Interview with Jason Hart
Jason Hart is a guy in my ward who served his mission in South Africa from 2007-2009. Jason served in the Durban mission, so East London was just barely out of his mission. He served mostly in Durban and surrounding townships. I asked him about Durban – it is the largest port, has the most high-rises of any city in South Africa, and it is very lush and green because of proximity to the Indian Ocean. Jason lived mostly in flats (apartments) and mentioned Granny flats, like the one the Thomases have. Jason mentioned that servants or domestic help will often live in the Granny flats. He said a surprisingly large amount of South Africans have some kind of help for around the house or yard, not limited to the super wealthy.
I next asked Jason about the racial situation in South Africa. He said there were four groups – blacks, whites, coloreds, and Indians. It sounds like he taught a lot of Indian families. In his opinion the coloreds have the hardest time, because they are often forgotten. He talked about the make-shift towns of shack houses that poorer people often live in. There is no sewer system, just drainage ditches and people try to steal electricity and often get hurt. Church-wise, Jason said the white Afrikaners were a little more stand-offish than the white British people in South Africa. The Afrikaners are very traditional and have their own religion. This is not to say they were not friendly, just that they were less willing to hear about the gospel. Of course the next topic was apartheid. Jason said he felt like apartheid is blamed for a lot of the current problems; there is still a lot of resentment. He shared a couple stories about people that he taught. One lady was alive when segregation first started – her family lived in Newcastle but was then forced to move to a township. She was a little girl at the time and could remember the night raids and white police searching her house at 2 or 3 in the morning. A man that Jason taught once had to run away from police because he had extended the time that his pass allowed for being outside of his township. He had to hide in a ravine for some time. Jason said rural areas were still mostly black and the cities were more a racial mix. White neighborhoods are usually nicer, but integration is starting to happen.
I next asked Jason about the schools in South Africa. He said he was not really sure how they worked, but it seemed more like a charter school set-up. Families can choose where to send their kids. Schools cost money and have uniforms. English is taught in schools – most people can speak at least basic English. Jason said English was kind of the bridge language among the many different tribal languages; signs, for the most part, are in English. I then asked about what the country was like. It sounds like the west side of the country has more deserts and the east side is more tropical. The coast lines are more temperate. Inland is drier – the bush or veld. It is hilly and grassy and there are many termite mounds. In order to see wildlife, one must go to the reserves and parks, but there the wildlife is abundant and diverse. Jason mentioned a particular bird, the Hadeda bird, that makes a really annoying noise.
The next topic of the interview was food. Jason said expect a lot of rice and chicken. South Africans love their meat and are really good at cooking it. Jason mentioned boerewors, or farmer’s sausage as a South African favorite. Apparently people will eat it with boiled corn meal (pap) and sour milk. Yum? The strangest thing Jason ever ate was curry with chicken feet – that was with an Indian family. I asked Jason to tell me about South African culture. As Heather has mentioned to us, they love their soap operas! Jason did not think they really produce their own movies, mostly they watch American or Bollywood films, but soap operas are a huge deal. Jason said that is how they confront different problems in their society. He mentioned house music – people will blast music from their homes that is really focused on rhythm, is repetitive, electronic. South Africans love to dance. Jason particularly liked the traditional dances; he said they were really energetic and fun.
I’d like to describe the setting really quickly. Jason and I met in the living room of his apartment. On the walls there are several framed pictures. There are some drawings of a cheetah and a group of elephants. There is a larger print of a native village in South Africa. And there is a Springbok skin hanging right in the middle of it all. Jason got all of these in a market and told me a little bit about how he bartered for things. His tips were to ask someone you know what things are really worth and then to not let the shop owner know how much money you have. He suggested picking a few items you liked and telling the shop keeper you only had a certain amount of money (less than you actually have) and then to barter from there. He told me about some of his other purchases – ivory and wood carvings, a ring, etc. So that led me to ask about money. The currency is the rand. There are coins, measured in cents, and rands, measured in notes.
I asked Jason what advice he had for me. He told me a lot about safety. Jason was fortunate – he was never robbed or mugged while in South Africa. But he heard plenty of stories from companions about being held up by machetes and knives. He suggested the standard things – don’t go out alone at night, use the buddy system as much as possible, don’t let people see that you have money or valuables. He also told me to be really aware of my surroundings at all time. He suggested making eye contact with everyone on the street that you pass. And if you notice that a person or people are moving in on you, make very direct eye contact with them. Cross the street or just stop walking. Let them know that you see them and know what they are up to. Overall, he said, just be confident , aware, and smart.
