Letters From An Island Son, Far From Home

Stefan Verbano grew up on Guemes Island, the son of Chris Damarjian and Larry Verbano. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Jornalism from the University of Oregon and is currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, Africa.

His home base is a small rural village near Mansa, Zambia where he is working with the local population to establish rural aquaculture and agricultural sufficiency. Through his writings you get a sense of the joy and frustration at trying to make a difference. Stefan has agreed to share his letters with his home community.


Letter Twenty Five: South Africa

Photo of Stefan with his companion on his shoulders at the memorial for Nelson Mandela as it appeared in South African's The Saturday Stay from 12/14/13.

 

Part I – Blacks and Whites, Browns and Greens

In the Johannesburg International Airport there is a 6-meter tall giraffe made out of what appears to be papier-mache. It looms over the escalator landing in a lower-level section of the airport housing the terminals for international flight passengers still bound for locations around continental Africa. The wall above the giant, yellow and brown spotted piñata is slapped with the words: “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together”, an “African Proverb” as the hyphenated line below the adage reads – a broad category of proverbs, I assumed. And looking around this terminal, hearing the unfamiliar languages, seeing the unfamiliar faces and contemplating where in the world I stood at the moment – and how much farther from home I had yet to travel – I felt at peace with the chaos of this place.

It was here on the warm cement floor under the gaze of one of Africa’s most majestic macro fauna where, nearly two years ago, I sat cross legged sprawled out with thirty-four other Peace Corps trainees on our way to Lusaka and our 27-month extended sojourns in rural villages. It was my first few footsteps on African soil, if you can call the steam-cleaned, disinfected escalators and decorative carpets of a first-world international airport “soil”. Seventeen hours ago I had been in Washington, D.C. twiddling my thumbs as our two-day Peace Corps staging formalities wrapped up, and I scrambled to memorize the names of thirty-four people who, less than twenty-four hours earlier, had been complete strangers. And then I was in Africa, jet-lagged, sleep deprived, nervous, delusional from bad airplane food and champagne and orange juice for breakfast. I had heard horror stories about OR-TAMBO International Airport, so I sat on my luggage and mean mugged Africans who, in my paranoid, irrational state, I assumed were clever thieves lingering around this crowd of prostrate muzungus waiting for their chance. To calm my nerves, I unclasped the latches of my resonator guitar case and strummed a few bars; that age old catharsis which never failed to bring me peace in times like these. The crisp, resonant notes of the chrome slide on the new bronze strings filled the hall with music. I felt the collective apprehension and fear of my fellow wide-eyed travelers and tried to channel some of it into my fingers. It was as if we were sitting together on the side of some great chasm, mustering up the courage and counting down the minutes until we would inevitably take the plunge into the darkness like a line of frightened lemmings.

Across the terminal in the bathroom – I was new enough still to smirk at the fact that the sign read “toilet” instead – the sight of my first squat toilet sent shivers up my spine. I must have officially crossed some imaginary cultural line in the sand, I thought, faced with the choice between a “western” toilet and a “traditional” one. It was the beginning of the metamorphosis for all of us; the metaphorical fat burning, the purgation of fear. One week ago I sat in that same spot, out in front of that same giraffe, and felt at peace. I took up my seat on the benches running perpendicular to the giant glass sliding doors, outside of which busses were waiting to transport scores of passengers out onto the tarmac airfield where their planes were idling. I yawned, I read my book, I struck up conversations with other Zambians waiting to go home just as I was. It all felt so normal. And it finally clicked in my mind how much Africa had changed me, from the inside out. If time was cyclical rather than linear and I could have rewound two years of my life and confronted that shivering, tired, naïve boy sitting there strumming his guitar trying to fight off the horror of the unknown and uncontrollable, I would have barely recognized him. It’s all gone now; all of that fear has been tempered away, the impurities have been burned off, and all that remains now is the hard, pure molten metal which once existed only as composite ore, as unrefined rock. And soon, I’m afraid, what now feels like an ancient fear of arrival will be replaced with the fear of leaving, with another unknown, but this time it’s not stemming from my blank mental map of interior Africa. Instead, it will be the fear of the familiar; of whether the scars have cut too deep and the homeland will not in fact feel like home again. You can go back, but you can never go back all the way. Not from a place like this.

