Mandela Day Weekend

I went to Johannesburg the weekend before last to get my camera fixed and play ultimate frisbee. I stayed at a backpacker called Sleek (formerly called Acousticks) Friday night through Monday morning. I had planned on playing frisbee Friday and Sunday night but had no plans for Saturday (which I forgot was Mandela Day, the day Nelson Mandela was born).

After frisbee on Friday I went out and had some food and drinks with one of the guys and his grad school friends at their pub. I had gotten into contact with him because I wanted to play ultimate and he had organized pickup games in Johannesburg. He e-mailed me detailed instructions on how to get to all the places I needed to, picked me up at the camera place, brought me to frisbee on friday, dropped me off at a backpackers, then picked me up for and dropped me off from frisbee on Sunday. There is something about ultimate frisbee that creates instant camaraderie amongst those that play. It was refreshing to play again since it is one of the things I've missed a lot while being away from the U.S.

When staying at backpackers I am always able to find at least a few people I can relate to. People who stay at backpackers seem to share the same sense of camaraderie as those who play ultimate frisbee; must be because they have similar mentalities.

I met a middle-aged South African guy who upon introducing myself immediately pegged me as an American. Strangely enough, another guy named Nick, who was sleeping in the same dorm was also from NY. I woke up the next morning and the first thing I said to the guy who I presumed was Nick was "Are you from NY?". He was a little shocked but confirmed that he was.

Nick was here doing some climate research as an intern with the Red Cross. There was also a large group of people here with Global Studio whom Nick had joined forces with to do some non-related work with. Since I didn't have anything to do until Sunday he said I could join them. I had woken up at 8 am and contemplated going back to sleep since I've been a little lazy lately and sleeping until 10 on most days. I don't teach and I don't have pre-determined hours when I am supposed to be at work so it doesn't matter when I get up.

They were going to Diepsloot which is a squatter settlement just outside of Johannesburg. The settlement had a completely different feel than the village I live in. Squatter settlements are on government-owned land instead of tribal land which is controlled by a chief. Therefore it is a free-for-all so anyone can build a house anywhere. Most of the houses are shacks that are made of tin (tin shacks are the minority and brick the majority in my village). since a lot of people don't have yards they don't have water taps so more people share the same public tap. A large portion of the population is from Zimbabwe or Tanzania or other bordering countries.

Crime is much more of an issue there so we were instructed to never walk alone. I felt pretty confident and I would have been comfortable walking amongst the residents because I am so used to being the minority. Nonetheless, I heeded their warning and stayed with other people.

We helped plant some trees and left the pick axe and spades (shovels) as well as instructions for how to care for the trees. Since we had so few tools I spent a lot of time just observing or playing with the kids. Then the locals started to harass me since I wasn't doing any work suggesting I was too weak. Of course, they chose to have me "prove myself" when we had reached a large rock. After 10 minutes of chipping away at the rock they were satisfied and I was allowed to retire.

We spent the other part of the afternoon playing with the kids. They were supposed to build wire cars-cars made out of wire, screws, and shoe polish containers-but there was not enough materials or staff to instruct so we had to find a way to entertain 30 kids. We decided to introduce duck,duck, goose since that could be played with a large group fairly easily. I had forgotten the rules and it proved to be more difficult to get the kids to play "correctly".

The child that was "goosed" was, as most of you may remember, supposed to chase the other child around and try and tag them before they did a lap and sat down. The chasing child would more often than not forget to stand up and start chasing the other child. The chased child nine times out of ten forgot that they were supposed to sit down after doing a lap and kept running around the circle or realized they couldn't run fast enough in a circle so tried to lose them by running erratically away from the circle until they or the other child fell down.

Since they were having difficulty we explained the game to the older kids (around 13+ when most kids were 4-10) so that they could demonstrate it to the kids. The older kids were doing a good job engaging the kids doing the typical grown-up thing pretending to be unable to run faster than the child thus either getting caught by the child or being unable to catch them. This proved to be slightly counterproductive because the kids were enjoying chasing/being chased by the older kids so no one was picking the small children and they were just sitting there neglected and bored.

When I first got to Africa I would have probably been extremely frustrated that they didn't seem to follow my instructions. Since then, I have realized that when teaching kids (or adults) games it doesn't matter that they weren't playing by my rules. Everything seems to get Africanized once introduced here anyways. The important thing was that I was keeping the kids occupied and interacting with them.

Some people get this view that Zimbabweans and other immigrants are here to rob South Africans of their possessions or livelihood . It is true that some people who come here commit crimes, but so do South Africans. However, not ALL immigrants are criminals. I talked to quite a few non-South Africans who lived there and they took it as there home. To them, it wasn't just a squatter settlement that they were occupying. That was their home, they didn't like the crime, uncleanliness, or lack of nice areas to gather. It was refreshing and frustrating at the same time because many of them wanted to make change but they also lacked the resources and know-how to acquire those resources. An entire settlement of people falling through a gaping hole in the system.

And I almost rolled over and went back to sleep, good choice.