Integrative Musings

There is an incredible woman who works for m2m called Tuffy. She’s responsible for Mothers’ Creations, the enterprise that helps women financially by teaching them to bead, and exporting the jewelry they make. I’ve spent some time with her during our trips to the Khayelitsha beading center, which have been really informative mostly because she is a talker. Although white and belonging to a generation that was raised when Apartheid was still going strong, she is fluent in Xhosa. She told us she was raised on a farm in the Eastern Cape, and her parents thought it was natural that her playmates were the black African children whose parents worked in their fields. That was how she learnt Xhosa, and the traditional African beading craft which she is now imparting to another generation of African women. She is very matter-of-fact about her unorthodox upbringing, and she regaled us with stories of staying out in the fields picking fruit and shooting birds. But she sees it as ironical that in her old age she has gone back to her childhood pursuits: speaking Xhosa and beading.

Tuffy had various stories to tell of how speaking Xhosa has saved her life while working for m2m in Khayelitsha. She repeatedly stressed what an advantage it was to know the native language of a region, and that it was the only reason she had survived in xenophobic (white-phobic?) Khayelitsha. I also learnt of the cultural history of beading in the Southern African tradition: beads are an integral part of the ritual practices. Every stage of a person’s life is marked by a special ritual, and specific beads are created and worn for it. Tuffy showed us a beaded necklace that is made and worn by a pubescent girl to signal that she is old enough to be suited. Once the wooing has commenced, she beads a brooch-like ornament to be given to her favourite beau. The fixing of the marriage involves another series of beads to go with the negotiations over the dowry—how many cattle need to be paid to the bride’s father etc—and a whole another set of beads mark the marriage ceremony.

Indigenous African culture is obviously intricate and ancient. But the sheer amount of effort that is put into valuing and treasuring the constituent subcultures of South African diversity has surprised me. In my short time here, I’ve seen it being done via TV shows and advertisements and fairs and the like. Obviously, this is not to say that SA is now fully integrated and all is well. Tuffy mentioned that she has friends who, in the privacy of their homes, continue to talk as though 1994 never happened. Still, I find the efforts to integrate impressive. Having grown up on “mile sur mera tumhara” playing on DD incessantly, I bemoan the lack of integrative TV programming and cinema in India today. Or, really, any other covert/overt signs of integration that would make it seem as though right-wing nationalism hasn’t overtaken the country.

Anyway, SA. I find it marvelous that I can buy curry flavoured Maggi in my friendly neighborhood Pick’n Pay market. This is something I couldn’t do in uber-brown NJ, and it made me very miserable. I can even get spices here—all the Indian ones with dhania/haldi etc written on the bottle, instead of turmeric/what-ever-else. And I watched an Amitabh Bacchan movie on TV yesterday (albeit a bad one), which came on after a Saturday afternoon show that enlightened me on the Hindi AND Tamil Top Ten countdown. Fabulous!

Updates: The car is now parked in my flat’s parking space, instead of the garage. We even took it out for a spin today, which basically served as reminder that neither of us is ready to drive on a busy road. Sigh. Lots more practicing coming up. The goal is to drive to the airport to pick up our other roommates, who arrive at the end of August. I wish I could just take the bus/train/cab everywhere. Nothing makes me feel incompetent quite as thoroughly as driving does.

In other news, I am officially a Cape Townian. I got a Library Pass to the Public Library (which, btw, is housed in the gorgeous City Hall building in the City Bowl), and I’m about to go crazy reading. I have all evenings and entire weekends to while away, so if you have reading recommendations, do let me know.