A Week of Firsts

This past week was one of new experiences, to say the least. I’ve been living with the Mthembu family for over a week now, and the experiences and insights of the Zulu culture that I’ve seen in only one week have been amazing. Here are a few of my most memorable experiences in the past week:

1. A Zulu Memorial Service: When my sisters asked me if I wanted to go to the memorial service of one of their friends who was killed (he was 24 and apparently was deliberately run over by a car), I was psyched because I wanted to see how they differed from the ones I’m used to. Little did I know what I was in for. We walked down the streets of Cato Manor to the home of the boy who died. The family was conducting the service with members of their church and his friends huddled in the street looking down at the service, drinking and carrying on. It ended up being that hundreds of people were in the street and the entire service was like a big party. Everyone was singing and dancing and the entire night was a big celebration of his life- without any tears. In Zulu culture, the memorial service should reflect what the person would have wanted. So if the deceased was a big partier, all of his friends through a massive party in the middle of the street by his house. And if he was a gangster, people who have been partying and drinking the entire night start firing gunshots into the air. Well, turns out this kid was both a partier and a gangster. I left pretty quickly after I discovered the second part. The concept was really interesting though, and I’m glad I had that experience. I’d really like to see a Zulu wedding at some point while I’m here.

2. Having a 3-year old sister: She’s adorable. She loves me. She loves crayons. She loves shaking what her mama gave her. But getting any work done is actually impossible with her around. I have more crayon in my books than highlighter.

3. Driving in a Minibus: I’ll preface this one by saying that prior to coming to South Africa,I was told never to get in a minibus. But it’s literally my family’s sole source of transportation and when I travel anywhere with them, we all go via minibus. I go because I feel very safe with my mama around (I wouldn’t want to mess with her EVER) but let me just say, if you ever come to South Africa, don’t get in a minibus.

4. My first Church Service Ever: Yep, last Sunday was not only my first Zulu church service, but my first church service ever. It was really nice (other than the fact that it lasted about 4 and a half hours). The entire service was conducted in Zulu and I couldn’t understand a word. But it was nice. At the end I had to get up in front of everyone and introduce myself in Zulu and say where I’m from and what I’m doing here. Everyone was so nice and so interested in what we were doing living in Cato Manor and seemed very happy to have me.

5. Knowing that the person in front of me was HIV positive: It’s one thing when you assume “someone in this large crowd is probably HIV positive,” as I’ve been doing frequently when I’m in very crowded buses or streets here. 1 in 5 people in South Africa is HIV positive so you can assume that any relatively large group of people will have some HIV infected individuals. But it’s another thing to look a person in the eyes and know that they for a fact are HIV positive. It definitely takes you aback at first (and I don’t mean to stigmatize in any way). On Monday we went to the Cato Manor Clinic and toured the facilities. At the end we went around back to these trailers that they used as their HIV clinic for HIV testing and distribution of Antiretrovirals (ARV’s). As we walked past the people waiting on line for their medication, I was stunned at how healthy most of them looked. Most people think HIV is something that’s branded on someone’s forehead, (I’ll admit it, all this time I’ve been scouting out for people in random settings who I think might look HIV positive), when in reality if a person’s on the right treatment and has a high enough CD4 count, it’s virtually impossible to tell. It made me realize how very many people I’ve probably encountered and had conversations with since I’ve been here, who are HIV positive. It made me think of the little kids who attach themselves to us and follow us all around Cato Manor and how many of them could be HIV positive. Who knows, my own family members may even be HIV positive. I would never know. I saw a girl in the clinic who looked about my age (if not younger) and she had tears welling up in her eyes when we passed by. I think that’s when it hit me the hardest- at least until I saw how many little kids and babies were there.

I decided to focus my Independent Study Project that this whole program is geared toward on the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT). I couldn’t believe how many HIV positive children I saw who had been born infected because their mothers did not take the right preventative actions (or didn’t have the resources in which to do so). I’ve been doing some really interesting research on PMTCT and I’m really excited about my project. I’ll give you more details as they fall into place but I will most likely be volunteering in the maternity ward at a rural hospital in November to study PMTCT.

In other news, I cooked a spaghetti and meat sauce dinner for my entire family tonight and it went really well (I think). They said they liked it, but we all know what a renowned cook I am so who knows. It was nice to be able to contribute by buying dinner and cooking it for my family, who have been so generous this entire time. SIT is putting us all up in the city for the weekend and we’re all looking forward to it. I’ll update you all next week! Thanks for reading!