Staff Blog

Doesn’t Matter if You’re Black or White?

We had the most amazing day the Saturday before last. Three times a year there is traditional event called the Umlangha reed dance. The most well known is performed by virgin girls at the end of August.  Girls from all over the country gather to dance for the King.  They are topless and not wearing much on the bottom, and traditionally the King would choose a new wife each year from out of the young women (he currently has thirteen wives).  But apparently he’s finally given that up as it doesn’t set a good example for the country (I don’t know exactly the reason that he was persuaded to stop, but I do know that HIV spreads quickly through networks of multiple concurrent partners, so perhaps this has something to do with it). Anyhow, we’ve been disappointed that we were going to miss that event (it will take place on August 31 this year), although I think we’re all a bit wary of what it represents.  However, it turns out there are two other similar events: men dance in January and married women dance in July. On Saturday we attended the married women’s dance.

Kim and Tania arrived dressed in traditional clothing (care of Tania’s family), I was in a skirt, Carleigh was in jeans, and Ryan was in shorts.  When we arrived we found Kim’s host mom, Fikile, who was participating in the event this year.  She dressed Carleigh and I in traditional clothing, which involved tying a sarong over our left shoulder and tying another one around our waist.  Someone gave us a bunch of reeds which Fikile seperated into smaller bunches so that we would each have some to carry.  We each bought the anklets made from butterfuly cocoons filled with stones that rattle when you walk and put them on our ankles. We took off our shoes and put them in our bags.  We were ready. In the meantime Ryan disappeared for awhile with Fikile’s brother. He returned dressed like a traditional Swazi man, we took loads of pictures all together, and then he was swept off again by Fikile’s brother.  Kim, Tania, Carleigh and I would be participating in the event, but Ryan, being a man, would have to watch.

We joined all the women who had gathered together to wait for the event to begin. They were singing and dancing and blowing whistles.  We danced and swayed with them, as we waited.  We waited there for a couple of hours (this is Swaziland afterall, and nothing starts on time), energized at first, then tired, hot, and hungry; none of us quite sure exactly what was to come.  The first time I asked Fikile what we were waiting for she said we were waiting for the King’s wives to arrive, as they are the ones who lead the event. Later I asked again. This time she said it was the King himself who was holding things up.

All of a sudden a ripple ran through the crowd and Fikile told us it was time to go.  We walked with our reeds over our shoulder until we reached a place where men were taking the reeds from us.  Then, with the King about 50 feet away, one of the ladies in our group came over to us, organized us in a straight line, and showed us how we were to walk. And so we started. This pause had created a gap in the line which meant we, six white unmarried young women, were leading hundreds of Swazi married women in their march past the King and to the stadium.  As we walked past the King he was laughing. Then we were accosted by journalists who flashed our photos and videoed us.  We were giddy, incredulous of what was happening.  But I couldn’t help thinking that in some way we were comntaminating the event with our singleness and our foreignness. I was sure that we didn’t belong there and I couldn’t understand why we’d been invited to be in the centre of it all.

When we arrived at the stadium we continued to sing and march around. At this point I could see just how many women there were, at lelast a thousand, and I was overwhelmed and exhilarated to be in the midst of it all.  There was a bit of a lull as we waited for all of the women to finish throwing their reeds and the King to enter the stadium. We chatted and sang and danced. Every so often Kim’s mom brought someone over and told us to greet her. We shook hands, introduced ourselves, the woman smiled at us, and told us how happy she was that we were here. Fikile spoke with her in SiSwati for a minute and then she left.

Finally the King entered and seated himself. The women marched past him seperated by their locational groups. Once again we were instructed to lead our group as we walked in front of him. The the women settled into a large semicircle facing the front of the stadium, five Gogo’s (grandmothers) came to the centre and started to sing. The entire stadium followed their lead. We were off to the side and once again as we waited for all the women to organize themselves Fikile introduced us to people who laughed at our Swazi names and greeted us enthusiastically. At some point Fikile said, “They really respect you. That’s why they wanted you to lead the group. They are really happy that you are here.” But why?  I still don’t understand.

That day was a bit of an extreme, but being a spectacle because of our whiteness is nothing new. It’s an everyday reality here. So often when we meet people they are so happy to see us. The language barrier generally prevents conversation, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Just our presence delights them.  However, our whiteness also elicits other responses, some much less desirable than what I’ve just explained. The most challenging of these is when we are asked for money.  Often we’re just stared at, no greeting, just blatent and unabashed stares.

