Thursday, November 22, 2007

Pumpkin pie

South Africans cook with pumpkin a lot. But to my great surprise, none of my coworkers had ever tried a pumpkin pie!

I had to rectify this.

I went to two different grocery stores. Neither of them had pumpkin puree or pie crust. Nor did any of the employees know what either of these things were.

"A pie..." (extended pause) "crust???"

"Yeah, you know, like the shell of a pie."

In both grocery stores they led me to the premade pies section. I said, "no no, a just the crust" in the second store.

The man acted like he finally understood, walked me around the store and then back to the same pie section.

Nice try, Themba!

In store number three they had both pie crusts (apparently they're called "puff pastry" here) and canned pumpkin puree with both sugar and cinnimon already mixed in.

There must be other pumpkin pie makers in this country.

Viola! I made two pies and celebrated the only day white people were nice to the Native Americans with my friends.

I promise to blog more about racial inequality soon.

My best friend


Bacardi is my best friend.

She loooooves being photographed!

I am definitely bringing her back to America with me. (At least, I THINK she's a she!)

I will have to negotiate with her a bit. This is the yard she currently romps around in. I won't have this to offer her in New York.


I don't think she will mind though. She and I are really good friends. I just don't know how to tell her owners. Woe is me.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

My car


After being forbidden to do almost anything on foot (will blog about this soon) I finally broke down and rented a car.

It is a luxiourios '91 Volkswagen Golf. I say "luxiourious" because it has a manual transmission. However, it costs $15 USD/day, has no computer inside it and requires quite a bit of muscle on my part to turn the steering wheel. As the car most likely to be broken into in South Africa, it also a has huge lock over the gear shift.

Driving on the wrong side of the street is not as hard as I thought it would be. I can't wait to try it back in America.

Soweto

Last Sunday I visited the Soweto townships. Townships are the areas to which black people were relegated under Apartheid. I was told never to go into Soweto, or for that matter, any of the townships on my own. So I found I a tour group that drives through. (Nevermind the irony of paying $120 USD to go see the poorest areas of South Africa).

Soweto is just a few minutes drive outside Johannesburg. (Hence the name, SOuth WEstern TOwnships). Under Apartheid, all the blacks who flocked to Johannesburg in search of employment were forcibly removed to make room for whites. This was often done against their will, and all their homes and belonging were often bulldozed in the process.

The transfer of minorities to peripheral areas was made possible by legislation that meticulously categorized people by race and allowed them to be limited to certain housing areas on that basis.

The conditions in Soweto have improved dramatically, so I was told, especially in the past five years. My black tour guide went to great lengths to point out this out at every turn.

“You can tell by the children,” he said, slowing down the van and pointing flagrantly. “Look at that one! He is not going to church or to a party. That is just the way he dress.”

Indeed the kids wore bright, clean, logo-smothered clothing. They still live in cramped, relatively uniform housing projects, many of which are the same homes their families lived in during Apartheid. The “improvements” manifest in the fact that people now paint their tiny homes; they decorate their tiny yards and cultivate tiny gardens. They drive beat-up, used cars and sell tires along the streets.

Soweto is currently home to about 60% of the population of Johannesburg. I did not see one white person the entire time I was there.

Along the road, there were hand-written advertisments for "HIV curing tea" and "painless abortions."

The white Afrikaners (former Dutch colonialists) staying in my guesthouse were amazed to hear I went to Soweto.

“I’m not a racist,” one of the women told me at dinner, “but I just don’t understand them. Don’t get me wrong, I know them. I have worked with my maids for more than 35 years. And they are so superstitious and gullible. They just don’t have any common sense. They will believe anything someone tells them.”

I could have sworn she had just ripped out a page of Huckleberry Finn and read it out loud.

“Could you give me an example?” I asked.

“A few weeks ago, a lightning bolt hit a tree in our yard,” she told me. “I asked one of our groundskeepers to go uproot it. He said he could not, because the gods laid an egg under that tree, and he could not touch it. You see, they just don’t make any sense.”

