ZA ZA South Africa

At this moment, I am sitting in my dorm, having just woken up, and listening to some girls in the hall laughing and speaking Afrikaans. The language is completely unintelligible to me, as its origins lie in both Dutch (from South Africa's former colonists) and indigenous African tongues.

I have so far attended two days of my Development Anthropology class. In this session, there are about 40+ students. I am one of three students that originated in North America, and one of those is French Canadian. My roommate is American, but she has spent the last several years as a hospital chaplain in Ethiopia. Other students hail from such far flung places as Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Bolivia, Australia, Ukraine, and, ah! yes, Africa. There are a few students from South Africa (which I have been told a few times is not ACTUALLY Africa, I would have to go to a less modernized country to experience the "real" Africa), but many students also come from the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, etc...I love listening to all of the different accents, it is like a fluid mosaic, always changing, never staying static.

It is a real humbling experience to be the only person in this session who has spent most of her life in America. I feel guilty, almost inherently, to have been raised in a moderately privileged environment, with two parents, not really wanting for anything. At the same time, I smile to myself when I hear the student from Zimbabwe remark on how much she misses watching television at her house.

Everyone knows that I am the "resident anthropologist" in the group, and they continuously ask me what I think of our class, and if it is all review to me. I answer yes, but that I am not at all looking forward to our Statistics class as the end of the session, where I will be an expert by nobody's standards.

This past Saturday, we took a mini-trip to the beach, which was sunny, windy, and beautiful. There were plenty of daring kite-surfers, as well as youthful socc-um-FOOTBALL players. I am excited to take pictures of my campus as well, which is just unreal. This coming Thursday we will be taking a scenic drive around Cape Point, to which I am looking forward.

Until then, school school school! Anyone have any ideas for an ethnography that I could do in the Detroit area? :]

Chels