1) Food. They eat very late at night. As in 9:45 or 10pm. They eat meat, meat and more meat. They braais it, inside or outside, but it's meat on the braai that's what's for dinner. I can guarantee that every night.
2) One night - the first night I stayed in the house - I was sitting in the living room watching tv with Mr and Mrs Osmers, and the dogs all started barking and I got a little nervous and Mr Osmers noticed. Then he explained "Oh it's just the rhinos. They come onto the front lawn every night about this time. Stupid rhinos!" Then he got out of his chair to shoo away the rhinos from the front lawn. This activity repeated almost every night. What is normal? I don't know anymore.
3) This place is out in the middle of nowhere. They call it "the bush." Like I live in the country in a very rural part of the States. But I consider this part of the world to be totally isolated. There is nothing but bush and bush and bush and wilderness as far as the eye can see. Kruger isn't far, so there literally is nothing for hundreds of miles in that direction. And in one direction there are mountains about 60 miles away. And every other direction, I guess it's just bush and more bush and game farms. At night I can't see a single light. It's so bizarre. The stars are incredible though. Gonna miss these Southern Hemisphere views of the night sky. I've gotten kinda used to them...
4) People here are OBSESSED with money and prices. They describe everything in terms of how much it costs - in Rand and in US Dollars. It's very strange. They speak in terms of dollars in Afrikaans too I can tell a lot of the time. I'm catching on...haha another month here and I'd be fluent.
5) The hunting and game industry. It takes a very certain type of personality. A type of personality that makes me 99% sure I'd never actually be able to work as a wildlife vet here. At least not in private practice. Ooof. White men with very stodgy ideas about things. Also, it's really weird to me that they're so into animals and conservation but that they hunt and hunt and hunt all day long. Like it's what they do. So confusing to me! I think I'm catching on a little more each day. Hunting brings in all the money to this industry so then farmers can afford to breed and raise animals and then they save species from going extinct...like the sable. So I guess it kinda makes sense. But it's just so counterproductive to me!
They all ask me if I hunt. And if I'm opposed to it. Kinda awkward I suppose. Oh well, that's life in this part of the world.
6) Structure of the farm, employee-employer relationships. Here's where it starts getting sticky. Farm owner: old white man. His wife and children, all lovely blonde Afrikaans-speaking South Africans who only speak with and date other lovely blonde Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans. His farm manager if he has enough money to have one of those, a white man. They all dress in stereotypical safari/hunter gear with the khaki blouses and shorts, the long socks and the little bootie things that cover their boots. They eat biltong and speak Afrikaans all day long. They're very nice and friendly and welcoming. If you're white. But then their employees on the farm are all black South Africans dressed in work clothes in very very bad condition with lots of holes. They are extremely skinny. They speak isiZulu or Tswana or Tshivenda or Sotho to each other but they speak Afrikaans to their bosses. The relationships are extremely strained. The owners/managers bark orders at the farm workers. They treat them pretty poorly. It's really difficult to see. The owners/managers look at me as if I have four heads when I hop in the back of the pick up truck and say hello and introduce myself in Afrikaans to the farm workers. I've picked up enough Afrikaans to be able to say "look out there's a branch!" "it's hot!" "help!" "can you hold this animal's horns." "are you from here?" "do you like working with the animals?" "how long have you worked on this farm?" "where do you live?" ...and as I said, I have three heads and am the crazy liberal American girl who sits with and talks to black farm workers. It's really hard to deal with. And it is what makes me 100% sure I could never work here longterm.
7) Racism. It pervades everything here. Stories are told in terms of the color of skin of the people involved. Good guys are white. Bad guys are black. "The black man does not understand the world." was actually said to me. I laughed and told the person who said it that it wasn't true, that it was racist. All the old white farmers would tell me "Americans think South Africans [meaning of course only white South Africans...] are racists. We're not. Black people are just so....[insert derogatory adjectives of your choice here]..." And I'd say, well see the reason Americans think that some South Africans are racist is because what you just said is racist. And then they'd laugh this big fat belly laugh at me, the crazy American girl who wants to work with wildlife and who talks to black people. This is a male-dominated industry. Ok, that's kind of an understatement. Aside from seeing Mrs Osmers at dinner and while watching TV every night, I did not see a single other female. At all. It was always me and 2-11 guys. It involves a lot of heavy-lifting, but it's an industry very much rooted in its past, and kind of stuck there if you ask me. I do not know if it will last long for this reason.
8) So this whole thing seems kind of like a pretend life. But maybe that was just the way I feel because it's so unusual for me. For these people, it's their every day real life. So why does it always feel so fake? I think it's because these people have created an artificial world for themselves in which they speak a language heavily tied to old racist ideas and laws. I think it's because they refuse to speak other languages to people, even though they know these languages. I think it's because they have maintained the vestiges of apartheid, the methods of it, for all intents and purposes it still exists there. They live miles and miles and miles from other people (aside from their black employees whom they don't consider people who live in shacks hidden deep within the farms). They have very few real interactions with people except for people exactly like themselves. They watch Afrikaans soap operas on TV. They own every single apple device that has ever been created. They try to isolate themselves from diversity, from other cultures, from any ideas that might prove that their racist ideals are wrong. ok, so I kind of vented, but this is all true. It breaks my heart.
10) I went to the BJ Voerster Farm. Still can't get over that. They referred to him as the former president of the country. Not true. The country is the Republic of South Africa, RSA. Founded in 1994. Didn't exist when BJ was president. That was apartheid South Africa. Don't try to make it seem normal. I see what you're trying to do there... Not cool. That farm was also the most racist, not surprisingly.
11) Poaching. Is a weird cultural factor. Plays very seriously into racism. Black people poach. maybe it's because they have no money and their kids are starving and dying so the prospect of killing one animal they see in the field that will give them a million dollars and will save all their kids' lives obviously makes sense. It does to me anyway. So...yeah.
It consumes a lot of the conversation. It's on everyone's mind. There are signs and posters about it everywhere. I think the little dehorned rhinos look cute with their stubby flat horns. :) Believe me, I want poaching to end as much as the next rhino-obsessed conservationist. But I am afraid it's an extremely complicated issue. The last Friday night I was in South Africa, poachers cut the fence at the Osmers' farm and broke in. One of the rhinos on the farm had a bullet wound in it and Bossie wasn't able to remove the bullet without risking killing the rhino, but he cleaned the wound and it already started healing up quite nicely.
12) All the white South Africans here speak English, but they only like speaking Afrikaans. I usually sit there in silence while they all converse in Afrikaans. Every ten minutes or so someone will turn to me and say something in English. Eventually though, I started picking up on what they were saying and would randomly interject just to keep them on their toes about not saying anything nasty about me behind my back. Or I'd ask a question in the middle of their conversation about something they were just talking about. Ha! :) They are all delighted when I speak Afrikaans. So it's a good way to impress and make friends too.
13) Seunde Laan. How I learn Afrikaans...this soap opera called "7th Lane" that's on every single night and is about a bunch of young Afrikaans-speaking people. There are English subtitles though...so I am learning Afrikaans that way. Three months ago, this show celebrated 3000 episodes. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN?! Here is a clip form it...
14) Mandela. So the two weeks I was on this internship were the two most critical weeks of Mandela's health ever. Every second they thought he could die. So it kept everyone on their toes. But more about that later.
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