at first.

On Saturday two of my host mom’s brothers kids knocked on my door and told me I was supposed to go to church with them the next day at 10. Going to church here is always a very interesting experience. The services will normally last anywhere from 1.5 – 2 hours and are almost entirely in SiSwati or Zulu. There is an seemingly endless repetition of singing, preaching and praying during which everyone but me knows exactly which will come next. I do my best to imitate what everyone else is doing and clap along to the numerous songs but for the majority of the long service am left with just my own thoughts to entertain me.

The next day I got ready for church around 9:30 but by quarter till no one had shown up to pick me up. I thought about just staying in and working on reading more SVG graphics documentation for a project I’m working on, but something made me ask my host mom why no one had come yet. I guess I felt that even though it would be so easy to sit in my room and program or read all day it would be better to get out, even if that meant sitting through 2 hours of church in a language I don’t understand. It turned out that the church yesterday was one of the most interesting and inspiring things I’ve seen while being in the township.

My to host nephews lead me down the block to the Salvation Army church. I’d never been in it but had passed it several times and on many occasions and always sort of wondered about it. All I new of the Salvation Army was that it was where you could donate furniture and clothing and never had heard of it as a church. I was ushered into the service by my host mom brothers wife and was immediately surprised. Everyone in the service except me was waring a white shirt, blue tie and black pants and most people had Salvation Army badges on their shoulders. I also very quickly realized that the entire church was filled with males expect for a white couple sitting behind the pulpit which I found very very strange. I latter found out that this was actually the regional meeting of mens arm of the Salvation Army for Mpumalanga and Swaziland which will explain a lot of what I saw but I didn’t know until after the service.

One of the coolest things they had there was a brass band. There were 3 tubes, about 10 smallish euphoniums, 2 trombones and 4 trumpets. It was really great to listen and watch them play and they sounded really good. When everyone was done they played a Susa march that really made me want to pick up a trombone again. I got to go up and talk to them after the service and that’s when I found out that the band was so big because it was a conglomeration of everyone in Mpumalanga. It seemed like the group at the local church was really small and in need of instruments and music but they practice every day and so I might stop by their practice sometime this week.

A surprisingly large amount of the service was in English, most likely because the regional commander was there and him and his wife are from Newfoundland Canada. Not knowing anything about the Salvation Army of their doctrine I was not surprised to find find it inundated with the religion as war metaphor, they refer to themselves as the “Mighty Men of God”. But at the same time it was filled with a message of personal responsibility and integrity. A mighty man they were told is an outstanding member of his community, honest in all his relations, and does everything to the best of his ability. This service was the culmination of a weekend long mens retreat where they had brainstormed ways to address the problems plaguing the community. How to fight HIV and AIDS, how to improve the educational opportunities for young children, and how to provide good role models for the young men in the community. At the end of the service they had everyone that had taken a pledge to live up to these standards the previous day come up and get a certificate. Among them were about 40 high school age youths. It was great to see such an amazing example of beneficial social change.

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helpin

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helping cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.

g cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.

One major aspect of Peace Corps Training is the home stay, the purpose of which is to teach you through cultural immersion what would could never be taught in the class room. Here are some of the things I learned while living in a small South African village for two months where the water flowed out of the communal spicket about once a week, the cows and chickens roamed free, the garbage was thrown over the fence for the goats to eat and every house had an identical government build bit latrine.

On bathing in a 2 ft basin with half a bucket of water

• Always start with your face because you wouldn’t believe how dirty the water is by the end.
• Blow out your noes while you dunk your head to wash your hair because sneezing shampoo out your nose is worse then soap in your eyes.
• Dead bugs don’t teach live bugs how not to die because ever morning there will inevitable be a few dead bugs in last nights bath water.
• No matter how good the book you’re reading is don’t wait two hours after the water is ready to bath because after taking an ice cold bath in the bleak July winter not even three blanks on your bed will warm you up.
• Don’t forget to put the lid on the bath water while it boils over the fire because smoke scented bath water can’t be masked by your Old Spice deodorant.
• The phrase don’t throw the baby out with the water finally makes sense to you after a month of throwing your dirty bath water over the fence.

On hand washing your cloths

• Always soak your socks for a good 2 hours because it makes getting the African dirt (there’s really nothing special about it that makes it African dirt its just that there’s so much of it) our of white socks so much easier.
• Don’t bring white socks or any other white clothing to Africa or any place you’ll be washing cloths by hand unless you have always wanted to tie-die them a nice tanish color.
• The answerer to a mud stain isn’t magic bleach but more elbow grease.
• It is always best to check the 3 day forecast (if you have access to a semi accurate one) before planing to do laundry because a cloudy day or dust storm ruins your plans.
• If everyone washed their cloths by hand once a year quite a few of the worlds problems would be solved because there’s nothing like 3 hours of scrubbing to let your mind come up with the best ideas.

On using a pit latrine (mine was really nice as pit latrine’s go)

• The first 3 times not flushing seems really weird, then after that its so normal you hate doing it when you use a flush toilet.
• Always care a flash light with you at night because light is the best way to scare the cockroaches back down the hole.
• Cockroaches really are going to be the only things to survive a nuclear holocaust because they seem to thrive in places you don’t eve want to see.
• On the cold July mornings you actually welcome the heat coming out of the bottom of the pit.

You ask questions you never would have asked before: Like did humans sense of smell evolve to detest the pugnacious aroma of feces or did the pugnacious aroma of feces evolve so that humans detested it?

On English

• It’s Maths not Math

Sample Conversation:

Me: My favorite subject is math.

5^th Grader: You mean maths.

Me: Yeah math like arithmetic and geometry.

5^th Grader: Yeah thats maths not math.

• American TV is not always the best teacher of English because young kids understand when to use swear words but not what they mean.

Sample Conversation:

Me: That’s actually 4.75 cm see you it goes to this small tick and not the tick half way in between.

1^st Grader: Shit. Asking for eraser.

Me: (cringing at a 6 year olds use of such a word). What did you say.

1^st Grader: Shit. It’s English my mom likes me to speak English, it means I did something wrong.

Note: The 1^st Grader’s English in question was not really good enough for me to communicate in full sentences with and was probably only a little better then my understanding of Zulu but that’s what I imagine he would have said if I could have asked him.

On other random facts of life

• Cows have much more intelligence then I ever thought, they’ll go wondering around all day and then an hour before sun set trot back home in a nice line. Its blew me away to see a double file line of 20 cows running down the street taking weaving their way through all the cross rodes to get home.
• The best way to shut the back door of a taxi van when no one is in the back is to slam the breaks really hard being sure to give the passengers a good 2 second warning.
• Breast feeding on a 3 hour taxi ride is perfectly acceptable but listing to an MP3 player will earn you strange looks.
• The best way to make sure the wild grass in your front yard or a crossed the street is to light it on fire.