I
am a white African living in America.
Logic tells me to call myself an "African American", as that
is what I am: an "African" born, raised and living the first
38 years of my life in Africa
, who has now come to
America
to make a life here on this continent. But
I cannot use that title, it has already been taken. The census forms
started the confusion of the naming process; there were boxes to check
if you were an "African" --ah ha, that must be me, but
alongside are boxes for "Whites". But I am both. How do I
straddle the two boxes? How did this become an 'either or' situation?
So, I have gone for the longer title, a white African living in America.
Growing
up in Johannesburg
, South Africa
in the sixties and seventies was a unique
experience. A surreal existence, living a half-life populated by tribes
of people one never really met. Their lives ran parallel to ours, never
intersecting unless to cook, wash, clean, or serve. As a child, you don't
question this shadow population, quietly slipping out of the suburbs
as it grew dark in order to comply with the "White by Night"
rule. Life was a heady concoction of balmy weather, huge gardens and
equally large swimming pools. We seemed to swim our lives away, until
our hair turned green and our skins almost as brown as the rest of Africa.
We
had a tortoise, rescued from a roadside vendor in Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe) who planned to eat it if no one bought the
creature. We did, and it kept wandering off. Digging its way under our hedges it would
turn up in people's prize petunia's which resulted in panic searches. My
brother hit on the idea of painting our telephone number on its shell. A
bright idea that resulted in angry neighbors phoning to demand we remove
the marauding animal. Our gardener (called a garden boy) would get an
old box and shuffle off to whichever house to patiently reclaim the
tortoise and return it to our garden. I later learnt that Africans are
scared of tortoises and so who knows how this order from my mother to
"fetch Tommy" sat with the gardener.
Real Africa
would occasionally intrude into our smart, sterile
suburbs. All the children knew to run to the street when the cry of
"mielies" rose high and shrill over the noise of dogs barking.
The mielie ladies would walk regally along the pavement their heads
piled high with corn on the cob (mielies) wrapped in sacking. They had
grown it on their land and brought it on the long journey to the white
areas. The corn was damp and smelled sweet and dusty altogether.
The
mielie ladies would wear traditional garb: seemingly unending swathes of
brightly colored cloth wrapped around their bodies in an intricate
pattern. I always looked to see how it was fastened and why it didn't
slip off, but I never found out. Their heads were wound with more cloth
and fashioned flat on top to support the weight of the bundle of corn.
Our maid would always talk to the ladies before even glancing at the
goods. They spoke Zulu which to my ear was an exotic series of clotted
sounds. Then, in her stiff white uniform, she would bend slowly and
examine the corn with an air of authority. She was the more powerful, an
employee in a white house not a poor farm laborer walking the street in
broad bare feet powdered with dust.
Holidays were frequent and exotic. Even going to the closest beaches at
Durban meant a winding trip through the open veldt dotted with kraals.
The villages (kraals) were inhabited by women, children and old men. All
the young men had left to work on the mines in Johannesburg
"Egoli"--Zulu for "city of gold". My father was
prone to making spontaneous trips down potholed sideroads, where he
would stop the car. Within minutes we would be surrounded by crowds of
small back children all gaping and silent. We always took pencils,
paper, crayons which we would hand out. The older ones would hang back,
more fascinated by the bright blonde hair of me and my sister. Some
would try to barter, presenting us with small gifts of sugar cane sticks
or litchis. But we were too ignorant to allow them this gracious offer
and would think we were doing the right thing by declining all exchanges
and so would just leave our gifts.
In
November 1999, I looked at our two children confidently stepping
into JFK to start another adventure. Only 3 and 7, they were extremely
well traveled, the little one having crossed the equator the same number
of times as the years he had lived. We had been traveling for almost a
year, a break between our dream existence in Cape Town , South Africa,
and settling down to our new life in the USA . They were keen to start
schools and make friends.
It's
2002 now, we live in New Jersey,
and this is the childhood my children will remember. No chasing after
errant tortoises or wearing strict school uniforms or having Christmas
in 90 F. How will I ever explain the life we had and why we gave it all
up?