Jason said the people in South Africa are, on the whole, very nice and friendly. There is a lot of diversity. He told me to not be surprised if I hear about witch craft, herbal healers, or using snakes to talk to devils. Jason thought people were really down to earth. They were very willing to talk about their families and hardships. Jason said his time there gave him a whole new perspective on many different aspects of American culture. For example, South Africa has a lot of immigrants from other African countries, and those immigrants are not treated very well. People with college degrees are forced to get jobs doing manual labor. This gave him a whole new view on how we treat immigrants here in the U.S., where we’ve been having issues with illegal immigrants from Mexico. Jason said he would love, love, love to go back to South Africa someday. He still keeps in touch with some people there via email and Facebook.
I am not sure what I am supposed to analyze with this interview. This interview was useful for me, not really in terms of my project, but it was nice to hear more about South Africa from someone who lived there for a significant time. There were some aspects of the culture that Jason obviously would not know about, because he was serving as a missionary at the time, but he had some great advice on safety. And I feel like it was good practice for the kind of informal interviews I will probably wind up doing in the field.
Participant Observation
For my participant observation I went to the Regency Apartments. Every year, Regency has a drawing for contracts. Their lounge fills to bursting with girls wanting to live there. Everyone puts down their name on a piece of paper and it is entered into one of those round wire cages that spin around. If you want to live with a certain group or person, you all put your names on one slip of paper. Then the managers draw names until all the contracts are sold. My three roommates and I arrived five minutes before the drawing began. The lounge was already completely packed; girls sitting on the floor, on couches, standing huddled in groups, gathered outside the doors.
Most people come in groups with those they want to room with – these groups talk within each other, but I did not really notice people talking to girls outside of their personal roommate group. I even saw several girls there that I knew, and only talked to one of them. There was a boy standing near us – he came to enter his friend’s name, she was on a mission. He did talk with the girls around him and introduced himself. I felt a sort of general malignity towards all the other people there, and Liz, one of my roommates, mentioned a similar feeling later. I wonder how many of those girls felt that way! The groups within my hearing were talking about other places they had looked at, their chances of getting an apartment here, how tightly everyone was packed into the room, plans for the rest of Saturday. The managers and those helping the managers stayed in one corner of the room and joked among themselves. It took a while to get all the slips of paper passed around and for everyone to write down names and put them in the wire cage. We put my name first, since there probably weren’t any other Quincey’s there, so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting our hopes up. Another group standing next to us did the same.
When the drawing finally started, the lounge got completely silent. There was a collective sense of people holding their breath. As names were read, shouts of excitement would come. The girls who were drawn went to the front and started filling out contracts. They were smiling, or looked like they were trying not to smile – it was interesting, after the first shout of joy, most groups would try to muffle their excitement, I assume in respect of all of us still waiting anxiously. As the drawing wore on, the talking built up again, even when names were called out. My favorite thing I observed was three girls sitting on the edge of a treadmill. All of them were leaning their heads on one hand, which was resting on each of their knees. They all had a sort of lost look in their eyes and were all looking in the same direction. Dejection – they were the perfect picture of dejection.
Posture and body language – I was standing, legs and arms crossed, with a lot of shifting trying to be comfortable. Most of the girls around me that were standing also had their arms crossed. I was looking all over, trying to see what people were doing. Lots of girls were also looking around. It was an interesting situation, because we were all competing with each other, but in such a passive way. None of us had any control over who got a contract, but it was definitely a competition. Nobody seemed terribly comfortable or expansive, because there was no space, but also because it was a tense situation. I think it caused people to be more….how to describe it….held in?
We had been there for maybe an hour when our names were drawn. I had been thinking about how I would react if we were drawn, while also telling myself to just face up to the fact that we weren’t going to be selected this year. I was thinking I’d let out a great whoop – like a really loud one. People had been sort of shouting, but again, they didn’t want to rub it in everyone else’s faces too much, so celebration was pretty restrained. I was thinking about just completely freaking out, to see how people reacted, but when we were called, I was so surprised all I did was look around to grin at my roommates and see what they did. As we were walking towards the front to sign the contracts, Liz leaned back to me and said now she just felt such goodwill towards all those still waiting. And it was true! Once I had a contract, I could start hoping that other people could be as lucky as me.