A poignant example of some of the realities of being a white person in Swaziland was a few weeks ago my friend, Gcebile, took me for an overnight to the place where her son stays with his grandparents and an assortment of other grandchildren. It’s a couple hours from Manzini in a very rural area.  We got off the bus and immediately I knew this was my favourite place I’d been to so far in Swaziland.  We were surrounded by mountains that looked as if they’d been untouched by humans. Fields of golden grass blew in the gentle breeze and the sun shone down from the clear sky, bathing everything in a soft golden glow.  I was overcome by how calm and quiet it was, partly due to the fact that is was Sunday morning, and partly because we were so far from anything.

When we arrived at the homestead Gcebile told me to take a seat and then she left the living room.  A couple minutes later she came back with Makulo (Grandfather).  He greeted me enthusiastically, asked me some questions about my time in Swaziland and then disappeared.  It was 1:00 pm by this time and Gcebile was worried about what what I would eat for lunch. There was some porridge (local staple food made of maize flour) and a piece of chicken and I assured her that was ok, so we sat down together and started to eat.  A minute later she got up again, explaining that Gogo (Grandmother) was home from a funeral (apparently she’d rushed home when she heard I was coming) and Gcebile had to go and meet her.  So I sat there, eating my porridge and picking away at the piece of chicken.  Throughout all of this there were some small children playing on the floor who would stop every once in awhile to look up at me with a confused and cautious look on their face.  When I smiled at them they stared blankly at me until I looked away and they carried on playing.  Every so often a gaggle of teenage girls would crowd into one of the doorways, whisper and giggle, and then run away when I looked up at them.

Eventually Gcebile and Gogo came inside and Gogo smiled widley while we greeted each other and then talked away to me in SiSwati.  Gcebile translated bits and pieces, but not everything.  I smiled and nodded. After a few minutes Gogo got up and left the room.  We finished eating and Gcebile told me that now we were going to fetch firewood.  She suggested I change my clothes so I didn’t get dirty, but I didn’t have anything else to wear.  We went into one of the bedrooms and six teenage girls followed us.  Gcebile searched around for a few minutes and then pulled out a skirt and a wrap that I could wear.  She handed them to me and then I hesitated for a moment before starting to change, as all of the girls were staring intendedly at me from the doorway.  Gcebile and one of the other girls fumbled around to try and hold up the wrap to give me some privacy, but by then I’d already taken off my skirt and was standing in my underwear.  None of the girls made any attempt to turn away or hide their curiosity. They just stared.  I didn’t mind.  I was amused by the whole situation.  Oh, and at this point I still hadn’t been introduced to any of them.

Then we set off to get firewood - Gcebile, the six girls, Sethu and another little one named Sebu, and I.  We walked down the hill, crossed a stream, walked up a mountain and then along a path until we reached some trees. As we walked some of the girls introduced themselves. I stumbled with their names and they laughed at me.  They asked Gcebile questions about me until she told them to ask me directly.  They would titter and giggle a little among themselves before getting up the nerve to ask me how old I was or what I did in Canada.

We stopped in front of a tree and Gcebile and one of the other girls started hacking away at it while I looked on and took some pictures. The girls were fascinated and excited by my camera and they crowded around me to look at the pictures.  I felt fingers in my hair and told them it was ok to touch it.  Suddenly there were four hands in my hair and a minute later there was a braid.

Gcebile and the other girl finished cutting the sapling down and they asked me if I’d be able to carry it. I told them that I thought I would.  We left the tree by the path and carried on.  Eventually everyone had their wood and we headed back. I picked up my tree along the way and everyone laughed as I put it on my shoulder and we walked home.  I was carrying the smallest piece of wood out of any of them, but they were very pleased that I was there carrying wood with them.

When we got back Gcebile started to make dinner and I asked if I could help. She called the one of the girls to bring me a bag of spinach, a pot of water, and a tray. A cluster of girls sat across from me and watched in amazement as I washed the spinach and then started to chop it. They couldn’t believe that I could do that.  “Why are they so surprised that I can wash spinach?”, I asked Gcebile.  “They don’t know anything about white people.  You’re the first white person they’ve seen in this area. And they’ve never had one staying at their house before. They don’t know what you can do.”

