Alethiology (Epilogue)

alethiology (n)- the study of truth

I made a short list of the things I learned on the plane ride home. Here it is, in no particular order, with some explanation.

What Did I Learn

-Europeans aren't as sophisticated as they act. Whenever I heard the word "European," I used to immediately think: sophisticated, advanced, and refined; I assumed all European people embodied these attributes. However, I had never been in close contact with people actually from Europe, just emigrants and descendants. My European roommates, behind the doors of our flat, were just as foul, careless, and rude as the people in the dorms on American college campuses. They did not think about resource use, taking interminable showers, blatantly refusing to recycle, and driving cars everywhere when it would have been easier to walk. They did not consider the consequences of their actions, like playing techno music at 3 in the morning or leaving towels in heaps on a wet bathroom floor. I know these were just the four people whom with I had contact. It certainly shifted my prior perception of the utopia that is European life.

-American culture has a global presence. Why? Why do people throughout Sub-Saharan Africa listen to our pop radio, watch our embarrassingly bad comedies, and know more about our political system than Americans themselves? American media is broadcast just about all around the world, giving people in other countries a skewed lens of what it is like to live in the U.S. Coca Cola is probably the most popular soft drink in the world. I knew it was widespread but I didn't know how pervasive it was nor how it inundates (figuratively) entire communities. My understanding is that people in South Africa, at least, if not in the rest of the world, see the people of the U.S. as rotund, lazy, gluttons who garishly drive our gas-guzzling S.U.V.s to menial jobs that allow us to live in whatever decadent manner we choose. My friend described the U.S. as a veritable land of milk and honey, where people don't have to work for what they have and subsequently don't value their abilities, possessions, or freedoms. Thankfully, he said I helped shift his perception somewhat.

-I've had it so unbelievably amazing with regards to education, safety, sanitation, parenting, infrastructure, hunger, healthcare, and especially love. I had a solid education from my public school without my parents having to pay exorbitant school fees. My parents helped supplement my education and fueled my curiosity and my passions. My parents were able to pay for me to attend a four-year university and learn about a subject that I find fascinating, not just one that I think will make me employable. Although I'm sure my parents did, I have never worried about going out alone at night. I never have to wonder if I will have access to electricity, water, or passable roads. I have never had to wonder if the water coming from the tap was clean enough to drink. I have never been hungry, except for by choice. I have not begun to think about life without my parents' presence. I can afford, through my parents' generosity, the medicine I need and doctors to take care of me. I speak the dominant language of my country. I have people who love me, both out of familial obligation and of their own volition. I will never, ever forget the crushing loneliness that accompanies the knowledge that no one in your hemisphere loves you and your home, with open, unconditionally loving arms, is half a world away.

-It's far too easy to just be complacent. Whether it is vacation planning or political regimes, it takes effort to speak up when something is important. A phrase I heard so often in South Africa was, "it's just one of those things, hey?" in response to the latest tragedy, injustice, or scandal. The supermarket being out of your favourite flavour of yogurt is 'just one of those things.' Police forces shooting at peaceful protestors or millions of people living in squalor cannot be 'just one of those things.' If we allow ourselves to accept such atrocities as constant, given factors, they will never change. Yes, change is hard. Yes, the bad things in the world can be overwhelming in their abundance and severity. We cannot be content to sit back and let other people try to sort their problems out at the same time they struggle for basic survival. Those with privilege and power, which is anyone who can identify with the statements in the above paragraph, must speak up. And with regards to the vacation planning, life is short; we only have so many chances to do the things we dream about; opportunities should be seized when they are present and created when they are not. I didn't see any baobab.

-My education is preparing me for a life as a world citizen.The South African university system focuses on training people who will be successful in their chosen fields. By contrast, the U.S. higher education system focuses on people who are well-versed in their discipline but also broadly introduced to the basics of many other subjects. A scientist needs to know a little bit about economics and politics just like an artist should know about physiology and history. My fellow students back in the U.S. were more rounded and socially conscious because of the interdisciplinary nature of our education.

