July 30-August 3: The Week I Almost Had My Face Bitten Off by a Cheetah

When I was still at home, everyone I told about my imminent venture to South Africa either gave me looks of great respect and excitement or looked up to the sky to see if a full moon had called out a lunatic. They told me repeatedly of the dangers, that I’d be abducted, that I’d be drawn and quartered, or have my head boiled and peeled. South Africa has the highest number of murders in the world per year, a local New Jersey policeman told me as I requested proof of good citizenship for my visa. (At the time, I rolled my eyes at his small-town mentality and ignorance; I now know he was just about right.) “Fiddle-dee-dee!” I thought. If you don’t take chances and constantly think about what could go wrong, you’ll never leave your house… and probably end up being electrocuted by the toaster, anyway. But alas, I’m in Africa, and I have confronted the indigenous dangers of the continent. No, I have not been mugged, or followed home, or captured for sacrifice. I’m talking about the fuzzy-wuzzy wildlife. My dad warned me about the baboons, but he never said anything about the cheetahs.

But more on that later. (Don’t worry yourselves; obviously I’m still alive, unscathed, and pumping out the blog.) Molweni! Kunjani? I hope you all are well! Africa is just as beautiful as ever. One of the most enjoyable experiences I have had here is hopping on the Jammie Shuttle in the morning, which is the bus that takes us from the residence hall up the mountain to UCT, and surveying the city as it bustles with waking energy. The sunlight tinges everything orange-yellow, illuminating everything from the cute Dutch-style houses and the street-vendors to the homeless who live their lives in the same sheltered corner against the wall of the Shoprite. Even when it’s raining (during Africa’s winters, when it rains, it pours), it’s a stunning and moving experience to survey human life in its mundanity. What catalyzes the experience is the profound presence of nature, the constant backdrop of mountains in every direction, rising above the manmade landscape to constantly remind one of that which is bigger than oneself. In the States, I never thought much about my position on the earth, how small I was, a speck. Landscape was the iron jungle, compensating for relatively flat land. It’s pretty boring. But here, as you look out and you see Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head stretching far into the sky, frosted with clouds, the city at the bottom seems like a toy kingdom. The houses scattered at the base of Table Mountain as it slopes down to sea level are so small. I love sensing my location, like drawing a pin-point dot on one of those tactile, raised globes from elementary school.

This week, my sense of physical exteriority from the United States has been compounded by a sense of profound cultural exteriority. Many a time I’ve laid in bed this week and contemplated how I will go about learning about this incredible country, a task harder than I anticipated. In a school of 20,000+ students, I feel quite alone, isolated by my American accent and my status as a transient study-abroad kid. As much as I’d like to not travel in a pack of Americans all the time, as much as I’d love to throw myself headfirst into friendships with South Africans who could teach me all about their country with enlightening conversation, it just doesn’t happen that way. It’s like high school, where everyone already has his or her own group of friends, exactly the reason I didn’t want to move in high school. While some are intrigued by the fact that you left the States to come to South Africa, many make immediate judgments as soon as they discover you’re an American. One guy I came across told me he felt “sorry for me” after hearing my accent and confirming that I was American. (Why he felt sorry for me, I’m not sure. Considering the condition of my country versus his, I would venture to guess he was just trying to make me feel bad after I declined to dance with his friend.)

Of course, there’s the race issue. (You have to have wondered; I didn’t want to discuss it until I had more of a grasp on the situation.) In the quest for a “non-racial nation,” South Africa has created a most confusing philosophical and practical matrix. My mom was here in 1994, right after apartheid ended and the “Rainbow Nation” idea was instituted, and I came here with mixed expectations of lingering prejudice and honest, frank discussion. While both were good guesses, they were incomplete, at best. While many of the Americans I’ve been bopping around with have marveled at the frankness with which they perceive race is considered here, I feel like it’s way more taboo than in the United States, and not at all in a good way. Maybe my assessment of the situation is different than the people with whom I am traveling because race is something that I often think and talk about, in my coursework, with my friends, in seriousness and in jest. As an African-American female, I’m also having a different experience than my Caucasian companions. What makes my experience so striking is that Africans gape at me like some specimen, marveling at my “light” skin. While I’m kind of used to this, since in the States I sometimes come across white people who actually have darker skin than I do, I’m not used to the constant barrage of questions about my heritage. Despite trying to be a “non-racial nation,” South Africa is still a country painted in white, black, and the in-between. Compartmentalization is part of their past and a fervent, unapologetic part of their present.

