HOME: Figment of the Imagination and Other Contradictions

How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life.
            --James Agee, A Death in the Family

We have made our lives far way from our small city, but we just can’t get used to being away from it, and we like to nurture our nostalgia when it has been a while since we’ve been back, so sometimes we exaggerate our accent when talking among ourselves, and use the common words and expressions that we’ve been storing up over the years and that our children can vaguely understand from having heard them so often.
           --Antonio Molina, Sepharad

The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.

            -- A. F. G Bell, In Portugal (1912)

Where thou art - that - is Home. 
            -- Emily Dickinson

It was May 6th, a late Friday afternoon, and exactly three months after I arrived in South Africa.  The three months that had stretched ahead so invitingly when I got off the plane, had flown by even though day by day they had seemed endless.

Poof!

Now I was on the way to the Johannesburg airport with John, who had joined me for the last few weeks.  For the past six days we were based in Pretoria, the city that provided the bookends to my trip. My anxiety, sadness and sorrow about leaving sent me into something of a panic.  Did I have enough material?  Could I really write this darn book?  What did I have to say that made the project worthwhile? Was I exposing my inner self too much? What actually did I do those three months?  My emotions rippled up and down from my center to a tightening of my throat, teasing me, scaring me, discordant. 

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I am sitting next to John who joined me for the last few weeks as I look out the window at the open veld.  The wavy brown grass, shrubby trees, horizon far in the distance, so familiar to me from my stays in southern Africa. I find myself edging away from him, turning my shoulders so that my back is towards him -  my green-carded Canadian partner, who at this moment represents where we are heading.  I don’t want to think about it, not yet.  

Open Veld, North West Province

This is my private communion with my country that I am already yearning for before I have left it.   I gaze and absorb. Words, unbidden enter my mind, prick like barbs:  “I love this country!  I love this country!”

 Why am I this affected I wonder as my seemingly incurable sentimental self gives way to teariness?  After all, I have lived in the US, mostly in and around New York, for more than forty years. This is close to double my life in South Africa and yet I could never be moved to say about my adopted country:  “I love this country” or even  “I love this city”. 

New York City from New Jersey: Murkier, and not Table Mountain!

But neither had I felt this way on previous visits to South Africa, which have been fairly regular since 1991.  On those trips I was not there to finish gathering material for a book.  I was not there to purposely immerse myself in memories, to conjure up an earlier life, to expose myself to current times. Cape Town insinuated itself into me, jarring forgotten senses – smell, taste, sight – as well as buried memories – that reconnected synapses I had thought were severed forever.

Why was I so affected - even as John and I were creatively hatching plans to return regularly and for longer periods? 

Setting sun from above Camps Bay, over the Atlantic Ocean

One thought begins to surface. Was I harking back to the twenty-three and a half year old self that left without saying goodbye? I had told myself I wanted to leave.  I had told myself I had no reservations.  I was white and privileged.  It was impossible NOT to benefit from apartheid.  My skin was an undetachable badge that declared that the apartheid government had made sure that everything in the country would be, for years to come, geared to my comfort and privilege. As I could not change my skin color to match that of 90 percent of the South African population, I was doomed to accept much of that privilege, like it or not.  I didn’t like it, so the only option, or so it seemed at the time, was to leave.  I had trouble envisioning staying once the organization I worked for was banned, once political activity had become dormant.  After all, once outside I could join the vibrant and growing anti-apartheid movement and make a contribution that way. And leaving wouldn’t matter.  Or so I told myself.

Sky during sunset from St. James, Indian Ocean

I followed the man I married the day before we left Cape Town for the United States.  He had a scholarship to study for a PhD in Physics. He did not intend to return.  No future in physics in South Africa, especially not in his particular field.

I left and I did not consciously say goodbye.

Although I left with a passport, in one respect I was like other exiles who left with one-way permits or fled across the border ahead of their own arrests or deaths, I did not know when I would be able to return.  The beauty or South Africa, combined with the horrendous and brutalizing political system, made it impossible for most South Africans to let go.  The country I called home and then left, had planted a seed within me that grew taut like an indestructible vine, unyielding to stimuli from outside as I became integrated in New York and US life and culture.

They might have a home, but they don't have a house!

Protests before the municipal elections were a common aspect of Cape Town life.

