In the sodium

And throw away my misery.
It never meant that much to me.
It never sent a get well card….

…disassembles my despair.
It never took me anywhere.
It never once bought me a drink.

-The WeakerThans “Reconstruction Site”

Greetings loyal blogsters!

First a few cool websites…

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

If you go to this website you can help to donate mammograms to needy women by simply clicking on a button. Link up and start donating! It’s super easy.

http://www.radiopcp.blogspot.com/

This is the blog of a radio project I spoke about on my last post. My friend Bill Taylor is down in Honduras now (despite Hurricane Felix) helping to erect an AM radio station for the indigenous rights organization COPINH. The blog is super cool and firsthand account of a very worthy radio project.

http://www.thislife.org/

I’ve been listening to a radio program on my iPod called ‘This American Life.’ It’s a public radio program that comes out of Chicago and, besides ‘Poodles Ahoy!,’ is the best radio show I’ve ever heard. It’s a one hour program on some area of American Life. It’s witty, unique, funny, and has good musical interludes. My mother introduced me to this show when I was a youngster and I’ve been loyal ever since. The first episode I heard was about a man that wanted to run down an antelope after reading a Native American myth about it. The program followed his training and progress. If you want to learn about American Life in a way you’ll never get anywhere else…this is your source!! You can download episodes for free from this site.

http://www.parkingday.com/

This is the website of an initiative that is going down in San Francisco on Sept 21, but is also a worldwide event. The organizers are trying to inspire people to take parking lots and transform them into parks for one day. If you are in Kenosha, WI on Sept 21 then go check out my friend’s park at her school: Armitage Academy down by the lake and the Free Masons Lodge.

There’s really not much earth-shattering news to report here in Pretoria. I’ve been spending a lot of time since Oppikoppi with my friend Raoni, from Brazil, and we really haven’t been doing much. It’s just what I’ve needed. I’ve felt like I have a normal life here because of hanging out with him...as normal as a Brazilian/American duo in South Africa could be, that is. It's nice to do normal stuff if you’ve been feeling like a foreigner without a home. I’ve been going to his house for the last few weekends and not doing a whole lot: watching TV, talking to little kids, playing with his cat, listening to music, studying. One weekend he came to my place to hang and go to a few parties. It’s been fantastic. First, it’s always great to hang out with him (even if we don’t do anything). Second, it’s nice to not be in my dorm room all weekend. Until you have to live (or go back to living) in a spartan dormitory cell…well you really take for granted all the “comforts” of a home. Things like a couch, a gigantic bed, a porch, neighbors that are a variety of ages from babies to golden oldies, wide open rooms. Well…even just rooms, period. My life takes place these days in one room…two if you include the toilet/shower room. Sometimes I even miss TV. My dorm room is not really set up for relaxing, so even when I do have time to kick back…there’s not much to kick back to or on or with. It kind of sucks because usually when I want, or am able, to chill out and turn my brain off…well, I really need it. I miss my High St porch in Urbana, IL sooooo much!

I know I always say it (because I’m an optimist), but I really feel like my mood is turning around here. It’s happening for a number of reasons. First, I get this place a lot more. “This place” being Pretoria. I’m starting to fall into a rhythm and all my energy is no longer required to complete simple tasks like buying groceries and going to classes. I’m getting used to riding my bike in a crazy environment where every car is out to kill you. It’s all about a careful mixture of ruthless pedaling and meekness. I can give directions to someone driving in a car. Wow! That surprised me a lot! Even radio stuff has been getting easier. I sort of know what I’m doing now and I’m no longer “the new person.” There are 2 new producers, so I’m sort of an old hand…if you can believe that. Dad, I earned my first money in SA in this week. I just got paid R100 for a voiceover I did. I said “Look and Listen, for the fans,” which was used in a commercial, and money came to me...because I have an American accent and a sexy radio voice. Sort of weird if you ask me, but I can’t complain. About ½ second of audio is going straight to the bank!!

