Sometimes, loving is

the bravest thing you can do.

Und ich frage mich, „wie?“. Wie zur Hölle könnt ihr erbärmlichen, rassistischen Arschlöcher solche Taten vollbringen. Menschen verachten aufgrund ihrer Herkunft. Ihres Aussehens. Ihres Glaubens. Und dann würde ich gerne auf euch losgehen. Mit nackten, wütenden Fäusten. Und so lange auf euch einschlagen, bis eure hässliche, kleingeistige Visage nur noch Matsch ist. Und dann überkommt mich das ungute Gefühl, dass meine moralische Überlegenheit in solchen Momenten eine ziemlich eklige Farce ist.

(Und trotzdem wäre die Welt ohne euch ein besserer Ort.

Dasselbe denkt ihr über mich vermutlich auch.)

The Day I almost got arrested. Or: Murphy’s Law.

This incident happened about one month before the end of my stay.
To save my poor mother's nerves, I only told my brother back then.

It was already a tiring and strenuous day as I had to wake up early in the morning after a night of sentimental goodbye-drinking to bring my favourite french flatmate to the airport. A serious cappuccino to go should have got me going, but it only caused an accelerated heart rate while my head was still tired. ‘Cause I already drove for two hours when I arrived at the office in the morning,  I was really glad not to go into field this day and have a more relaxed day at the office.


As the morning went by, a little drama arose as we thought to have lost all our backed-up data due to problems with the server, so we started to call RAs back into the office to get hold of their tablets, which seemed to be the only place the data was saved on. (This was when someone blurted out a comment about murphy’s law. Maybe the day got jinxed at this moment.) 
After a late lunch due to a delivery failure of our Nando’s food (which left us almost starving for over an hour #first world problems), we get a call from one of our FWCs who got stopped at a traffic control while driving a Mahindra with an RA-Team in the back. Apparently the car only showed a plate with the allowance to carry two persons while we always carry 8 people in the back. A bit irritated and panicky, we rushed to the traffic control with all the car documents from the office to prove that - in fact - actually everything was alright with the car and we have the right permits. 
When we arrived at the traffic control, a guy in a leather jacket approached us and started to ask questions. I was pretty confused as I had no idea who that guy was and why he was talking to us. I even figured he’s just a spectator who’s also a bit mental. Well... Turns out it was the supervisor of the Department of Home Affairs and my blurted-out answer „oh, it’s alright - we work together“ to the question „What are you doing here? How do you know this guy?“ (meaning our held-up FWC) was a very unfortunate one…
So, apparently this was not just a normal traffic control and our FWC was also held up because he didn’t carry his passport with his visa… So when we came there to rescue him, we apparently also didn’t carry our passports (I mean - who does that in a country where everyone always tells you how easy it is to get robbed?) So instead of saving him by bringing the car documents, we made it worse and I got myself into some deep shit. 
And the guys from Home Affairs started showing off their power. We had violated our terms of stay by not carrying our visas with us and would spend a night in prison. Also, what visas are we on? And if I am on a tourist visa, why do I volunteer as this is not permitted on a tourist visa (and another reason that could me get arrested). They were not amused. So wasn’t I.


This was when we started calling our neighbour (who is a magistrate) and our boss in England to get some legal advice. When they were taking us away in a police car to drive us home to get our passports, I was on skype with our boss who instructed me how to make up a believable story about initially wanting to travel the country and only visiting friends at the project and ending up staying because I was so moved by the work and all the children the project aims to help.

I am a very bad liar.

So while I was sitting in the car, silent and terrified after having told my story, my colleague - who was on a proper visa - tried to charm the lady from Home Affairs by casually chatting and being super friendly. Didn’t really work. She was like the iron lady. After ten minutes, he could finally get a little smile out of her - and her colleague, who was driving, even offered us a piece of candy. The ice was, well, not really broken, but at least starting to melt.
 Back at the police control on the highway, our neighbour had arrived and was waiting for us. He actually interrupted work to come and save us, this angel of our project (he also built two tables for our office and towed broken-down cars to the mechanics - not counting the endless amount of food and beer he supplied us with during Braais and casual social gatherings). Gladly, he didn’t have to show off his power as the police finally let us go - me with a warning that they actually will arrest me when they ever catch me working again. (And trust me - they weren’t joking on this matter).
 So we could finally drive back to the office. Two poor colleagues of ours were waiting for us at our car the entire time and so were the 8 RAs. They were incredibly sweet, supportive and worried and I felt so bad for them to be stuck there for so long. When we drove back, we also had to find a way not to run into the police control again as the seatbelts in the backseat of our car weren’t working. 
What a day.
 The initially held-up FWC was brought to the police station to wait for someone to get his passport from Alice (which is about a 40-minute-drive away). Poor guy. But his girlfriend rushed to King in no-time, bringing his passport and rescuing him. (I’d say she’s definitely a keeper.)