After dinner Gcebile and I were exhausted and ready for bed, so we went to the bedroom where the girls sleep. There were two single beds and a double bed.  Gcebile asked me if I was able to sleep with other people. I told her that was fine. She asked me if I’d ever slept in a bed with other people before, and I told her I had. I said in Canada we usually have our own bedrooms, but may share a bed with someone when we stay at overnight somewhere else.  She nodded.

As we got into bed the girls rushed in and started asking me more questions.  After they asked, “Are you able to run?” I finally said, “I’m a human being just like you.  I can do the same things that you can.  Maybe some things I haven’t done before, but if I haven’t I can try to do them.”  There was collective nodding and laughing in the room after that.  Then we started talking about my camera, and I told them that I would mail them the pictures I took there when I got back to Canada. They got excited and wanted to take a picture with me. So I got out of bed and we took a group photo. Then someone wanted a picture of just me and them. And then the next person did. So we went through each person in the room for one on one pictures. In the meantime a couple of kids from a neighbouring homestead came in and joined to photo shoot.  I felt like a celebrity; unfortunately I was a celebrity dressed in my pyjamas who was ready to go to bed an hour ago and getting a bit tired of smiling all the time.

Eventually everyone had had their picture taken at least once and I finally got back into bed. But they were not done with me.  One of the girls wanted me to get up at 6:30 so I could walk to the bus stop with her so that she could show me to all of her friends. Another girl wanted me to come to visit her at school the next day for the same reason. I said I wouldn’t get up and go to the bus stop but we’d see about going to the school (the school is right near by).  But I had an inner struggle about it.  Was I being selfish to not want to get up in the morning to walk with a young girl to the bus stop?  If that small thing would bring her so much joy, was I wrong to not want to do it?  But I also didn’t like the idea of being shown off like a new dog. It wasn’t that she wanted to introduce me to all of her friends because we’d gotten along so well, but essentially to be seen with me, a white woman. However I felt badly that I might be willing to go to the school, but not to get up early to go to the bus stop. What was I to do?

In the end the decision was made for us because we had to get up early to take Sethu to the clinic, so we’d be able to go to the bus stop.  Then we’d stop at the school before we left.  But finally I was getting tired, tired of the questions, tired of smiling, tired of being the centre of attention.  So Gcebile told the girls that was enough and they all left the room to watch a movie so we could finally go to sleep (although the four girls would also be sleeping in the same room as us).  By some miracle I slept well, despite a baby crying from the next bed and being kicked in the night by one of the girls who’d insisted on sleeping in the bed with Gcebile and I, even when she told her not to.

In the morning we went to the clinic.  We took the bus part of the way back and then had to walk up a hill in the hot sun for about an hour.  By the time we got close to home I was hot, tired and hungry.  As we walked by the primary school on the way to the homestead Gcebile was called over by some women who were sitting at the school selling sweets and snacks.  She told me that they wanted to greet me.  I admit I didn’t have much patience for being “the white person” at that particular moment but I grudgingly complied. We went over, I said hello and shook the hand of about 12 women, and then waited while they talked with Gcebile in SiSwati.  As I waited a man who’d been standing nearby saw my camera and told me to come take his picture so that I could sell him in Canada.  He put himself in three different poses and I dutifully took each picture. Then he asked me if I could try and find a sponsor in Canada for the school. I explained to him that I was here to meet people and make connections, but that I wouldn’t be able to find him a sponsor in Canada.  He nodded and walked away.

I had already been at the end of my rope, but that sent me over the edge.  Being asked for money is trying and hard at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.

Gcebile said that since we were already at the school maybe we should go and see the girls.  I agreed, and we went to the office of the headmaster to get permission. There were two women in the office, and after talking for a minute Gcebile told me to wait and left with one of the teachers.  The woman I remained with asked me if I was there to sponsor the children. I said no.

The bell rang and children streamed out into the courtyard. It was breaktime. Gcebile came to get me and we met up with the girls from the homestead.  Gcebile asked me to take a picture of each girl and then we would go. I guess I made some face because she looked at me and asked me if I was cross. “No, I’m not cross,”  I lied.  I took three pictures as a hundred children crowded around us and stared.

Then we left. As we walked back to the house I tried to explain to Gcebile what was happening for me. Sometimes it’s hard for me to have so much attention just because I’m white, I told her. It’s not because people know me, but just because of the colour of my skin. And on the one hand it’s lovely to be able to make people happy just by being there. But it can be tiring too. And I said it’s hard that people ask me for money all the time, just because I’m white and they assume that I have money. It’s hard because by Canadian standards I don’t make much money plus I have thousands of dollars in student loans, but by Swazi standards even the little bit that I do have is much more than most.  Most of the time I’m ok with it all and I can understand that people are trying to take advantage of a potential oppurtunity.  But sometimes I struggle with it all, I said. Especially when I’m tired and hot and hungry.  I don’t know if that makes sense or not, I said, or if you think it’s ridiculous. “No,” she said. “I think I understand.”

