the end?

Ok, so I didn’t get to post this after I actually wrote it because I was writing it in the airport and on the 19 hour airplane back home, which had no internet access. I have decided to post it now, a little more than a week since I arrived back in the States. It actually sort of feels like longer than a week because it has been a weirdly easy transition back into my life in the States. So much so that it feels like my time in South Africa happened months ago, even though I know I can think back a week and remember being at Wits. I was warned about ’culture shock’ both going into South Africa and coming back to the United States, and surprisingly I didn’t really notice experiencing it either time. So anyways, I think this post will serve as a good last or near to last post for this crazy semester.

(Nov 18, 2009)
Last night was our final get-together for IHRE. We had little finger food, everyone got dolled up and lots of hugs were given out and pictures taken. I also have been going through my room, throwing away a lot of the staples that have gotten me through this semester (my granola, pasta, garlic, stupid bag of rice I could never seem to cook correctly, oatmeal… yeah ok, I ate other things, but I kind of stopped shopping recently, so those are the things that have remained despite a lack of shopping expeditions). Anyways, all of this sort of finalizing has made me come up with lists about what I am going to miss in South Africa and what I am looking forward to having back in the States. I thought I would share.

What I will miss (not necessarily in any order):
-The International House community (mainly the other American students, but others of course) which have fostered many game nights and tennis adventures, as well as just being a really nice base to come back to every day.
-Bunny Chow: this is an amazing Indian dish that I have never heard of in the States. Basically, you hollow out a loaf of bread and fill it with a slightly spicy dish including chicken or lamb etc It’s so yummy!
-Informal clubs on campus, I don’t feel like I really utilized these as best I could, but they had a really nice atmosphere and it was a great place to meet students who may or may not live on campus. Plus the atmospheres were a lot chiller than real clubs where you actually get dressed up and have to pay a cover fee etc.
-Walking around and being surrounded by all different languages and types of speech. While the language thing made me feel incompetent with my one language I am fluent in, it was so cool to be able to be around people with such language knowledge.
-All of the amazing people I have met through this program. While I feel like five months is a good amount of time for me personally to spend away from my friends and family at home, I do think that more time to bond with people here would have been amazing. I am a little disappointed I did not always take the most initiative to hang out with people, and I think I would start doing that more if I was here longer. However, I thoroughly appreciated every person I met through this program and the international house at Wits.
-The vuvuzelas blasting into the night keeping me awake and making me believe there was some sort of party going on that I was missing out on…. Oh wait, I can live without that actually.
-Staying at pretty nice backpacker establishments in places in the world that sound foreign, and learning that these different countries are not really as foreign as they are sometimes portrayed.
-Living in a place where the people are still very connected to their political situation and consciously working to move past the horrors of their very recent past.
-Cheap food. I love cheap food.
-The constant harmonizing and group singing. I am going to work to bring this back to the States. Haha
-People’s expressiveness. I feel like people here are much less reserved in expressing things like how they feel about situations or performers or anything.
-Clothing stores that sell clothes I can see myself wearing. That is kind of hard for me to find in the States sometimes, probably because I don’t do trendy that much. Not that South Africa isn’t trendy, but I think clothing stores may not focus as much on it or something.
-The expressions people use to punctuate sentences or thoughts. These include saying ‘aish’, kind of like when people in States may exhale in an audible way (So are you working this summer? Aish I don‘t know, I haven’t heard back from anyone yet). Also using hey at the end of sentences (it‘s been such a hectic semester hey?). Oh, and everybody calling each other ‘bra’ in replacement of ‘bro.’
-Summer

