On a more personal note...

I have been instructed to post something more personal this time, and so I’ll comply since I’m about to be out of pocket for a while. The last few weeks have been consumed with meetings, lectures, and preparing midterm essays, so there really isn’t a lot that’s too interesting to tell. I have figured out my classes and arranged an independent study in lieu of next semester’s cancelled course. I haven’t gotten more interested in my two compulsory courses. I have, however, made a few side trips that I thought you might find a little more scintillating than the details of my lectures.

1. The Apartheid Museum. This museum is a remembrance of all the factors which combined to create apartheid: pass laws, white fear, the works of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the Soweto Student Uprising, etc. If you aren’t so good on your South African history, here is a link to the Wikipedia site on apartheid. It would really help you in understanding what I’m doing this year. Anyway, I’ve been to the Apartheid Museum twice now, both times for two hours, and am still only about 2/3 of the way through the museum. I like to read everything—you know me. Here are some pictures of the museum.

The pillars of post-apartheid South Africa. Not pictured are several others including reconciliation and truth.

Admission to the museum--you enter through the "white" and "non-white" entrances

An example of a South African identity card. Note that the woman pictured isn't just black, she's identified as Swazi as well. This is because blacks couldn't even all live together--they were forced into "homelands" of like tribes.

The definition of apartheid--"the system of segregation or descrimination on grounds of race inforced in South Africa 1948-1991."

2. The Hector Pietersen Memorial. Hector Pieterson was the first student killed in the Soweto Student Uprising (click for link) of 1976, which marks the beginning of black resistance to apartheid as well as state violence in dealing with black resistance. The memorial is dedicated to the student uprising and discusses the resistance of blacks to the state mandate of education for all students in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor. It was really, really interesting for an educator.

Picture of Hector Pieterson being carried by another student and followed by his sister, Antoinette Sithole.

Marker placed by Nelson Mandela

View of Soweto from the Memorial

3. This weekend, I visited Calvary Methodist in Midrand to participate in the Manna and Mercy course offered by the pastor, Alan Storey. The course serves as a brief introduction to the Bible and provides a framework for understanding and interpreting scripture: that God desires a giving and forgiving people. Anyway, we discussed a lot about the context of scripture—things that the peoples who developed the scriptures would have understood just by being in their context. For example, the number 40 was not understood as a number, but the symbol for “a lot.” So, 40 years in the wilderness meant a lot of years, not necessarily 40 exactly. Also, the “rod” was a pointer by the rabbi used to help the congregation follow the scriptures. So, “spare the rod, spoil the child.” As a result of failing to seek out context, we fail to understand scriptures correctly. Very interesting!

4. For worship Sunday I attended Calvary for the early service. Calvary is a multi-race, multi-class church in Midrand, the halfway point between Jo’burg and Pretoria. The church has lots of ministries for the disadvantaged in the Midrand community and works toward active understanding of social justice issues within its own congregation. It reminds me of my own Highlands UMC in Birmingham. After attending the early service at Calvary, Alan took me to Ebony Park Methodist where he was preaching for their service. EPM is a more traditional African church with a service entirely in Zulu and members dressed in traditional Methodist attire (black suit with white shirt and red vest for men and red top with white collar, black skirt, shoes, and hoes for women). They danced and sang with vigor and welcomed me to their congregation by asking me to pray for them. It was lovely.

Finally, some views of Jo'burg from my various side trips. Hope you enjoy!

I love this sign! It's for Cell C and it's HUGE!

I live near the white tower, which is on the Wits campus.

They have great sunsets here--which leads to the question whether or not I am shaving years off my life breathing in all this smog!

So, I’ve had a good few weeks, despite papers on epistemic paternalism and the frameworks of human rights in light of shifting conceptions of human identity. On Wednesday I leave for Cape Town to visit Jon David, a friend from Birmingham who is also on a Rotary at University of Cape Town. We plan to live it up for a couple of weeks, so I won’t promise a blog post during that time. But I promise to include installment two of “cultural amalgamation issues” upon my return, so keep those thinking caps on. I will also promise pictures.