In the evening, when I popped down at our neighbour's with some thank-you-beers, he actually told me that he looked into the legal works and the Department of Home Affairs could have gotten me arrested for 14 to 48 days without seeing a judge or anything. Fuck.

Gladly, I'm sitting on my porch now, safely back in Germany. But boy, I guess I really just escaped prison that day. (So maybe Murphy's law didn't kick in with all its force in the end...)

Beautiful People and a Braai.

I love living in the Eastern Cape. Its randomness and the smiles on peoples’ faces. Its wildflowers and its cows grazing next to the road. And the stars on its night sky and the full moon lightening the fields in front of a village palace. I love its stories about hit donkeys and angry ancestors. I even started to love its chaos. But what struck me most are its people. I love our RAs and their spirit. I love to hear them sing songs about Mahindras and songs about being incomplete every time someone’s leaving. I love their laughs and sometimes even their stubbornness, but mostly their jokes and seeing their smiles not only on their lips but also in their eyes. I love their warmth and how welcoming they were. I will miss all this. I think it changed me for the better. Or at least I hope so.

If I could carry just a fraction of their warmth in my heart when I go, I’d feel blessed forever.

A night full of laughter and tons of grilled meat. A cook looking irritated at my veggie patties. A goodbye and lots of booze. An encounter with the security guards I wished I could have avoided, but a lovely girl who saved me by smuggling Amarula in like a badass. The most beautiful songs in the world sung by the most beautiful voices. A lot of great dancing and some failed attempts (by me, of course). Tough negotiations about how many cows I’m worth and a two-hour drive in the back of a Mahindra I thought would never end. But oh, the beautiful night sky. And the moon. And the cold. But with so much warmth in your heart*, you don’t care about the cold anymore.

*I leave it to my readers to speculate on the source of this warmth. It might have been alcohol-related. But it might as well have sprung from the midst of some singing and dancing with those awfully lovely and bright Xhosa-souls.

About losing your language

Sometimes it feels like I am losing the ability to express myself in my mother tongue. It is a strange feeling. As if my synapses aren’t working properly anymore. As if I lost all my thoughts. 
When I am trying to write E-Mails in German, I don’t know how to say things. How to form my messed-up thoughts into proper sentences. How grammar works. (And let’s not even start talking about proverbs and sayings…) The problem is, I also still struggle with English and though I’m understanding most things and I actually feel almost fluent at it, I still make tons of mistakes and I’m still lacking so much vocabulary that I don’t know where to begin… So my linguistic skills are fading away and I feel like I am robbed of something I always considered crucial to my character. Being able to master the (german) language, being able to write and express myself, being a painter with words - yeah, that was how I saw myself for a long time. Or at least for some moments. And now? Now I feel like my thoughts have dyslexia or something… In both languages. (And I know that there is a better way to express this, but the words escape me). My brain is mutilated and I don’t know how this could happen. I am lacking a crucial part of myself and so far it doesn’t seem like I will get it back… Maybe multilinguality is not for everyone. Or maybe I am not what I thought I am. Maybe my skills are lying somewhere else…


On Paradise, Powercuts and Poverty.

South Africa is blessed with beautiful places. Just driving through the rural areas around King is stunning enough, but then there are places like Hogsback: A little hippie escape in the mountains, with the most beautiful eco hostel i have seen so far. It was my first weekend in South Africa when we spontaneously took off to one and a half days of relaxation, eating delicious food at the Butterfly Bistro, enjoying a horseback-ride and a small hike, sleeping in the coolest dorm ever, being woken up by a kitten chasing my feet under the blanket and cuddling with two cute (and a little annoying) puppies who kept us from reading, sleeping or eating by constantly chewing on everything they could get between their teeth (like books, blankets, shoes, t-shirts…). But who could be mad at something as sweet as this?