In this past month I have been all over the media here. I got paid for this radio spot, was interviewed on one of the major news websites in South Africa because I was an Oppikoppi virgin (24.com), and just had an article that I wrote published in a student newspaper with a circulation of 100,000 and a distribution to most of the major university campuses in South Africa. It's in a paper called the Campus Times which is put out by the best paper in SA: The Mail and Guardian (http://www.mg.co.za/). Watch out South Africa…Lynsee is here and she’s not sitting quietly in the corner!! My new motto is: “Taking over SA media, one source at a time.” If you want a copy of the paper then email me. I can send you a copy no problem. I’m really proud of the article cos I think it’s well written and really encapsulates a lot of my feelings toward this place. I was asked to reflect on being an American student at a predominately Afrikaans university. In short, I’m flexing my ambassador role all over the show!

2nd, I am starting to really cultivate some good friends here. Namely, Raoni, but also a friend at the radio station, Kenzy. Palesa…if you want to call her what her mother does. She’s a DJ and we have been working together a lot on different radio segments as well as hanging out. She’s got a lot of cool ideas and I push the buttons to make them turn into audio. We are a wicked combination! We’ve worked primarily on a set of radio segments called “Mind your language” that highlight different slang terms from various groups worldwide. I did the voice on the first 12 episodes which broke down hillbilly slang from the USA South. The next 10 episodes were giving definitions of slang from Durban (another big city in SA). Durban Indian slang. There is a really huge population of Indian people that live there and apparently there’s a distinctive slang among that group of South Africans. We are working on a set of episodes defining “tsotsi-tal” which is SA gangster slang. ‘Tsotsi’ being the word for gangster…which you might remember from a movie from SA that won an academy award last year. ‘tal’ I think means talk/slang or something…maybe in Afrikaans. Not quite sure. We are also working on a piece called “Urban Zulu” which features the Urban Zulu, an oracle of wisdom (in the Chinese philosophy tradition) that hails from one of the provinces here (KwaZulu Natal). If you want to hear any of these segments…email me. I’ll hook it up! On an unrelated note, Kenzy drives a very very old school Jaguar. It’s been cool to drive around town and to Joburg with her in the Jag. People are always looking at you and checking out the car. Awww…it makes you feel special. You can see a photo of us at the Tuks FM bday party. We were the door women taking cash from all the guests, oh yeah!
I’ve also been hanging out a lot with Cliff, a Zimbabwean friend from 2002. He lives in Joburg, but has been working a lot in Pretoria, so we get together just about every week. I don’t know if know you are hip to my Zimbabwean donkey story (ask me later) but Cliff is one of the guys that was a part of the donkey incident. So, we’ve been thru a lot together and he’s my closest friend from the time I was in South Africa in 2002. We’ve been having a great time together cos Cliff is a wonderful spark trapped inside the body of a business man. He’s contagious. You can see a photo of Cliff below from when I first arrived here. L-R: Cliff, Gamu, me, Chido, and Chido's auntie.
I’m a people person and really really need to have good folks around me to distract me from working too hard or focusing too much on myself and my emotions. I would make a terrible hermit. That has been the hardest part about being here…not really having anyone close and having to try to keep myself from not working too hard and not tweaking out in my brain. Ummm…read my past posts…I don’t think I’ve been doing that great of a job at distracting myself. So it’s refreshing to have some kindred spirits to spend my time with. Hanging out with Raoni, in particular, has really helped me to find some things inside myself that I’ve been hiding away or thought were gone. He’s boosted my confidence, helped me to remember what happy is all about, and generally makes me feel more at ease. Although, he also makes me crazy. This week my horoscope was talking about getting in touch w/my muse, the person or thing that makes you “crazily sane.” If it’s possible to be crazily sane, then I would have to say that this guy fits the bill pretty well.

