Another Africa

I’ve been in South Africa for eight days now. Several borders and a couple weeks ago, I was still sitting in Entebbe taking a deliberate interlude, sipping a chocolate milkshake on the lawn and telling yet another inquiring waiter at the Botanical Beach Hotel, “They’ve gone back to New York, it’s just me here now.” Then I checked out and pulled my suitcase a kilometer or two down the dirt road to a more affordable place: a little, round, thatch-roofed banda tucked away in the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, which is a refuge for wildlife saved from various parts of Africa. My cottage had a gas cooker so I made my own tea, and there were two twin-size beds which made me wish my friend Marybeth were sharing the interlude with me. She would love seeing all of my animal neighbors! At night I fell asleep to strange guttural sounds, and one morning I looked out at two ostriches walking by. On the weekend I took a matatu into Kampala and stayed the night with Charlotte. How I love how she calls me Mom! She and Malko and I went to a lively church service the next morning before driving back to Entebbe, where the three of us walked all through the refuge to see the chimpanzees, rhinos, vervet monkeys, zebras, crested cranes, and one sleepy lion.

James from the wildlife refuge drove me to the Entebbe airport in 3 a.m. darkness and I flew to Nairobi and then to Johannesburg in one brief morning. Flying is efficient, but travel by road or by water is better for keeping heart and mind together. I’ve left so many hopes and friends and possibilities trailing behind me and I don’t know if that is kind or cruel. I am not responsible for the whole world but I am responsible for me. And I want to make that count.

So here I am in South Africa feeling completely at home with my cousin Carla but not yet at ease in this country that actually was home for me – 35 years ago. I lived here as an exchange student in 1972-73 when apartheid ruled and injustice was everywhere. Carla moved here in 1994 just before the historic election, which I witnessed from the states in newspaper stories about Mandela and photos of people lined up for miles to cast their first-ever vote.

I’ve wanted to return to South Africa for so long, and being welcomed by my childhood buddy is almost miraculous. But I didn’t expect the wild mix of emotions I’ve experienced since landing here last week. Initially I was stunned at the sight of so many white people, and so many nice cars – driven by both white South Africans and black South Africans – swooshing along on wide boulevards, and the absence of potholes, and manicured neighborhoods. I had a momentary emotional arrest just walking into a grocery store with Carla. It was a huge place with wide aisles and rows and rows of merchandise and bright lights that caught me like a deer in headlights (does a deer ever fight back tears?).

The wealth overwhelms me. It’s not easy reconciling the South Africa I am seeing around me and the Africa I’ve been experiencing in the last few months. First world/third world relationships are hard to rectify.

The other big set of differences – the distinctions between apartheid-era South Africa and contemporary South Africa – are stunning in other ways, hugely positive but with rough edges like crime and safety, issues that are faced by all countries of the world but did not confront South Africa in the same way when it was a police state. When I came here as an exchange student in 1972, apartheid ruled everything. Books were censored, people were banned, and benches in parks were labeled “For whites only.” Black South Africans who worked in Jo’burg either lived in servants’ quarters on white property or rode the nightly train back to Soweto or some other designated township. Schools, churches, hospitals were all separated by race, and the quality of education and care was entirely skewed.

One evening last week I went with Carla to a school here in Johannesburg to see Romeo perform in a student musical. Romeo is a 7-year-old black kid who has cerebral palsy, and Carla has helped raise him since he was born. In his classroom beforehand, Romeo and a bunch of other kids in costumes were hopping around with excitement. That all seemed normal to me. But later, in the auditorium, when the lights were dimmed and the curtains opened and kids of all colors came out on the stage, my heart did a little jump and I thought, wait a minute, where am I, is this…South Africa? I was glad it was dark in there because the tears that I’d felt rising at several odd times in those first few days just finally rolled out.

That program was so fun! All the kids – primary through middle school – had parts in a “round the world to 2010” program that was done in English and Afrikaans and pop songs and folk songs. Four girls in wheelchairs danced to Edelweiss, a bunch of boys did an African gumboot dance, and a large group of cowboys and cowgirls did a square dance when they got to the American portion, which also featured Oprah, Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton, and Paris Hilton accompanied by a guard. A troupe of Michael Jacksons performed, Elvis sang his hound dog song, and Oprah interviewed a boy dressed as the Statue of Liberty, who sang “I’ll do it my way.” Then a bunch of Marines marched in.

The best part was watching Romeo, wearing his hat and Bavarian lederhosen, dancing the folk dance he had practiced with Carla and looking perfectly at home on a stage filled with kids of all description.

So it’s a new country to get to know. I hardly recognize it. But staying with Carla feels as natural as being back in Wausa together. Her garden flat looks out to beds of flowers and vegetables surrounded by trees, and we hang clothes on the line outside to dry. But this is definitely not Kansas anymore. Or Nebraska! Nor is it quite the land that I still hope it becomes. Romeo and a whole generation may have been born after the end of apartheid, but the remnants of an old system don’t disappear overnight. And making sense of the still-strange blend of riches and crimes and cultural diversity that characterize this beautiful country may take a while.

I’d be leaving for JFK this week, according to my original schedule, and back in Alaska next week. But instead I’m staying on for October and November and some of December. Carla and I have been talking nonstop and we’ve hardly begun. There’s lots we have to do. I need to have more time in Uganda too. So a few more months will be a start.