Now, after days and weeks and months that flowed into one another, during which I felt that Cape Town and South Africa began to once more take on the familiarity of home, I am saying goodbye.  This time it is wrenched, not because I was once again leaving home.  It was due in large part to finally having to acknowledge that while I might not regard the US or the town I live in as my emotional home, I could no longer claim South Africa to be 'Home' with a capital 'H'.  But at the same time memory, physical recognition of place and space, tentacles that bind, years of nostalgia, years of longing for more permanent reconnections, all conspired to keep me linked in a visceral way even if I had to give up on the idea that South Africa was still home.

Home is not, I have come to reflect, a very useful concept.  It covers far too much ground.   We will say flippantly that we are going home, wherever we happen to be staying, for a short while, a longer while, or a long time.  “Are you home for supper?” or “What time are you coming home?”, I find myself asking friends who are staying at our house, be it for a few days or a few weeks. 

I smile at the immigration official, if a little wanly, as he says “Welcome Home” and hands me back my US passport at Newark Airport.  Home?

And when, years past, I spent a long evening over Chinese food and wine and green tea with a new South African friend obsessing about South Africa and he asked: “When are you going home, Steph?”, I knew he was referring to South Africa and not my New York apartment in Washington Heights. 

Or more recently, having dinner with two young black women in Cape Town, one the daughter of a coloured friend, one her friend from university who is African, I delight in their talk and ebullience, in their South African-ness . When they talk about South Africa there is anger and pain but also an acknowledgement that this is where they want to be. There is also pride when they list many of South Africa’s assets.  After they regale me with stories about their visit to New York in the middle of winter, a city they obviously enjoyed, I ask them whether they ever think of leaving South Africa.  No, they say, their voices assured, no hint of doubt.  They love their country.  They would like to travel and live elsewhere for a while, yes, that would be good, but South Africa is their country.  They have no desire to live elsewhere.

Home.

Then there is the police officer who flags me down at 11:30 on the Main Road in Claremont where I am happily driving my zippy Yaris rental car on my way "home" to my cousin in Tamboerskloof after dinner with friends.  At first I am hesitant.  I can’t see who is behind the flashlights that are being waved up and down to signal me to stop. Do I stop or drive on?  I am aware that the Main Road is not the safest road to drive on at this time of night but having overshot the exit to De Waal Drive I am heading for the next one. Should I just ride on and not stop as I have been often advised in situations such as this?  I slow down as I get closer and see the police car.  I stop.  A young white policemen, Afrikaans, trim, minus the swagger that I associate with policemen in the US, walks over and says with a friendly smile that it is a routine check.  He asks for my license.  I hand him my New Jersey one.  "Ah, New Jersey," he says as if he sees one of these on a regular basis.  I tell him I am from Cape Town.  “Good!” he responds, “South Africa is The Best!” Home.

I interview Jean Marie Nkurunziza, an impressive young man who is working on gender justice issues with refugees in South Africa.  He says at the beginning of the interview:  “I am a Burundian by birth, an African by nationality.”

Home -  he knows what it means to him. 

I have come to the conclusion, a conclusion that I did not anticipate when I left for my three-month stay in South Africa, that in point of fact I have no home.  Is it a figment of my imagination and that’s why I can’t find it? 

As the idea takes hold, I like it.  It is freeing.  It provides a sense of maturity and security. I am no longing seeking something too elusive to capture.  It can be anywhere.  I feel best where I have a community.  And I have a number of them.  Some bigger, with deeper roots.  Somewhere I visit for short occasions and feel “at home” because of friends there that welcome me.  And South Africa (more than Cape Town) where I am drawn back by a strong thread, resists letting go when I leave.

Home is Montclair where I live in our family house where my daughter was raised. 

 Tree in front of our house in New Jersey in February, the day before I left for Cape Town 

The same tree in bloom (white lacey blossoms against Rhododendrums) when I arrive back

Home was England, to a lesser degree, for some twenty years, where first my parents, then my mother lived until they died, after leaving South Africa in the same year I did. 

In the 1980's in northern Mozambique, I walked in the early evening with Anastasia my interpreter along a narrow dirt road that led out of the small village we were visiting.  The African veld stretched away from us every which way in the receding light; the smell of fires, the sounds of birds in the calling in the stillness, the voices and activities of homestead life drifting towards us.  It was a blissful walk, as we continued our ongoing conversation about what was happening to women after independence.  A young man bicycling along the road dismounted when he reached us and walked alongside a little way, pushing his bike.  He was curious about this white woman in his village, clearly not a common occurrence.  Anastasia explained to him in Portuguese who I was.  “Aha!” he responded, obviously pleased.  “A Internationalista!!!”