And there is Hamburg - pretty much the opposite to its german counterpart: a small, quiet village on the Sunshine Coast where absolutely nothing exciting is happening. But the view you get after conquering a few kilometers of unpaved dirt road is incredible. And while there is no place to eat out and only one of the two hostels in the travel-guide actually exists (while the other one is only taking down reservations over the phone), it is a very relaxing place to enjoy some beachtime and drink a beer while watching the sunset (and do some shopping at a half-vacated art gallery).


Though South Africa is a beautiful country, on a structural level it is deeply messed up. While Apartheid was a morally pretty fucked-up, racist time, some say at least the economic situation was better during this time and most people were better off then - at least in the Eastern Cape. While I have not enough knowledge to judge this statement, I can say that now (over 20 years later), there is unfortunately still a lot of separation and poverty. And the big south african electric power company - Eskom - who was exporting a majority of its produced electricity into various other countries a few decades back, is by now not even able to supply its own country with enough electricity. (Talk about mismanagement here.) Although I imagined load shedding to be worse and more frequent, it is still annoying and anything but helpful for economic development. While some companies like big supermarkets and fast food chains have generators, enabling them to keep their businesses running during blackouts, a lot of small businesses are cut off and not able to take payments during this time…

Apart from that, complaining about blackouts on a personal level seems spoilt when you look at the living situation of most families in rural areas and townships. Two hours per day without electricity is easy to cope with when you can actually afford having electricity in general. Having a horrible shower without warm water most of the time is easy to cope with when you actually have a shower with running water and even a flushing toilet in your house (and not a drop toilet in your backyard). Freezing inside your house without heating is easy to cope with when you can afford blankets and warm socks. Having a leaking roof during heavy rain is easy to cope with when you actually have a dry house 364 days a year. Having to drive 45 minutes to East London to buy good bread or find a decent place to eat out is easy to cope with when you actually can afford to buy enough food or even eat out. A lot of people here cannot. They don’t have a job or a proper house, they struggle with money, with health, death and HIV, rape, violence, hunger and lack of perspective. They don’t have running water and their children are running outside barefoot, playing with empty PET bottles instead of fancy toys. And still their smile is happier and blither than anything I’ve ever seen. (So how can I even vindicate one single sorrow and doubt I ever had compared to this?) Well, it’s all about perspective. And gratitude.

But hey - congrats to South Africa for not calling themselves a developing country anymore and refusing to give people volunteer visas. I can definitely see a lot of improvement and decent living conditions for the whole population and no need for any help. (Irony off.)

The Day Nick moved out

Sometimes, enough is enough. Not paying rent, trying to steal my ice tea... Everything can be forgiven. But when he tried to hold hands with me I just knew we had to go separate ways. He now lives on the sidewalk. Sorry Nick, I'd like to keep our relationship platonic. Don't come back. Don't make things complicated.

A typical Thursday Morning.

00:15 - I wake up because I hear heavy rain pouring on the roof and the wind knocking on my windows. Half asleep I save my laptop, phone and everything that’s lying next to my mattress and put it in my suitcase. Last night when it was raining heavily, water was coming through my roof and was just running down the wall next to the socket I charge all my stuff.

00:20 - I fall back into comatose sleep, dreaming weird stuff. Like every night.

07:23 - My alarm is ringing, trying to wake me. After two snooze-episodes, I actually realize what’s going on and drag myself to the bathroom. When you’re living with your colleagues, who have to leave the house at the same time as you, every opportunity of an unoccupied bathroom has to be seized.

07:50 - I’m crawling back into bed with a cup of coffee, trying to wake up slowly (and escaping the cold of the room under my warm blanket) while watching an episode of friends.

08:40 - My colleagues are already gone in one of the two cars that are parked inside our gate every day. I am leaving the house in a rush, swearing at the lock we use for our gate - as every morning. Locks tend to be always jammed when you’re in a rush. Or carrying several heavy bags. Or in the middle of the night when you just want to fall into your bed instantly. Or when it’s raining, like today.

08:43 - I am finally on my way to work, accidentally hitting a deep pothole and feeling pity for our poor rental. I am overtaking several cars, swearing. Why is nobody able to drive in this country? If they’d go any slower, they’d go backwards.

08:46 - I arrive at the office, looking forward to a relaxed morning and my writing afternoon. During our morning meeting we realize that we are short on drivers and I have to go into field. I am annoyed. Possibly because I was too lazy to eat breakfast this morning and a lack of food doesn’t do any good for my mood. Possibly because it’s raining and I don’t have a jacket with me, nor proper shoes to be outside for more than 2 minutes.

