I am at my wits end with the school administration and the pointless purpose to pursue government curricula regulations. In the past three weeks of school we have finished unexpectedly early 8 times. It makes it difficult to accomplish anything when you don't know how to plan your week or your day even.
I really do feel like a WASP sometimes and my work ethic seems to defy the African spirit to take a step back and breathe. Somehow, with school resulting in the education of a disadvantaged population, I cannot reckon with the breathing. Too much breath!
In past entries, I know I've dedicated very little to what it's like being so different all of the time. I have to speak quite openly about this because it's a huge part of my experience. My mother mentioned the other day that not many Americans could probably relate to my experience here in Zululand and she's very much so correct. It's not just the color of my skin but also the culture. The white Afrikaaner population here is strictly conservative and they tend to appeal to the "Boer"/farmer mindset that so easily supported Apartheid, though to be fair, I haven't met many of them.
While initially the Zulus at school raised their brows at me in skepticism they have slowly begun to embrace me. However, we will never be one and the same such that we'll be able to relate properly. Issues of gender and religion come into play. Not to mention family and the concepts that I should be well into bearing children by now and that a good wife caters for all her husband's meals. There are much smaller things, like we eat different things. I was seen eating celery one day (which I bought at the grocery store) and everyone was curious what it was! Meanwhile, my fellow educators commonly eat loaves of white bread for lunch, sometimes with the addition of a local spicy meat dish. I cannot imagine eating a loaf of bread for lunch and how that would wrench my stomach into a knot!
Some of the new student teachers simply stare at everything I do, as though they've never been around a white person before. It's unnerving that even to do something so simple as blow my nose becomes a point of interest for someone else. One of the teachers naively asked me what time of day most white people shower. As if I would know! I told her my routine but that's the best I could offer. In a way, I respect that my peers feel comfortable enough to ask me such questions and I hope in my responses I can dispel the myth that we (whites) are all the same. Just as on the flip side, I can easily dispel the notion that all black people are the same as well. Generalizations, as a rule, require great patience though often they evoke great frustration.
....
....
Maybe some of you wonder what it's like to be gone from home so long? I think the edges get more and more blurry with each passing day of where I belong. The longer I stay here the more the foreign aspects become normal, comforting even. Some of the differences are still hard to deal with, but one learns to accept or even expect them as part of the status quo.
I've now melted from a tourist in South Africa into a volunteer, into a resident, into a citizen and now into a working-member of the country. Each way of participating allows a different perspective and provides different struggles. As a government-employed person I am more in the "norm" here than ever before and that has its certain perks. For instance, I'm a little less "special" and I don't seem like an alien from outer space for volunteering my skills to strangers. It also doesn't allow people to interpret my persona as "holier than thou." It's still odd for most white people to hear that I'm teaching in a black school (as the only white educator). However, at least now I'm in a fair trade between my skills and my employment and am doing just like the average Thando.
Being here longer does not mean life is getting easier. It's tough. Sometimes it's even tougher because I no longer have any deadlines attached to my time here. It's free, organic, open to movement and possibility. Many things could happen in an instant that would change my being here as I'm still not so attached. But, admittedly, I am attached. I'm attached to an aura that I cannot even name or put a finger on. I'm attached to being in a position that constantly makes me appreciate what I have and have had in life. It's difficult to imagine myself pulling away from such strong magnetic force.
Meanwhile my family is still overseas and my network of age-old friends. This also doesn't get any easier. The less you hear from people the more you wonder if they resent you for being away. I wonder if some family interpret my being here as "staying away." I wonder if my family and friends understand that I'm here because I'm drawn to this place rather than opposed to my homeland. Then I realize I'm making up all of these dramatic excuses because the real reason I don't hear from people anymore is because I'm so off the radar. Their silence is not personal and I have to remember that. Also, there's little I can do to rectify it.
It's now been eleven months since I was home and I do miss it every day. I am trying to live each day, one by one, with no knowledge or sight of where that will eventually lead me geographically. As a foreign citizen with no ticket home, that's the only way I can live for right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment