Woop! Woop!

…that’s the sound of the police if you’re a hiphopper…

But for me these last few days it’s the sound of the house alarm going off. A piercing siren scream that shatters your ear drums and make you frantically decide should I:

1. Go look around the house to see if an intruder is about.
2. Stay put and wait for the security company to come check the place out.
3. Take a sledge hammer and smash the alarm box

Decision 1 or 2 is scary. #1 is scary because if you stumble upon an intruder you don’t know what could happen next. In South Africa, burglars do not mess around. I’m sure not every breaking and entering ends in a person getting killed, assaulted, raped, etc…but I really don’t want to find out how statistically accurate my personal experience would be when compared to everyone else. Ya know? #2 is scary because you are helpless and shivering under the covers with the boogie man potentially out there I (I actually slept w/my shoes on the other night). Hiding out is not my style, but being brave right now is a bit tough. #3 enters your mind if the wind or a tree or some other phantasm has been setting off the alarm all day for no apparent reason. I was definitely in the mood for #3 today cos the alarm has been tripped about 10 times today for mysterious reasons.

I guess Choose Your Own Adventure stories never really did go out of style…

Right now (and for the last week or so) I’ve been housesitting for the family of a friend of mine whom I met at the radio station. Her family, like many SA families, have headed to the coast for the holiday season. My friend, Karlien, was here with me for a few days and then went and joined her family leaving me in charge of the Kuun household. I’m no stranger to housesitting. There were times in Champaign-Urbana where I would have my choice of 3 different houses. I have house/pet sat for about 5 different families at home. But this is the craziest housesitting gig I’ve ever agreed to. It’s really making me think “what have I got myself into?”

Housesitting for people is usually the awesomest job you could ever get. First of all you get to stay in a house that isn’t yours. This means perks that you might not have at your own modest apartment. For me this means watching TV, lounging on couches, reading new books, checking out people’s family photos on the walls (one of my favorite parts of other people’s houses. My friend Clara has the coolest photo room in her family's house), sleeping in big comfy beds, and enjoying people’s outdoor spaces (porches, backyards, etc). Also you get to play with other people’s pets, cos usually the point of you housesitting is to look after the pets. So you get to snuggle with other people’s dogs and cats, go for walks in the neighborhood with them, and generally just bathe in the love/personality quirks of an animal for a week or so…and then you get to give them back. It’s like grandkids. Sometimes people let you use their cars. Usually they buy you food for the time you are there. And you get to explore a new neighborhood. Sometimes on top of all this…you get paid. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Normally when I housesit the only thing I worry about is that the plants might die (I’m terrible w/plants) or that I might get a stain on the couch. Or that the dog will run away (I almost lost a cat once…). But the worries when you housesit in SA are WAAAAY different…

Maybe you will remember my “All you see is crime in the city” blog post about crime in SA. I think I wrote it in Feb/Mar, so check the archive links on the right hand side of this website if you’ve forgotten it. Crime’s a big deal here. It’s on everyone’s mind: rich, poor, black, white, Indian, and colored. It affects those living in shacks and those living in mansions. You can be robbed in broad daylight by little kids here. People might rob you for R20 (almost US$3) and stab you afterwards without even thinking twice about it…or so I’ve heard. Most houses have elaborate security systems: razor wire, electric fence, burglar bars over the windows and doors, every gate locked up, safes, and lots of dogs. There are a lot of gated communities here for those that can afford it. A lot of people’s cars even have special gear locks on them that you have to either unlock or use an immobilizer (it’s sort of like a little remote control you have to press before the car will start). My university has a gate system (that resembles a cattle handling facility) where you have to swipe your card before you can gain access to the place. There are security guards everywhere, some with guns. You will rarely see women walking alone (especially at night). It can be dangerous to walk around alone, but not unheard of. Like I said in a previous post, girls don’t ride bikes here to get around…which makes me a bit weird. It’s perceived as unsafe. Yeah…crime is a part of everyone’s life here.

All that being said, I don’t really feel that unsafe here. I don’t feel as safe as I was in Urbana. This is the first time I’ve ever had to operate a security system in a house. But the difference is that at home I have the luxury of not having to constantly watch my back. I’ve walked, alone and drunk, more than once from downtown Champaign at 3am to my house in W Urbana without thinking too much about it (a distance of maybe 1-2 miles). Even when I lived on the near South Side of Chicago or just at the edge of the W side of Chicago I didn’t feel like I was in danger…even when alone at night. I mean I would watch my back in those places, but what I would do there at night is not something I’d do alone here at night. I’ve been and done a lot of things in SA that no white South African in their (right?) mind would do…so it’s not like I’m living a sheltered life per se here in SA. But I’m definitely not as free here as I am at home. So when I say I don’t feel particularly unsafe here in SA it’s not because I stick to the sunny streets…I just feel that way because of my attitude and behaviors.

I stopped being afraid for my life and safety about 5 years ago. I was in Pietermaritzburg SA with some girls I went to school with who originally came from the USA and Canada. We went out to a club that we really liked, but when we arrived it was closed to the public for a private party. We were all dolled up with no place to go so we decided to go to another place in the city center of Pietermaritzburg. Because the taxi we took had left we decided (although we were scared) to walk thru the city center at night to this place. Admittedly PMB isn’t the scariest place in SA (it’s called Sleepy Hollow for crying out loud), but sometimes here the smaller towns are actually more dangerous. Why? I don’t know. And the city center is usually the most dangerous dirty part of the cities here.

