Home

Someone must have recently suggested to several of my new friends that they should be making me mix tapes filled with songs about home. In the past two weeks, the new music I have acquired has consisted of Michael Buble’s “Home,” Edward Sharpe’s “Home,” “Shelter” by The xx, “A Horse is Not a Home,” by Miike Snow and “Hey There, Delilah,” which is not about home per se, but is so thoroughly American that it might as well be. And this was one CD.This incredibly beautiful new life of no TV, no radio, and minimal internet has led to a lot of music listening. And, due to new mix tapes, thoughts of home.
It’s not homesickness, that’s not it. Sickness is how you feel a few months after you realize oatmeal is really the only thing you know how to cook. Or being on a boat for too long because whales are swimming right underneath. Or the anxiety before a first African Dance performance. And what I feel, it isn’t sick for home. It’s the desire for my home to be there with me to experience the bad oatmeal, the yellow kayaks in the ocean and my first recital. Because those experiences are, well, sick.
Michael Buble, he sang to me this evening and told me he’s been to Paris and Rome, and he just wants to go home. I feel for Michael, I do, but I can’t say my feelings agree. I just want home to have the chance to see what I see. To feel what I feel. To touch the same sand, run down the same streets, taste the same water and feel the same sunbeams at the same hours of the day. I want my sisters to sit on the same bus seats and try the same candy and feel the same warm in the afternoon. And I want my home friends to hear the same accents and learn the same slang words and look out at the same mountains every morning so that when I am back at home, I can call them up on the same area code and say, “Remember how the fog used to hang so low in the mornings when we walked to the Laundromat?”
So I’m trying, Home. I’m trying to bring back as many memories and stories and adventures as one body can hold. I’ll take pictures and I’ll write things down and I’ll collect phone numbers of interesting people I meet along the way. Just know that I wish you were here to see it too. Because my God, it is beautiful.

Of Feathers and Names

I turned in my first paper last week. It was supposed to be on “the significance of naming children in Africa.” And it was. Mostly. It was just that I spent most of my time attempting to figure out how to add the word “uBhekimpilo” to my Microsoft Word dictionary because I just can’t type when that red squiggly line keeps telling me that there are no spelling suggestions.
It was an interesting topic, though, because a lot more meaning goes into the traditional African naming practices than the average American baby name. They usually represent something: either the specific events occurring in the family’s life at that time, or what they hope that child grows into one day. Those traditional African names are more than just a label; it’s more like a prayer. That this child will grow up and fulfill their title, or wake up each morning as a living testament to the memory they represent. This naming process is a big deal.
For example, the name “uNduminseni” means ‘Progress’ in the Zulu culture. It’s a request for movement: a plea for growth. And when uNduminseni looks in the mirror, he no longer sees just brown eyes and Dad’s chin. He sees college graduate. Good father. Hard worker. And maybe, ancestors willing, that mirror will ultimately reflect ‘Progress. ‘
However, there are other names that are given in a less… optimistic environment. “uVelaphi” literally means “Who does he look like?” and is given to the illegitimate kids in the village. “uXolani” is the Zulu word for “Sorry.” I guess that’s pretty efficient, if you anticipate baby wild child.
And after reading through pages and pages of complex naming practices, I couldn’t help but wonder what my parents would have named me had they expected it to reflect on my future. Surely they didn’t call my grandma all excited and say, ‘We are going to call her Ella! That means, ‘good-at-climbing-things-but-not-so-good-at-brushing-her-hair.’ We really hope she can live up to that!”
However, I can see my dad holding my sister Remi in the air all Lion King Style and declaring, “We will call her ‘Good-at-fixing-anything-that’s-broken-without-an-instruction-manual-or-formal-training.’ Because that is just a really beautiful name.”
My sister Chessa would be “funnier-than-you” because, well, she probably is, and Amy, my beautiful friend from home would easily be called “laugh-that-makes-everyone-else-laugh-too.” People grow into their names and the Word usually represents them pretty well, even if at first there is no intended meaning behind it.
There is a saying in the uBuntu culture that goes something like this: “intake yakha ngoboya benye.” “A bird builds his nest from the feathers of other birds.” In other words: we build our own personal identity on what we see around us: the thoughts, ideas, beliefs of the people we encounter and the places we have seen or experiences we have felt. Each one of us takes a little sliver of that and adds it to our own nest until we have a beautifully unique and perfectly formed identity. This is a great thought for “uThukayizwe” (insult) and “uSiphipho” (cause for divorce), because despite your name, or the family you were born into or the outstanding, withstanding, in-the-rain-standing circumstances, you choose your own feathers and you build your own nest. Nobody else can do it for you. Not even your name.