Many years later I still like that designation: Internationalist.  I care about the world.  The world is my home.

Which is not to say that when I think of "home,” I think of the world.  South Africa is what comes to mind when I am feeling nostalgic. Montclair and the US when I am in practical mode.  I have no single place to identify as home.  Nonetheless, South Africa tugs on my emotions; the feelings it generates about space and place are rope-strong.  No other place comes close.

Breakfast on my last day in Cape Town in The Gardens with Sindiswa and Katie

An untranslatable Portuguese word captures the feelings about home better than any English word: Saudade. “Not an active discontent or poignant sadness but a ... dreaming wistfulness.”  Am I destined to feel this way about South Africa, whether it is home or not? I don’t really know.

I smiled when I saw the subject line on an email from my cousin in Cape Town a few days ago: “Homingl”.  I am not sure what she meant by this typo.  In my mind I added an ‘e’ and a new word was formed,  "Homingle”.  The mingling of many homes and connections and threads that tie me to places at different levels of flexibility, depending on where I am at that moment, both physically and emotionally.

Home.  Africa. The World.

Yes, that feels right.

And yet I know when someone says to me “When are you going home again?” or “Do you miss home?”, it will refer to South Africa. No other place comes close.  It's more about feelings, than reality.  And when it comes to saudade, feelings trump.

And yet, and yet.... as I write this at my desk in Montclair, as I read emails from friends in South Africa relating how cold it is, and know too that I am comfortable here in my skin.  I know the place so well.  Friends abound.

Perhaps it is as simple as Emily Dickinson declares:  Where we are, that is home.

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African Penguins

Boulders Beach, Cape Town: No doubt they know where home is: their community

I want to be alone...  home or not, let me outta there!

An Education in Contrasts

It was Founder's Day at Westerford High School.  My high school, which when I entered was two years old. 

I sit in the auditorium that was built towards the end  my stay at the school, and which easily held the school's 500 students at the time.  Now 900 squeeze in, using an extension that fans out of one side through adjustable walls and into a balcony that was added after I left. 

I scan the students, well more accurately I stare at them, contemplating them, from those that are 12 or 13 to those in the graduating class who are heading for young adulthood.  Like all schools, Westerford has its own specific uniform in the Westerford colours of in maroon, gold and grey.  They wear them with casualness:  shirts half out, or creeping out, maroon blazer worn by some, not others who are in their shirts, girls in dresses that are different in style and pattern to the one I wore although still checks (plaid), ties off, ties on but loose around the neck.  I prefer this level of comfort which would certainly have been frowned upon in “my day” as would the joking around between students, the noisy exuberance as they enter the hall, the turning to talk to the girl or boy behind them as they file in.  We would have entered in silence, walking with backs straight, blazers and ties neatly correct.

I think back the decades to “my day”.  

I remember the first principal with his straight greying hair parted down the middle precisely brylcreemed to each side.  He walked with purpose, seldom smiled, was serious about his religion (Baptist, preached the need to be a good Christian - no separation of church and state to be sure, apartheid got its im-moral compass from the bible), could be both kind and unkind.  One did not go against his wishes and he had many directions about how to behave as a Westerfordian:   The daily emphasis on being a good Christian (impossible for me - not only was I Jewish, my family was atheist), always respect the uniform which meant never ever taking your blazer or tie off outside the school grounds as you were to be an exemplary standard bearer of Westerford wherever we were – and yes, the girls as well as the boys wore blazers and ties.  Obey the teachers.  No pranks tolerated, although in a school of girls and boys this rule was always broken.  He was tougher on the boys than the girls.  He seemed to have no sense of humor.  Being sent to the Principal’s office was not a happy experience.  Lectures were long and disdain was expressed very easily for all except his favorites. He had many good points including his belief in an education that emphasized independent thinking.   He emphasized that Westerfordians respect everyone and to make the point he referred to appropriately as Mr. or Mrs. or Miss.

The school sign was a gift from my class at its 40^th reunion. 

The school motto (under the badge): Nil Nisi Optimum (Nothing but the best)



I pull back to my surroundings from these ruminations.  What I am looking at is very different from what I remember.  The principal jokes with the audience when he talks.  He is relaxed and in control.  Sitting with him are teachers from all South African backgrounds.

