The Third World
Today is the end of our fourth day in South Africa this year. I am sitting on my bed in my room in a condo situated about 200 feet from the Indian Ocean, in Bellito, a town roughly thirty minutes' drive north of Durban. On my left, there is an open window, and I can hear the waves crashing on rocks, as well as (what sounds like) a bunch of crazy 20-something kids a few places away that are probably drunk and probably Afrikaans-speaking. (I can't actually tell. Ehm.) On the other side I can hear my family chatting and making dinner. My mother just screamed loudly enough that I started, probably because one of my cousins pinched her toes under the table... On both sides, I hear American Pop music: Britney and Ke$ha on the left, Taylor Swift and Jason Derulo on the right. The music kind of makes me laugh and shake my head. Sometimes, I think that the rest of the world pulls off being “American” a lot better than most Americans do.
That brings me to a point that requires a bit of explanation: on Tuesday morning when we landed in Johannesberg, it turned out that the Americans had lost my baggage. I didn't like DC and New York, anyways. It was very hot and very muggy and very flat and very, very rude. I was only there for a grand total of about two hours, but it required that I order things twice and walk around listening to people, and they were simply uncivil, perhaps even uncivilized, in their conduct. It was as off-putting as the crappy weather and board-flat landscape. No thanks, I'll stay in the Pacific Northwest. Call me narrow-minded, but I rather like it there.
In any case, I have been living in two sets of clothes for the past week, now, and don't much like it. They finally delivered the suitcase to my grandma's house yesterday, but we'd left for Bellito already, so it was too late. That meant I had to go shopping today. And if you're to know only 10 things about me, that I hate shopping would probably be included in the list.
It's really not all that bad to get new clothes, and I'm always thankful that I'm able to. But the process of walking around amongst all the frills and manikins and flashy names is irritating enough, without an hour's worth of on-off-on-off-on-how does this look?-ew-off-repeat. I swear, it drives me absolutely crazy. Nearly all attempted shopping trips end in headache and half an hour of compulsive shuddering.
Today's shopping trip was a particularly special experience, as I am not familiar with any of the sizes, and everything is cut slightly differently, anyways, so it didn't help to work out a conversion chart. I walked out after more than two hours with three pairs of socks, a pair of pants, and one shirt. Anyways, I'm making myself move on, because it seems I'm in the mood to rant tonight, and the point of this was not to complain. What I mean to express is that the trip impressed upon me a great sense of awe more than anything else, and that's saying something, given that the irritation would have been hard to beat.
Everything and everyone is so freakishly up-class here. It's borderline scary. Walking around in the little outdoor mall, it's only about a third white – another third was black and another third was Indian, and there was a handful of Chinese – but I did not see a single person, whether they be in the grocery shop or in the I'm-a-cool-teenager clothing stores or I'm-a-cool-old-woman clothing stores that didn't look sharp. No matter what mall or what store you're walking around in in America, you're bound to run across some greasy-haired hermit programmer that's made his weekly trip to the surface, slugging about the uniform wrinkled T-shirt and sweats... And if you can't find any of those, you're almost certain to encounter that breed of woman that is just that *cough* wee bit too tan or whose skirt is just that *cough* wee bit too short, or whose pants are too tight, or whose shirt is too low. It's rare enough that people all actually TRY to dress as nicely as most people I encountered today did. They never ALL pull it off. But here, everyone, the men included, seem to be dressed like the manikins in the windows.
The people aren't the only sharp-looking things, either. I believe I expressed my astonishment regarding this phenomenon to a few of you last year: the malls here are freaking epic. And not just one, not just two, not just three, but every single mall or shopping center I have visited here is genuinely very pretty. To the extent that I often make a mental pause to smile and admire the architecture. It's not outrageous, but the place we were today looks fresh and interesting, as if it's trying to map the innards of a college student's brain. It's the kind of place that makes you want to stop and take pictures, just like the people are the kind of people that almost make you feel like you've walked into a modeling shoot. It's difficult for me to decide if everything in Washington's just ugly, and if the people just lack self-respect, or if South Africans genuinely have more style...
It makes me laugh, writing this, to remember the way “Africa” was spoken of at the Mexico trip just a week ago this time. The same organization plans to take a trip to Johannesberg to build more houses sometime later this year. Americans tend to see the whole of the African continent as a bunch of needy, scrawny, malnourished, dying, orphaned little black children, doomed to die themselves from AIDS or Malaria after having 5 kids of their own. I'm not going to pretend that none of those poor little children exist. They do. And it's much more common than what I'm talking about. It's utterly terrible. But I cannot help but wish I could plop those that don't know any better in the middle of a place like that, or Sandton, or Cape Town, and watch the reaction ripple over their faces. OMG, they're not in loincloths. OMG, they're not all black. (“Or all white,” add the few that've heard of Apartheid.) OMG, they're not in grass huts. OMG, they're playing Coldplay in the backgrou – OMG! that means they have radios! OMG, they have cars, OMG, they drink coffee, OMG, they wear Hollister, OMG, a lot of these people look like they darn well may have double the money I do. Sure, this is a pretty rich chunk of the country, but that doesn't change the fact that there are tons of people here (black people AND white people AND colored people AND Indian people AND Asian people) that are very, very well-off. Yeah, poverty may still be a huge problem, but surprise, y'all, there is civilization in Africa.
