Thoughts from the Moleskin

These are just a small collection of thoughts that aren't big enough to merit their own blog post. They are just things that i have noticed and woudl love to share with you about my time here in South Africa. Some are funny, some not. Take them as you will. They are just the thoughts i've got scribbled across my brain. Enjoy.

Smoke: There are many things people may associate with South Africa, or Africa in general, but for me, this place is synonymous with smoke. I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time, but I placed it on the way home from Lesotho. Everyone smells like smoke, even me. Whether it’s from the fire we have in our house to keep us warm (because we have no central heating), the cooking smoke that makes enclosed huts musty and difficult to breathe in, the controlled burning of what seems like all the green spaces to make them grow back stronger in spring, the smoke and smog from construction and infrastructure that always seems to be building or improving something somewhere, or just the cloud of smoke that follows most people around as they puff there way through pack after pack of cigarettes. Smoke and South Africa just seem to go hand in hand.

Human Safari: Whether I’m on the street going from place to place, or when I’m at schools it sometimes feels like we are on display. The feeling has got to be mutual. I feel like we are at the same time intruding and also a huge show. We cannot go anywhere without people stopping whatever they are doing to stare at us as we go past. And in an odd way, maybe we are doing the same thing. We have come into these peoples’ lives (usually uninvited) just to see how they live and in a lot of cases give them our pity when they don’t want or need it. I really can’t decide which of us are being paraded around for the others entertainment. What a disconcerting feeling.

“It’s a tribal thing”: I’ve heard this phase a few times now. What people are basically trying to say is “it’s a custom or practice of the Zulu tribe and tradition that I, as a white human, don’t or can’t understand.” It’s funny that two groups of people can cohabite a place for so long and yet seem like such strangers to each other.   

Driving: Driving in Italy is reputed to be the scariest and most suicidal place in the world. This is a fallacy because that place is South Africa. Scary drivers and scary roads.

“It doesn’t look real. It’s a whole different paradigm.”: We visited a low cost township to bring food and to meet some people. I won’t go too much into detail because it is a rather tender subject, however, the thing that stood out the most was that in that tight community, even though we had good intentions, we were stranger s and were treated as such. We didn’t even step too far into the community itself and most people came to us. As much as we tried to connect, it seemed surreal and like there was a pane of glass between us and them. Pierre told us that it might me difficult for us to even understand the way they are living because it would require a complete paradigm shift from what we know and that cannot come from one single visit. So in my head, and I know that to some others as well, it all seems like some kind of fake show put on for the stupid foreigners, but it all too real to feel comfortable about. I’m still not sure how I feel about the experience, and its 2 days later. Maybe some stroke of inspiration will come to me as I try to put this feeling down into words, but that might mean I’ve rationalized it and that can only be bad.

Final Thoughts

Distribution

Lesotho

Kamanga

Thoughts from the Moleskin