“Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” That used to be such a cute little phrase, but it now has a whole new meaning. Last night, the bugs went marching one by one, and with each hurrah took a little bite out of my flesh. By my right ankle I have a semicircular line of about 7 bites perfectly distributed. The rest of the bites tended to be more random, but the bugs successfully took a bite out of crime, although I’ve still not been read my Miranda rights and told what I did wrong. But hey, no worries, it makes me laugh and that’s worth something.

So about this time last week I was heading to Durban—land of people, pretty beaded things, and pollution. After being in Cape Town for a month I had forgotten what South Africa might look like without a majority of white folks. Then upon arriving in Durban I was faced with the interesting predicament of trying to decide if I had landed in Ghana or India. Durban advertises itself as “South Africa’s Playground” (I don’t know why) and also “The Gateway to the Zulu Kingdom,” I think it should also honor the heavy Indian influence and have a motto like, “The Gateway to India’s Playground.” The Indian population in Durbs is second in size only to India itself. It was really awesome to see the cosmopolitan environment of the city and surrounding areas where everyone could “be.” It’s not like Jamaica where people are mixed and “Out of Many, One People,” but there are all kinds of people moving in every which direction, creating a lively pace of life. I really enjoyed being a part of that as I visited my Macalester friend, Rachel Tenney, who was in Durban for the summer on a research grant. She is from New York and so is very city-savvy, something I most definitely am not, so I followed her confident pace all around the city, to the lovely, but windy beach, and to adventures galore at her two homestay families.

The family we stayed with most and the family with whom she’s lived the whole summer was a “coloured” family in Wentworth, which was originally a community set up for coloureds during Apartheid. If I were to explore for 20 years the intricacies of what it is to be coloured or what coloured is, I still would not be able to get a complete idea of it, because although coloured has been established as a strong social construction, it is still just that: a social construction. My basic understanding is that coloured is a unique racial category that includes any number of people of mixed “races” (the quotes denote the false nature of race), originally dating back to when the first whities landed in the Cape and created offspring with the Hottentots, or the original inhabitants of the land. Since then it has obviously become immensely more complex than that, pulling in myriad versions of what a Coloured person is and creating just as many exceptions to any defined rule denoting who’s in and who’s out. It is a fascinating subject matter really, which I am trying to write my first paper on, but have yet to figure out a way to narrow down and tackle. I have 7 days to do that. Wish me luck. So anyway, In this house there were three generations of cool folks that I had a great time with. If I explained the coolness and details of all of them you’d be reading forever, so I’ll continue.

The second night we went to Rachel’s other homestay family in another area. These guys were Sotho and Zulu and very awesome as well. As my amazing luck would have it, their neighbor was having a traditional 21st birthday celebration on Saturday. This was a huge deal and included the making of hundreds of scones (which I helped with) and even included the slaughtering of a cow, which I watched from start to finish with wide eyes and mixed emotions. The next day brought lots of music, dance, food, people, and energy. I even got in on some of the action and started busting a few moves—some I knew from before in practicing my Jamaican dancehall moves, a few I had learned in my African dance class, and the rest were ones I tried to pick up and I am sure I butchered quite badly. I would have loved to see how I looked, but I had people cracking up for as far as I could see. Whether they were laughing at me or with me, I may never know, but I sure had an amazing time. On both a personal and anthropological level, the whole thing was amazing to experience. And don’t let my continued use of the word amazing take away from its power. I could write on and on about this celebration, as I did in my daily journal where I write about what I do each day, but then y’all would stop reading, so this much of the adventure will have to do for now.

Also while I was in Durban, I was able to get together with the Bahá’ís, one of which I met in Cape Town when he was here visiting. Remember close to when I first arrived in Cape Town, I wrote about having a Bahá’í moment where random people from one side of the earth know random people from the other side of the earth that I know as well? Well, Durban was Bahá’í moment central, with everyone I met in the Bahá’í community knowing at least one person I knew, reaching up to a 7-person connection. It was pretty awesome. I also got to go with a few Bahá’ís to the big township called Umlazi, which was fun. Often there’s no chance of getting to go to a township unless you know people there, so I was lucky to have a connection. The only not so lucky part of going was that somewhere along the line, my special wallet fell out of my shallow pockets. Yet although it was a big bummer at the time, detachment soon came.

The last cool thing about Durban that I’m going to talk about is my awesome opportunity to use the sign language I knew with a 10-year-old boy named Michil, who was the cousin of the kids at the house in Wentworth. I was chillin with the two girls, Jody and Cody at Jody’s place one night (where I was staying) when we decided to go to Cody’s. They told me beforehand that her brother was “deaf and dumb.” Uff, after taking Deaf Culture classes I get a pang in my heart and cringe every time I hear the old school phrase describing someone who is deaf to also be dumb. Obviously someone who is deaf is not dumb just because they cannot produce words that they would have learned if they could hear. Not hearing does not create a mushy brain, but old habits die hard and the term was still in use there. So when I went and started signing to him, he shied away a bit at first, but quickly warmed up and started signing with me a bit. There are some differences in signs, but it didn’t matter because we were still communicating regardless of whether we knew exactly what the other was trying to communicate. It was a very cool experience and I realized at that moment why I had learned sign language…to be able to communicate in a very special way with people otherwise placed on the margins. That little boy had so much love to give and his smile just radiated as he joined in the card games and was able to understand. Precious.

My sincere apologies at the slowness of the posting (and writing) of my blogs. Hope y’all are well!