I was drawn to South Africa once again by the promise of spending a relaxing, romantic holiday vacation with the girl I love; the one with the mars-brown hair - now falling down to her lower back in elegant curlicues - who met up with me in Lusaka one year ago to begin our first African adventure together. This one, though, was inarguably more luxurious, more comfortable, more indulgent. It was a two-and-a-half week release of ice cream sundae room service and missing complementary breakfast from sleeping in late and staring into big, beautiful eyes in the evening stillness before falling asleep every night. All of the luxuries I had missed so much from living a monastic life in a dirty African village were at my fingertips; craft beer, punctual transport, clean clothes, hot running water, the supermarket cornucopia, the smell and touch of a woman. But it could not all be hedonism – we came to this agreement early on – so we punctuated the long days spent napping and restaurant splurging with mountain hikes and museum tours, just to ward off the feelings of revulsion that we could become textbook big, fat, lazy, insensitive American tourists.

We started our journey reunited at last on the ground floor of the three-story-high circular international arrivals terminal in OR-TAMBO. She was smaller than I had remembered as I held her mane of untamed curls to my chest. Her eyes were hazel, her teeth white and her facial features soft. She was darker than I remembered, too; no doubt the result of spending eight months under the desert sun in her Arizona Americorp assignment. She looked healthy, a product of her being in control of her own environment, cooking for herself and practicing daily self-care in the peace and quiet. On the side of her neck Kokopelli winked at me from under her curls - right where I left him - and the compass on her left foot still pointed true north. Everything else was the same; the lilt of her voice, the one front tooth set back just ever so slightly from its neighbor.

There we were in Africa once again after eleven months of separation, each of us on our own trip of trying to save the world and in turn being bludgeoned by the harsh realities of trying to fight the system from within the system. She is stronger than I am - that is the way it has always been - and I saw less of the exhaustion in her eyes than when I would look in the mirror at my own. She had been taking care of herself; had been working on herself, and her toothy smiles and unabashed laughter melted away many months of the ice that had been building around my heart. It felt so strange to finally be standing beside the flesh and blood embodiment of what had for the last year been just a pixilated pretty face and sweet, consoling voice crackling with digital noise on a computer screen. There she was; small and fiery, all greens and brown, with a spirit far taller than her shadow.

Johannesburg was all BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes and tall building and billboards and security fencing and black and whites brusque in both pace and speech. I have never seen so much barbed wire in all my life. The racial tension was still palpable; blacks complained about the lingering effects of cruel white rule, whites made crass jokes about dysfunctional, childish blacks. And I could not prevent my poetic disposition from turning the barbed wire into a metaphor. Johannesburg is not soft. It is sharp, as sharp as the barbs and electric shocks of the fences which surround its neighborhoods. Such things are just a product of mistrust amongst its people, of half a century of apartheid and disenfranchisement and one race ruling another race with an iron fist. South Africa, at least its modern iteration, is a new country. It is still going through birthing pains, where aggressive groups of people – mainly blacks and whites – still retain a great deal of bitterness over what has been done to their lot. And so the barbed wire is strung up and there is de facto segregation in the townships and blacks and whites are still reserved in the way that they interact with each other. But the city itself seems prosperous, and though there is a wealth divide, it is not one that necessarily correlates to a racial divide. We met scores of affluent black South Africans driving luxury cars, dressed in suits and punching away on their smart phones. The city was unlike anywhere in Zambia because blacks and whites actually shared the environment. In Lusaka the only white people to be found are the scores of aid workers, missionaries and some expatriates living in the city for business or adventure. But in South Africa white people actually live there – it is their home – and they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. They are white Africans -- white South Africans -- and they are proud of it. I walked down the streets of Johannesburg and I did not feel like I was in the fishbowl anymore. I was just another white person, one of the millions that live in and around that city. And for those few days it was an immeasurable relief to be able to disappear again, to be anonymous. South Africa is not a wholly African nation like Zambia is, but rather a combination of so many different ideals; the colorfulness of Africa, the astuteness of Europe, the business savvy of India and the efficiency of Asia. It has a dark and bitter past, but the people do not wear it so palpably on their faces. There is just the lingering after effects of a bleak period, something that will turn into history before long and the racial lines will only become fainter with the passing years.

