Everyone keeps telling me horror stories of the crime in and around Pretoria. I won’t share them here because I don’t want you all to worry about me. As each new person feels compelled to tell me these stories, I say “Now you tell me. You didn’t think to mention this while I was back tucked safely in my American bed?” They are not trying to scare me, they just want to impress upon me that I should be sure to use all the safety precautions they have advised. If I do these things, I will be safe. Everyone is so protective of me. They don’t want me walking around oblivious to my surroundings – which I am likely to do. I am just so happy to be here and soaking up everything, interested in everything, but filtering through my naïve perspective. Not to mention my independent and adventurous spirit that wants to master all these new things myself! It is hard to set that aside, but don’t worry Mom and Dad, I will let all my willing guides accompany me on even the most basic of tasks. But after two weeks of this, I have had the safety lecture, I take it seriously, I have gotten the point. I have forbidden Piet from entering my office until he has good news. He is the maintenance man, and the resident voice of gloom and doom. He told me about the earthquake that is going to cause the East coast of South Africa to drop off into the sea. I have survived the same situation in California for 20 years now. And Piet is very detailed in his crime stories that are never on the nightly news, so I’m not sure of his sources. He walked in the other day, “Another one was just killed.” Piet, what did I tell you? You may not cross that threshold unless you have a happy story.
These are big things that I have to adjust to. Don’t open the gate to drive in or out if anyone is hanging around. Don’t drive with your purse in the car, put it in the boot (trunk). Keep your windows rolled up at a robot (stoplight). I have learned these big things, like driving on the left side of the road, shifting a manual stick with my left hand. But it’s the little things that still get me. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten into the car and went Darn, no steering wheel. I still turn on the windshield wipers at every corner because the turn signal should be on the right. And it’s not just cars that are backwards. To turn a light switch on, you flick it down, not up. It’s the little things that make everything an adventure.
Like going to the movies, such a little thing, such a normal American thing to do, how could I mess this up? Went to the mall, bought my movie ticket and my popcorn, start to go where I always sit, on the aisle in the middle of the theater. Wrong! Your ticket has your seat number printed on it! It is assigned seating but you don’t get to pick. Tickets are randomly assigned seat numbers. So even though only 10 people were in the theater, we were all sitting in the back rows. And people actually sat where they were supposed to, imagine THAT happening in America!
Then there are the little things I took for granted at home. Like faucets, here there are two – one for hot, one for cold. That is if you are lucky enough to have two faucets. Often times, there is only one and that means Cold. But if you have two, the hot is too hot to use to wash your hands or your face, but you can’t adjust it. The cold is separate. So you have to run both faucets and try to splash the water together in the middle before using.
Another thing you might take for granted – if you buy a product here, you can actually use it here. I can’t use the curling iron I brought from home because it is American voltage. Finally ran out of butane for my travel curling iron so I went and bought a South African curling iron. Can’t use it. Has a Chinese plug on it. Now I have to go buy a prong adapter, Chinese to South African. This is because everything has to be imported. South Africa doesn’t make anything except gold, diamonds, and wine. This leads to strange results. When shopping for a printer for my office, I found out a printer costs less than the replacement cartridge of ink. This explains AFnet’s old printers lying around in the storeroom. They ran out of ink. It’s cheaper to just go buy a new printer.
Then there are the big things we take for granted in America, like having water and electricity at all. The water has been off in a few block radius around the AFnet office for the last few days. For no apparent reason, no storm or pipe burst. Just waiting for the city to make it work again. Can’t do the dishes, wash our hands, flush the toilet, and the people who live here can’t take a bath or shower. We brought bottled water so we could make coffee – we can go without bathing but not coffee, we’re not total barbarians. I am told the electricity can be out for days too.
Last weekend, I realized an even bigger thing I take for granted, even more important than water, electricity, indoor plumbing. I was attending an Oggendtee, a morning tea. It was a fundraiser for three local charities. A group performed and they were amazingly gifted singers. They had such beautiful voices that my eyes were misting up as their singing filled the hall. You know how beauty can affect you that way sometimes? Then I looked across the table and saw Christa’s sister and I began to really cry. She could not experience this beauty. She is deaf. She was reading their lips so she knew the words they were singing, but she could not know that these particular voices were not voices you hear every day, that each voice was unique and talented and that when their voices blended and built to an emotional crescendo it made you tingle. It put my attempts to communicate in Afrikaans in a new perspective too. Though I am struggling to communicate with others because I don’t speak Afrikaans, or Zulu, or Tswana, or Ndebele, I can hear them! I can hear these strange sounds that evidently are words. It makes me want to run out and learn all these languages, because I can!
Little things. Big things. Because I am here, where everything is new, I am intensely aware of both. And being more aware, feels more alive.
Try it…
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