I love and miss all of you, have no doubt. I covet your emails and pictures and facebook messages. Thanks for all of your support. On a personal note: a belated Happy Birthday to my Uncle Denny! Congrats to Rebecca and Charles on their marriage! Congrats to Ben Marsh on becoming a Fulbright Scholar! I joy in your celebrations, even when I’m not around to hug you in person.

Public Holiday!

Hello, friends! Today is a public holiday in South Africa, and a great one, at that. Today is Human Rights Day, intended to commemorate the apartheid struggle and to bring light to every day issues of human rights. In honor of this important day, I wanted to share with you the first two verses of a favorite hymn of mine and my family’s. Hope you enjoy it!

This is My Song
Words: Lloyd Stone, 1943
Music: Jean Sibelius, 1899
Copied from The United Methodist Hymnal

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Human Rights Day is a really important day in South Africa which is used as further catharsis in the painful journey through and out of apartheid. Too bad the US doesn't have a similar day, don't you think? On this Human Rights Day, remember not only the importance of respecting the human rights of those in other lands but also the every day acts that honor or besmirch human rights in your own life.

Cultural Amalgamation Issues

I realize that there are some of you who read this with your children, and for those of you I’d like to suggest that you screen this before reading it together—the rating for this post is mature audiences only. I promise to post pictures soon for the Brents and Kyles of my readership!

The issue of multiculturalism comes up a lot in South Africa, as I’m sure you can imagine. At Wits alone, we have Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians, Atheists, Blacks, Whites, Indians, Coloureds (a term meaning mixed-racial and also representing a distinct cultural group in the Eastern Cape), Zulus, Sothos, Xhosas, Afrikaaners, British, etc., etc. There is no way to go out your door and know who you will see that day in most instances. We are constantly confronted here with the issues that face a multicultural society. As a result, there is a lot of debate about how society as a whole should handle these differing influences. A friend in one of my classes rightly called these quandaries “cultural amalgamation issues.” I wanted to present to you what we’ve been talking about in Human Rights class as a set of questions first and then in a second installment, I’ll discuss what we have concluded in class. (I know, I know, I’m being a teacher again. It’s in my blood, what can I say?)

1. When in a multicultural society, who should assimilate?

To elaborate on this, let me give a few examples. I think I’ve made some of the cultural influences of South Africa clear, but a quick and dirty explanation would be that South Africa was originally populated by many cultural groups, most of them what is considered black and was colonized by two main cultural groups, both of which were what is considered white. So, there was a blending of a traditionally “African” worldview (this is a VERY broad generalization) and a traditionally “European” worldview (again, broad). These two distinct worldviews come into conflict in many ways due to misunderstandings of each other’s beliefs, customs, and behaviors. One example is this: until recently (and still sometimes) when a person from a particular black culture would come to be interviewed for a job, he or she would insist on sitting on the floor as a sign of respect. Who in this case should assimilate to the other’s practice? Should anyone? An assumption inherent in colonialism was that the colonialised culture should assimilate.

2. Who decides which practices are right and which are wrong?

In several African cultures, there is an embracing of what many Westerners would consider to be misogynistic views. It is customary for the wife to bow to the husband as he is served, to have no right as to when conjugal acts occur, to prepare the affairs of the house (including all of the children), and not to be educated. Please note here that I am not suggesting that in one cultural group all of these events occur, simply that they are common throughout African cultural groups. Even in relatively “metropolitan” households, a son is still named “The one we have waited for has arrived,” even though there are already multiple daughters in the family. Most Westerners would consider these practices to be clearly degrading to women. How do we determine whether or not a cultural practice should be contested? Which values should be used—those of the culture or those of the “rest of the world”? Since these examples are “affairs of the home” and “more difficult to determine on a group basis” (we’ll flesh that out later), let me diverge to an example which you may find to be less in the grey area.

There are several African cultures which practice the ritual of “Female Circumcision,” also called “Female Genital Mutilation” in some groups (not within the cultural group performing the circumcisions). This practice involves the excision of the clitoris and sometimes portions of the labia minora and labia majora, rendering the female unable to experience sexual stimulation. It is understood that this ritual originally occurred to guarantee the virginity of a woman at her marriage as well as to discourage female promiscuity. Regardless the reason, it is considered a rite of passage and is staunchly defended on cultural grounds by men and women in the cultural groups who perform the ceremony. Is this practice categorically wrong? What if the woman chooses to be circumcised? Whose values do we use to judge? On what basis do we condemn? Health? Mysogyny?