We got back to the house, sat down, and ate lunch.  I was feeling more rejuvinated when half an hour later Gcebile came in and quietly said that one of the ladies that we’d greeted at the school had come to see me. She wanted to ask for money for her family.  It was ok, I said. And thanked her for letting me know.  The woman came in and sat down. She explained that she was a widow who was trying to make a little money selling buns at the school, but there was no profit in it and she didn’t have any money for her children.  With more patience and understanding this time I explained that unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to help her.  She said ok and that she understood.  Her face looked resigned.

It was finally time to go, but Gcebile said there was an old blind man who lived nearby who’d come to the homestead in the morning to greet me, but we’d been at the clinic.  We went next store to his homestead where we were greeted enthusisastically by two of his wives and some of his grandchildren.  Then we were taken into his hut and sat down with him. I greeted him, although I don’t know if he heard me, as it was clear that his hearing was also impaired.  After a minute Gcebile told me that we could go. I was surprised. I didn’t even feel like he’d acknowledged me, but I guess we’d done what we’d come there to do. We stopped for a minute to talk to a few of his other family members who asked me what I thought about their area and told me how happy they were that I’d come to visit them.

We went back to the house and collected our things and then started to walk to the road where we would catch the bus.  As we walked by the old man’s homestead an old woman called to us. It was the man’s first wife and she wanted to greet me. She hobbled over to the fence and I walked over to meet her.  We shook hands and in siSwati she thanked me for coming to visit them and told me that I should stay and be her daughter in law.  I laughed.  During our whole interaction her genuine happiness to meet me radiated from her enitre being. I couldn’t stop grinning as I walked away.  In that moment it was all worth it again. The simple joy that I’d given her and in turn she’d given me from that moment of connection made up for all of the hard moments and negative reactions.

That experience was an intensive experience of being a white person in this country, all squished into about thirty six hours. But it encompasses much of the reality that we face in smaller ways every day.  When we go places sometimes people are thrilled to meet us. Thrilled that we’ve come to visit them. Sometimes people ask us for money. Sometimes men ask us to marry them. Often people just stare. But always there is some reaction. We cannot be here without the colour of our skin announcing our presence everywhere we go and drawing some reaction from people. Sometimes it’s incredible (when I can bring someone so much joy just because I’m here).  Sometimes it’s confusing (why do people want to talk to me just because I am white?).  Sometimes it’s annoying (how can people want to marry me when they don’t even know me?).  Sometimes it’s frustrating (no, I can’t sponsor everyone’s children or take them to Canada with me).

I’m fascinated and distressed by this phenomenon. And I still don’t understand why people have the reactions that they do. But regardless, our colour means something here, whether we want it to our not.

A few weeks ago we spent a weekend in Johannesburg. Colour means something very different there, and I didn’t like it at all. As the bus drove into downtown Jo’burg I was excited. “I’m going to like this city,” I said to Carleigh. It was busy and bustling. There were hoards of people on the street. There were people selling things, people getting their haircut, people shopping and walking and laughing. It had energy.  And everyone was black.

The bus station was a zoo; a chaotic mess of minibuses and people and things and cars.  But again, I found it interesting and exciting.  We got off the bus and dodged people asking us where we were going and if we wanted to buy stickers or socks or fruit or bags and finally made it to a taxi.  We started driving out of the city centre and almost immediately the landscape changed. It changed from commercial to residential, but the energy changed too.  At first it felt calmer as we left the busyness of the city behind, but then it felt empty, disconnected, souless.  The farther away from the city centre we drove the bigger the lots became and the bigger the houses within them. The businesses that were scattered throughout were high-end furniture stores and trendy coffee shops. We could have been driving through a city in North America, if it wasn’t for the intimidating walls that surrounded each property.  Clearly we were in a white area of the city.