09:15 - I speak to my team about two possible referrals from the last days. Two Teens seem to be having a high suicide risk. I am glad that it’s not a rape case.

09:30 - Grumpy because of a lack of breakfast I rush home again, grabbing a rainjacket, some leftover food from yesterday’s dinner and putting on proper shoes. Now I am ready to face a rainy day in field.

09:45 - I am at the office again, trying to coordinate my team. Everyone is pissed because it’s raining, one of our team members didn’t show up, we haven’t recruited a community guide (for safety and navigation) yet for the township we (or actually they) are going in today and generally everything’s chaotic.  As every morning. Having a small office jammed with 45 people every morning is prone to being chaotic, but you’re still annoyed every time.

10:00 - My team is ready to go, still lacking one member. I send them off anyway with one of our drivers and rush to another group who’s waiting for me to be their additional driver as we only have three big cars who can fit a whole team and only three hired drivers, but four teams. So we bring out the fourth team with two small cars and two Fieldwork Coordinators (FWC) as drivers.

10:10 - I am finally sitting in a car with half of someone else’s team, waiting for the other half to go in front and guiding the way.

10:15 - We’re still waiting.

10:20 - The other half of the team is rushing by, just through a yellow traffic light, not to be seen again.

10:21 - We’re calling them. They’re at the petrol station. We decide to go first and find our way. Another car with a project manager (PM) and a community guide trainer should be following us but it’s not coming. So we are waiting. again.

10:25 - We are finally on our way, with the other car following us.

10:40 - Arrival in the township, waiting for the community guide. And the other half of the team. I decide to finally go for some breakfast, indulging half a grilled cheese sandwich, some fries and two fried mushrooms. All leftovers from yesterday’s team dinner at a restaurant. All cold. All tasting like crap. But it helps to boost my bloodsugar just enough to take my grumpyness away.

10:50 - The other half of the team is finally here and ready to go pick up the community guide. We follow them and so is the other car with the project manager and the community guide trainer. What a weird parade. People in the township are looking at us, quite irritated.

10:55 - We are at the community guide’s house. Waiting. Two Research Assistants (RAs) are going off to do an interview. I have no idea what’s happening. No one actually has. Apparently, the community guide is not showing up, so we are turning around and trying to pick up another one. The car with the Project manager is staying behind. We lose the car in front of us as the two RAs are coming back from the planned interview because no one seems to be at the house. Now we are 6 people in a car with 5 seats, trying to find the other car again.

11:05 - We are united again, driving to the second community guide who is actually there, dropping two RAs off on our way so we are finally having enough proper seats again for all the people in the car.

11:10 - We are stopping outside a house to drop 2 RAs for an interview.

11:11 - They are coming back. The Teen they wanted to interview ran away and is not to be found. Just after threatening his mother to stab her. Because he wants all the grant money for himself. I’m not even surprised anymore.

11:12 - We are trying two other houses for interviews, but as it’s the beginning of June, everyone seems to be in town to buy food from the grant money they always receive in the beginning of the month.

11:30 - We are waiting for the other car again.

11:45 - Finally everyone is in one place. All three cars. So the community guide trainer can train our picked up community guide in finding programme participants for us. We are waiting again. In the meantime, I chat with one of our RAs about beer, whiskey, rock music and claustrophobia and sending a gps link to another pair of FWCs who are about to join us, respectively take the second shift in field as me and the other FWC-driver are actually supposed to have our writing afternoon off.

12:00 - Everyone actually arrived. We swap cars and drivers and I am finally off to the office, surprised that I can leave this early and very happy to leave the field chaos behind.

12:30 - I am finally home, switching into sweatpants. I call my team to check if everything’s going alright with them.

12:40 - I start writing this blogpost, sipping coffee and freezing in our living room without heating, running into my bedroom from time to time to check if there is water coming through the roof as it started to rain heavily again.

I wish I could say this was a typical day, but it wasn’t. Not only because it was just half a day (which I can enjoy maximum once a week, if at all) but because there are no normal days here. Everything is madness. And chaos. But at least not boring at all - well, apart from the hours spent waiting somewhere in a car.

Office Chaos

Downpour.