Things I am looking forward to going back to:
-My friends and family (surprise surprise)
-Progresso soup, especially minestrone. Yep. And on the subject of food: salsa (it’s not the common here)
-Driving on the right side of the road, and driving in general. And the prevalence of automatic cars. My mom and I had some major issues with the standard car that we rented in Cape Town. No crashes though, so yay!
-Not having to worry about how the dollar is doing versus the rand and getting upset about how much worse it is getting.
-Not having to worry about cooking for myself, eating delicious food cooked by my parents
-Speaking of which, Thanksgiving!
-Visiting Vassar
-Seeing David in My Fair Lady (and Full Monty at Vassar)
-Unlimited texting and not having to worry about buying airtime
-Student-run theater. Why do you not really have this Wits?
-Hanging out in my house, getting to see my dogs, sleeping in my own bed

I feel like that kind of diminishes both South Africa and home a bit because I can only outline a few things that stand out to me at this particular moment, but I hope it conveys how much I like both places. I don’t know if I will ever have another travel experience quite like this. Well, obviously not exactly because I finish school next year and will not be going abroad again for studies, but I mean the kind of emersion that I vaguely got to experience in South Africa. Yes, the studying part of study abroad is important and everything, but I think the most valuable thing you can get out of a study abroad experience is being able to truly experience a culture different in va personal way. Living in an area instead of traveling as a tourist is such a unique experience, because you interact with people in a different way, you get to do regular things like shop for food etc and you’re forced into the culture. You may not completely belong within the culture per se, but you certainly get a very good feeling for it and can learn how to interact within in it. This kind of experience is really why I decided to do a study abroad program and I think I got as much out of it simply through the cultural immersion as I did through the classroom, and honestly I probably got even more out of it in that sense. Anyways, I am incredibly grateful I got such a wonderful cultural experience, and actually I am also glad to be back with family and friends... even though my winter break is now two months long and I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep myself occupied for that long. I'm planning on filling my time with lots of trips to see people at Vassar, and maybe some time earning money.

Anyways, happy thanksgiving everyone. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog because I really liked having this place to record my experiences. I'm guessing this will be my last blogging attempt, at least for awhile, so I am signing off for now.

And a semester comes to a close

So my last final was yesterday. Everyone is making plans to travel now that we have no classes or exams to worry about, and I will be joining them when my mom comes to visit me today. I am so super excited to see her! We'll be going to Kruger National Park (safari central) and then back down to Cape Town. I actually also traveled last weekend and I didn't write about it this week because I was really busy um studying. But no excuses now that exams are done... so you all get a lovely recap.

All of the Americans (one of the only times all seven of us girls have traveled anywhere together apart from our epic journey here back in July) joined a friend of ours from Botswana to go home with her for the weekend to see a traditional wedding. Her brother was getting married and she offered to take us to see the wedding. In this case, and I believe most cases, the couple had already been married legally at the courthouse and this ceremony was more for tradition sake than anything. Our day started out very early. We got up around 6:30 and arrived at the bride's house (where the wedding was to take place) at about 8:00, under the impression that the wedding would be taking place at 9. Now have I talked about Africa time on this blog? I believe I have, but I will stress the idea anyways, punctuality is not held in such intense reverence here as it is in the States. In fact, often set meeting times are more rough estimates at best. This was no different. The bride's family had been cooking since the day before for all the guests, but by the time we arrived, the bride still had not even started to get dressed. In fact, this did not start happening until maybe around noon. The actual ceremony didn't get going until maybe 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon. How did we entertain ourselves you might ask? Well, let me tell you. Teresa introduced to us all this wonderful card game called Monopoly Deal which we got intensely involved in for the better part of several hours. It is amazing and I will be buying myself a set and I advise everyone else to do so as well.

So, anyways, at around 3 we all got out of the van we had been sitting in and got ready to walk over to the bride's house.

The whole gang. Our host is the far left

What I found most interesting was the fact that the majority of the group we were gathered with was made up of older women, who were very enthusiastic. They kept making that stereotypical Native American noise, but instead of hitting their mouths with their hands they would make the noise by moving their tongues really fast. It's much more difficult that way, we all tried to perfect it. We then all gathered together and walked as a group to the bride's house.

And here's a picture of that!