Ya Mampela

It is an interesting time to be living in South Africa. I heard one man say, “Most people read about their history. South Africans today live in the history that has yet to be written.” This a unique thought, and I’m sure people would argue that any person is living in history in the making. Perhaps this post-apartheid South Africa is just in a critical point in its history making. Fascinating and a little terrifying.
Below is a link to a commercial on national television that is a hot topic for argument and debate. This advertisement was put out by SABC 1, a local South African TV station. Their slogan: “Ya Mampela,” or “The Real Thing.” It is currently banned from public TV, but the content is interesting: what if racial roles were reversed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWsTwvtyOI&feature=related

Listen...

Public speaking is ranked as one of the top fears of adults in the whole world. I think something like heights or snakes is up there also, but talking in front of a bunch of people: that scares people. This concept is very funny to me. Because the majority of people I know love to talk. They are all about telling you where they’ve been or what they’re doing or why they are wearing brown shoes with black pants or the dream they had that Johnny Depp was in a taxi with them and they drove to the shoe store together. People do it, they talk. We are social creatures: it’s in our blood, through our diaphragm, on our chest, then out our lips.
And I think it is beautiful, completely and thoroughly incredible, that humans can communicate so effectively and so complexly. However, I think it is common to forget something with a mouth full of words. We forget to listen.
Starling’s Backpackers Lodge was the name of the hostel that some friends and I stayed at during this long weekend. And it was like most hostels that you picture when you close your eyes: wooden bunk beds and thin mattresses and an incessant dripping noise in a room with no sinks. But this place had something a little extra: a room with a fire and some couches and a place ideal for, well, for listening.
I sat and listened until late, late, late on those nights we stayed at Starling. I heard as a man told adventure stories of how he base jumped for fun and sky dived for a living. The waitress who lived nearby told me of her dream to find a way for the youth in her hometown to travel, and to experience the world. “Because,” she said, “if they see how awesome this world is, they will try harder to rise above their circumstances.” There are really, really interesting people out there. And I think they are more willing to be that kind of interesting when they know someone is willing to listen. Not just the quiet or the absence of my speech. But real live hearing: the kind you do when you think that what the person says is important.
So I came home from this excursion with my hair smelling like smoke and this idea in my head that I wanted to do just that: intentionally give off a listening vibe and see what happened. And I heard ideas. Good ideas.
Moses journeyed to America a few years ago with nothing more than $300 and a good attitude. Sometimes that’s not enough though, and he ended up living in the projects of New York, with no job, no money, and a new realization that maybe America has its problems, too.
Mr. T. wishes people were more like elephants. If one gets orphaned or left behind, another elephant family will help him out and adopt the lost elephant. They just accept the lost one and let him be part of the family. “Why can’t humans do that?” was his question to me.
Now, I usually go to class and I try and take notes, but my real learning hasn’t been sitting in those desks in a lecture hall, wondering if the teacher will count me off on my paper for not using the British spelling of “color.” My true learning has been through the thoughts and ideas of people around me. And all I have to do is listen.

Adventureland: Recap

It has been a hectic time around here the past week (hectic, I have learned, can be used to describe anything that isn't super mellow in Africa)butI wanted to share some of the adventures that this journey has taken me recently, through pictures:

Road trippin' with new friends, bungee jumping off the highest bungee in the world, elephant walks, tiger sightings, and cheetah love........







Wild, wild, world, and so blessed to be a part of it.