-Diversity is detrimental when integration is missing. South Africa describes itself as "the rainbow nation." While I did personally see the beauty and the majesty of so many cultures, languages, and mindsets in South Africa, I learned the hard way that the presence of many different peoples does not equate to the harmonious cohabitation of these peoples. For example, South Africa has eleven national languages, which sort of implies that each language has equal importance in the eyes of the government. However, take road signs: warnings and important information is printed in either English or Afrikaans. Someone who doesn't speak either of those languages would be lost. Of course, I'm not saying that different cultures should abandon their identities in order to form a more cohesive whole (although it would, arguably, make communications easier). What I am saying is that any entity, be it a family, university, or nation that claims to value diversity needs to ensure that each contingent part of the whole is equally represented and that no one group is given more weight than any other. Also, different peoples need to know about each other, the basic tenets of the various cultures, such that neither alienation nor assimilation need occur. Only when this delicate balance is achieved will the whole become whole, one unified collection of many disparate, though not disjointed, parts.

-A little kindness goes a long way. This one is simple, self-explanatory, and vastly important.

-What I want with my life slightly narrowed. This is a very good thing, although it is slight. I now know that I want to pursue a career in conservation biology and that I want to continue on to earn my Master's degree to fully grasp the scientific methodology necessary for a position in this field that is fighting an uphill battle, so to speak. Like so many freedom fighters before me, I have stumbled across the idea to which I am prepared to devote my life: Homo sapiens is just another species inhabiting the multitude of ecosystems present on the planet. Our population has grown in numbers and intelligence such that we are destroying our co-earthlings, and at faster and faster rates. Therefore, some humans have to take the initiative to protect the species and their habitats that are in danger of disappearing, in the speediest and most efficient way possible.

-An identity as a woman and as an American. Augh, this is an experience that I find hard to explain. As I mentioned earlier, I know what Americans are thought of by other peoples from other nations. Thus, I was able to define myself in the context of what I know of my American life and what other people assume happens within American borders. Sort of? Similarly, I became hyper-aware of myself as a woman in South Africa. People were always telling me, oh, it's dangerous for a girl to do that, to go there, etc. I spent many hours thinking about why South Africa is like this, why it has the highest rape rate in the world, why women are still treated as inferior to men. Here's my theory: during WWII in the U.S., women stood up to the jobs that men had performed before they were drafted off to foreign battlefronts. When the men returned, they found women perfectly capable of doing the industrial, labor intensive, or managerial jobs they had abandoned for the war. After this period, women were more accepted in the workplace and began to be treated more like their male co-workers. In South Africa, only a small number of men were drafted to the U.K.'s war efforts, not making space for women in the workplace until the equality laws of post-Apartheid South Africa were enforced. Anyway, I felt like my freedoms were restricted as a woman living in South Africa. Returning to the U.S., I have reclaimed those freedoms and treasured them like never before.

I have this idea that as we move through life, we are constantly learning. Some of the things we learn are factual, and they are truths that we add to our working knowledge of the world. Some of the things we learn are so deeply and staggeringly resonant that they must be integral to to the working of the world; this is the Truth. It is universal. It is whole. It is the fabric of being. It is perfect. We can only learn the Truth by exposing ourselves to as much of life as possible. I sit comfortable with the feeling that studying abroad in South Africa helped me add to my tiny understanding of the Truth.

Hypnopompic

hypnopompic (adj)- of or relating to the partially conscious state that precedes complete awakening from sleep

Returning home was waking from the dream. I had that feeling the whole plane ride home- where the reality of the waking world taps lightly at the periphery of your dream. Every familiar accent, every Starbucks cup, every hushed echo of the words "San Francisco" coursing through the plane reminded me of the life I had forgotten. When we finally landed and I was joyously reunited with my exuberant family, it was just the same as struggling to keep your eyes open after you first wake up. I forced myself to remember, Oh yes! The sky is soft and grey in San Francisco. This is winter; the air is crisp. This is the car and I sit on this side when I'm not driving and we drive on that side of the road. I had to explain it to myself in order to understand. It was similarly surreal walking into our house, smelling and hearing all those details I had missed for almost a whole year. As disruptive, consuming, and ineffective as our furnace is, I love its unique din.

