culture

things happen so quickly here that it seems that i dont have enough time to sit back and reflect on them. its hard to make cultural observations because our knowledge is so shallow and limited, the observations made are tainted by my outsider perspective.

every experience that we observe is transected by racism, sexism and ageism. the apartheid goverment finally collapsed 10 years ago. there is the obvious race gap between white and black, but this is further complicated by the fact that between whites, there are the afrikaners and the descendents of the british. for the black population, there are many different ethnicities, such as zulu or xhosa.

visiting the arv clinic or doing health trainings in the community, it seems that most of the people are women. even walking on the streets, the impression that you get is that young men are missing. taking the children or attending the arv clinic is a whole day affair that begins at 10 am and can last until 8 pm, depending on the number of people and how complicated the cases are. its easy to judge individuals that miss their appointments and foster resistant as difficult patients, but once you see the many constraining forces (lack of funds to travel, risk of losing their job) you become more sympathetic. the most important lesson that i have learned so far is not to pass judgement, people's lifes are so complicated that as an outsider, you cannot impose your worldview or your assumptions on them.

we visited the nursery last week, which in the united states would be considered an nicu. you see these babies and they cannot be more than 1 pound. babies are usually born in september because in december, most of the men return from working in the mines. the babies that we are seeing now are the premature babies who require intensive care but the hospital is so understaffed and undersupplied that it makes you wonder if these babies will survive and if they do, how their development will be hampered. the nurse was telling us that children are not a priority culture because age is a marker for status.

people's lifes were are simple, dreams are simple. children walk miles to go to school, where their education is basic at best. mothers just want their children to be health, grow up, find a good job (which i understand to mean a stable job), marry and have children.