Learning a New Language

If you wanna keep up with my group on our shared blog, please do! cgenamibia.blogspot.com


[2/7/10]

Sundays are quiet. It’s like pulling the plug on a high-voltage lamp. The men all have soccer to attend to, but the women do laundry and clean and take naps before making dinner. Women still work, oh yes. But Sunday is quiet.

I’m learning so much about homestays on this homestay. I may not think I’m learning much by sitting in front of the TV eating dinner, but in fact I am having a much different experience than I would at home, at CGE or at Oberlin. So, essentially, I’m doing exactly what I set out to do. It just doesn’t feel that way.

Yesterday there was a baby shower and I felt out of place until Kristin (our intern) suggested I ask how to say “what is that?” Then the conversation really picked up. I thought, from last semester, that I’d be cool when everyone was speaking another language and yet I felt isolated and sad. They LOVE to share their language though and will tell me that, by the end of this week, I’ll know Afrikaans.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

It feels like I’m learning the language of the oppressor from people who have been oppressed and yet, they seem perfectly happy. They don’t feel segregated or hopeless or any of the things I’ve read that tell me what “coloreds” or Barstars feel. I’m wondering why they don’t have more to say on the subject, I’m wondering why they’re so proud of this language and I’m feeling very conflicted.

Yet...

When you think about it, English is an oppressive language. It’s one that has been used (now) for YEARS to ‘keep people together’ and yet all it does is push people away. If someone immigrates to the U.S. and doesn’t speak English they will feel ostracized and alone. They won’t be able to work or go to school until they learn basic terms. And yet, as an American College student I can go anywhere I choose, knowing that I can find at least one person in most countries/nations who speak English.

How ‘backwards’ is that?

So I suppose...it’s not...all that different.

That seems to be the theme this weekend. Many facets of Namibian life are very similar to American life, just...in Namibia.

They love soccer – we love football.
They like to watch TV – so do we.
They enjoy good food with a good chat - yup, same as us!
They have conceptions of how life is in the US – and we TOTALLY have conceptions (and many misconceptions) of how life is in Namibia and in Africa ‘at large.’

Speaking of which...our DEVELOPMENT class was very enlightening this week. I learned I know a lot more about development than I thought I did and I have a lot more opinions on it than I ever imagined. Namely, Development should be about empowerment. What I mean by that is, if one group comes into another group’s space to ‘develop,’ they should focus on empowering the people who live there: teach a man to fish...kind of deal. (P.S. Recently in that class I’ve found that I’m becoming a Radical. Like an Assata Shakur, Audre Lorde, Black Panther-type. It’s kinda freakin’ me out...but also really interesting)

I hope I can do that in my internship.

****
So, we arrived last Wednesday. On Saturday, we had guests from UNAM (University of Namibia) come and talk with us. We also met a local music artist named Pablo. He took us to a concert for Haiti that was AWESOME! Sam and I (Sam Ryan, yet another Sam in my life who loves to dance as much as I do!) got up and danced and of course, some guys were all up on our tail and this guy was all ‘let me take your picture’- apparently he was from the Youth League and it turns out we were on African television a couple nights later!!!

So basically we’re stars. No big.

Ok, so when we came back to hang out Pablo told me how well I danced – how I was a Dancer and I felt the music and I don’t dance like most girls like me...and I was shocked because people have been telling me that here a lot and I just immediately think of the Moment I found out about getting into DANCE 1 when the majority of my class were in at least dance 2, if not dance 3 and I was SO heartbroken and so ready to never EVER dance again and for a good year or so I refused to dance outside of Dance Class, even though I Loved to dance (and I always have)...I mean, it’s always been that way. I don’t like dance classes because I almost always feel that I can’t get the steps right or I’m sweating more than everyone else or whatever. I’ve had a couple of teachers who haven’t made me feel that way – Kaye, Wendy, Ms. Mehan, Aziza, and most recently, Tweety at Manhattan Plaza.

But...without their even knowing it...by hearing about my dancing and my body movement from people who are from where dancing was created, everything I’ve tried to explain to people in the past about my body image and relating to ideals that were not stereotypically my own and all the bullshit i get for liking men and women outside of my race and all the questions of WHY AFRICA? WHY YOU? WHY NOW?

It all just silenced. It was all quenched. It all made sense. Without even knowing me 24 hours, somehow people here ‘get’ that my body is connected to some force I can’t describe and that I’m in continual turmoil for have the urges I do as a white girl.

And yet, without discrimination, without hate or jealousy or passive aggression, they just dance with me. They just accept that this is who I am. I was born with the soul of someone different that who I look like on the outside. I’m not special. I’m just not the stereotype. I’m not anything that people would expect. I never have been and I never will be.