It is of course obvious, but sitting with the all white section from the late 1950's and 1960's what I am most aware of is the makeup of the student body.  About 50 percent are black. Mostly coloureds and Indians, with a very few Africans. (It is later explained to me by a parent of recent Westerford graduates, that the catchment area for the school is confined, effectively excluding African applicants.  I also learn that although it is a state school students have to pay fees of R21,165.00 ($3129.65 at today’s’ exchange rate.  The website indicates that fee exemptions are available for those unable to afford the fees. Frankly, had Montclair High School fees for a public school been at this level, very few parents would have been able to manage.  Without knowing how it all works, I am assuming it to be a mechanism to enable the highly privileged school to continue to provide education for the highly privileged without draining the Provincial education budget.)

I sit next to two classmates, Lois and Stan, in a rows down one side of the hall reserved for guests.  The rest of the guests are from the class behind me who are having their 50^th reunion.  In contrast to the new South Africa demographic, where the students and teachers represent all of South Africa, we are a relic from the past.  All white.  Lois turns to me and says:  “Isn’t it wonderful how mixed Westerford now is?”  Her face glows.  I just nod in agreement, my breathing constricted with the thought of how many things have changed. 

Photo taken on Founders Day (from WHS website)

When I later ask a teacher the racial breakdown he says “I don’t know.  We don’t count”. 

It’s a sensitive issue.  And no wonder.  The apartheid government certainly counted.  By use of a very weird maths. 

Africans who were actually 80 percent of the South African population, were by a sleight pen, designated not. Africans were divided up into different language groups and then assigned their “own” homeland, one of ten so-called Bantustans, according to language – Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana etc. – whose edges had long ago been fudged beyond ethnicity and language into a diverse but one African people within two language groups. Few Africans spoke only one African language.  Many spoke four, or perhaps even more, as well as English and/or Afrikaans.  The clincher was that in each so-called homelands the government could count a smaller number of citizens than the white citizens in South Africa.  Voila! Whites were no longer a minority.

Africans could vote in their own supposed country.  Problem was most of the “citizens” of these homelands did not live there and many had never ever set foot in them.  Problem was that these so-called homelands made up 10 percent of the country’s land mass, and that some of the homelands consisted of non-contiguous “black spots”.  Problem was Africans constituted 80 per cent of the population, whites fifteen per cent. Problem was the land was eroded and generally non-arable so the “citizens” couldn’t sustain life from it even if they wanted to.  They had to continue get permission to work in the white areas of South Africa, and the requisite stamp in their dompass (stupid pass) because their land was no longer their country. The labor was exploited and those that controlled the apartheid economy – and their overseas corporate investors - were exceedingly happy.  Cheap labor.  Humongous profits.  Don’t rock the treasure boat.

Again I pull myself back from these thoughts as the Westerford Orchestra plays the national anthem signaling an end to the Founders Day ceremony. 

As I  played the violin in high school and was part of a youth orchestra, this was a welcome sight

We all stand to sing the South African anthem.  The anthem is in three parts. It starts with the rousing but solemn hymn that was the anthem of the struggle, a symbol of resistance and hence banned in apartheid South Africa but now sung proudly in Zulu or Xhosa or one of the African languages. I sing along with the Xhosa:  N’kosi Sikilela Africa....  (God bless Africa)

It is close to seventeen years since South Africa had its first elections for a new South Africa.  And I am finding it hard to sing along.  My voice is cracking because of emotion.  When it segues without stop into the old, apartheid anthem in Afrikaans – Uit die blou van onse hemel (Out of the blue from our heavens), I join in more forcefully, the Afrikaans words carved into my very being from my childhood. Now I know I am being truly soppy as I think of the significance of the majority government decreeing that the new South Africa should include in its anthem the old South Africa that we want to forget.  I can't wipe away the tears that wet my cheeks because it will bring attention and make me even more embarrassed.

And as the anthem then segues without barely an intake of breath into the English, it is even harder.  And I find myself thinking:  I have never felt the tiniest bit emotional over the American anthem although I am now a US citizen.  To me it is a song. 

But my strong reaction to the South African anthem?    Can it be that I am home?  (Something for later reflections.)

I leave the school impressed by its progress, delighted by its diversity.  I have seen the large fields that extend from the Main Road up to De Waal Drive, the swimming pool, new astro-turf playing field with its bright new sports building where my class held its annual picnic.  The mountain towers above me on this perfect late summer day.  The grounds are many times the size of the Westerford I attended (where I and my fellow students painstaking planted the grass for the first playing field, seedling by seedling) and many, many times the size of the New Jersey high school my daughter attended in Montclair.  The school is not only graced with sports fields.  It has a fantastic library, an art room, classrooms that aim to serve under 30 students in each, newly painted walls, spic and span bathrooms.  I am told by a teacher that prime real estate that was recently acquired for the expansion of its sports fields in one of the more expensive suburbs of Cape Town belonged to the Provincial government. He believes it  was granted for use to the school which had to fund raise for the fields and buildings.