The next morning Carleigh, Kim, and I went on a tour of Soweto. Soweto is made up of 33 townships to the south and west of Johannesburg (“Soweto” comes from South Western Townships).  My very basic understanding of this is that during apartheid black people that worked in Johannesburg or in the nearby mines were not allowed to live in the city proper and were relegated to townships. Soweto is well known because it’s so big (three to four million people live there) and the living conditions were so poor during apartheid, but especially because there were some important events in the anti-apartheid movement that took place there.

Before I go any further, I’ll tell you I was very reticent to go on a tour of Soweto. I didn’t know much about the area, but something about a bunch of white people going on a tour of a place where poor black people live felt very off.  However, we looked into it and the guidebook and the internet both said that in fact these tours are generally run by residents of Soweto as income generating projects.  Apparently they’re totally accepted and strongly recommended. I was still a bit hesitant, but I was also curious and decided to trust what we’d read, and so we went.

It took about twenty minutes to get there from our hostel. Our guide seemed a bit rough at first but warmed up a bit as time went on. On the way there he told us a bit about Soweto. I was surprised to learn that most people who live in Soweto work in Johannesburg; it is almost entirely residential apart from businesses and organizations that service the residents.  He said that the living conditions in the area were actually quite good now, as compared to during apartheid, because all of the houses had electricity and running water. And the residents now owned the properties and houses so they were free to make adjustments or renovations as they wished.

We got off the highway and as we took the exit we looked out over Soweto. It was a concrete jungle as far as the eye could see. We entered the streets and drove by tiny brick house after tiny brick house, squished into tiny lots with walls and fences surrounding each one. It was very clean, but there were almost no trees or grass. I couldn’t get over the sheer compactness of it all.  As we entered Soweto someone asked our tour guide where he lives. “I live in Soweto, where black people live. Only white people live in Johannesburg.”  That about sums up race in Johannesburg, even post-apartheid.

Later that day we went into a mall near our hostel because a couple people needed to use the ATM.  It was like entering another world. It was the most high-end mall I’ve ever been in, with designer clothing stores, classy home decorating stores, and fancy restaurants.  I felt uncomfortable there. Uncomfortable, filthy and confused.  I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that in the morning I’d been in Soweto and just a few hours later I was in a classy mall.  There were two completely different worlds existing much too close together.

Later it occurred to me that Johannesburg is like a microcosm of the world.  “White countries” are rich; we have big houses, two cars per family, and more “things” than we know what to do with.  “Non-white” countries are generally poorer. “Black countries” are at the bottom of the barrel.  I guess Johannesburg was so hard for me because I could see it all there in front of my face. No, I couldn’t just see it, I felt implicated in it. I couldn’t escape from my whiteness. I couldn’t escape from the fact that at the same time that I was disgusted by the mall and the houses and the nice restaurants, I found comfort in them.  And I couldn’t escape from the poverty and the inequality.  Canada and Swaziland are thousands of kilometres away from each other. But in Johannesburg we’re talking about minutes apart.

At the same time that I was squirming in my own skin I was learning about apartheid, and most importantly, about the anti-apartheid movement. The most influential part of our trip to Johannesburg was during our tour of Soweto when we visited the Hector Pietersen Museum.  In 1976 the South African government introduced some laws saying that some secondary school courses would be taught in Afrikaans. Until then all courses had been taught in English. This meant that at the high-school level students would be forced to learn in a language that they didn’t know. And we’re not talking about taking Afrikaans courses to learn the language. They had to learn courses like science and math in a language that they didn’t know. Not only was the language foreign to them, it was the language of their oppressor.

On June 16, 1976 students in Soweto left their schools and joined together to march peacefully to the offices of the ministry of education to protest these new laws.  They never made it. The police interfered. Shots were fired. Many students died.  After this day student protests swept through the country. More students died. Many went into hiding. Many fled the country. Eventually the laws were changed so they no longer had to learn in Afrikaans.

In Soweto family members of the deceased wanted to have funerals to bury their loved ones, but they were not permitted to do so.  Instead they had one funeral to represent all of those who died that day and in the days that followed. The funeral was for a boy named Hecter Pietersen. He was thirteen years old.  June 16 is now a national holiday, called Youth Day, which Nelson Mandela introduced to commemorate all the students that stood up for their rights on that historic day.

Last week Carleigh and I went to Cape Town for a few days.  While there we visited Robben Island, where political prisoners were held during apartheid. Nelson Mandela stayed their for 18 of his 27 years in jail.  Tours there are given by former political prisoners.  At the end of our tour I asked our guide what his story was.  He went to Orlando High School, which was where the movement for the 1976 student protests started. He was there. And then he fled the country. For the next ten years he worked in the anti-apartheid movement. He trained in militancy in Europe and Russia. He worked underground in at least five different African countries.  He was arrested several times.  Finally, in 1986 he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in jail.  He was lucky. He spent five years on Robben Island and then was released in 1991 when all political prisoners were released from the prison.

