Cultural Conversations: Soweto

Part of going on a trip that is, essentially, a two-week-long cultural exchange is, of course, interacting with the culture. You get some of that through museums and heritage sites (which was part of the impetus behind visiting the Cradle of Humanity site) but you get more of it from being in the places with the people and just living life. But if you don't have a year or two of your life to spend living abroad, and when you're travelling with a group, it's hard to organically have that kind of interaction.

And that is how I found myself sitting across from two young Sowetans, awkwardly grasping at natural conversation between practicing Zulu greetings and introductions. We were being hosted at a lady's house and we sat on plastic chairs under a tent in her front courtyard while women and men from the community gathered in their best clothes to talk with us over lunch. I'm sure we had much more in common than came out in the stilted sentences, but I struggled to hear with all the conversations around me and had to ask for things to be repeated. They waited on questions that my brain, tired and still a little jet-lagged, couldn't come up with. I was grateful for lunch and still more grateful when the small group conversation transitioned to a discussion with the entire group. In the big group, we talked politics and compared our presidents and discussed the role of remembering our history and reconciliation and community. It was fascinating and enlightening. 

But to my brain, which is rather more used to easy success, the group discussion made my earlier conversation seem like even more of a failure. The young man I was talking with wanted to travel, to eventually leave Soweto and live abroad, and had a blog and a music business. The young woman had two children, one the age of the kid I nanny, and had helped cook the meal we had. I could have asked questions about why he wanted to leave the township, especially since many of the other South Africans I've talked to take such pride in where they live and the community they have there. I could have swapped stories with her about caring for toddlers and cooking for families. I could have asked her what books she read her kids, what their favorite toys were, how much her parents help with raising the kids, what other work she did, what she studied in school. I could have asked any of the million questions I have about speaking so many different languages (even though they taught me Zulu and spoke perfect English, their primary language was Sotho). I felt like I had squandered and opportunity because I was tired and felt awkward. 

The awkwardness was, of course, not just meeting new people and not being able to hear. Soweto is a township. Well, a bunch of townships, since Soweto is actually short for Southwestern Townships. The townships were created when the apartheid government decided that black people couldn't be anywhere near white people. The houses are small and piled close together, even in the formal settlements, where we were. In the informal settlements, where the people are basically squatters, there's no running water, except from a spicket down the street, and no electricity. If you're looking to do poverty tourism, to show people “how bad it is in South Africa,” you could take them to a township like Soweto, or Alexandra, and they could snap exploitative pictures to their little misunderstanding bleeding heart's content. 

Now, I know that living in the townships is different than what people might expect. There is a deep sense of community in the townships. The people who live there are not as impoverished as you think, financially or culturally. There are vibrant art scenes and strong communities of faith. And of course, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously have houses on the same street in Soweto. Two Nobel laureates are nothing to sneeze at. I know all of this and I still struggled to form questions about life in the township. At every turn, what I wanted to ask felt rude and insensitive and laden with stereotypes and so I didn't ask. It'd be like saying, “So I understand that you're poor but you're happy? Explain that to me” or “This seems like it could be a pretty violent place. Is it violent?” or “So what's it like being black in South Africa? How do you feel about white people?” None of those are the questions I wanted to ask, but I feared that they were the questions behind the questions I wanted to ask. No matter how much I disavow blatant racism, I know that there are still racially-biased thought patterns in me and I worry that they might make their way out of the hiding places and into the world through my mouth. And so I was awkward.

It is difficult to have organic conversations about race and the challenges facing people of different racial groups with someone from another country that you just met. There's trust that must be built and if you only have a few hours, that trust must be assumed. It's a challenge to have these conversations without one person or the other feeling like they're on display at some point. I enjoy eating like the locals do. I like observing cultural celebrations. I like digging deep into conversations. This lunch in Soweto should have been for me. But as the Sowetans taught us a few dances and songs and told us to join in, I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. A tired, awkward little white girl, standing in the corner, shuffling her feet along in the middle of a complicated cultural exchange.