I leave wondering whether I should be impressed by a school with such resources that services a mixed community or troubled by the display of resources that is almost ostentations when considering the situation of the majority of students in South Africa.

School grounds that stretch up to the edge of the mountain

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Forward, not too fast, to March 21, 20011.

March 21^st is  Human Rights Day, a public holiday commemorating the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960.  This year  20,000 black youth chose the day to march to Parliament to protest the state of education in South Africa and demand better conditions.  They are elementary and high school learners, in their school uniforms despite the holiday. There are teachers and parents and other supporters of the call. As I missed the announcement of the demonstration I heard about it from press coverage. 

This call for equality education came thirty-five years after the Soweto uprisings of 1976 when school students went on strike to protest Bantu education, in particular the ruling that Afrikaans would henceforth  be the language of instruction.  The uprisings and continued demonstrations resulted in a brutal crackdown in which hundreds of people were killed, many of them school children. 

While the black youth of South Africa were protesting Bantu education for many years to follow, the white youth continued to benefit from education that was among the best in the world.  Inequalities still based on race as well as on class and privilege continue to mar progress.  Today, education for the majority of South Africans is sub-standard.  Some 18 percent do not have access to electricity.  Twenty percent do not have no water supply (which means they do not have flush toilets) .  More than 92 percent do not have stocked and functionary libraries.  [Timeslive.com]. 

Yvonne Msebenzi, a Grade 10 pupil at Mfuleni High, quoted in The Cape Times, said “Sometimes we have to go to libraries in Delft and Khayelitsha because the library in Mfuleni does not have enough books with the information we need or there are just too many people there.” 

A Grade 12 pupil at Harold Cressy High School, Qhayisani Mxhego, told the Sowetan  that he marched because education was a basic right that should be fulfilled by the government. “We want all schools to have the same opportunities, and for learners to have the same access to higher education”.

Protest on Human Rights Day (Photo: Gillian Benjamin/Writing Writes blog)

Another Grade 12 pupil at Hector Pieterson (named after the first child to die in the Soweto uprisings) High School said: “We need the same quality of educators and resources.”

 

Protest on Human Rights Day (Photo: Gillian Benjamin/Writing Writes blog)

The key demand of the protest was  for National Minimum Norms & Standards for School Infrastructure.  Yoliswa Dwane, spokesperson for Equal Education that organized the march said “This is not just our bright idea.  The South African Schools Act itself...gives the Minister the power to set Infrastructure Standards.”  It has been in place since 2008 but no action has been taken so far.  Dwane added that while some pupils are taught in “mud huts”, others are taught in “buildings that look like universities.”

Or like Westerford?

I stand on the field that possibly still had the grass my class planted

As long as Westerford remains the domain of the privileged, and schools in the townships and the rural areas remain the domain of the poor, the need to fight inequality will not diminish.   While the education realities are depressing, the students are inspiring in their protests.  They are once more leading the way.

I can’t stop looking for glimmers to hitch some hope to.  And I find them all over the place.

I continually hear about community based, civil society organizations (such as Equal Education) involved in work that is making a huge difference to people’s lives.  In terms of education, stories abound about the involvement of teachers and principals and parents, who are responding in innovative ways to the eagerness of children and young people  wanting to learn.
One story I heard recently came from a friend who visited a small pre-school outside Hazy View in Mpumalanga province.  A teacher from the area, trained in early childhood education, established a pre-school for the children of her village who were left at home during the day while their parents went to work. She started with a dozen children, holding classes under a tree. Now 150 children attend the pre-school every day.

In the decade since she began, she has developed a progressive curriculum for pre-school children, teaching them in English and their own language to read and to develop skills necessary for learning. With financial support from individuals and organizations to help her fulfill her vision, the school now has several buildings, grows its own vegetables, has a kitchen and provides two meals to the children every day.  She has opened a second school in the next village. When asked what has happened to those who started their schooling with her a decade ago, she said she has followed their progress.  They are all now in high school.

