Author: noforeignlands

It’s Sunday at Ken and Joy’s house. They live in New Kasama, a well-to-do neighborhood over the hill from the Bauleni compound. Ken and Joy have adopted two sisters from the compound who were regulars at Appleseed: Jenny is 10 and Lucy is 8. Both of Jenny and Lucy’s parents are dead, and they have a younger sister who died a couple of years ago. Jenny has sickle cell disease and was not getting treated. Ken and Joy stepped in when Jenny almost died. With the blessings of the girls’ family—their grandmother lives four doors from Appleseed–Ken and Joy legally adopted Jenny and Lucy. The girls now realize that Ken and Joy are ‘our real parents forever and ever.’

Jenny and Lucy have a leg in two worlds. Their parents are white teachers from the United States and they attend the American International School of Lusaka, probably the most expensive school in Zambia. And Jenny and Lucy are fully of Bauleni. Their friends are mostly from the compound and they are fluent in Bembe and Nyanja.

It’s Sunday and there are ten children over to play. Some are Appleseed children from the compound who called and asked if they could come over. Ken and Joy said no to some children who wanted to come, but who are not really Jenny and Lucy’s friends and just wanted to be at the house. There are also neighborhood children, some of whose families are squatting in a big abandoned home about 100 meters up the hillside. The building was being constructed when Zambia had its first transfer of power a few years ago–and constructed stopped.

Jenny and Lucy’s house has luxuries not found in the compound. The grassy yard here at the house is a nicer park than can be found there. Most people in the compound do not have running water and the folks who are squatting up the hillside must walk a kilometer into the compound to get water. Jenny and Lucy have running water. Both yesterday and today they played a hair parlor game with their friends where the girls wash each other’s hair under a running hose. Did I mention that Jenny and Lucy have a trampoline?

There are also four sweet young men that are at the house today: Paul, Isaac, Patrick and Jimmy. They were Appleseed kids and now work there. Paul and Isaac spent Saturday night sleeping on sofas in the living room. The men are hanging out, using the wifi, watching television, and doing laundry. I didn’t realize that there would be a crowd coming over to do laundry today and so put a load in the washing machine. Some of the young men are doing their laundry by hand, but that is much easier here because of the running water.

The other complication with water is that there has been an outbreak of cholera in Lusaka and Zambia. There have been about 3,000 cases nationwide and 70 deaths. Water from the local water system is not considered safe to drink. The municipality brought a half-dozen huge green water tanks into the compound for people to get water from, but this means walking to the tank and waiting in line to fill a container or two.

This afternoon, Ken, Joy and I went to Pick n Pay to do the grocery shopping for the week. Our shopping cart full of food cost a little over 1,600 Zambian kwacha, which is about US$160. This seems reasonable–until you look at local salaries. The American International School pays for a security guard 24/7 at all foreign teachers’ homes, including Ken and Joy’s. The guard makes 1,100 kwacha a month for working six 12-hour shifts each week.

Ken and Joy have two half-time gardeners, who they each pay 700 kwacha a month (more than the going rate). Ken and Joy told the gardeners that they would need to find new jobs in about a year. One of them has taken a full-time job working for another faculty member at the American International School. That family is paying 800 kwacha a month, so it’s barely more than Ken and Joy were paying for half-time work. Moreover, the other teacher lives 15 kilometers from here, so the gardener needs to move himself and his family to be close to the new job. The man was desperate to make sure he didn’t find himself with no income. Ken said that the unemployment rate in the compound is 70%.

When the day finally cooled off in the late afternoon, I went for a 90-minute walk. I mostly trod paths I’ve already been on–past the protective walls of the well-to-do, past the open yards and corn fields of those with less to lose, and through the compound. As always, the compound was buzzing with people. Over 22,000 people live there now. It was 14,000 people just a few years ago, but people keep moving into Lusaka from the countryside. The only paved road on my walk was in the compound. The first paved roads appeared there within the last two years. Almost as helpful as the paved roads are the large gutters, which help keep rain water out of the street and yards.

Despite the poverty, the people in the compound are almost all dressed in clean clothes in good repair. They put a lot of care into this. Many of the used clothes that get donated in the USA are shipped to places like Zambia, so you’ll see people here wearing the same t-shirts that you would find in Oakland. Where attire looks different in Bauleni is usually the shoes, which are generally clogs or flip flips–or no shoes at all.