On days like these it is hard not to think about fathers who rape their 5-year-old daughters, or beat the shit out of their children. Or children living in shacks, not having enough to eat. Or drunk men walking from door to door in poverty-stricken villages, claiming to collect money for retired grannies - while I am pretty sure they will spend every single rand they selflessly collected on booze.
On days like these it is hard to see a reason in our existence, or our work, or anything really. On days like these my mind is as gray as the sky above my head. And I feel bad for feeling bad because I am blessed as fuck whereas others are soaking out there. Literally and metaphorically. And - to be honest - I could do more to make things better. I could do a lot more.

But on days with sunshine, I just care less. Things slip from my mind and while working it is easy to be distracted. It is easy to be distracted while driving through a beautiful scenery. It is easy not to think about death and HIV and violence and hunger. At least for a while. But it shouldn’t be. It fucking should not. How can I enjoy going out, having brunch, spending a shitload of money on tofu and chocolate and all the unnecessary things I feel like I am needing. How much ignorance is necessary to prevent oneself from becoming insane in this place?

Molweni!

Wow, it’s already been a whole month since I was boarding my plane to South Africa. So far, the days have just flown by… It is crazy how fast time is passing and at the same time I feel like I have  experienced so much in such a short time. It’s hard to find words for this weird space-time continuum I’m going through right now. Things are even more messed up since we work from Tuesday to Saturday every week and everybody else’s Mondays are now my Sundays… But well, at least I can honestly say that I don’t hate Mondays anymore. And still, I don’t even hate Tuesdays because working for this project doesn’t compare to any 9-to5-job I’ve had so far. My colleagues are all unbelievably great people and it almost feels like working together with friends (though it’s maybe weird to speak of friends after only 1 month, but I guess living in this kind of diaspora binds us together…)




Apart from that, I am pretty sure I won’t get bored any time soon, as my tasks at work are pretty diverse so far and there are new challenges and problems (well, let’s maybe rather say surprises) every day. I got assigned to most of the office logistics and organization (I guess being a frantic list-maker due to a very bad short-term memory and a latent OCD got me there…) and since yesterday I even have my own team of 8 lovely Research Assistants who I have to look after now. As they are the ones actually going into field and doing the interviews in Xhosa, the whole project relies on their work. And I am now the one making sure they know where they are going every morning and whether they have everything they need when they leave for the field, plus checking if there’s everything alright with the data when they come back, etc. This is actually a huge responsibility (or at least it feels like one), so I’m quite excited how the next weeks will turn out! (But as we are all amazing at our jobs, everything should go smoothly - at least more or less ;)


So, let’s dig into living in the Eastern Cape. Being a white European here in King Williams Town felt really weird in the beginning. You feel like carrying a flashlight saying „I’m not from here. I don’t belong here.“ and the fact that I was unable to blend in and hide in the masses was really bothering me the first days. But I guess I will eventually get used to it - or maybe at least be able to ignore it. Anyhow, though I still feel like a part-time-intrudor sometimes and I really hate drawing attention to me without any reason, King has become my home quite quickly. I even got used to the annoying powercuts, which cut off your cooking mid-term or leave you without coffee (and hair straightener!) in the morning… An at all times well-charged laptop and a hard-drive full of series is a crucial thing not to turn crazy at this point.

So far for my everyday-life here in South Africa, where winters feels like summer and roads seem to be consisting solely out of potholes and cattle. Besides this, people generally seem to be unable to maneuver a vehicle in this country, especially if a roundabout is involved in the process. I don’t even care to wait for any green light anymore as a pedestrian, since they seem to be more some kind of a recommendation than a crucial instruction. So I am slowly trying to lose my inherent germanness, which is alright for me regarding this matter, but every time I have to throw something into a bin without recycling or separating it, a little part of me dies.

But let’s do a quick jump to the touristy part and provide you guys with some cliché photogrpahs. I have so far managed to spend two lucky long weekends in lovely eco-hostels (and one not so lovely hostel with a spider under my pillow, an ant-colony in my room and brown water in the shower…). But apart from that, I have had an exciting post-birthday safari-day in Addo Elephant Park, watching out for the great grey pachyderms:

Deserted Waterhole...

Kudus...

Finally an Elephant - and what a beauty!

And to relax from this strenuous animal-hunt in Addo, we've spent two very relaxed days in Tsitsikamma, chilling at the beach, eating everything the local farm had to offer and enjoying a perfect breakfast view:

You see, I am having a great time here and I might possibly never come back until they drag me out of this beautiful, crazy and somehow deeply messed-up country.