life in the cracks, or, these are peasant people

Yesterday, I realized why I chose to come to Africa. I’ve been asked this question for weeks, in America and more frequently here in Durban, but my response has not satisfied me, nor has it encompassed the full emotional truth of my decision. Yesterday was my most complex and diverse day yet and the most emotionally trying. And the most important.

Three of the five Rotary scholars this year are members of the Developmental Studies department at UKZN, as is my roommate Sarah and many of the people we spend time with. So, when a walking tour of Durban was planned, I asked the department if I could come along. I was told that all the spots were taken, so I resigned myself to doing nothing and sleeping in.

But at 7:15am, Sarah came into my room, saying she had just received a call and a spot had opened up for me. I tossed and turned, deciding that I did not want to come, stating that I had to go to the grocery store. Good thing I realized just how stupid I was being, and within 5 minutes I was in the shower, getting ready to go.

The tour was with an architect from Mauritius, Deng? Dom? He was an absolutely fascinating man, with a scruffy beard, and bald, except for one long chunk of hair in the back of his head that was wrapped up and held in place with a single white stick. He is interested in architecture without walls, those lost spaces in a city, and how people are able to transform spaces, giving them new meaning, to fit their own purposes. He talked extensively about a space plus meaning or people make a place.

We began at Musgrave Center, which is a shopping mall in a Durban suburb. We talked about how Musgrave is white and clean; there are no spaces for public gathering, and the white lights are hidden in the ceilings so that you feel as if you are walking on an air-conditioned cloud while you shop. There are mirrors placed all over the mall so that you can be reaffirmed by your reflection; and the glass windows in front of shops function in the same way, allowing the consumer to indulge in themselves, encouraging them to shop.

From this mall, we walked (mostly) east, towards the ocean. We followed the same path down the freeway that people travel from the Cato Manor Township to the Victoria Street and surrounding Markets. We watched as the clean and cultivated sidewalks turned from inviting clay, to concrete, to asphalt. Deng pointed out that despite these manmade materials, nature would continue to prevail; little bits of green plant would creep up in the cracks between asphalt and concrete, between the bricks in the ground.

We were told not to bring anything valuable on this trip, seeing as we were going to be traveling in areas of urban poverty. But as soon as we passed into this “scary” community, all elements of fear melted away, and instead of looking at our own reflections in the glass, we saw a community; a tiny girl behind a metal gate smiling while a woman inside says hello, a group of five sitting by a cart selling sweets while a man fixes a radio, a man who joked with us about how if we took a picture of him we might sell it. The community was filled with buildings that had been burned and plots of land that had been fenced off because homeless people had been living there. Tens of koombis, mini-busses that are used mostly by blacks as taxis, were parked on this quiet street, representing a source of income and stability in a world of unknowns. And yet so many of the buildings looked gutted and should have been unoccupied, but here were these lovely smiling people. From the high walls and electric fences in the community at Musgrave, here was a vibrant and loving group of people with children and grandmothers, sitting outside, and sharing life together. This is the Africa I yearn for.

From this residential area, we walked to the bustling African market. It seemed like there were miles upon miles of markets, entire city blocks of fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, medicinal herbs, clothing, and other goods. Each market was separate; all the fruit vendors were together, all the meats, etc. Such delicate care was taken in the presentation of these goods; tomatoes were stacked into a pyramid, onions wrapped in mesh bags, plums spritzed with just the right amount of mist. Rows upon rows upon columns of black women in their colorful dresses selling the most delectable fruit I had ever seen, for prices I could not fathom. For example, a couple of green peppers in the African vegetable market cost between 2 and 5 rand (or 20 to 50 cents); I bought three smaller tri-color peppers at a grocery store for 15 rand.

I have never seen so many heads. Behind some of the fruit and vegetable vendors were women in aprons standing over decapitated cattle; heads with complete fur and eyes, straight off the cow. A woman reared back a butcher’s axe, and began chopping into the animal’s bone. The sound was sharp and hollow as the bone cracked.