April 30, 2011

Random Thoughts on Home

The following blog reflects thoughts that are at this stage random about home and nostalgia and South Africa.  Rather than wait to do a “considered”  piece, which I will need to do for the book as that is permanent (and which will be helped by your comments - so will yet appear in this space), I am jotting down thoughts and reflections I have had over the two months I have been here.  These have come – and gone – while walking on the beach, talking to friends, meeting people, staring at the mountain (It’s become a joke with John who is continually telling me to “Look at the mountain!” because I said that to him at every vantage point when he arrived, and there are so many, it just never stops.  As I write I am looking over Fish Hoek beach, the mountains to the left, right and centre, the sky is blue, blue in the early morning light.  Ialready feel sad that I have just over two weeks more of this trip.

So let me indulge in a stream of consciousness about my thoughts on “home”:

CONCEPT of HOME

I can’t say I have yet come to terms with the concept of home and how I relate to it. But perhaps I am getting there. The longer I am here, the more comfortable I feel and the more settled.  This doesn’t mean I plan to relocate here. There are many considerations now that I have been away for so many years and made my life, my “home”, elsewhere.  But one thing is ever more clear. This city and country has once again cornered me.  It is beautiful, rich in people and cultures; it is complex and complicated (a word I usually don’t like using) and it twists me into many contortions of emotion – love, anger, despair, respect, wonder, angst.  Sounds like any love relationship, né?!

I have had the opportunity to meet amazing variety of South Africans.  Living here could be one of the most rewarding experiences imaginable on many different levels.

POVERTY

Yes, the poverty in this country is, well, overwhelming.  It is always commented on.  By visitors, returnees, people who live here.  What gets me is the level of disparity in terms of wealth.  This links to the levels of violence that is not talked about as much as I would have imagined, although perhaps this is because I am in Cape Town. (I referred to this in earlier blogs). 

Bus station for mini-bus taxis.  Fare to Cape Town is R12, roundtrip $3.5 dollars

I know it is hard for those who have lived outside of South Africa and Africa to be so upset by the poverty, the in-your-face, impossible-to-ignore poverty that is disturbing reason enough not to feel comfortable living here.  What is particularly disturbing is that access to resources are the domain of a very few and certainly by no means the prerogative of only the whites.

Privately built house in Khayelitsha

In Khayelitsha the mountains are in the far distance; there are not trees

It is impossible to read the newspapers daily and not be offended by the stories of corruption and misuse of authority and position to accumulate personal wealth on the part of many of South Africa’s leaders in different sectors. 

In relation to poverty, some figures tell the story: An official unemployment rate of 26% which among the 19 to 24 age group is estimated to be 53%; a poverty rate estimated at approximately 50%.  Ironically South Africa ranks as an upper-middle income country based on average income, some of the nation’s social indicators are comparable to those of the poorest countries of the world.  Having spent the good part of yesterday in Khayelitsha, all I can say is damned right.

Khayelitsha

Seller of hand creams at the Khayeltisha bus station

However the country I have lived in for the past decades is also a cleaved society.  Filmmaker and rabble rouser Michael Moore has recenlty pointed out that 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.  As my American friend, Peter Kjeseth, who has lived in South Africa for the  past ten years, noted with passion and anger in his voice this morning, the gap in wealth in the US is totally abysmal and getting worse. He feels no less passionate about this state of affairs as he does about South African poverty and the disparities. 

Tamboerskloof, suburb below the mountain where trees are in abundance

Another friend, South African living in the US, pointed out (quoting a Reuters article) in response to my email about minimum wages and the generally substandard  pay that is common in South Africa wrote: “President Obama has advocated, against shrieks and screams, increasing the federal wage floor to over $8 per hour in 2011. Over 35 million working Americans only get paid minimum wage. “So the point I am making” she continues, “is not that poverty wages are O.K. but that they exist, on a huge scale here in the U.S., still the world's biggest, and among the richest economies.  S.A. will have a hard time building its economy, given the deep scars of apartheid , to a comparable level of wealth and productivity- but the U.S. has gotten there and  yet gets away with  miserable minimum wages, huge, huge wealth/poverty gaps and tax cuts for the rich.  Why aren't the people marching in days of rage?”  