I arrived back at Ken and Joy’s as dusk was starting to fall. All the guests had gone home. No shrieks of joy from children playing and the clothes line and dryer were finally free.

I have been using black, African, coloured, white, and Indian to describe people in South Africa. These are terms that are used here, but they understate the cultural diversity of South Africa.

There are eleven official languages in South Africa. Nine of the eleven are southern Bantu languages. Listed by percentage of the population that speaks them, they are Zulu, Xhosa, Northern Sotho, Tswana, Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda and Ndebele. The big ones are Zulu at 22% of the population and Xhosa at 16%. This is not merely linguistic diversity, but tribes with distinct cultures and histories.

As the economic powerhouse of the region, South Africa has many immigrants from other nearby countries. There are many black Africans in South Africa from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other neighboring countries–and bring their own heritage and language.

The two other official languages are European: English and Africaans. Africaans is short for African Dutch. There is a long history of antagonism between the English and the Dutch in South Africa. (Think voortrekkers and the Anglo-Boer war). My friend Claire described being called ‘English speaking’ as if that were a cultural label.

There is a large population of people of Indian heritage. The first Indians came to South Africa as slaves and in the early 1700s, 80% of the slaves in South Africa were Indian. Subsequent generations came largely as indentured servants, a practice which ended in 1911 in South Africa. Durban is the largest concentration of Indians in any city outside of India. India has amazing linguistic and cultural diversity of its own and there are still remnants of this in the Indians of South Africa.

This leaves us with the designation that is most confusing for me: coloured. Some of the people who identify or are identified as coloured are of mixed heritage or race, for example a black parent and a white parent (such as Trevor Noah). But it’s much more complicated than that. A genetic study identified coloured people of the Cape region as the most genetically diverse people in the world. Under the racial categorization of apartheid, the Coloured group was further sub-divided into Cape Malay, Khoisan, other Coloureds, Bastards, et al.

The original habititants of the Cape area were two tribes: the Khoi and the San. They had yellow brown skin. They also had no immunity to smallpox and other European diseases, so 90% of the members of these tribes died or were killed when the Europeans arrived in the mid-1600s. The Khoi San are trying to have their languages added to the list of official South African languages, to be officially identified as the original inhabitants of the area, and to not be called coloured. Jacob Zuma showed no sympathy for their case, but there might be progress under Cyril Ramaphosa.

The Dutch sent people who opposed their colonization of Indonesia and South East Asia to the Cape area of South Africa as slaves. Many of these people were Muslim. This included people from places like East Africa and Madagascar, but they all went under the label of Cape Malay.

My last two days in South Africa before flying to Zambia, I spent at lot of time at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, a suburb of Johannesburg. Despite the lofty name, Nelson Mandela Square is a big shopping mall. Malls seem to be the centerpiece of social life in Joburg’s northern suburbs. Wandering the labyrinthine mall, seeing the variety of people walking them with me, I felt like I saw South Africa’s rainbow nation for the first time.

Rona works in marketing at Stanford Lake College and we got to know each other when she was the Round Square coordinator five years ago. She lives on a farm about 20 minutes from campus and invited me over for dinner my last evening at the school. My trip to the farm provided me with a perspective on South Africa that I probably won’t otherwise get.

The weather had been perfect for the three-day trek with the year 8 students, but a heavy rain fell within an hour of our arrival back on campus. We drove to the farm via Rona’s preferred route, the shortest path via dirt road, only the dirt was now mud.  Even with the four-wheel drive engaged, we slid at many points like a toboggan. Rona managed to keep us on the road the whole way, but we nearly slid off a couple of times.

As we drove along, Rona pointed out various pieces of land that were part of the farm. Actually, they have seven farms. Three have been reclaimed, post-apartheid, by the community through legal suits; however, the community ‘made a mess’ of running them. Rona and her husband were again managing those three farms, albeit paying rent to the community. They grow a lot of pine trees but are switching many fields to winter avocados. They are also experimenting with growing macadamia nuts. Their son is an agricultural chemist and he has planted some coffee.

Rona’s husband is named Nile; his father worked as a surveyor on the Nile River. He has a twin brother named Ferris. Nile and Ferris’ family have lived and farmed here for four generations.