People stared as we walked by: we, a group of around 14 University students, mostly white, in sunglasses and shorts. This was the case throughout our walk. Why were these young white people walking down the freeway? Why were these white people walking at all? Why were these white kids in our market? The mere sight of us begged looks of confusion. It is so rare that a white person goes on foot into any of these neighborhoods or markets. But, there we were. My friend and fellow Rotary scholar and southerner, George, and I kind of held back from the group, after seeing some fried chicken at a vendor’s stall. The fried chicken reminded us of the hospitality and openness of the black community in the southern United States. We began to talk to these vendors, in as much Zulu as we could muster. Our calls of sawubona were greeted with ear-to-ear smiles. How often have whites come into this market? And how often have they attempted to communicate in Zulu? We must have seemed a strange group. A strange, but welcomed and accepted group.

We paused and Deng spoke to us, yet again, about the culture of the market and its inhabitants. A small boy, who had just learned to walk, came over to us, and started touching a girl named Emily’s white hand; he smiled, she smiled. These children of the market were everywhere, on laps of mothers and friends, sitting on bridges next to older sisters selling washcloths, wandering through the legs of passers-by. The children too stared with wide eyes as we walked through, just as their parents did. Some of us often stopped to share a wave with the children; sometimes we would get a smile and wave in return, sometimes that same look of awe and confusion.

We made our way into the medicinal market. Here the stalls were full of various tree barks, flowers, herbs, and animal bones and skulls. All of our western medicines are made of some combination of these herbs and products, but here they were in their natural and raw form. And here was a thriving culture of natural medicine. Men and women sat in the shade of their stalls, many with their faces covered with some kind of red or white chalk-like paint. Sawubona. Yebo, hamba kahle. Sala kahle.

Never once on this walk did I feel any sense of fear. I felt welcomed. Yes, we were walking with a man who traverses these paths daily and has many friends and is known by many more. But here was a thriving culture. A man dancing in the street, mothers nursing their children, a woman cutting slabs of meat for sale, a young man begging to have his picture taken with me.

I yearn to go back to these markets; George and I are already making plans. I want to buy my vegetables, I want to speak in Zulu, I want to listen to the stories of this community. This is the Africa I desire.

Deng talked about the mapping of the city, where a street is a sentence, a neighborhood is a paragraph, a city is a chapter, and where a country is a book. As we stood in front of a rough house with a corrugated roof, Deng told us that Uncle Lenny lived inside, 94-year-old Uncle Lenny, whose stories could lift up this community, put it and Durban on the map. I started thinking of what it might mean to map Durban with stories. The academic part of me started whirring, and I wonder now if it might be a feasible project for a dissertation. Of course the ideas need to be discussed and refined, but no matter what, I am glad that these experiences are really getting me thinking and inspired about what it is come.

After this incredible morning and afternoon, I went to a Rotary function in the evening, which could not have been more different than my time in the markets. We all met in a lavish house up on a hill, a house that had been added on to many times. The Rotary men had a meeting, while their wives and I “chin-wagged.” Then all 16 of us sat down to a decadent meal, complete with meat pies (which of course I did not eat), vegetables, breads, salads, followed by strawberries and cream and expensive cheeses with crackers. Of course, there were at least a dozen bottles of wine consumed, a handle and a half of whisky, and nearly a full bottle of brandy. It was an evening of conversation of David Beckham and Barack Obama, of laughs and drinks. It was so easy to forget my experiences of earlier in the day in this world of wine and cheese.

I do not mean to suggest that one world is better than the other. Just to say that here it is possible for these worlds to exist right next to and on top of each other. And the people from these worlds do their best to ignore the other. As a Rotarian said to me during our evening, as I was trying to communicate my experiences in the market, “besides, these are a peasant people.” I am doing my best to forgive such comments from people who grew up under apartheid, just as I try to forgive comments from senior citizens in the USA who lived before the civil rights movement. My experience today was of capitalism at work, a complex system of monetary exchange, barter, and trade, wrapped in custom and tradition. What defines peasant? Is that another way to say different? How do the vendors in the market define people who live in suburbs? How do we define the other?

These vendors and the lovely people who I met in the radioman’s community live in the cracks of Durban society. If the city council deems them as unfitting, they burn buildings, put fences around good plots of land where many could call home. Yet despite this paving over of culture and home, people have learned to live their lives, albeit in the shadows of mainstream society. Does this mean that the people in power are the pavement to the poor vendor’s sprig of green plant? Maybe. I wonder how we can foster life in the face of a government that wants to squash its own.