People here have been sort of putting what I consider to be unnecessary terror into my thoughts. Terror about certain conditions here in South Africa. Even if I don’t agree with all the things the people say or the conditions they describe (cos sometimes I know people are talking about things they saw on TV and probably have never tried in their lives…because they heard bad things on TV), well these terror thoughts have still been creeping into my subconscious. It’s not cool. Some of the terror thoughts have even been about places I’ve already been to and things I’ve already done before in South Africa. The scaaaaary things that are supposed to get me killed ;) I’m not trying to be some “maverick” (as I was accused of in a not-so-nice-way by a South African guy a few months ago) or some American hotshot. I just don’t live my life like everyone else. I don’t like to believe the hype. The hype is wrong…a lot. Public Enemy was on to something all those years ago. Make no mistake, I value my life. I don’t want to die, but I also don’t want to hide in my room my whole life. It’s a tightrope I’m willing to walk to be out and doing things. Raoni is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He lives in Joburg, about an hour away from me. People are terrified of Joburg. Murder capital, rape capital, this and that. The terror thoughts aren’t necessarily untrue, but it doesn’t mean you will get mugged every time you are out and about. It’s unnecessary to be terrified because being smart goes a long way. However, I have been much less adventurous because I’ve been letting people here get the best of me. Raoni is like “screw Joburg! I’m from Sao Paulo…it’s 5x bigger than this place. Joburg is nothing.” His attitude puts a lot into perspective for me. It’s good to have a friend like this…at least for me. I’m down for just about anything, but I don’t always initiate things. It’s always been a positive thing in my life to have an instigator to help get me moving (Graeme I’m looking at you!). You need a partner in crime, right?

A great example of this is the taxis here. I will try really hard to objectively describe the taxis here because mostly the descriptions you get from people (here) are really biased, in my opinion. Mass media is dangerous in any part of the world…and often I think the accounts (white) folks here have of the taxis is thru media. There aren’t many white people that will ever ever ever set foot in a “black” taxi.

There are two types of taxis here in South Africa (and in many places around the world). There are the metered taxis and the “black” taxis. Black meaning black people take them, not because they are painted black. I will call them kombis or just taxis because I think it really sucks to call them black taxis. Most of the kombis are VW van type vehicles. Some of them are much nicer, sort of like the shuttle vans a hotel might use to take people to and from the airport. You can fit 15 people in a kombi.

The taxis operate locally and over long distances in between towns. Because there are local and long distance taxis, you can potentially get to just about any tiny little place that exists in SA…which is pretty handy for folks that don’t have a car at their disposal. Taxis are organized informally in the sense that there is no schedule that dictates when a taxi will or won’t show up. You just wait on the corner or go to the taxi rank (rank=central spot for taxis to congregate, usually in the CBD), get in the van you want, and wait for it to fill up and leave. I think this is the best part about taxis because it means that you have almost no danger of missing your connection. Taxis only leave a rank when they are full and the ones on the street will almost always pick you up unless they are already full. Taxis are sort of organized locally in associations and lines I guess. There have been a lot of attempts to bring some sort of governmental organization to taxi lines because of some problems like taxi drivers not having their vehicles up to code, etc. I’m not sure if it’s true, but there is also talk that taxi lines/organizations often have gangsters and thugs behind them. You know, the scary gangster at the top getting all the cash from the service. Hence, taxi wars and things like that.

Oh yeah, you might be wondering…if there is no schedule and no organized lines…how do you know what taxi to take?? Okay, there is some organization on that tip. Mostly if you don’t know where you are going then you just ask people on the street or the driver if he is going to such and such a place. A taxi leaving from a certain place has a specific route it takes. If you get on a taxi on one main street then you know it will go a specific way. If you get on a taxi on the next main street over, then you know it will go to a different place and take a different route.

Another cool thing about local taxis is that you just shout out the destination you want when you want to get off. Like “next traffic light,” “Vermeulen St,” “Main Gate” and the taxi will stop where you shout you want to get off. This is also a cool thing about taxis because it also means you don’t really need to know where you are going in order to get there. You can get off wherever you want on the line…every landmark is a potential stop. Taxis at a rank (local and long distance) are organized according to where they are going. So if you want to go from Joburg to Pretoria then at the rank you ask for the Pretoria taxis. But you have to be careful if you are going to a big place like Joburg because there are taxis that go to all different parts of the city. For example if you were arriving in Chicago you might have taxis going to the North side, South side, and West side, but not one taxi going to all 3 of those spots. So if you don’t ask you might end up on the West side when you want to be on the South side.

