MINORITY

What a wild time it is in our world. I’ve been watching the goings on in the US, especially Los Angeles, and around the world. And once again I am bewildered.

I do not understand the state of mind which allows anyone to believe that one type of person is better than another. That skin colour or hair type or the language they speak can be seen as superior or inferior to others. I just don’t. 

 And likely I never will.  That’s not a bad thing.

 What I do understand, from the inside out, is the enormous education I’ve received here in South Africa. Coming from the United States, even a very multiracial city like Washington DC, I was part of the majority. For my whole life, that was true. Until I moved to rural KwaZulu-Natal nearly a decade ago, I’d never experienced what it was like to be in spaces where I was surrounded by people who looked different than me, who spoke a different language and existed in a way that bore little resemblance to the life I’d lived thus far. I, like many, had lived in a bubble of a comfort zone, one which kept me insulated from the “others”.

Until I plopped myself into the middle of South Africa, a place I’d always dreamt of living. And everything changed.

I’ll never forget one of my earliest experiences up in KwaNgwenya, in the low range of the Lebombo Mountains. It was a community celebration of Youth Day, one that began early with running races and ended in a large hall as the winter sun began to set. I’d been asked by a local organisation to help with the prize giving for the youth and had happily agreed. I imagined young children, perhaps some who would be students at the preschool we were about to open.  The building had a few small windows and no electricity. As I entered, my eyes had to adjust to the dimness given the bright sun outside.  Once I could see, I noticed that it was all adults. The temperature in the room was warm as sweat ran down the runners’ faces and necks even on that cool day, and the collective smell was both earthy and a bit overwhelming though no one else seemed to notice. I’d only learn later that “youth” here in South Africa refers to older teens and young adults but that day, it was quite a surprise to me in many ways. 

 To say I stood out in the crowd would be an understatement. I was the only umlungu or white person there, in a crowd of perhaps 250 Zulu people. And it felt very, very odd. Not bad, not good but very strange. I used the few words of isiZulu I’d learned to greet the crowd and did as asked. My main duty seemed to be to hang ribbons with medals around the necks of these grown people who had no idea who I was yet bowed humbly before me and called me “madam”.  That was incredibly uncomfortable. 

In the days, months and years to come, more of the community got to know me and I developed relationships with many of them. And I learned.  Perhaps we all did, I can hope so, but honestly they taught me in ways I couldn’t have imagined in the community hall that June day. As a child of the 1960s in America, I had always believed in civil rights and knew that “race” was a social construct but this learning went far beyond that.  

 Over time, I was given access to people’s homes and most intimate family events in this beautiful but terribly challenged area. Funerals, weddings, the birth of babies – all of it, close up and personal. Late night traditional ceremonies - the children giggling at the way my naked body glowed in the dark. Sitting with mothers who mourned the death of a loved one on a mattress under a heap of velour blankets, no matter how hot the day was. Zulu dance, always, on every and any occasion and laughter only an hour or two ofter the weeping and wailing of grief. Attending church and attempting the shuffling dances but mostly holding babies as I listened to scripture spoken in isiZulu. Eating maize grown on their infertile land and cooked in the fire. Answering questions about America and how I flew all the way home to them without falling off the earth. And eventually, love and children and family came into my life, with entirely different rules and needs than I’d ever known before. Certainly, I know more about caring for black hair than I ever imagined, though I still can’t braid at all. 

 I’m a better person now, both internally and externally.  More human, less entitled. Humbled and still learning. 

 I am, and always will be, immensely grateful for the huge plot twist in my life which allowed me to learn, experientially, that we are all so much more similar that we are different. What I wish for our broken and chaotic world is that many more people come to see the same things. That we somehow forgive each other for the ways our ancestors harmed themselves and others and that we drop the colonialist thinking that’s led us here.  That we begin to talk to each other as human beings rather than “other”.  That we invest the time to get to know those we were taught to believe were not the same as us, something that goes both ways. 

 It's the only way we’ll learn.  And certainly, what is needed to heal. 

 It’s time.

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