The male section of the wedding party. Since we were part of the groom's side of the wedding we went with him to get the bride

On our walk over we sang a traditional song in Setswana (and by we I mean the older women were basically doing all the singing, though a few of us picked it up after quite a few repetitions). Basically the song we sang was simply asking permission to get the bride from her house, or something along those lines. There was a dance that went with it that involved very specific stepping which we were all getting to be good at by the time our ten minute walk ended. Then the groom approached the house and the flower girls and bridesmaids came out followed by the bride. The two stood together while people sang around them in circles.


I love how much people sing here. And no matter where you are, people harmonize and it sounds wonderful. I wish that was a tradition in America and people could grow up learning how to harmonize like that. I feel like Americans have a lot more reservations about singing in public and even singing in groups, its sad. Anyways, then the bride and groom kissed and everyone danced out of the yard. I am still not 110%, but I believe that little thing right there was the entire ceremony. After the bridesmaids and wedding party all piled into cars, with the bride and groom in a fancy old-timey car, and drove out for about fifteen minutes to this lovely little area near a stream with mountains in the background and took pictures. They set up this cute little table and posed around it.

Ok, there were closer pictures, but this one gets a sense of the landscape

Anyways, after that we piled back into our respective cars and headed back to the house where the meal was waiting. What followed was very similar to what happens after an American wedding I believe. There were toasts (none of which we could understand, but that's ok), dancing, a cake (which no one ate, it is apparently kept for one year before being eaten) and wonderful food. We all had not eaten since that morning, so I think we would have eaten non-edible things like sticks or something, but this food was very good.

Reception tent

Wonderful looking cakes which we all fantasized eating. No such luck unfortunately. One thing I wanted to know about though, why is the couple white? The only explanation people could give me was that the concept of 'white wedding' is more catered to white couples, but I think this is silly.

The wedding party went in and out, each time changing outfits and when they came back they would do a dance to enter back into the tent. It was very coordinated and even the little flower girls participated. I wanted to know how many practices it took for them to get to that level, but no one seemed to have an answer for me. Once it got dark the wedding tent was packed up and we all headed out. All in all it was (for us at least) a twelve hour experience, and a very interesting one at that.

The biggest culture shock moment in terms of the wedding did not occur during the wedding actually. The night before we were all hanging out in the living room area near the door and all of a sudden men start coming through the door with huge sections of a skinned cow. And before our eyes the entire cow crossed the threshold in parts and was placed into a giant freezer, including the head with all its teeth and its eyes. We were told that the cow was a gift from the bride's family to the groom's family. Apparently not everything fit in the freezer though, because when we woke up the next morning and went to cook breakfast, the cow head and neck was just lying on the kitchen floor in front of the oven. It was a little difficult to cook around it because it took up a lot of space, but Kelsey, who was put in charge of the eggs, did an excellent job.

The wedding itself overall felt like an informal section of a wedding I could see in the States, though with more group singing and dancing and less talking and no one really leading the ceremony. I guess that was pretty interesting actually. Everyone seemed to know what to do, but there was no minister or anything comparable to take a leadership role. Which of course meant that those of us who didn't know what was going on really didn't know what was going on. It didn't make it any less fascinating though. I also thought it was interesting how the majority of the people actively participating in the ceremony were not friends of the couple but older relatives etc. Though I don't think this is that unusual. People often argue that weddings are not for the couple, they are for their parents and their friends. I guess I can see how this is true.

I like how weddings like this in Botswana seem to be a melding of tradition and modern, since you have two sort of weddings (one legal and one traditional). A bride price is still figured out (interesting fact, Botswanan currency is named after their word for rain because they are a farming country dependent upon rain), but often the money goes to the couple rather than the bride's family. Also, the bride is 'given away,' which is similar to Christian culture, except that here it seemed like an entire community was involved in the process, where it is just the father in Christian ceremonies. Both of those are obviously more symbolic than anything else, but its nice to keep some tradition to center the ceremony.

Anyways, I have to go clean my room so that my mom doesn't judge the state of my room too much when she gets here. Enjoy your weekends everyone!