There is apparently a system of hand signals that let a taxi driver know where you are going, but that’s a bit too advanced for me. Taxi drivers want riders, so if you just stand at the corner and make any sort of gesture to them, they will stop. I saw a taxi driver on the freeway stop his taxi and drive across the median to pick up the passengers from a broken down taxi on the other side of the highway. Smart guy. Look, taxi drivers just want people to ride in their van so they get money. It’s simple. Just like a yellow cab in Chicago…the more fares they have, the more money they make.

Paying is also informal. There are no tickets or anything. When you get in the taxi you ask the person next to you (or the door man if there is one) how much the fare is and you pass it forward. Sometimes there is a door man that opens the side sliding door and handles the money. This doesn’t happen all the time. Raoni told me he’s never seen a door man, but I’ve seen them on taxis in Durban, Port Elizabeth, and I think Cape Town. If there is no door man, the person that sits shotgun (passenger seat in the front) is the person that collects the money. This is why you NEVER sit shotgun in the taxi. It’s a trick. You think you are getting the most comfortable seat in the kombi (cos otherwise you will most likely be crammed into the back with a bunch of big Zulu mamas with bags and stuff), but that roomy shotgun seat comes w/a price! It took me a long time to realize this. I hate money…especially other people’s money. I just don’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s money. I don’t even want to be responsible for my own money. The person sitting shotgun has to give change to anyone that needs it, collect all the money, and then give it to the driver (if there is no door man). The person that sits in the middle of the next bench behind the front seat also plays a pivotal role in distributing money between the person in shotgun and the people paying in the back. I’ve been stuck in this position the last few times I’ve taken a taxi…so I need to find a less active spot, again. People from the back hand forward money (usually pooling it between a few people) and say “2” or “4” or however many people they are paying for. Then if you are sitting in the middle you try to make change for them or you pass it forward to the person in shotgun and they sort out the change. Finally all the money goes to the driver and the excitement is over. Whew! Handling the money isn’t so bad when it’s a long distance because the prices are usually easy. Like R20. But in the city sometimes the fares are R4.50 or something like that, so you gotta work a bit more to figure out the change. At any rate…I don’t want to be handling some taxi driver’s livelihood…bottom line! To go from Joburg to Pretoria it’s R20 (US$2.85) and takes about an hour. By proper bus/coach it is R70 (US$10) and takes about an hour. To go from where I live into the CBD of Pretoria is R7 (US$1) and takes about 10-15 minutes.

I think taxis are really cool because they are informal. There’s organization, but it’s fluid. Like the times they leave, the routes they take (I was on a taxi in Durban once and my friends and I messed up and took the wrong one. The driver went out of his way to take us where we needed to go at no extra cost…and he played me Bob Marley!), etc. Anything that is organized by people for people gets a thumbs up in my book because often it works better than things organized by the government or an outside source that doesn’t understand the needs of the system. Basically the taxi system seems to work. Millions of people take them every day, ya know? I mean, can you imagine Greyhound in the USA actually catering to the needs of the passengers? Can you imagine them covering every inch of the USA landscape such that you could get to any tiny one horse town in Iowa via their service? Can you imagine them just letting you off where you actually need to go? Can you imagine them guaranteeing you a seat when you pay? I can’t.

In this country, taxis are thought of as a dangerous mode of transportation for many reasons. 1st the taxis can be in really shoddy states. Like using cardboard for brake pads and things like that. But common sense gets you around this for the most part. If a taxi pulls up to the curb and it looks like it’s going to explode, well, you wait for the next one. Same thing is true if you are at the rank and waiting for a taxi. If you see a scary looking one that looks like it will fall apart…watch for the next one, man! No one is holding a gun to your head to make you get into any taxi. 2nd the taxi drivers are maniacs. But…have you ever driven in a yellow cab in Chicago? That’s all I’m going to say. 3rd taxis crash. If you listen to the news, they crash a lot. It’s actually a good story to keep the status quo intact because it makes what black people do really scary…the same tactics are employed in the USA to remind everyone how scary black people are. And the stories are always sensational: fires, upwards of 15 people dying, crazy taxi driver characters, etc. I saw a brush fire in KwaZulu-Natal that was started by a taxi crash. Almost a whole field burned out because of the accident. But, a lot of people crash in this country. There is even a public awareness campaign called “Arrive Alive.” The most deadly time of year here is around New Years. Lots and lots of people die on the road at that time and people go nuts here at New Years. In a place in Joburg called Hillbrow people throw TVs and crazy stuff out of windows, shoot guns in the air, and generally just go mental. The papers always have interesting stories at New Years. There are a lot of road deaths in SA, and not just from taxis. Also if you think about all the people that take taxis each day in the country (millions of people) and compare the number that die every day in a taxi…well the proportion of deaths to use is probably pretty small. I always think about this when I take the CTA in Chicago. People constantly complain about how much the CTA messes up and makes you late, etc. But if you think of all the people that use the CTA/Metra each day in the Chicagoland area compared to all the people they screw over in a day…it really puts things into perspective. Like I said, I’m an optimist!