As you can see, there are many slippery slopes when it comes to the successful mixing of cultures, and decisions made must be made rationally and soberly. I’d love your thoughts on this topic, whether by email or comment. If you want to email but don’t mind me posting part of your response anonymously, let me know. Since part of my job here is to educate, I think I ought to use this forum to do so.

Africa time

I have thought about posting several times this week but haven't done it because I feel as if I don’t have anything to talk about. It’s the first time that I’ve begun to feel not only settled, but even a little bored! But more than that, I’ve been frustrated. Then I realized that the whole reason I have a blog is to let you know what’s going on with me, and why not do that even when what’s going on with me is neither entertaining nor extremely upbeat? So, here goes.

As you know, I do not have internet in my room. Living in West Campus Village is lovely except for that. I have to go to the lab in order to get internet, and then it’s excruciatingly slow. For those of you who are interested, that’s because there’s a huge bandwidth monopoly here. The university ends up paying out the nose for internet and as a result makes it generally not fun for us to use. This would be fine if all I had to do was respond to you wonderful peoples’ emails. Unfortunately, I have to do some research at some point—shocking? So downloading pdf files or anything else becomes near to impossible. Thus, I have decided that it would be best to move to International House. Unfortunately, IH has few openings and the people in charge tend to “lose” your application (does this sound familiar—are you having flashbacks yet? I am). As a result, I have spent the last two weeks talking to 10 different housing directors and basically running in circles to no avail. I do, however, have one housing director (sadly the one for IH) who asks me for presents a lot. Gross.

In addition to this, I have been having trouble with my course set-up. As I’ve told you, I am not in the master’s program, which is where I should have been placed. Instead, I’m taking courses at the Honors level. This is not terrible except that two of the courses are entirely remedial for me. We’re talking about quantitative research—seriously? I’ve done this since Psych 101. So, I get bored. In the Hons. Program you take two mandatory courses and then get to choose two electives. I love the first elective, which is Human Rights—I’ve told you about how wonderful it is. The second course was supposed to be Democracy in Education, but it has been cancelled! This basically means that I’m wasting my time right now because if I can’t take that second course, then there’s no reason for me to complete the Hons. Degree which will be useless to me in the States. This all adds up to a lot of frustration. But I’m going through the “proper channels” and trying to arrange an independent study. I’ll keep you updated on that.

This may not seem to you to be a lot of frustration, and that’s probably because when you have a problem, you go to the source and you fix it. To help you understand my situation, let me give you a few examples of my interactions here:

Going to the bank to pay for my language course:

Lisa: Hi, I need to link my account for a transfer on the ATM.
Lady at desk: Well, we can’t do the transfer, but you can do it on the ATM.
Lisa: Right, good.
Lady: May I have your passport and debit card?
Lisa: I don’t carry my passport with me, but I have my ID card and my debit card and I can tell you my debit card number (thinking all the while that a North American passport could go for about R20.000 on the black market).
Lady: No, I need your passport.
Lisa: Well, I can give you my ID card and tell you my passport number.
Lady: No, I need your passport. I can’t do it without your passport number.
Lisa: Well, I can tell you that, I just don’t have the passport here.
Lady: Then we can’t complete the transfer.
Lisa: You absolutely have to have the passport?
Lady: Yes.
Lisa: Ok, well (really reluctantly) thank you.
Lady: Pleasure!

No. Not a pleasure. In fact, that’s the definition of NOT a pleasure.

Going to check on my course registration

Lisa: Hi, my second semester option didn’t show up on my registration and I was just wondering if this was a problem.
English faculty attendant: Umm…I don’t know…No, I’m sure it’s not a problem.
(TWO DAYS LATER)
Lisa: Nazir, I was just wondering…I already checked with the faculty office, but my Democracy course didn’t show up on my registration. Is this a problem?
Nazir: Oh, yes, definitely. In fact, I think they’ve cancelled that course. They didn’t let you know?

No, they didn’t.

So, you’re beginning to get an idea of what I’m dealing with. No one knows the answer, but they’ll gladly make things more difficult for you. Or, they’ll send you to someone else who doesn’t know and who doesn’t even have any idea what your situation is. It gets old.