As is to be expected, a place with such diversity of skin color will inevitably bring with it a diversity of language. South Africa has eleven official languages, two the product of colonization (English and Afrikaans) and nine Bantu languages indigenous to the continent, the four most common of which are Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English, in that order. Afrikaans is essentially Dutch with influences from indigenous African language families like Bantu and Khoisan. It was formed after the first wave of Dutch colonization had taken root (creating an ethnic group known as the Afrikaners, which includes the Boers), and began diverging from European Dutch in the 18th century. For someone who has neither studied nor often heard purely Germanic languages, Afrikaans sounded like garbled German to my ears.  Besides Xhosa and Zulu speakers, whose dialects were almost completely unintelligible, trying to talk with Afrikaners speaking English was probably the most confusing and communicatively excruciating experience I had in the country. These sons and daughters of Dutch settlers speak English virtually monosyllabically, really only pronouncing the first and last letters of every word. For example, when the girl with the mars-brown hair and I went on a wine tour of Stellenbosch – a vast countryside of rolling hills, vineyards and wine estates outside of Cape Town – our Dutch South African tour guide would say things like “get pissed” (get drunk) in English, only he would pronounce it like “gt pst”. It is as if Afrikaners speak English in an attempt to speak the fewest number of syllables while still managing to get the point across.

In word structure and rhythm, Zulu and Xhosa sound similar to Bemba, another Bantu language cousin, but incorporate click sounds not found in most other Bantu languages in Sub-Saharan Africa. The girl with the mars-brown hair and I were taught how to properly pronounce Xhosa (*click*oo-sahh) by an old, gap-toothed woman who stood behind us in the longest line I have ever seen, swirling and zigzagging around city blocks in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. Nelson Mandela had died eight days before and his remains were to lie in the Union Building in the capital for three days. The two of us made the journey to Pretoria on the last day of public viewing, warding off jetlag and making a pact that we would not let such a monumental historical experience slip through our fingers. We took South Africa’s high speed train linking “Jo-Burg” and Pretoria that morning, navigating our way through the capital with a poorly detailed map printed off the internet. Our excitement over finally reaching the capital was soon dampened by the sight of a queue which newspapers said involved a six-hour wait. There must have been a thousand people ahead of us, all decked out in Mandela gear, African National Congress (ANC) flags, ribbons, face paint, masks and icitenge – the colored, pattered cloth which has become one of the strongest symbols of Africa in my mind. Food and curio sellers were making the rounds up and down the massive line, selling t-shirts, roasted maize, popsicles, ice cream and cold drinks.  

The old woman only butted into our conversation because a hawker approached us and tried to unload a can or two of Coca-Cola. On the side of the can the word Xhosa was printed -- in place of the brand name -- which I knew was a major language in the country but little else, and my traveling companion and I took turns trying to pronounce the word on the can and giggling at our attempts as the beverage seller became impatient. Then the woman behind us grabbed the can and drew our attention.

“*click*ooh-sahh,” she corrected with a smile. “You say it like this: *click*ohh-sah.” My traveling companion and I each took turns trying to emulate the first clicked syllable, but the woman never seemed satisfied. The way she created the intonation seemed to come from her throat, while we still struggled to begin the word with any sound other than the click of our tongues on the roof of our mouths.

As it turns out, we never got to see Mandela’s body. And we really didn’t need to. His ghost seemed to be everywhere in Jo-Burg and in the capital; signs and portraits in store windows and giant posters depicting his smiling face and gray hair hung off of 50-story office buildings, with slogans like “Rest in Peace, Mandela” and “Heroes Never Die” and “Bless The Founder of Our Nation”. At the train terminals on the way to Pretoria there were billboards with simple block-letter quotes from Mandela’s life, like “It’s always impossible until it’s done” and “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” These same slogans were pasted on pillars in the airport, along with his likeness.  