So, I took my first taxi in the Guateng province in the last few weeks, something I was strictly advised not to do on the first day I arrived in January. A warning that’s been repeated to me over and over. I was told the GP on the license plates here (on the Guateng Province plates) stood for ‘gangster’s paradise’ which is why I shouldn’t take taxis. Nevermind, that I had taken taxis many many times before when I was here in 2002. I even took a long distance taxi in Zimbabwe…sheesh, according to the hype, if that didn’t kill me, nothing will. Okay actually that was one of the nicest taxi rides I’ve ever taken. The people were so friendly. One guy exchanged money with me, another took me out to lunch/bought me some little things I needed/showed me to my next bus, there was space to move around cos Zim passengers are much skinnier than SA passengers, and we jammed out to the Spice Girls. Okay, that last part wasn’t so nice…

I took a taxi from the CBD of Joburg (near where Raoni lives) to the CBD of Pretoria and then another taxi to my University. The trip went well and from Joburg to Pretoria I rode in a really fancy taxi that was more like a hotel shuttle than a crappy rust bucket on wheels. It wasn’t scary, was really easy, convenient, and I got where I needed to go. I have been discouraged by a lot of people here from taking taxis. Mostly I try not to listen to them, but their terror thoughts have found some soil in my brain and taken root. Taken root in the sense that I’ve been avoiding certain activities or have been generally less adventurous. It’s sort of like when your mom says “don’t go outside without a scarf.” You try not to listen to her and vocally brush her off, but secretly when you are walking outside with bare neck braced against crisp air…you are just doubting your brazen actions and your mother’s words are ringing in your ear. I think I’ve been trying to be good and listen to people here in the hopes of not rocking the boat. This has been at the expense of being myself, and that is always a bad trade off. And who am I kidding…I rock the boat. We all know this, right? So, hanging out with Raoni has helped me to get over this and be myself a bit more. One thing that bothers me about people telling me not to take taxis is that I can’t decide why a system that works for millions of people every day in South Africa can’t also work for me just because I’m white. It doesn’t make sense to me. The people I know at university take taxis places they need to go. They are just like me. They don’t have cars and are reasonable educated people. The only thing that separates us is color. Even my friend Cliff (who owns a car) had to take a taxi because his car was broken and he had to get back to Joburg to make a meeting or else he might be fired. What’s the difference between me and Cliff? Nothing except he’s black and I’m white. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way…but that’s all I can boil it down to. Why must I have a crisis of conscience every time I want to use a taxi just because I am a white person? I don’t get it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home these past few weeks because I know it’s getting to the end of County Fair season. The County Fair is one of my favorite things of the summer besides the 4th of July! Barns and barns of sheep, pigs, and cows for the lookin’, rednecks as far as the eye can see, winning a goldfish in a plastic bag, horse racing, seeing the freaks of the farm (the largest and most beautiful crops/vegetables/fruits from the county), art exhibits, funnel cake, getting my yearly dose of the phrase "Git r duuun" in one day, deep-fried everything….AND the DEMOLITION DERBY!!!!!

