My African Excursion & My Own Reflection
Today is Thursday and I have been here since Monday with one more day to go. My work is now done but the next flight is not before tomorrow afternoon. Guess I could have jetted to Jo'burg as it seems to be called for the day tomorrow but I am pretty comfortable here now.
Actually I am sitting at the beach. At uShaka Marine Park. There is a Wet n' Wild, a Sea World and other fun attractions here but it is right at the beach and I am in a cafe looking at the waves, the surfers enjoying the storm causing a great swell and 1000s of school kids on outings from their school to the park. I have made many experiences while I have been here. I have not had the chance to "get around" as I would in other places and explore the surroundings but that has other causes.
I find it pretty difficult for me to write about what I am feeling here as I constantly catch myself, my earlier self and my opinions. When have I even entered a restaurant as the only white boy with 200 other blacks enjoying their dinners? Never. I find myself constantly thinking about my youth. My upbringing. My roots. While I did not grow up in a segregated society, the world in the southern US in the 1960s & 70s was still quite separated. There were the us and them. Our places and theirs and both sides probably enjoyed some of that separation. Or at least I know many of "us" did.
So here I find myself in a Hitchcock film, everything is upside down. I am the minority. I am the unusual one. I must say here that I have only had very good experiences while here but that also has other reasons. but I just can't help myself in thinking I am out of my neighbourhood that I have crossed the tracks and have wandered too far from home. This is really strange and really confusing. I find myself in a constant state of anxiety and probably for no real reason. Or is it just guilt of my thoughts. Why is it so hard for me to just accept these new surroundings?
It is fascinating here. It is really far away from everything I have experienced before. Like my first time to China or Malaysia, full of new smells, sights and people. Wonderful. I honestly do not know much of what South Africa is and that probably makes this that much more challenging but then I rarely have that much insight when I first visit a new place for work. I am enjoying sitting here, watching the kids play in the surf and their parents hiding from the sun and surf. Just I know from many more familiar places in the world.
Durban is a really big city with over 2 million people in the area and unfortunately like many large cities it is full of crime. My hosts and those in the hotel warm me what I can and cannot do. We wanted to walk to the restaurant here on Tuesday, my south African colleague and me. A total of 800 meters but we were asked by the hotel not to and to drive instead. This is a town of gated communities. Fences, tall ones with sharp tops and some with barbed wire are all around to be seen. Being out after dusk in an area you are not familiar with is not suggested.
Now, some of this is not anything I did not grow up with in the 60s & 70s, back in the southern US. I knew where safe was and did not ever challenge that. I have friends who did and paid for it. Perhaps it is this part of my experience which just reminds me too much of that past. That past I left behind happily 25 years ago when I moved to Europe. I recall one of my first weeks when bunking in Frankfurt how I could walk across the city centre at 9pm, across the red light district which was also the drug centre of town then and feel safe. Not having to constantly look over my shoulder to see who might be there.
It has been a successful trip. Business has been done and those involved are pleased. I can return home with stories of why it is so loud in restaurants. Why there are so many "indian" people here in Durban and why I had to revive many long lost feelings of my youth. That may not necessarily be pleasant but it is true.