As time passed, I slowly eased back into my former life like easing into a hot bath. At first, I just wanted to tell stories, show pictures, and pass around trinkets. My family had work and school, though, so I spent some time resting and thinking.

Walking into the grocery store was an ordeal. Every time I went shopping, I was curiously reminded of the comforts of home that I had lived without, somehow. Simultaneously, I was crestfallen to search for the products I had become accustomed to and not find them. Even still! I wake up craving Ouma Rusks, some custard for my peaches, gem squashies, tennis biscuits, or a granadilla. Sigh.

If you've never had one of these, you have no idea what you're missing.

After about a week of being home, it already felt like the past ten  months had been a dream, a hair-pin loop, a detour from the course of my previously scheduled life. It was so easy to file the entire experience away and focus on living in the present. Once the hymnopompic gauze fades and you decide to really get up and actually keep your eyes open, the rest of your body adjusts, right? I focused on finishing up my degree, on family, on my friendships, and on my neglected relationship.

Once you are immersed in a dream, as confused and nonsensical as it may be, you roll with it. You can hardly do otherwise. Moving to South Africa was a serious departure from from my waking consciousness and the body of information that was my understanding of the world. Like the foreignness of a strange dream, I had to be open minded, flexible, and also careful of my new world. Being back in the warm swaddle of familiarity, I am back in my element, come full circle to the place where I started.

And yet.

And yet, everyday I am back in South Africa. I hear a bird call and think, wait, was that a goose or a hadeda? I see plants whose names I did not know before but that I now recognize as South African natives. I think, the sun feels strange today; has it always been so weak? I hear a song that came out last year and I am transported to the minbus where I heard it for the first time. I see a movie poster and think of the fabulous date on which I saw it. Every time someone talks about the operating system Ubuntu, I am caught off-guard.

How could it not be dream, with this terrible monster roaming the streets?

I am restored to familiarity. I am not back in my context, however, because my context has been forever altered by what I learned when I lived abroad.

Abecedarian

abecedarian (n): a person who is learning the alphabet or a beginner in any field of learning (and much to my enjoyment, you pronounce it: ay-bee-cee-dahr-ee-uhn)

One of the most powerful, educational, and meaningful experiences I had while in Mzansti was the privilege and responsibility of volunteering at Pendla Primary School in New Brighton. In Port Elizabeth you can always feel the presence of poverty, of people left behind in the glorious wave of peaceful revolution that was to reform and uplift South Africans. That presence is easy enough to ignore. One can dismiss the occasional beggar or disheveled person lying in the street. That was not so in New Brighton, one of P.E.’s townships. It was painfully evident that every member of the community was straining just to get by. The people are all black, predominantly Xhosa, and largely impoverished. 

Lunchtime at Pendla. A simple meal of beans, pap, and some meat, served in plastic containers from tupperware to pencil boxes.

My job was to step in to this foreign community, just for a few months, and endeavor to throw a cog in the cycle of poverty: education. Because of England and the United States’ global presence, business, politics, and education are conducted in English. Unfortunately, by speaking only their native tongues, the Xhosa youth are disadvantaged from the start. We were simply to improve the English skills of these abecedarians by practicing reading from story books and primers (government written and distributed, of course). 

