I honestly don't know how I feel about being here or how I feel about leaving. I recently had a conversation with a friend after I had my surgery, while my cat was sick in the US and I was waiting through the events of mom's accident and subsequent orthopedic surgery. Keep in mind, its been a tough year and I'd come back from holiday ready to make amends with South Africa and start anew. Almost as soon as I got there, I started feeling those pains in my abdomen. Since then, the efforts to "catch up" and "readjust" after that surgery have been a reminder of the constant obstacles which face me in SA. SA might not get the blame for knocking me off my feet for my surgery, but it did kick me in the face while I was down. Still kicking, though at least I'm back up and can fight back a little. Anyway the conversation went like this:
Andrea: I hate to say it and I've been denying it for months, but I honestly think I might hate this country.
Friend: I don't blame you.
Andrea: I mean, its unbearable: the incessant fear necessary to survive, the unavoidable anger and hate circulating in the air, the false impression of modernness always leading to even greater inefficiency. Its maddening!
Friend: Ha! You sound like a local!
Andrea: Maybe. But the worst part is that I can see all that and say all that but, for reasons beyond comprehension, I do not want to leave. I can't leave.
Friend: Now...(insert a slowly upturning, knowing grin)Now, you sound like a South African!!
As far as I can tell, its true. I rarely meet a South African who isn't, to some degree, critical about the shortcomings of the country and cynical about whether they will get through it. Cited in these ranting are: poverty, AIDS/TB, the unevenly distributed provision of health care, ancient and oppressive views of gender/sex, crime, materialism, corruption, homophobia, lack of service delivery, poor education, poorly educated people, traffic, and so on. Sometimes these opinions manifest as racist ravings which lack reflection or, really, intelligence. Sometimes they are sarcastic jokes with just enough truth to make you laugh and cringe simultaneously. Sometimes it is an apologetic voice that comes through, not out of guilt or embarrassment, just despair. Sometimes it is a mere statement of fact. My mentor once corrected me: "You aren't cursed. You are just experiencing South Africa and learning to live in it the way we all do."
Yet I have only met one person who honestly and truly is looking for a way out. (This particular person is a gay, black man who has had the privilege of spending time in New York. When I blog about homophobia in SA, the fact that he wants to leave will need little explanation.) By far, most people I've met can't think of leaving or at least staying away. This remains a mystery to me.
It isn't a blind pride like we tend to find in the patriots of the USA. South Africans are very much aware of and affected by the turmoil and despair which surrounds them and often express doubt of it improving, even as they feed me the line about SA being a "young country" which needs time to "get better." And it isn't stubbornness either, I don't think. Some of my friends are well traveled and have even lived abroad and enjoyed the first-world comforts (safety, efficiency, predictability) of Britain or the US. But in the end, they genuinely want to be in SA whether or not they can explain it. And no one has even tried the justification that there is enough good to make up for the bad. They laughingly will list the amazing things about the country (the beaches, the friendliness, Cape Town, culture, richness) but no one would even think it was worth bringing out the scale to see how it levels out.
So what is it about this place? Whatever it is, its got me.
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