LOTS OF STUFF!!

Sanibonani once again!

I just finished the first weekend with my homestay family and they are so incredibly amazing!  I have a 5 year old little brother, a 10 year old little brother, and a 15 year old sister.  The words for brother and sister in Zulu are bhuti and sisi :)  The community we're living in is so communal, just the opposite of America.  Everyone lives right next to each other and the people walk through each other's yards, all the children know each other, and the dogs are free to roam around wherever they want.  I got a chance to play with a bunch of the little kids yesterday afternoon and on Saturday; they taught us how to play games, and we talked to them about America!  My little 5 year old brother is ADORABLE!  He always wants to hold my hand and wakes me up in the morning, and hates when I'm in my room doing reading for my seminars because he wants to play with me.  When I showed him the book I brought about Minneapolis he said he wanted to come back to America to visit me, and then when he gets a car he's going to drive to my house :)

Still however, I can't help but notice the fact that race is still what determines where you are in South African society.  There have been a few negative experiences in the neighborhood we're living in.  One of the girls in my program who is living next door to me has a little sister who is 7.  She mentioned that when she was walking down the road with the little girl a man turned and laughed at them, noticing the fact that there's a white young woman walking with a black little girl.  And then people always ask you what race you are if they can't tell, and when you let them know, they tell you to stay away from people of this race, or of that race.  It's quite sad.  

Also, being here has made me realize what an influence America has on the rest of the world.  Even all the way here in South Africa.  South Africa's economy is much greater than the rest of the continent and it has the possiblity of being able to lift the rest of Africa out of poverty (all though that obviously hasn't happened and I'll talk about that later when I learn more about it).  But unfortunately, it seems like all of the crappy parts of American culture is what's been globalized.  MTV is huge here amongst the neighborhood that I'm living in, and all that's played is Britney Speers and Fergie.  A little girl I saw was wearing her shirt half way up and was strutting around like Britney and I swear I wanted to cry.  

Additionally, what's been globalized as far as the economic condition of South Africa has been mechanized aspects of America.  Meaning the use of machines in agriculture, information and so forth.  This may sound great but for this country it's the opposite-this is adding to the severe unemployment crisis that is occurring in South Africa, which is also adding to the country's insane crime wave.  

Many of the children in the neighborhood, especially the boys, play quite violently.  They use toy guns that look INCREDIBLY real, and have games where you pretend to shoot one another.  I'm not sure if that's a product of all of the violent crime in the country, or of the media they're getting from America, or a combination of both.  Child abuse and corporal punishment against children is also widely accepted and often used by parents.  I walked to the store with my host sister and she told me that almost every single one of the homes have been broken into, and that a girl was raped and stabbed there last year.  It's something I need to study more.  

And then on Friday we took a walk around Durban with this AMAZING tour guide who was trying to show us the beauty of the world around us, and that although South Africa has a great deal of crime, the areas that are labeled as "dangerous" really aren't what they seem.  For example, we went to one of the areas that is considered the most dangerous part of Durban and we passed by some grafiti art that was spray painted on the brick wall.  He turned to us and asked us what we say in it; "grafiti," one of the students replied.  And he came back with, "you're looking, you're not seeing."  He showed us that the graphiti was trying to express something to the people who walked by it, that it meant more than simply "danger," and "fear." He showed us how beautiful it really was, and made us realize that we have to understand our surroundings and that we cannot allow ourselves to be indoctrinated in the culture of fear that people the powers that be try to present to us.  

Our tour started out in the mall, a very American mall I might add.  The mall where all of the wealthy whites shop and some of the middle class Blacks like my family, and middle class Indians.  He showed us how superficial these types of establishments are, and the contradictions between a rich looking place where people can buy worthless material goods, and the extreme poverty that exists in the country-another parallel to America.  I saw an add for Prada in the mall that said, "beauty comes from within...unless you're wearing Prada."  Another crappy aspect of American culture!  He showed us how dehumanizing society is to SO many people, and how we always have to label and categorize one another in an effort to understand them.  This made me want to cry, although it was everything I already knew.  It just made me so sorry to know that it is even more true in another country than it is in America.  America as we all know is very dehumanizing as well.  

We passed by the barbed wire fencing and the alarms installed everywhere-the things that are supposed to protect us from the supposed criminals.  We walked passed a homeless man on the street and waved to him and he smiled back at us.  Once again, a lot of parallels between South Africa and America.  I'm thinking about doing a program here where I go to a prison and talk with criminals-it's a non-profit that tries to bring together criminals with victims so that closure and understanding can be brought.  South Africa has a 43% unemployment rate and a great deal of crime that comes along with it.  But I've learned that we have to understand each other.  And although I'm not sure if I agree with everything the tour guide said, I learned so much that I wouldn't have if I had not come on this trip.  He made me think about the world around us.  

I think this is enough for you all to absorb right now.  I'm going to try to upload some more pictures when I get the chance, loading pictures is really hard on this network so I have trouble doing it.  But I will update again very soon.  This is my favorite blog entry so far!  Love you all, and you will hear from me again very soon!