Durban Excursion

First of all the picture below is the view from our apartment we stayed in last night. But anyways. Lets see, where did I leave off.

Yesterday afternoon we had our first real encounter with Durban and South Africans. Our academic director, Zed, sent us loose to use the bus line called the People Mover to explore Durban, find various locations throughout the city, and get the chance to get to talk to the people that live here. After school in the morning, Seth and I walked across the street from the apartments we had moved into for the night (again right across from the beach!) to the People Mover bus stop. We got on the bus and pretty much immediately I realized that I had no idea where we were going. The bus driver was very helpful and pointed out that our map of the bus routes was not correct….

The first place we got off was the Workshop, which is essentially a shopping mall. The first South Africans we talked to were two students! They were very friendly which was a nice boost of confidence for us. They told us that they were just visiting the city for the day but they were graduating soon and then they were going to have to try to find work. They weren’t the only ones to tell us that the economy in Durban made it much harder to find work than in Jo’burg or Cape Town. The next people we talked to there were two middle aged women, and we could tell as soon as we started talking to them that they had a negative attitude towards us. They told us, as they were walking away, to go to an information booth downstairs to get our questions answered.

After that we hopped back on the bus. We met a Pakistani man who had also lived in Japan. He came to Durban for work – he makes boat cushions for yachts, and since Durban is right on the water there is a very high demand for his craft here. He was very modest in saying that he didn’t speak very good English, but I was very impressed. He also answered some of our questions about healthcare here. There is a private and a public sector, private obviously costing more and public being supplied by the government but having long lines, which by the way are called queues here.

We got off the bus and headed towards “the mosque.” Judging by the name and the description that we got, I thought it was going to be a massive actual mosque, as in a place of worship; however, it turned out to be mostly a shopping center (as it seems most of Durban is), and we failed to find any religious aspect about it other than the architecture. We also wandered to the Victoria Marketplace, where I saw more goat/lamb heads than I have ever cared to see in my life, and we then had to promptly leave the fish/meat section since I started feeling nauseous.

It was here that we had the most exciting conversation of the day. We met a man from Jo’burg who was here looking for work. Again he said that Durban was notorious for being hard to find a job – especially a steady one. He also opened up to us about health care, repeating what we had heard on the bus, and also mentioning that he thought it was the government’s responsibility to open up more clinics in rural areas and make the public healthcare more accessible to the people living out in the more rural areas. Durban health care was pretty good, but he said a lot of people out in the villages have a hard time getting to the hospitals. They wait until they are really sick because it is such a hassle to get to the city, and by that time, many of them die before they can make it to get treated.

Looking back on the experience I realize how much growing up in the US effected my expectations and fed my nervousness of the situation. Personally, I know that I have a tendency to distrust strangers and to be suspicious of people that come up to you on the streets. South Africans are extremely friendly. Seth and I would be standing on the street corner for 10 seconds and we would have someone come up to us and ask us if we were lost and needed help. That’s most likely because we stuck out like sore thumbs, but a majority of the people we encountered were very welcoming and helpful and as soon as we made an effort to talk to them and listen to what they were saying they got so excited and were willing to take time out to help us and give us advice.

The concept of race is here also strangely familiar to that at home, while also its own dynamic. One of our lecturers put it well when they said that South Africa is two worlds, first and third. And its true. There is such an extreme juxtaposition of the well off and the majority lower class living side by side, and extreme gap that isn’t seen in the US. Walking around and living here for not even a week has already helped to give me a greater appreciation for what I have how much of a privileged life I have lived thus far. We have found ourselves saying “First world problems” many times over the past few days.

So far I think I am adjusting decently well. I am still overwhelmed by all we are going to learn and all of the many different experiences they are going to throw at us in the next few months (they call it “experiential learning”). But I am also very excited to get to experience it all. The accents also still give me trouble.. It is a lot different than we are used to, and when ordering food and talking to people from here I can tell they also have trouble understanding my American accent. I also can’t remember the last time I have consistently woken up before 7 every morning…

We just finished our morning of classes, learning about the state of the nation as well as Indian and colored identities in South Africa. This afternoon we get to meet our homestay families and tonight I will be staying with Mama Ruby! Eeeeek! I will tell you all about my host family in my next post!


Hope all is well back in the US!