So we started walking and we were acting all scared and stuff. We were talking loud and started to separate ourselves into groups of two spaced out down the sidewalk. After awhile I realized how stupid this was. We made our decision to walk there and if we were going to do this right we had to change our behavior. So I made everyone stop. Asked them to please be quiet and walk together. The only way people can tell we are foreigners is if they hear our voices (hey I would rather rob an American than a South African any day…Americans are rich, right??) and it’s just stupid to walk all separated when strength is always found in numbers (there were 6 of us). So we huddled up and continued in silence. And…we made it! Can you believe it? Yeah I can too…

This event caused me to think a lot about being scared of crime and stuff in SA. I had only been in the country a short time and to hear the stories and “this happened to my cousin” from the South Africans…you would have thought the sky was falling. As a foreigner it’s hard at first to tell what is right and wrong in a country because it’s all new to you. You just have to listen to everyone and forge your own path. Being scared sucks. Fear is a paralyzer that makes you pretty useless. So after this event I decided to stop being scared and just try to be smart. If something bad is going to happen to you then it will happen and you probably can’t do that much about it. I’m no super woman but I try very hard not to rile myself up over nothing until I need to. Being in SA in 2002 was my first trip abroad to a non-western country. Since 2002 I’ve done quite a bit of traveling on my own in quite a few other countries. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that my policy works for me. I don’t expect others to follow me or even understand my methods…but I do stand by them. People have been kind to me more often than not. I’ve never been mugged or assaulted. I had some things stolen from me in Cape Town earlier this year (the fault of the place I was staying). I was almost pickpocketed 2x since I’ve been here (once in Grahamstown and once in Mozambique), but I knew I was about to be robbed, so I got out. If you are paying attention you can usually tell when you will be pickpocketed.

So after all this learning and traveling and experiences…here I am. Cooped up in someone else’s house at the mercy of a finicky alarm system and a boogie man that may or may not be there. How did I get here again?

The other night at 4am I heard some alarms going off in the neighborhood and I woke up. I was getting annoyed cos I wanted to sleep. But then my friend called me and asked me where I was. I said I was sleeping in her bed cos it was 4 in the morning. She whispered for me to push the panic button on the alarm remote control because someone was in the house. The panic button is a silent alarm that alerts the security company that they should come but doesn’t make an audible noise in the house. So now I’m freaked out. I just woke up and now someone is in the house? How is this possible? Every entrance to the house is covered by the alarm system. If someone tries to come in, it goes off. I’ve set it off a few times because I forgot it was on and stretched my arm out to pet the dogs thru the back door. The alarm in my house hadn’t gone off…I was confused and now I don’t know what to do. Plan #1 or Plan #2??? I opted for plan #2…hiding under the covers with my shoes on. I saw some flashlights in the backyard and hoped it was the security guys. One of them stopped at my window and I squeaked out “ADT?”

Thankfully it was the security guys and I guess what happened is that the neighbor’s house was broken into. Because the address of the neighbor’s house (147b) is similar to the address of the house I’m at (147c) the security company made a mistake and phoned my friend telling her someone was breaking in. Oops…a mistake…a freaky mistake. So I just stayed awake til the sun came up and went back to bed when I thought all the boogie men might be in bed too.

An interesting part of all this is that attitude determines everything. I think one reason why I’m so tweaked out here is that my friend set that tweaked stage for me when we stayed here together. She told me that she couldn’t sleep until I came to stay with her…which I now understand. Every door must be locked behind us. The alarm must be set at all times. But I think her paranoid attitude (although not completely unmerited) helps to perpetuate her fear. And now it’s working on me too. It really sucks. I think my friend’s paranoia is a microcosm of what a lot of South Africans (particularly whites) experience every day. Their paranoia and fear and wariness (although not completely unmerited) sets the stage for bad things to happen. And in an environment where bad things aren’t exactly too far away from you at any point in time…it’s sort of a destructive cycle. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Ahhh, but what do I know? I’m just some foreigner who thinks I know better than everyone here…I guess I can only call it as I see it.

I don’t like what this house is doing to my brain. I’m scared, despite my previous conditioning, and I don’t like it. I want to change my attitude, but I’m alone, it’s high house robbing season (cos most folks are at the coast), and I’m basically locked inside a house w/a security system just waiting to go off and freak me out more. It sucks. But I have a responsibility to my friend since I said I’d watch the house. This has probably been the most stressful 10 days of my life…and I had a car accident w/a donkey in Zimbabwe in 2002. I thought that was the most stress I’d ever seen, but this week takes the cake. I feel like a caged animal.

The most ironic part of this whole situation is that as scared as most people (especially white people) are in this country of all kinds of places, people, and situations…I would guess that they feel the most safe in their houses. But this is the most dangerous place I’ve ever been in South Africa or anywhere else in the world…nestled in the bosom of an Afrikaans family’s house in Pretoria. If you don’t find that ironic I don’t think anything is or ever will be.

It will be a long time, if ever, that I will housesit in SA again…

I know there's a lesson to be learned from all this, but the sound of the alarm is making my brain constrict and thoughtful ponderings are not really happening at this moment. Let me ruminate on it and maybe it'll end up in a future blog post...

On a positive note…I’M COMING HOME!!!! Via Chicago, babies! I’m leaving on Jan 15^th in SA and will arrive Jan 16^th around 11am/noon-ish. Just in time for tacos and margaritas ;) I’ll be home for about 2 weeks (til Feb 1 or 2). I’ll know the exact dates and times in a few days. If you want to be part of the margarita/steak taco extravaganza when I arrive then call my mom (847-782-8211) and organize with her. That phone # will also be how you can reach me while I’m at home cos I won’t have a cell phone. I’m going to try to make it down to Champaign-Urbana, up to Wisconsin (Janesville to see my dad and Kenosha area to see my 2^nd family), Waukegan, and of course…Chi-town!

Happy 2008…may all your resolutions be realized. Remember only you can make them happen!

Keep the faith and spread it gently

Love
Lynsee