That brings me to a point that requires a bit of explanation: on Tuesday morning when we landed in Johannesberg, it turned out that the Americans had lost my baggage. I didn't like DC and New York, anyways. It was very hot and very muggy and very flat and very, very rude. I was only there for a grand total of about two hours, but it required that I order things twice and walk around listening to people, and they were simply uncivil, perhaps even uncivilized, in their conduct. It was as off-putting as the crappy weather and board-flat landscape. No thanks, I'll stay in the Pacific Northwest. Call me narrow-minded, but I rather like it there.
In any case, I have been living in two sets of clothes for the past week, now, and don't much like it. They finally delivered the suitcase to my grandma's house yesterday, but we'd left for Bellito already, so it was too late. That meant I had to go shopping today. And if you're to know only 10 things about me, that I hate shopping would probably be included in the list.
It's really not all that bad to get new clothes, and I'm always thankful that I'm able to. But the process of walking around amongst all the frills and manikins and flashy names is irritating enough, without an hour's worth of on-off-on-off-on-how does this look?-ew-off-repeat. I swear, it drives me absolutely crazy. Nearly all attempted shopping trips end in headache and half an hour of compulsive shuddering.
Today's shopping trip was a particularly special experience, as I am not familiar with any of the sizes, and everything is cut slightly differently, anyways, so it didn't help to work out a conversion chart. I walked out after more than two hours with three pairs of socks, a pair of pants, and one shirt. Anyways, I'm making myself move on, because it seems I'm in the mood to rant tonight, and the point of this was not to complain. What I mean to express is that the trip impressed upon me a great sense of awe more than anything else, and that's saying something, given that the irritation would have been hard to beat.
Everything and everyone is so freakishly up-class here. It's borderline scary. Walking around in the little outdoor mall, it's only about a third white – another third was black and another third was Indian, and there was a handful of Chinese – but I did not see a single person, whether they be in the grocery shop or in the I'm-a-cool-teenager clothing stores or I'm-a-cool-old-woman clothing stores that didn't look sharp. No matter what mall or what store you're walking around in in America, you're bound to run across some greasy-haired hermit programmer that's made his weekly trip to the surface, slugging about the uniform wrinkled T-shirt and sweats... And if you can't find any of those, you're almost certain to encounter that breed of woman that is just that *cough* wee bit too tan or whose skirt is just that *cough* wee bit too short, or whose pants are too tight, or whose shirt is too low. It's rare enough that people all actually TRY to dress as nicely as most people I encountered today did. They never ALL pull it off. But here, everyone, the men included, seem to be dressed like the manikins in the windows.
The people aren't the only sharp-looking things, either. I believe I expressed my astonishment regarding this phenomenon to a few of you last year: the malls here are freaking epic. And not just one, not just two, not just three, but every single mall or shopping center I have visited here is genuinely very pretty. To the extent that I often make a mental pause to smile and admire the architecture. It's not outrageous, but the place we were today looks fresh and interesting, as if it's trying to map the innards of a college student's brain. It's the kind of place that makes you want to stop and take pictures, just like the people are the kind of people that almost make you feel like you've walked into a modeling shoot. It's difficult for me to decide if everything in Washington's just ugly, and if the people just lack self-respect, or if South Africans genuinely have more style...
It makes me laugh, writing this, to remember the way “Africa” was spoken of at the Mexico trip just a week ago this time. The same organization plans to take a trip to Johannesberg to build more houses sometime later this year. Americans tend to see the whole of the African continent as a bunch of needy, scrawny, malnourished, dying, orphaned little black children, doomed to die themselves from AIDS or Malaria after having 5 kids of their own. I'm not going to pretend that none of those poor little children exist. They do. And it's much more common than what I'm talking about. It's utterly terrible. But I cannot help but wish I could plop those that don't know any better in the middle of a place like that, or Sandton, or Cape Town, and watch the reaction ripple over their faces. OMG, they're not in loincloths. OMG, they're not all black. (“Or all white,” add the few that've heard of Apartheid.) OMG, they're not in grass huts. OMG, they're playing Coldplay in the backgrou – OMG! that means they have radios! OMG, they have cars, OMG, they drink coffee, OMG, they wear Hollister, OMG, a lot of these people look like they darn well may have double the money I do. Sure, this is a pretty rich chunk of the country, but that doesn't change the fact that there are tons of people here (black people AND white people AND colored people AND Indian people AND Asian people) that are very, very well-off. Yeah, poverty may still be a huge problem, but surprise, y'all, there is civilization in Africa.
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