In that unpromising line, after our impromptu lesson in Xhosa pronunciation, a Rastafarian looking man happened upon us and asked if we wanted him to adorn our cheeks with a homemade stamp of Mandela’s face for five rand (South Africa’s official currency; 10 rand = 1 USD). The resemblance wasn’t exactly uncanny, but in a way it made us feel like we were part of the show; our own small way of honoring such a giant of a man on an occasion where “Tata Madiba” was on the tip of every South African’s tongue. And then suddenly, when our effort to say a last goodbye to the founder of a free South Africa appeared most futile, and it seemed that our muzungu skin would just burn to a crisp in the afternoon sun in a line that was only moving in fits and starts, the people ahead of us lurched forward. We were making progress. Too much progress as it turned out. The line to say farewell to “our beloved Tata” had turned into a rally because the government had decided to end the viewing early and move the body before the official end of the day. This angered a lot of the mourners, and they assembled in a giant mob in front of the capital building in a wave of bodies that we could not help but get swept up into. We were toward the front of the pack and we could see a police barricade with dozens of armed officers and members of the army looking around nervously. The mourners sung and danced and yelled and screamed, shaking their fingers at the police and projecting balled fists up in the air in Mandela’s iconic symbol of defiance.

“Give us Madiba!” they would yell in unison, and then break into another song in the native languages. The crowd swayed with the music and its beautiful harmonies of perfect-pitch, a fundamental trait of all Africans I have met on this continent.

At one point I looked around and noticed that we were the only white people in the throng. Sweaty black bodies kept smashing into us, and I thought I might lift the short, pretty mars-brown haired girl up on my shoulders so she could get a better view of what was unfolding before our eyes. A pair of boisterous South Africans standing next to us must have followed our example because suddenly there was another person being hoisted up onto shoulders, and that is when the news photographers swarmed in. At first there were only a few cameras pointed in our direction, no doubt capturing the novelty of a cute little white girl hovering over the bulging crowd of angry, screaming Africans shaking their fists. But then the hoisted-up member of the pair next to us decided to join hands with the girl on my shoulders and lift their embrace high above their heads. A moment later I could make out the photojournalists standing behind the police barricade tripping over themselves to get the shot in focus, firing off hundreds of photos and directing many of the sweaty, bobbing frizzy heads in our direction. Later that day, when we broke free of the mob and got some much-needed fluids and sustenance in our bodies, we decided without a doubt that that photo was going to be in the next day’s newspaper. It was perfect: a rally for South Africa’s most famous leader, the contention with the police, and at the center, a smiling white girl seemingly riding on the sea of angry faces and balled fists, holding hands with a black African also hovering above the crowd. Later that day, sitting on the dirty sidewalk outside a pizzeria a few blocks away from the capital building, we ate a vegetarian lunch out of a cardboard pizza box and let the sweat dry on our clothes. We had made the journey that morning to see a dead hero’s body, and had not even come close by any measure, but instead we had shared a moment with the people of South Africa: their anger, their grief, their passion and celebration. We were the token muzungus on the side of the fence with all the other everyday Africans, smiling at them, holding their hands, trying to feel what they felt.

Nothing ever turns out the way you expect it to. It is an uncompromising rule in this place; something I have learned the hard way during my time in Zambia. But I have also learned that if you do not fight it; if you let the primal mother take you where she leads you and do not question her will, she often leads you to what you need to see, which will forever be more important than what you want to see. I have learned to take it all in stride, to not get my hopes up, because all compounded things do indeed decay. That is the hardest lesson I have had to learn here. And that naive little boy sitting cross legged under the towering giraffe two years ago no doubt would have felt some tinge of defeat at how those events in Pretoria unfolded – that he did not get what he wanted -  but he has since been changed. His conception of what he wants to possess and experience in life versus what he needs to possess and experience has shifted. He has grown up and realized that he got what he needed that day; to share a meaningful experience with someone he loves; to trade a smile with a stranger; to be a part of something bigger than himself. The details no longer matter. He, who was once the rock in the river, rejecting the pull of the current and fighting for his stationary place in the universe, has learned to become the water which flows around the rock, fluid, diverting, accepting, adaptable.

  ***Part II - The Mother City    .....coming soon!***

- Stef


"The opinions and impressions expressed herein in no way represent the official stances or policies of the United States Government, the United States Peace Corps, Peace Corps Zambia or any appendage of the Zambian Government. These writings are intended for a small, select audience comprised of the author's friends, family members and associated parties back home, and are written in the capacity of a private U.S. citizen abroad and not officially as a Peace Corps Volunteer or U.S. Government employee."