For those of you not familiar w/the County Fair…it’s a beautiful thing. Each state in the USA is broken up into smaller sections called counties. Each county has their own fair in the summer time. The fair is mostly an agricultural event, but also has carnival rides, music, demolition derby, and other events. The demolition derby is an American event, thru and thru. People take old junk cars, modify them according to certain standards, and then smash them into one another until only 1 car is left. The winner of each group of cars then goes into the final round against all the other winners to pick the derby champion. A lot of times the derby takes place in a sectioned off area of a race track w/lots of mud and cheering. Sometimes the cars catch on fire and have to be extinguished by firefighters. Surprisingly, people never really get hurt at these events. People decorate the cars in fun ways with paint and other things and all the cars have numbers on them. Getting a winning derby car together is an art and a skill that is often passed down thru generations…I’m not joking! Personally, I have a ritual of picking a car out of the lineup before the smashing begins and then cheering for that car. Station wagons are good cars to cheer for and old skool chevys (or anything with a solid steel frame) are also good horses to bet on. The Caprice…now that’s a derby car to cheer for!

There are a bunch of rules associated with a demolition derby regarding how your car must be fixed up and there’s an etiquette to smashing into one another…if you can believe that. A car can’t just get into the ring and not smash into another car. You have to be continually hitting other cars or you are disqualified. I can’t remember what it’s called if you don’t hit other cars, but there’s a term for it. It’s really the coward’s way out and if you aren’t smashing into other cars I WILL shout at you! If your car goes out of the ring usually you are out of the derby. You can only reverse into other cars, no head-on smashing. If your car stops moving you’re out. If your car is on fire you may or may not be out. Depends on if it can still move after the firefighters are done with it. Sometimes the biggest hero of the derby is a person whose car gets disqualified…but if that happens you really gotta go out in smash ‘em up derby style! The derby always stops if a car is on fire or if someone needs medical attention. Women derby drivers get my respect because the derby is a man’s world. There are variations of the traditional derby like truck derbies, tractor derbies, school bus derbies, and compact car derbies. All in all, the derby is about crunching metal, fire, mud, rednecks going crazy, bad jokes from the announcer, and revving engines. As much as I dislike waste and useless destruction…well, it’s just a beautiful event.

I guess that’s all the news from here. I’ve been studying a lot in the last 2 weeks or so. Studying because it’s semester test time right now and I’ve been practicing languages a lot. Raoni is teaching me more Portuguese (with the help of my neighbor from Mozambique, Nadia) and of course I’m still working on Afrikaans. I’m polishing my Portuguese swear words (why do you always get taught these first?) and now learning some useful verbs. This week I memorized how to say the word “inconstitucionalissimamente.” Not really for any purpose, just because it was a challenge. I think it means unconstitutionally or something like that. I’m already able to understand quite a bit of Portuguese, but I can’t speak back to people. There are still a lot of words I don’t understand because they aren’t like Spanish or French. But give me time and I’ll be on top of it. Semester test-wise…I just took a biochemistry test where the average was a 45% and 62% of the class failed, yikes! I got a 59%, but I’m contesting some of the marks, so I’m hoping that will improve my score a bit. I took another test in Biochemistry 2 weeks ago and have a test on fungus on Monday. Joy. Now if I can only remember how the heck to spell Chytridiomycetes…

Raoni went to Mozambique on Tuesday, and will go back to Brazil for good in November. I’ve got a holiday at the end of September and hope to join him in Mozambique for a week. Beaches, beaches, camping, and a good friend. I’m looking forward to it very much.

Oh yeah, “In the sodium” is a phrase from my friend Luso that means you are floating along and everything is feeling fine. It originated either in Botswana or in Malawi…not sure. She’s from Malawi, but grew up in Botswana. I think it’s a pretty sweet phrase. It evokes the buoyancy of the sea.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from my Aunt Bernie. She’s the 80 odd year old sister of my mother’s father. A very cool lady that still travels to places like China and Australia, plays the bells at her church, sells Avon products, and is currently learning to navigate the world wide web at her local library. This is from an email she recently sent describing a trip she took to Oregon with some of my younger cousins.

“As to travel, I was questioned by friends if taking 7 & 9 year olds by myself on a 4 hour flight was advisable. I have a motto,"If I don't do it this year, I will not do it in the next one." This has served me well in avoiding limitation.”

And with that…I’m out! Take care of yourselves, smile, and enjoy the last rays of the Indian summer if you’re in the North!!

Keep the faith and spread it gently
Love, Lynsee