All of this spilled out of him and I struggled to keep up.  At the end he asked if we’d visted the Hecter Pietersen museum. We said yes. “Do you know the picture of the boy carrying Hecter Pietersen’s body?”  Yes, we did. “That was a friend of mine.  A close friend.”

I was overwhelmed by all he had experienced in his life. I was overwhelmed by his drive and dedication.  I was overwhelmed that he’d been there on that day 33 years ago when young people stood up for their right to an education.  I didn’t know what to say, so we thanked him and said goodbye.  I wish I could have articulated to him just how deeply his brief life story effected me. He’ll never know, but I always will.

A couple days later I flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg (Carleigh had left the day before). At the airport in Jo’burg I got a taxi to the bus station to return to Swaziland. On the way I asked my driver if he’d ever been to Swaziland. “Ah yes,” he said. “Many years ago.”

It turns out that he too was involved in the student protests in 1976. He didn’t live in Soweto, but the protests swept through the country and reached even the rural school that he was attending. But in the days after the protests the police were searching for the students that had been involved. So him and a bunch of other students left South Africa in the back of a transport truck. He spent the next two months in Swaziland, until he was told it was safe to come back.  When he returned and went back to school he said that the teachers would keep class lists with different names on them, in case the police did ever come looking for someone. “Because the teachers supported our struggle,” he said.

Again, I was speechless. I realized that every person in that country that had lived through apartheid had stories, stories that would shock, anger, and sadden me. Each person - black, white, asian, or coloured - had lived something more horrendous than I can comprehend. I’m glad that I got a few minutes with a few people in order to be able to understand this.  I wish I had more time.

In the face of these encounters I felt shocked, angry and sad. But I felt deeply inspired too by the commitment, sacrifice and passion that people poured into the anti-apartheid movement.  And in the end it paid off.  There were beatings and deaths.  There were lives spent in exile and in prison. But they won.  At the end of the tour of Robben Island prison our guide said that they did not give tours as a demonstration of oppression and injustice, but as as sign of triumph and hope.

I said they won, and they did. But the struggle is not over yet, and the country is from from fully healed.  I read somewhere that South Africa is the most violent country in the world that is not at war. It is one of the countries with the greatest disparities in wealth in the world.  They have an HIV infection rate over 20%. Apartheid is over, but the walls that divide white and black are still high and strong.  I left South Africa with a sense of the injustice and the triumph, as I think the country continues to embody both.

As we got close to the bus station my taxi driver drove by an area that looked familiar and then turned away from it.  I said, “So, I’m going to the buses to Manzini. Do you know where they are? The minibuses, the kombies [the name for the local transportation].”

My driver started laughing. Not just smiling, full out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked, a bit confused.

“Because you’re one of us,” he said, and changed direction.

He was going to take me to the part of Park Station where the big buses leave from. Presumably the buses that white people usually take. And when we pulled up to the place where my kombie was leaving from I had to smile too. Yes, it was busy and bustling the way it always is. And everyone was black. My driver wished me well and I dove head on into the cat calls and arm grabs and chaos of the Johannesburg bus station.  When I got onto the bus I looked around me and smiled again. Yup, still the only white person around.

Skin colour is impossible to hide from, but the colour of our skin itself does not mean anything. Culture, attitudes, judgements, economic and political power, and life experiences have meaning, and we attach them to skin colour. So yes, I was the only white person in that kombie, the only white person my young friends at Sethu’s house had every known, one of the few white people living in Swaziland at this time. But it’s not really the colour of my skin that is important. I’m different because I’m Canadian, because I come from a middle class family, because I don’t know anything about gardening or raising goats or cooking porridge (the staple food here). However, those differences can be bridged, through intention and will and love and openness.  Through laughter and living together and learning together and working together.  We’re doing that here. Ryan, Kim, Tania, Carleigh, and I, we’re discovering the differences, but we’re also finding our similarities.  And it’s both learning from our differences and celebrating our similarities that make this experience so profound.  That’s what touches our hearts, penetrates our soul, and changes our being.

-Lauren Nagler, Intercordia Mentor and L’Arche Assistant, Swaziland