Flats overlooking Clifton beach with the reflection of the setting sun

 Clifton beach

Clifton beach at sunset

There are significant ways that South Africa looks after its poor that puts the US to shame.  Take the story of Grace, who’s  name matches her personality.  I got to know her when I stayed at a friend’s house where she works as a domestic worker.  Last September Grace had a double bi-pass surgery at Groote Schuur hospital, no longer the  segregated hospital of apartheid years, whose standard of medical care was spotlighted when Christiaan Barnaard performed the first heart transplant in 1967. The cost?  Completely free.  That’s not all. Grace was able to build her own house using a subsidy from the government, supplemented by aid from the Irish government.  In addition, she received receive monthly social grants that are provided to all families with children under the age of 18 who qualify according to an income based means test.  When Grace reaches the age of 60 she will qualify for a state old age pension that is not tied to any form of contribution while working.

 RACISM

Ongoing racism is often raised as a reason for not living here, I understand how strong the response is for those who see it.  Sally wrote in her piece I published on this blog a vivid description of a racist incident that made her acknowledge once again that she couldn’t live here.  Because of our past, because of growing up under apartheid, the reaction to racist incidents is like a punch in the belly. A really hard punch.

For me, though, having lived these many years in the United State, it’s a no go argument.  There racism is rampant, a constant undercurrent of life and politics, of the economy and society in general.  A black President has not meant that racism is over, although some seemed to want to argue this.  It has meant all too often that a backlash has been severe.   And since 9/11 Americans of the Muslim faith have experienced levels of racism and xenophobia that is unprecedented.  I remember a comment by a close South African when she lived in New York for three years in the late 80’s studying at Columbia University, that she had never, ever in South Africa experienced the racism she encountered in the US, both as a white South African and as a general part of living in American society.  Regard for white South Africans might have changed the day that Mandela became President, but the general level of racism remains.

I have been impressed over the past two months at the few racist incidents I have encountered and when I have they tend to be very mild.  What I do observe is the systemic racism. Although I no longer feel my stomach clenching into a knot of discomfort to the point of pain when I enter a Cape Town restaurant and am confronted by the usually all white clientele, I haven’t stopped noticing. I have spent a lot of time in the past few days with a Somali friend and her 6-year-old daughter, Hibo, and we can only laugh as we note, once again, that they are consistently the only black customers.

Certainly there have been the open though not necessarily hostile stares, as I walked along Fish Hoek beach with Hibo.  But these were less frequent than the smiles, the calls of “How beautiful!” and  “I love your hair” (that day her long hair stood out in a magnificent mass of curls) and then “And yours too!”, from someone with the same grey curls as mine.  People would stop to chat and to encourage Hibo to pet their dogs.  When we were in restaurants or at Kirstenbosch (Botanical Gardens) the usual children seeking out children to play with took place and she was off to participate in their games, apparently fully accepted.

In my daily interactions with people on the street and with people I meet for my writing and for pleasure I am accepted with generosity and affection, regardless of race or class.  And so after a while, I have found that this is what I anticipate.  Color is not something I am noticing on a personal level.  When I walk into white, white restaurants or shops I do notice.  This was very different in Johannesburg.  There is a much bigger black middle class in Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria).  The suburbs are not as segregated.  Race meets class.

Back in the US I will once again encounter a pervasiveness of race.

COULD I LIVE HERE?

Quick answer: Yes. 

This doesn’t mean I am going to return. There are too many other considerations at this stage of my life. The point is that I know I could live here and part of me would love to.  Not to, feels a bit like a abandonment by the privileged of an ongoing struggle for change in this country which I have found at the community and civil society level to be inspiring. 

Every now and then a thought nags at me that goes something like this: To have skills that one can bring to the vast need here, and not do so feels like an easy way out;  to not be part of it, feels a bit like desertion.  I do remind myself that poverty is systemic and exists everywhere.  But for me, with my past of having grown up here, it would and it could make some sense to return, even at this late stage.  That I don’t contemplate it except to spend some months here each year is personal.  It has little to do with South Africa per se.

I think about what one South African friend wrote in her annual  letter to friends on return to Johannesburg after seven years of working in New York.  After commenting that people who didn’t know her well and some who did expressed delight and amazement that she would return home at a time when the country was once again in a cycle of middle class emigration, she wrote: “Of course I’m amazed anyone would think we’d stay away – rather this mess, our mess, one we understand, than the messes elsewhere – and yet another year of Obama’s own party not supporting him on health care, two wars unending, and a number of colleges suffering a shooting rampage, reminds one of how the grass may seem greener but every country has its madnesses.”

My problem is that BOTH the United States where I have lived for over 40 years and South Africa talk to me of their madnesses. I relate to two messes.  So which one do I choose?  It is a rhetorical question, as I have chosen to remain in the US.

