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I feel as though it’s time for another update, but to be completely honest there isn’t a whole lot to update on. The last month it seems that class work has almost entirely consumed my life, and I don’t think this would be a very interesting blog entry if I talked about all the reading I’ve done and the lectures I’ve attended, or if I talked about the two 20 page papers that are due next week (I’m procrastinating, which is the real reason I’m writing this right now).

I think you would actually be shocked if you knew how similar to an American lifestyle my life is here. In fact some days walking around campus it would be easy to forget that I am not in America, but then a monkey will jump out of a garbage can and everyone reacts as though it were just a squirrel or a chipmunk, and I’m reminded of how far from home I am. I’m getting used to the small daily hardships we face, like hand-washing clothes (there is a Laundromat near us, but it costs $8 per load, which may not seem like much, but when you consider that I spend $15 on food for a whole week, you realize it’s pretty pricey) and not having a TV, a car, or internet access at my flat. Even the Durban heat and humidity have become more bearable as summer is slowly coming to a close. I even wore long sleeves a couple of times last week! Although one of the days that I thought it was cold out and had long sleeves on, I saw a thermometer in the afternoon that said that it was 83 degrees, so I‘m not sure if the thermometer was incorrect, or if I’m just acclimatizing surprisingly well.

One highlight from the last few weeks was a daytrip to Umhlanga Rocks, a small resort town with beautiful beaches about 30 minutes north of Durban. While there we stopped at Gateway, the largest mall in the Southern hemisphere, which sort of reminded me of King of Prussia mall in Philly. Definitely felt like I was in America that day. But the beaches were lovely and we went for a walk down the beach to a lagoon, which we didn’t realize was a nudist lagoon until we got there. Made for a bit of an awkward situation, until we stripped down and joined in. (Just joking.)

One thing that I am still adjusting to here is the safety issue. While I do feel safe in the part of town where I live, it can be tiring to always have to think about safety and always have to be in by 6:30 when it gets dark. It gets particularly frustrating on weekend nights when we want to go out, and are forced to choose between going to posh, wealthy bars with a dress code (clearly not my kind of place), and less safe but much more relaxed and fun bars. Even at the bar on campus we sometimes face safety issues. A few of us have started a tradition of stopping there every Friday afternoon after lectures for a couple of drinks, and last week someone came up to our male friends and requested that they go and “leave the white chicks here.” Looking around and realizing that Laura and I were not only among only a handful of women there, but also the only white people there, we decided that perhaps it was about time we headed home.

The gender issue has also been difficult to adjust to. I never realized how good women have it in the states until I arrived here. Don’t get me wrong, women and men still aren’t completely equal in the US, but they are so far from equal here that it has turned me into a bit of a feminist. Laura and I have found that men, both black and white, always address our other flat mate Andy rather than us when we meet them. This may seem like a small thing, but it’s very frustrating to not be included in conversations. Women aren’t supposed to drink beer (it’s un-womenly… I still do it) and when you shake hands with a man you’re supposed to give a limp handshake (to show submissiveness?). But I never know how far to push these boundaries and whether or not it’s my place to assert my values on another culture. One day in class we got into a discussion about gender, and it was interesting to see the reaction of the males in our class and how they sort of laughed at the women, saying “oh, here they go again on their feminist rants.” I will say that I’ve discovered that for some reason South African men are worse than any of the men from other parts of Africa. Two of my closes friends here, Lukes and Tawanda, are from Malawi and Zimbabwe respectively, and I’ve found that they are very respectful towards women and just generally very good guys. Why South African men have different ideas of gender roles, I’m not sure.

While this issue is an annoyance for me, it is even worse for poor women who are not white. Black women are expected to do all of the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing in their households. One South African girl that I know told me that she would never marry because she would then become a slave. In addition, they are often forced to have jobs as well to make money to support the family. I’m actually thinking about doing my dissertation on care work, which is done almost entirely by women. By care work, I mean caring for children, elderly, the disabled, and the ill (especially those with HIV/AIDS). There have been studies done in South Africa that reveal that even when men are unemployed they do not assist in care work because they don’t feel it’s their duty. This clearly puts a huge burden on women. As one person told me the last time I was here, “this country is carried on the backs of women.” I’ve been looking into doing my research on nurses and the current “brain drain” (nurses are moving to the UK or US where they can make more money) and the impact of their absence on communities and the discrepancy between those who need care and those who are able to care.

Alright, rather than catching you up on my life here I’ve again managed to go off on a tangent, which my sister Abby will probably accuse of being too political. Oh well, it’s probably more interesting to read about this stuff than to read about my daily schedule which consists of walking to campus, doing a couple of hours of reading, attending class, coming back and doing more reading, then going to bed. At the end of this quarter (in a week and a half) we have a nice long two week break, during which I’m hoping to do some traveling, possibly to Zimbabwe, so I promise a much more action packed update next time. Unfortunately my flat mate Laura has decided to return to the UK at the end of this quarter, which I‘m very sad about because she’s a wonderful person and has become a very close friend. The good news is, we have an open room in our flat now, so if anyone wants to move to South Africa, you’d have a place to stay:)

I hope all is well with you all. Keep in touch; I love receiving your emails!