While I was intrigued when I was asked the “What are you?” question six times in one night, while I raised my eyebrows when I discovered that the two adult leaders of our program, a white woman and a black man, have had entire conversations about my background and have targeted me for participation in certain events for purposes of diversity, I was pretty shaken when a white South African took it upon himself to put me in a box. As always, the American accents of a friend and me gave us away to a guy our age while standing outside a restaurant. “Oh, you’re American?” he said. We nodded. “But you’re Chinese,” he said, pointing to my friend (who’s Japanese), “and you’re Coloured.” It burned. My mom had told me very matter of fact-like that I would look most like the population deemed “Coloured” here, which is basically anything that’s not dark-skinned, but not white. Fine. I knew this, but I was really taken aback when he said it outright. I was offended, to say the least. What bothered me at the moment was that the statement had absolutely zero context. None whatsoever. It’s not as if South Africa was a racially-homogenous country that would make the fact that my Japanese friend and I are both Americans very unusual or interesting. The statement came out of the blue. Second of all, I take issue with my status in the eyes of South Africans as a “Coloured.” I’m not South African; the experiences that have defined my racial identity are completely different than they would be if I had grown up here. When I contradicted him and told him “No, I’m black,” he looked at me with confusion. “No, you’re Coloured,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. It was almost as if he was trying to save me from myself; it’s preferable to be Coloured. His eyes told me that he wasn’t trying to offend me, but I persisted and rephrased, saying this time that I was African-American. “What the hell does that mean?” he said, now looking at me with disdain. “You’re Coloured.” Now I was really peeved. Dual histories swirled around in my head. Paper-bag tests. Apartheid’s racial hierarchy, in which I, at least, wouldn’t be on the bottom rung. That famous 1960s photograph of the “Whites Only” and “Colored” restrooms. The relocation of entire South African Coloured communities to shantytowns, to clear prime real estate for whites. My grandmother proudly correcting a man who tried to shuffle her through the “white door” into a 1940s social event, stepping over into the “black” line. Keeping my (unreasonable) fury under control, I told the guy that he should just get the hot dog he was waiting for and leave me and my friend alone. Confusion returned to his face (maybe because he didn’t understand why I was dismissing him, maybe because I called the sausage a “hot dog” instead of a “boervors”) and he walked away.

But I continued to think about it, weighing my reaction, vacillating between scolding the stranger and scolding myself. I was still thinking about it the next day, as I sat in my development economics class listening to the professor, the former chief economist for the Republic of South Africa, discuss obstacles to growth of the formal and informal sectors of the economy here. While he gave a very thorough and intriguing presentation about the various mechanisms of large and small firms in developing countries, particularly the one we are in, he put up the blinders when it came to talking about the challenge of race that continues to hold back small, black-owned firms who struggle to find funds, while their larger counterparts most often are financed not by banks, but by money they receive from their parents. Not parent companies, even; their biological parents. I kid you not. You’d think that the chief economist of South Africa would take very seriously that blacks in this country don’t necessarily have rich uncles to support their start-ups, nor do they have the background education or credit to get loans, and maybe consider some sort of microfinance scheme to level the playing field. But no. South Africa is a “non-racial nation,” so something like that can’t be directly addressed. The whole situation I find baffling. In a lot of ways, race is a lot more taboo here than at home, since it’s not always considered constructively. (Not to say that the United States is a bastion of racial equality—ref. Michelle Obama and the “baby mama” comment.) But given the experience that I’ve had so far, I’d say I was right to self-correct and remind myself that I’m not in Philadelphia riding the bus with African-Americans. Despite the common thread of struggle of “minorities” against colonization and oppression worldwide, this is a whole different animal, one I don’t expect to tame.

Speaking of animals… Mr. Cheetah. The highlight of my week; the fright of my life. I rose on Saturday to a brilliant sun and clear blue sky, the air crisp. It was the perfect day for the wine-tasting trip our program had arranged, a welcome change from the monsoons that had kept the rest of the week wet and glum. The trip was a lot of fun and very interesting—I feel quite cultured and uppity, now that I know how to determine the age of a wine and swirl it around so that it releases the right olfactory sensation. But the best part of the day arrived when our program leader surprised us with a stop at a cheetah rehabilitation center in Stellenbosch! We discovered that for 80 rand (about ten dollars), we could meet a cheetah and pet it and snap a few photos. We were assured that it was perfectly safe. My friend Janine and I coughed up the dough and eagerly awaited our turn to meet Joseph the Cheetah. But Joseph wasn’t having any of it that day. He was restless and just wanted to walk around. Our guide informed us that we couldn’t go in until he was settled and “wanted to work,” so she took us over to another cheetah, Hemingway. The line for him was longer, though, and we only had a limited amount of time, so when she received a walkie-talkie message that Joseph had finally plopped down, we headed back over, ready for our glamour shots. Our friends peered through the fence as we made our way into the cheetah habitat, pressing ourselves up against the wall to avoid the stare of the cheetah, who was sitting, leashed, with one of the trainers. We positioned ourselves behind him as our guide took our cameras and prepared to take the pictures. I was so excited… I couldn’t believe I was petting this huge cheetah! Was I in Africa or what? And then… Joseph whipped his head around and stared me right in the eye. His big ol’ cat face was about seven inches away from mine. He assessed me with his huge orange eyes, those scary black teardrop markings seeming to narrow, and my life flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t breath for terror. His tongue slipped out of his mouth. He all but licked his chops. I think I whimpered… I felt my face contorting as he moved forward a millimeter… and then he turned back, facing front, leaving me to clutch my racing heart and catch my breath as I burst into nervous, hysterical laughter. Joseph really wasn’t in the mood to be social, and he dragged his trainer up so that he could relieve himself someplace else, leaving me paralyzed and without a picture. Luckily, the guide had gotten a couple with Janine’s camera; the one above was snapped right after Joe decided I wasn’t a nutritious snack, after all. (Notice how freakily focused Joseph looks. Notice the maniacal and crazed smile on my face. Also notice our friend Jess in the background, thanking her lucky stars she’s not me.) We were promptly ushered out so that Joseph could brood in peace, and not a moment too soon. Although I was scared almost to the point of heart palpitations, it was by far one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, right up there with partying with those baboons I saw at Cape Point. (My father has expressed concern; baboons are some of the most vicious creatures on Earth.) I assure you all I’m being cautious, and I’m not doing anything exceedingly unsafe, but hey! If I’m in Africa, and the powers that be determine that I’ve got to go, I think being carried off into the wilderness by monkeys is the coolest and most impressive option. Don’t you agree? ;-)

Hleka,
Christina