WHATEVER

by Cheri Roland

New Year's Eve is an excellent excuse to have a party, even in South Africa. Doug and I received an invitation from our neighbors two doors down, Alison and Ian whom we had met thru our walking club. It's hard to meet people here outside of the seminary, so we were eager to get the opportunity to connect with our new surroundings.

This neighborhood is mostly white working class with medium sized concrete block and stucco forgettable rectangular homes surrounded by inventive high walls and gates all topped with various uncomfortable deterrents and hung with brightly colored signage cheerfully proclaiming "Armed Response" from a myriad of security companies. Vegetation is surprisingly Florida-like, but these plants are prickly and on steroids. I can feel them growing. Many flowering trees are currently softening the otherwise thorny succulents that line the path, threatening to impale unwary pedestrians. Zoning here allows extra buildings behind houses, so most sport a variety of opportunities for income-producing lodgers, and many yards park an assortment of vehicles. Virtually every home here has at least two attack dogs that enthusiastically charge the gates with every passerby. And this street is a traffic thoroughfare - for runners and walkers (a surprisingly large numbers of fitness-conscious PMB-ites regularly traverse these big hills), folks walking their dogs, really causing pandemonium, and the regular constant to and fro of domestic and day labor workers in their layers of brightly colored dress, caps or turbans on their heads, ladies often waddling under huge sacks balanced on top, all loaded down with any number of bags and sacks and umbrellas. Five houses away at the top of the hill is a taxi stop (no regular public busses here; a taxi is a crammed 13 or so passenger van), so folks are always waiting, resting awhile on the meter high cement road signs if they are lucky. Down the hill and bordering our valley across the street is the N-3 highway going west to Johannesburg and east to Durbin. In between is our "One Hundred Acre Wood" which certainly would have added to Pooh's and Eyore's adventures. It is a long stand of Australian eucalyptus harboring the extremely noisy African ibis, cousin to our silent, well behaved white ground-peckers. But these are huge dark glossy monsters that insist on emitting ear splitting squawks whenever they move, preferably in concert, and begin this unfortunate group activity at four AM, rain or shine (and it is shining at four AM, believe me). Adding to this auditory insult is the busy train track running about 1/2 kilometer away, curving around across the top of the ridge, so that its effect can echo across hill and vale. (We have taken to sleeping in ear plugs.) Directly behind us is the seminary. The asymmetrical tower cross fills the sky to the left. All we need is a gate cut through our back wall, and we could trot right into the Christ the Servant Chapel. And along its edge, now a strip of grass, will be our production garden. And that is my project for this new year.

The New Year's Eve party did not disappoint. Allison had their back garden (yard) decked out in a beach theme, and rain, drenching at times, just added to the wet and wild flavor. They had invited about forty revelers to help cheer in 2011, albeit about seven hours before we Rolands could honestly celebrate. Most guests brought major food - "Bring a plate of snacks" - trays and trays of heavy hors d'oeuvres but they scarped up my paltry ham and cream cheese pinwheels nonetheless. Somehow Doug and I managed to stay awake for the big 2011 countdown, drink some champagne and dance around with sparklers.

Interesting people with all sorts of odd experiences and thought provoking theories were circulating. Of course, being American in this small town is still a drawing card, so we were quite popular among the over thirty crowd. We finally caught up with our next door neighbors whom Doug had briefly spoken with shortly after we moved in. Vivian teaches math to 8-12th graders and is on the committee that writes the national competency exams; Garth teaches several musical instruments and has a piano gig two nights a week at a nearby hotel restaurant singing and playing requests. (I must follow up to see if I could get keyboard time somewhere.)

At one point I was chatting with Quintis, an Afrikaaner thirty-something dad. True to form, as soon as he found out we'd been here for five months, the first question invariably was, "How do you like it?" And we answered, as always, "Oh it's great!", although I must admit I'm not as adamant with that reply as I was at first. (I mentioned to Doug the other day that the excitement of newness and wonder has faded.) Quintis was more interested in our real assessments of life here than many others have been, and continued to question me. I found myself verbalizing impressions and experiences that had been swimming around in the deep recesses for some time. Man, this guy was asking for it! But New Year's Eve is often accompanied by a lack of good judgement.

I started a litany that could have really hurt his feelings, but he surprised me by voicing agreement. In fact, he eloquently summed up the state of affairs with, "If you are OK with mediocrity, this is a great place to live". In my short time here, this WHATEVER attitude seems to pervade all levels of life, pressing down with a weight that is palpable. He concurred that here eventually one just must shrug and give in, or end up being visited at Town Hill Mental Hospital.

After a couple of drinks of New Year's Eve cheer, my examples of startling circumstances struck me as more and more funny. Maybe tops on my list were problems with "the Municipality". Power and water outages happen out of the blue, and last for at least eight hours after being reported to the Municipality; the last time this happened, the worker explained that we had been notified the day before that the power would go off- right! We live in the middle of the block; the two houses next to us and immediately across the street are on a different grid than the rest of the long street. No one knows why. Where there are sidewalks, the sewer access six foot deep holes are often uncovered for months, with no safety provisions in place. Now that it's summer, the grass along the roads has grown by leaps and bounds, now up to my armpits, and has yet to be mowed. In other areas we've seen abandoned mowers surrounded by a small islands of futile attempts. Trash pick-up is another mystery, and even the locals just shake their heads. Schedules? What schedules? Today I learned that the municipality workers expect "Christmas boxes", meanwhile slacking off during working hours in order to demand overtime. Postal service is another nebulous concept, and we are clueless in this department. Our mail has ended up at four different locations, and we always have to pay varying amounts to retrieve it. Only junk mail get delivered to our gate. Major highways seem to be in fairly good repair, but the rest of the roads are happy to inform the travelers that there will be potholes for the next 30 km; for fun I've clocked it, and the next pothole sign always occurs with a 10 km overlap, just as so not to disappoint. I guess there are no plans to actually repair the road…, just make more signs. Recently, we decided to go to the driver's license place to see if we really needed to have SA drivers' licenses. When we mentioned this to others, we usually got a "Good luck with that" response.

TV viewing is entertaining. We are trying to stay on the cheap, so our options are limited. There are three SABC stations, one for Afrikaans, one for Zulu, and one for English. All three use the same news stories, the same video clips, the same weather graphics. If we were clever, we could probably pick up some foreign words. We have been reduced to watching re-runs of reality shows from years ago; Survivor - Gabon is currently our big thrill during the week. I'm sure the news is slanted. A surprising story caught my attention the other day, and I made Doug listen the next time it came on. A man had been arrested for driving 235km/hr, in the 120km/hr zone. He told the judge he was on his way to his sick mother and was sorry. So the judge "let him off because he pleaded guilty". So I guess this means that if you admit guilt accompanied by the most overworked excuse known, you incur no penalty. SWEET.

We've noticed the glut of employed official workers, especially in "security" capacities. Their are usually two or three uniformed people standing at the entrance to a building, two or three standing just inside, two or three at the next turn, and to what end? It makes me nervous, as if they are expecting an armed insurrection. Over-employment seems to be the norm here. It's a shame that efficiency has proportionately decreased as the numbers of employed has increased.

Looking back on my conversation with Quintis, I'm smiling. We are in a foreign country, after all, and we are no longer visitors. How disappointing it would be if life here turned out to be the same as at home! Half the fun is finding these differences - and celebrating them! So I lift my glass to South Africa and 2011. May we continue to respect this country's culture and all her peculiarities as we concentrate on making God's love a reality WHATEVER, WHEREVER.