Culture Shock

It rained yesterday. An unsteady, indecisive rain, that came and went and made everyone walk around with their eyes on the sky waiting for the next shower to raise their hoodies. At night the rain finally decided to become a downpour. The wind rattled outside and it got so chilly I closed my window for the first time all week. A little cold rain was worth it though, because today was beautiful, sunny warm and breezy. I walked into town and bought a muffin from a little coffee place, that is also an outdoor bar at night (I’m pretty sure almost any place that serves food in Grahamstown is also a bar) with a pretty open courtyard with wooden benches.

So far the culture shock has been less a shock and more of a creeping wave. There aren’t really any huge things so far, just a lot of little things to get used to. The 7 hour time difference, the 10 rands to a dollar, seeing a monkey run across the road as we drive in to town.

The biggest culture shock has come the past few days attempting to register for classes. I have been at it for two days now and so far the only class I’ve managed to sign up for is English. Since I am an international student, I have to go through the international office to sign up for classes. First I tell them what classes I’m interested in and they give me letters for the heads of those departments for them to sign to confirm I have met with them and we have agreed on a certain course. So I’ve spent the past two days walking from the English department to the Political Science department to the Journalism department trying to just find the people I’m supposed to talk to. At Poli Sci I was told the head of the department would not be in until Friday and apparently the expert on South Africa left so it would not be possible to take a course simply on South African politics (! How do you not have someone to teach about your own country?) At journalism I emailed the Head in charge of academics who referred me to the person in charge of their international students who referred me to their person in charge of third years and I still don’t know who to talk to! I do have English now though, two ‘papers’ or sub-courses which should make up one full course, Post colonialism and New Literature. Tomorrow I attempt poli sci and journalism again…

More creeping culture shock was this night. One of the orientation events was the screening of a movie and I found it rather illuminating. Not the movie itself really- a crime/action movie, called Jeruselema, locally produced and acted, very much like any action movie in the US- but the student audience’s reaction to it. Here, watching a move, the divisions between black and white seemed most apparent. The movie focused on an anti-hero who rises from hijacking cars to becoming the biggest slumlord in Hillbrow. The loud laughs and often cheers from the black members seemed to reveal an empathy for the life shown on the screen of poverty and crime that whites could not understand. There were loud laughs and nods when on screen the hero’s soon to be teacher tells him what he does for a living. The hero says “so you’re a hijacker?” the teacher replies “I like to think of it more as affirmative repossession.” There were cheers when the hero, money starting to come in from hijackings carries a tv into his tiny house for his family. We watch and we try to understand but we’re not in on the joke, not me, not any of the white faces in that audience.