The school’s education wasn’t making much of a difference, evidently to me. Even with a passionate, devoted teacher, a class ratio of 40 third-years to one teacher is impossible. And passionate or devoted are not words I would have used to describe any of Pendla’s teachers. I saw these women tell their students to go outside to play while they sat inside, toying with their cell phones (iifowuni). I saw a first-year teacher leave her class unattended while they were supposed to be learning to come take silly pictures with us on one of our breaks (What? What are you thinking?). The teachers don’t call their classes in from the breaks when the bells don’t ring (Why don’t the bells ring consistently?). The school didn’t have the money to pay a salary swollen enough to persuade competent, skilled teachers to work in New Brighton. No worth teachers were willing to work in a dangerous, challenging environment for little pay, at least not for the long term. Money. Tsk tsk. These children who had so little of their own and were deserving of so much, were dealt a cruel hand that worked to keep them from succeeding. 

The spare classroom

So, for three hours a week, several of the international students would take a taxi out to New Brighton (about a twenty minute ride), pull half of the 40 third-years out of class, divide them into groups of 4-6, and try to find somewhere quiet to read with them. We could sit outside if it was not raining or too windy. We could sit inside an empty cinder block classroom with broken chairs and a threadbare rug if the weather was poor. We used the same primers full of simple stories every week. I can still quote them from memory even now: “Vuyo loves to read...,” “My sister Aisha is perfect…,” “We are going to build a treehouse…” I began to wonder if, like me, the student simply memorized the banal stories. I would supervise their behavior, correct them when they read words incorrectly, try to talk through the themes of the story, and get to know them as best as I could. 

A huge challenge was that all the students were at different reading levels. Some were fluent in English because they had an English-speaking parent at home. To these few, our weekly reading corner was a tedious task that was just slightly more enjoyable than being reprimanded (or ignored) by their teacher. For others, English was an ocean to their desert island. The words “the” and “an” were road blocks. We also had no idea whether English itself was the problem or simply reading. Because I had a smattering of Xhosa, I was popular with some of the less English-inclined students. They could not believe that a white woman, an American nonetheless, was able to speak their language. They would ask me question after question in Xhosa with a high-pitched note of incredulity, with amazed smiles when I would provide the answers.

In just a few hours a week over the course of a semester, I learned so much from the children of Pendla Primary that I became the abecedarian. I’ll share the most memorable and meaningful lessons.

-No matter the resources available, nothing educates better than a good teacher.

-Children can’t focus on learning when their bellies are empty, their teeth ache from unattended decay, and their feet are poking out of their too-tight, worn-out shoes.

-Children also can’t focus on learning when they fear judgment by their peers for their scholastic shortcomings. These children could be so harsh to one another. Nothing could fix that look on Mihlali’s face when another student said, “This one, teacha, she doesn’t read English.”

-Don’t assign your background to a member of a foreign culture. I incorrectly assumed, at first, that these children had the same upbringing as I had: books to read at home, parents at home to take care of them, and people who encouraged them to read. Heck, some of these children did not even have permanent shelters to call home. I simply could not relate but I was never more grateful for my own childhood then after visiting Pendla each week.

-Lastly, don’t assume that the pattern of the past must be the way of the future. One boy, Washu, I think, had significant trouble reading even simple English words. He was laughed at by his peers and sheepishly shrugged off their taunting. When break time came and the children were sent outside, Washu stayed in the library with the tin roof and bare dirt floor and asked if he could stay to read with us. He read the same four-page story over and over again until he was confident he was pronouncing the new words correctly.

Isithembiso (left) and Asiphe (right)

I have a multitude of meaningful, silly, and heart-wrenching stories from my time with these children but I’ll sign off with this message: the reading corner at Pendla was an awakening, sobering, trying, hope-granting experience that changed the way I see the world permanently.

Penultimate(s)

penultimate (adj)- next to the last

I left South Africa on 30 November 2012. It has nearly been an entire year since I returned. Since it has not quite been a year, I am going to take advantage of the time left to finish this blag. I have three more pieces that I have written over the course of this year that I will post in the coming weeks. If there were a word that meant fourth to last, I would use it as the title for this post. I think I need the closure that will come with having "finished" this, even though I am still learning from my experiences. It is one less loose end dangling in my memory.

Just to keep you (yes, all three of you who are still interested in my blatherings) aware of what is to come.