BACK TO THE QUESTION OF ‘HOME’

Where is that illusive thing called home?  Because of this blog and my current writing I am thinking about this a lot more than I ever have. 

On Monday night I attended a Seder with some friends.  It was a lovely evening.  The discussion about freedom and the meaning of Passover allowed for thoughtful reflections.  I sat amongst good people, friends I have known since I was eight and since the first month of moving to New York who have now made their home in Cape Town with their American husbands.  So why did I feel sad, emotional even?   I was feeling as “home”-sick!  I was missing the annual Seder that my family has been part of for the past twenty or so years in Montclair.  And I felt almost teary.

Our Seder is an annual event, where we cook up a storm, invite friends, Jews and non-Jews and read from the pointedly secular Haggadah that one of the group prepared based on progressive Haggadahs that have emerged over the past decades.  I called after I got back to where we are staying, and was welcomed by shrieks of delight over the phone. Stephanie!!!  I could hear the buzz of people in the background as they waited for Kendra, my daughter, to get there from the city after work so they could begin.  How many are there this year, I asked?  About 22, 23.  Oh, I said, that’s small!  Last year we had 31 squeezed around Claudia’s table.  So I said, next year in.... Montclair. Home?

I continue to have difficulty in satisfactorily or at least not succinctly answering the question posed by the title of my blog.  Home is where the heart is, goes the adage.  My heart, I am finding is in many places. 

In the United States my heart is with a wide group of very good friends, some South Africans, some Americans, a few hailing from other nations.  In London it is with close family members who either immigrated from South Africa around the time I did, or, as in the case of my niece and my great-niece, were been born. There as well as some true Brits besides my nieces, including my God daughter – at least until she recently  (happily or me, though perhaps not for her Mom) moved to New York. 

In South Africa where I have friends who when we meet after often years of separation simply pick up on conversations we had before and expand.  My heart is with these, my communities in different parts of the world.  Home is not a static place for me.  It is where I happen I feel at home.  Most particularly it is where I feel passion and compassion.  Where I engage in debate, where I get affected by the politics and the news.  In my case it takes place in both South Africa and the environs of New York if not the United States as a whole.

Perhaps I must simply echo Socrates, "I am not an Athenian (Capetonian), or a Greek (sSouth African), but a citizen of the world." Or the Tamil poet, Kaniyan Poongundran who wrote, "To us all towns are one, all men our kin". Thomas Paine, "My country is the world, all men are my brethren and my religion is to do good." (I will forgive them their use of “men”)

Have I come home or back?  I still don’t really know. I have come back to Cape Town. But home?  I proudly tell people wherever and whenever the question arises, that I was born here but I live in the United States.  Sometimes I will add “It’s good to be home”.  I then may expand:  “Growing up in South Africa means that the country continues to have a hold on me. South Africa will never let you go”. They all nod.

I was flagged down at 11:30 one night on the Main Road in Newlands on my way back from dinner with friends by two policeman, one black one white.  The white came up to me and explained it was a spot check.  He asked for my license.  Ah, New Jersey! he said.  I told him I was born here.  He smiled as he said with great emphasis in a strong Afrikaans accent, “Ag, but South Africa is best!  The very, very best!”

(He then cautioned me that they were concerned that I was driving alone at that time of night.  It is dangerous he assured me.  Up until that moment I was feeling particularly good about life, and independent.  I drove the rest of the way to Tamboerskloof aware of every car behind me.  But by the next day I felt unencumbered by fear once more, just aware of the sensible precautions to take as one does in both South Africa and New York, although in South Africa these precautions are far more stringent.)

CAN YOU LONG FOR A PLACE AND NOT CALL IT HOME?

I will miss South Africa when I leave. I will miss Cape Town which, before I came, I didn’t expect to feel as attached to as I now do.  I will also long to return and get to know other parts of South Africa as I got to know Matumi.  I miss the different terrain, the different sense of other parts of South Africa that resonate more closely with the other parts of Africa I got to know over the past decades. (See earlier blogs on Matumi and Maputo)

I am already scheming my next visit back or home.  I hope, intend, plan to come back for longer periods.  Meanwhile well over two thirds of my time here has slipped by, leaving me sad at the thought of leave but very relaxed.  I don’t stop reacting, but I find myself more reflective, seeing the whole, and not only the parts.  I see failures and I see successes.  And perhaps this is just the nature of the world, which doesn’t mean we should shrug and move on. 

One thing I can’t do is shrug off South Africa.

April 20, 2011