Rona and Nile, Ferris and his wife, several other family members, and the farm manager all live next to each other by their saw mill. I said that I lived in a cohousing community and this sounded somewhat like that. Rona said that they live near each other for safety reasons. She said that a farmer was killed in South Africa each day and that these were gruesome murders. They are committed by people from Zimbabwe and Mozambique, not South Africans. For farmers, there is more safety in living together. At Rona and Niles’ farm, they have electric fences around their homes, large dogs that sleep outside at night, and bars on all the doors and windows. They sleep with guns by their side and their safe open. “This is how we have to live.”

Rona and Nile have a beautiful house that seems designed for entertaining, with huge porches and patio areas adjoining a flat lawn and hot tub. Nile came home from work and then his brother came over. Nile made a fire and we sat around chatting outside for hours. Dinner was, of course, a braai.

Zuma resigned the night before and so the future of South Africa was a big topic. They are hopeful, but the situation is dire. They have over 180 workers—each of whom on average supports 11 other people—but the economics of running the farm are becoming unworkable. For example, because of corruption and mismanagement, the cost of electricity has increased tenfold in the last decade.

The electrician for the farm is a 67-year-old man. He had retired but couldn’t make it on his pension and so they hired him back. He’s physically very frail and has been shocked so many times that he has some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Needing to re-hire him as the farm’s electrician was an example of the challenges they face managing the farm.

We chatted about my trip. The neighborhood where I stayed twice in downtown Johannesburg, Braamfontein, is one they won’t even enter because they consider it so unsafe. (I have heard so many white South Africans complain about safety in Central Johannesburg that I wonder if it is socially acceptable way to say ‘see what happens when you let those people run things.’)

Ferris and Nile have an aunt who lives in Denver. Ferris is very knowledgeable about the United States. He is reading Michael Wolfe’s book, Fire and Fury, and wanted to discuss Trump. He is also a Denver Broncos fan and we chatted about Peyton Manning and John Elway.

He seemed more of a United States booster than me. ‘Who would you want to rule the world, if not the US? Russia? China?” “Whenever there is a disaster, Americans are always coming to people’s rescue.” “Americans may disagree vehemently, but they rally as one nation around the flag when needed and that’s one of the things that makes the country great.”

The soundtrack for the evening was the buzz of the saw mill, which was constant. They have huge mounds of saw dust, which their son is trying to see if they can convert into bio-diesel.

Before going to sleep, I looked at the bars on my bedroom windows. I wondered if I was safer at my budget hotel in Braamfontein.

As we drove back to a campus the next morning, we passed a hillside that had been clear cut with nothing replanted. This is a piece of land that has been reclaimed by the community. Rona asked the leader of the community why they didn’t set aside some of the money from the sale of the timber so that they could replant. ‘If we did that, I could die the next day and then I wouldn’t get anything from it.’

From the dry grasslands of South Africa’s North West province, I headed to the moist mountains of Limpopo. My host was Stanford Lake College, a lovely Round Square school of 250 students in grades 8-12.

The student body is roughly 60% white, 35% black and coloured, and 5% Indian. The faculty is overwhelming white, mostly Africaans, with a handful of black faculty. It is an English-medium school, but I heard a lot of Africaans spoken between the Africaans teachers and between Africaans faculty and students.

Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, resigned two nights ago. How fun to be in a nation where the corrupt President just resigned. Students stayed up late to watch his resignation speech, reminding me of when I watched Nixon resign as a teenager.

The new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is expected to cut back on corruption. The father of a Stanford Lake student who came on exchange to Athenian refused to participate in the corruption and an attempt was made to kill him with poison. He moved away to live in another region for fear of his life. I wonder if perhaps he’ll get to come home.

Stanford Lake will probably have a more difficult time finding black students who can afford the tuition because of the reduced corruption.

For the last three days, I accompanied the Stanford Lake year 8 students on a three-day trek. We hiked from campus, past lakes and pine farms, to a base camp on the Letaba River. The next day it was 20 kilometers and 2,700 meters in elevation up to the summit of the Iron Crown, the highest point in the Limpopo province. On the final day, we hiked back to campus.

The students were carrying all their own gear, but the adults only had day packs. Our gear and food was driven into the campsite. At dinner time, the students pulled out new cannister stoves and pots. Mostly they ate freeze-dried backpacking food where you add hot water, stir and wait. The teachers started a wood fire and we had a braai. The first night we each got a steak chop and chicken wrapped with bacon. The first morning we had boerewors (derived from the Africaans words for farmer and sausage) on a bun. The second night we had steak and kebabs. Breakfast the last day? Ribs!