“Yes but in fairness, many people in Western culture believe God created the earth in seven days and that they can absolve their sins by drinking wine and eating bread. I bet your groundskeeper would think that’s ridiculous.”

After spending the day in Soweto, the Hector Peiterson memorial and the Apartheid museum, I must admit I felt little sympathy when the Afrikaaners in my guesthouse complained that their children had to move out of South Africa to find jobs, because the "biased" post-Apartheid government instituted racial quotas systems in most professions.

Of course, the people in my guesthouse probably had nothing to do with the evils of Apartheid. It was probably unfair for me to blame them. But then again, Apartheid did not spring entirely from the head of Jan Smuts; it was the product of an entire social system.

After a while it struck me that maybe some of my anger towards them stemmed from the fact that, at the end of the day, I am more like the Afrikaaners than I am like the people in Soweto. I am more of a passive facilitator than I am a victim.

When my tour guide took us to Soweto’s squatter camp, the “worst of the worst,” he invited us to get out of the van to take pictures. I was somewhat appalled at the suggestion of jumping out to snap pictures of humans in degenerate conditions, as if they were animals in a zoo. My first thought when he suggested this was that other tourists have probably done this.

As I peered out into the sea of tin roofs and shoebox lean-tos, two children began walking over to me. I knew they were going to beg me for money. I knew this because it happened every other time I had gotten out of the van. I turned for the door instinctively, like I was scared of these tiny, desperate, 6-year-old black boys. But I was scared; I was scared of having to say no to them; I was scared of dealing with my own feelings of guilt again.

The little boys didn't have a van to get back in. I could’ve at least said hi to them, so that they would know that they're not bad or damaged just because they are poor. Instead I did nothing. I got back into my air-conditioned van and went back to my gated community.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Let me oversimplify South Africa

I am spending the next six weeks at my company's office in Pretoria. I suppose this blog name/logo is no longer fitting. I had originally planned to upload a nice photo of me with the South African flag. But unfortunately, Internet connections are not the same below the equator, so for the time being, my dear blog readers, you will be afforded additional time to bask in the garish colors of the German flag.

I arrived in Pretoria Wednesday. On my first drive through the city, I was greeted by poshy, gated communities lined with fragrant Jacaranda Trees:


I went with my boss to an American-style mall. We ate at a place that resembled TGI Fridays.

South Africa wasn't quite what I expected.

It was not until I looked a little closer at the parks that intersperse Southern California-style office buildings that I realized all the public spaces were downing in emaciated, black African vagrants. On my radio, there was story after story about crime after crime, and discussions of how you could phone in to report what you see.

"You're not really South African until you've been held up at gunpoint," one of my co-workers told me in her thick Afrikaans accent, which sounds vaguely Austrailian.

I am staying in one of those poshy, gated houses. Inside, it is filled with beautiful gardens, Victorian style decor and lazy kitties. I am not allowed to leave on foot outside the hours of 11am and 4pm. I could rent a car, but I would have to learn stickshift and to navigate the Brit's backwards traffic system. I am caged in and pampered. I am allowed to go on pricey, organized tour groups and on a shuttle that goes to and fro that overpriced, Western mall. For all I know, I could be in suburban Ohio on a pleasant summer day.

The landscape is beautiful, and the sun is always shining. But it strikes me that no one can really enjoy it. The rich (white Afrikaans) spend their lives inside their cars and fancy buildings. They poor (blacks) spend theirs looking enviously from the street. They do not engage one another, unless it is violently.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

A remorseful blogger

Dear Friends,

I apologize for the extended absence. Will you forgive me?

I can't write much, because I will start to realize how much I am leaving out. But here are some highlights:

After Munich, I learned that Hitler's former favorite hangout is now an Apple store.

After Russia, I will defer to Madame Wei Wei and to Google photos to tell the story.

I will also add this piece of advice: if you try to take a photo of a poster of a half-man half-cat in the St. Petersburg Metro, you will be fined 100 Roubles by the police.

After Berlin, it feels good to return to planet earth. No more banana milk or reputation management for me.

Before Wednesday, I must learn Afrikaans.

Tot siens.
Custom Search