Get the picture?

The United States is a strong presence in South Africa.  The television at Claire and KJ’s house was a steady diet of Cartoon Network (Teen Titans) and movies such as Shrek and Barbie: Mermaidia. If not that, then the boys were using the TV to play the electronic soccer game made by EA, a California company. Apple, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard are all as omnipresent here as in California.

The student’s clothes and backpacks feature Superman, Spiderman and Barbie. I saw shirts from NYC, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Oakland, Seattle, and California State Red Industries. (In my three weeks in South Africa I’ve only seen two shirts that depicted a black person. Perhaps the new superhero movie, Black Panther, will shift this.)

Claire’s role model as a child was Oprah Winfrey. If she was a boxer, she’d be Layla Ali. Her favorite 1980s song is United in Love by the Commodores. The last cassette she bought was Always Forever by Luther Vandross.

I was asked what food in the United States is like and said that all your restaurant chains were selling it. KFC is huge in South Africa and every self-respecting town has at least one. I had been in the country less than three weeks and had already been taken to a chain called Spur three times. The restaurant’s logo is a Native American chief wearing a full headdress and the interior of the restaurant is decked out with various images of Native Americans. My breakfast café in Braamfontein even had a bottle of Tabasco on the table.

People here are excited about the improvement in the rand’s exchange rate with the new President. The comparison is always the South African rand to the United States dollar.

The Stanford Lake College curriculum seems very oriented to the United States. The year 10 English classes are reading The Great Gatsby. The year 9 history classes are doing presentations on the United States in the 1920’s. The year 8 students are learning the US national anthem and sang the Star Spangled Banner on our hike to the Iron Crown.

I just watched Mathambo, a girl who came on exchange to Athenian two years ago, receive a couple of awards. She is deputy head girl at Stanford Lake College and when she graduates in eight months is planning to head to a university in the United States.

And my daughter’s favorite movie as a child, The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, was shown on the long bus ride from Vryburg to Johannesburg. Get the picture?