The students and teachers refilled their water bottles from the rivers and streams we crossed. As long as the water was moving, every body of water was considered safe. What was remarkable to me was that the water was drunk straight from the river or creek, untreated. I put this off as long as possible, but eventually had to give in and drink the untreated water. No indications yet that I have caught some obscure African water-borne disease.

Some people think I’m crazy as an educator on sabbatical to choose to go on a school trip like this. And perhaps I am. But it was a treat to be on a trip where I wasn’t in charge, didn’t have to patch up any injuries, or make any major decisions. I got to know some of the students, do some great hiking, and the weather was perfect.

On the day we went to the summit, I returned to camp with the last group. I put on my bathing suit and lingered for 30 minutes. I thought about how normal it felt to be swimming in a remote South African river on this beautiful afternoon–and about how the Stanford Lake teachers leading the trip didn’t have the luxury of lingering by themselves in the cool clear water.

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?

On the day I visited Tiger Kloof, my friend Eddie was subbing for a class. He had me come as a guest and focused the class on me. The students’ questions and reactions were fascinating.

Using Google earth, Eddie took us on a journey from their classroom in Vryburg to my home in Oakland. They were impressed by the fact that I live in a two-story house. If you have a two-story house in Vryburg, you are wealthy. I pointed out that we only live in the second floor and a different family lives downstairs, but I don’t know if they caught that detail.

One girl had a US history question about ‘President George Abraham.’ After determining that she meant Abraham Lincoln, I had the interesting challenge of  describing, briefly, for black South Africans, his role in ending the slavery of people of African heritage in the United States.

Eddie pointed out my American accent. I told them I can’t help myself.

One student asked if I’d ever been mugged in the United States. While that happens in the USA, it’s more common here.

Near the end, a student asked about the exchange rate between the US dollar and South African rand. The exchange rate for the rand has come up often in conversation. I briefly explained how exchange rates fluctuate between currencies.

I had a crisp United States one dollar bill in my wallet and took it out. Eddie held it up before the class and pronounced: ‘The most powerful currency in the world.’ Now the students were excited. Many left their seats and started moving to the front of the room. Several students asked if they could have that dollar or buy it. There was something about the US dollar and what it represented that generated a bolt of energy in the room.

I spent most of the last two days hanging out with two white Afrikaans men. They are both dedicated educators working at Tiger Kloof, a Round Square school located outside Vryburg.  South Africa looks different when at their side than when hanging out with a black Tswsna woman.

I got to know Eddie when I brought an Athenian group to Vryburg five years ago. He and his wife, Ansie, invited me over for a brai on Wednesday evening. They have a lovely four-bedroom house in town, beautifully decorated, and we had a great time siting outside talking. Eddie said that 70% of the municipalities in South Africa were bankrupt or in danger of going bankrupt. (And my online research since suggests this information is accurate.) I found this stunning and asked Eddie what it was about. He said that in post-apartheid South Africa, municipalities almost all have more employees than their budgets can support. Eddie described this as ‘revolutionary rewards.’

The next day I visited Tiger Kloof. I spent most of the day with Chris, the Round Square Coordinator there. Tiger Kloof’s student body is 100% African or coloured. The faculty includes white and Indian faculty members. Chris and Eddie are two of the three white Afrikaans men who work there. Apparently the school has more support staff than it needs, but that the school keeps them on.

Like Eddie, Chris is helping to build a new South Africa. He said that a white farmer is murdered every week in South Africa–partly it’s robbery but partly it’s racial retribution. He knows 25 white couples from Vryburg, a small town, that have left South Africa in the last three to four years. Many are farmers who have gone to Canada. He said that not a day goes by when he and his wife don’t talk about moving out of the country for a few years.

When I got back to Claire’s place that day, she told me about a conflict that she had with two sets of parents. The parents came to school to complain about their children’s teacher. Claire said that she would meet with each set of parents separately, at which point one of the parent’s–a local politician–went off. He insulted Claire, said he would contact the ANC education office to complain, that he was going to go on Facebook to say the school was rubbish, that Claire was trying to be a white person, that white people took the African people’s land… Claire is a black Tswsna woman, but her husband is white man from the Netherlands. Eventually the politician calmed down, they had a meaningful conversation, and he apologized. Apparently, this kind of entitled behavior on the part of some black Africans is a feature of life in post-apartheid South Africa.

These seem like a kind of reparations and it’s interesting to think about what this might look like in the United States.

And many white people in South Africa are frightened.