Pride can come in many (sometimes weird) ways. Thinking about how my life here in South Africa has been enabling me to grow, one stand-out is that I've never felt so proud of the little things. I cross the street without getting crushed? Big win. Walk home alone from the gym? Stop the presses. Properly thank someone in isiZulu? I'm nearly in tears, waiting to tell Ariana when I get home. It's been all these little things that make me feel like I'm not only settling in to a culture that is not exactly designed to make people feel 'settled', but also learning how to be slightly out of my depth and still get on with my day.
We now take the kombi home from work. The kombi (pronounced coom - B) is a funny mix between a taxi and a bus; with no real set route, they are large VW vans that drive about a certain area until they have all the seats filled, then they head off to wherever their destination is. For us, that means catching the kombi in the township, waiting for it to fill, then heading to the downtown taxi rank. From there, we switch to another kombi that heads in our general direction and hop off about 2 blocks from our house. Door-to-door service is reserved for Uber and something that is far more of a luxury than I ever would have guessed. Kombi transport is one of the truly distinct South African experiences we have yet to have; in a weird way, its also one of the things I am most proud of.
Take today for example: the township was burning this morning. They regularly have riots and demonstrations in the township to protest the lack of funding and services. Fair enough. Instead of letting that scare us (as I’m sure it would have scared week-one Jess and Ariana), we patiently waited as our Uber driver navigated the still-smouldering tires and all the broken glass on the road into the township on our way to the school for camp; we weren’t going to take away a day of fun camp games from these kids just because we were too nervous to make it to school. After an absolute banger of a day with the kids, Ariana and I set off through the township on our own in search of our kombi home. This is a big deal for us because before we got to South Africa, we were told in no uncertain terms that it was too unsafe for us to be out of the school grounds on our own. But about 3 weeks ago, we went in search of a kombi with one of the teachers from the school. Then last week we started walking with the kids on their way home from camp, looking for one. And then this week... we’ve been out on our own.
So there we were, walking through the community, smiling and saying sawubona at everyone we passed and practicing our conversation skills. And that’s the funny thing about advice – when you’re told time and time again that something will go wrong, you believe it. When you are told that everyone around you means you harm, you believe it. But walking today and saying hello to a man who gave us an ear-to-ear grin after we attempted our isiZulu greetings with him made us realize that when you hold people at that distance, when you assume the worst, it’s only going to A) make you an easier target, and B) make you look like a bit of a dick. Of course they wouldn’t be inspired to intervene if something were to happen to us – if we wore our bags on our fronts and kept our eyes down, we would look scared and out-of-place, and honestly... like ungrateful assholes.
Instead, we treat people as people and hope for the best. Because that’s the truth of it: people are people, and it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there are going to be people who mean to do you harm and people who are just going about their day. Violence can happen anywhere, but you almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you peek around every corner, assuming the worst and waiting to get hurt.
All that being said, we don’t take unnecessary risks, and we don’t carry valuables with us. Cause at the end of the day, that’s probably what will happen – we get robbed. All things considered, I’m relatively okay with that. I don’t mean to sound naïve (although I’m sure I do) but as shitty and terrifying as that would be, we wouldn’t be idiots about it; I’m not risking my life over a couple rand and a MEC backpack. And of course it could escalate, but again, I think that could happen on any street in a big city the world over. So for me, the benefits outweigh the risks, and we have something to feel proud of every single day. To get back to my success story of today – the driver of the kombi saw us coming and stopped to wait for us. We’ve now finally worked out the timing of the payment (it’s anybody’s guess as to how that system works – just have the money ready and wait for some (unknown to us) signal) and after that it’s just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride. Today we didn’t even have to go to the taxi rank; our driver was a sweet older man who seemed stoked for us to be taking the taxi alone, and because he was taking a different route he was able to drop us off at the mall by our house. We made it home in under half an hour today. That is absolutely something to smile about in our books. Not only is this kombi experience saving us some pennies for our big adventures (13 Rand vs. 100 Rand… or $1 CAD vs. $9.50 CAD), its been an amazing way to immerse ourselves in the community we actually work in, see the township, and overall let us feel proud of ourselves for our small show of independence and trust.
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