This is not all to complain, it’s just to share with you some frustrations. I went to a very small college for undergrad, and frankly it was very student-centered. I worked in housing. I would rather DIE than work for housing here. I can’t even imagine! All I have to say is that between my dad, Dana Bekurs, Deb Sells, and Kathy Kano, we’d have this place ship-shape if I were in charge! Well, ok. If Daddy were in charge. As you can tell, this just isn’t what I’m used to, and it does get frustrating. I keep remembering Stewart and Terry reminding us of "Africa time" last year. I've found that for me, Africa time is not frustrating when you're in the country. But when you're in the city and still have to get things done, it's a killer. It’s the little stressors that get you, you know?!

Sorry that this week’s update isn’t more upbeat, but I knew that you’d be just as glad to share in my trials as in my exultations. I do have some exultations, though. Katy, some of Katy's English friends, and I went to a restaurant that serves all kinds of game meat on Sunday and it was a treat. Tomorrow I'm going out with some new friends (Americans, but with the goal to meet other people). This weekend should be a fun one spent with Lynne and Peter, so that should help a lot. All in all, life is still very good, just a little unnerving sometimes. Hope you are all having stress-free weeks. Love to you all.

Sala hantle (stay well).

Special everydays

So this week obviously hasn't been as exciting as last week (who can top Cape Town, the African look-alike of my favorite city, San Francisco?!), but it has been nice all the same. I have had some special everydays, by which I mean that nothing incredible happened, but it was still special. I think that any good week should be filled with special everydays. So, let me fill you in on three:

1. On Tuesday I began my SeSotho class. To answer the obvious question, yes, Sotho is an ethnic group in South Africa. So, why SeSotho, you ask? Well, the Se before Sotho denotes language. Zulu and Xhosa (said with an initial click that I can totally say) also do this, adding Isi- to the rest of the word. So, I have begun SeSotho. I can now greet you, tell you my name, where I live, my age, my cell number, my birthday, and that I'm not married (some of you are very relieved by this, I know). Anyway, I have to study a lot because the sentence structure, etc. is very different than English. So the first special everyday came on Wednesday when I greeted my Lesotho friend Isaac in SeSotho and he then made me do it for Eunice and Dumisani who both maintain that I speak exceptionally well for a white person from the States. Obviously, it made my day! I am now doubly excited about studying SeSotho and am determined to be the best Southern-American-accented SeSotho speaker around.

2. On Thursday, I got back from SeSotho and was tired, but still had to eat dinner. I walked over to see Pascalia and she immediately insisted that I come in, as she and Janet were braaing meat and watching a South African soap. Not only did she feed me some wonderful braai, but she also made the traditional African dish, pap! Pap is much like grits, but without any of the fancy schmancy things we might add to it like salt or butter or cheese. It's also much smoother than grits. You eat entirely with your hands (they say it doesn't taste as good with a fork), and you roll the pap into little balls. Any of you who ever ate sack lunches at elementary school would be good at that--think bread balls. So, we sat and watched this soap about a woman who is a South African doctor whose mother is possessed and she has to decide between Western medicine and African beliefs, and ate our dinners. It was a very special everyday.

3. Last night, Katy, Ursula and I went to see the Drakensberg Boys Choir in their farewell concert before they leave for the States for the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) convention in Miami. I know that some of you may be going to ACDA, and if so, be sure you don't miss this opportunity. These boys are incredible! They did a version of Bohemian Rhapsody, some Ravel, two new pieces by a South African composer named Martin Watt, some traditional African music and dancing, and a great version of the Star-Spangled Banner. They were really, really wonderful. Want to see them? Well, you're in luck because they're touring the country. You Birmingham folks don't have a show, but there is one in ATL and one in Nashville! Here is the website: http://www.dbchoir.info/. I'm telling you, you won't be disappointed! That special everyday made me excited about all the special everydays to come here. There's always something new and exciting to do!

Love to you all! Hope birthdays were happy this week. Oh, and props to Lenor for the Pictures of Alabama postcard (dude, that thing had a green light on Vulcan--how old is it?!), and Carrie and Donnovin for the pictures over email! I love hearing from you!