Showing posts with label Discrimination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Discrimination. Show all posts

Friday, September 27, 2013

My Life as a "wanderlust" : Sophie and Me... The unique relationship between me and my South African domestic...

Sophie is my domestic helper... no, I think that definition is a very narrow one...

Sophie, for me, is a doorway to know the culture of the land, I now inhabit... she is my mirror to the larger society that I am a part of, and yet I am quite aloof from it all... being an expat from the United States and an Indian national, we largely have American and Indian friends, who are all expatriates. We stay in gated communities, quite away from the humdrum, the joviality and the color of an ordinary South African life. We are fortunate enough to have a car at our disposal, wherever we wish to go... I have no idea how the "bucckies" (taxis, here in South Africa) are and I am quite unfortunately unaware of the problems that are faced by ordinary South Africans, in their ways of life... because as I said before, I live in a shell like existence...

That is the prime reason, why Sophie is important to me...

Not only she helps me keep my house clean, she also serves as a window to the larger, ordinary South African life...

Will Julius Malema make it to the elections next year..??? Is Robert Mugabe really as bad as portrayed in the world media?  How were the days for her, as a "black domestic" working in a predominantly "white neighborhood" in the days of apartheid? Do the tribes here, really keep Cheetahs as pets and how does one conform to the dual identity of being a Christian and a proud Tribal landlord...

These are some of the questions that Sophie unknowingly answers in our everyday conversations...

The first day, she came to work in my house, the second thing she said, after a big smile and a "thank you" ; is that she has never worked for "this color before", touching my arm to show that she has never worked with an Indian native before... Honestly, I was surprised and to tell the least I was shocked... I had never given any thought to my skin color before, at least not in the sense that Sophie implied, and then I realized that the skin color issue goes so deep in their psyche, that she just can't help but point it out...

I justified my skin color and the country of my origin by stating the one name, I thought she might be familiar with, Mahatma Gandhi... I asked her, "do you know of Mahatma Gandhi? He lived here in South Africa. I am from his country... same color, and same country, you see"... she responded with a huge smile, "yes Gandhi, I know Gandhi", "good man, very good man".... he fought for us...." I really wished some of our Indian Leaders could hear it... especially now, when the only day we remember the great man, is on his birth anniversary, and that too because it's a public holiday.

It's now been almost five months since I have known Sophie, and it seems to me, that she, through her stories, open up an incredible world  for me... it's a world inhabited by proud African chieftains, of the glorious wars the kings fought for cattle, the days of oppression, of Apartheid, of an entire nation suppressed by a minority government and of 1994, when Sophie who was 38 years of age and her mother 80 years old, went to vote for the first time in their lives...

Sophie belongs to the Ndebele (pronounced "debele", the N is silent) tribe who live mostly in the province of Mpumalanga (the M is silent)... her family is related to a tribal warlord who at one time had accumulated millions of cattle and were trading partners with the Boer settlers when they first came in... her mother still lives in a small village in a wattle and daub house and her only brother, was shot by the Apartheid Police when he was 22 and was working as an electrician for a white businessman, his crime, he was out in the "white neighborhood"  without his "identity pass" at 7 pm in the evening... he was the only bread earner in the family of four... after which Sophie took on the responsibility of the household and set off to eMahlaleni (Witbank), an industrial town some seven kilometers away from her village to find work as a domestic...

She has one daughter, Precious, who studies Chemical Engineering in Stellenbosch University near Cape Town. When Precious was small, she could not get admitted to a school near Sophie's then employer's home, because it was reserved for "white kids only" , her then employer, a White doctor called Jaco, (who still live in Silver Lakes, one of the biggest gated Estates in Pretoria East) introduced Precious as their own adopted daughter in order to secure admission for her in a school a short distance away where his children also studied. He and his wife, used to take Precious with their own girls to the school in their car... something that was unthinkable in the Apartheid ridden South Africa...

When she speaks of Nelson Mandela, her eyes fill with tears... Mandela, also known as 'Madiba' here, is the father of the nation. What Mandela and the African National Congress did for the majority of Black South Africans can be gauged from Sophie's life. Sophie belongs to the lowermost strata of the society, a strata long oppressed first by the white minority and then by the elite black minority. Sophie's daughter who is hopefully going to enter the growing middle class is her only hope of having a better life, one in which she hopes, to no longer work as a domestic helper.

As I grow more familiar with her, her life seems so richly filled with experiences, that my own struggles seem puny. She looks much more than 57 years of age, a face wrinkled and creased by experiences, age and struggles. As a woman, Sophie has had to struggle on many levels, a single mother trying to eke a living for herself and her daughter, a black domestic worker, working for white employers, a dutiful daughter whom circumstances forced to become the sole breadwinner for the family, a devoted Christian, and an ANC Card holding member, who with millions of her countrymen are engaged in a long battle to elevate and gain an equal standing in the land of their birth.

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me about Sophie, is this woman, whom life has handed out probably the harshest of the terms, never ever blames life for her destiny. She always has a smile on her face when I open the door in the mornings that she comes to my house. She is always grateful to god, that he has given her a life and enough to eat to maintain her strength so that she can work and earn her livelihood...

Nowadays, very often, a small quote by Gandhi (yes, again, back to him)... comes to my mind, it goes something like this, "when you are in a difficulty, when your ability to decide is being challenged and you are confused about the path to take, think about the most poorest and the most courageous man or woman you have ever met, and think, how the path(s) you are about to take, will effect him or her. You'll see it becomes easy and something that seem complicated, resolves smoothly".

Before this I could not think of any one till I met Sophie...

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

My Life as a Wanderlust : The Black, The Grey and The White...

It's almost been three months of stay for me and my husband here in South Africa.
 Before taking a trip down here, there are two things which we searched about the most.

First, of course, the places to visit and secondly, Indian Restaurants ( as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we are foodies of the greatest nature).

About the first, we haven't been to any of the famous places that one would normally come across while Goggling "South Africa", but I managed to go to the one place that I was hell bent on and which really shook us, it instilled a feeling in us about the place where we are living and the legacy it carried for all of us.

The place I am talking about is the Apartheid Museum. Anybody who has been to South Africa or plan to visit South Africa, trust me, your journey would remain half complete if you don't visit this place. I am a huge history buff so wherever I go, I make sure that I read some of the nations' history, otherwise not knowing about the country, about it's people, about the legacy, makes me feel incomplete.

We have all heard of the heinous practice of Apartheid which was taken and practiced as a State Policy here in South Africa and the practice ended only in 1991. A lot of my friends of Facebook, didn't know that Apartheid ended only in 1991, this is extremely recent for people of our age... I mean we were all in school at the time... Anyhow when I had first heard of the place, I made sure, that this was a "must see" on my list.

I am giving below the link of the Museum's site, if anyone is interested in finding out more, and really the more you know, the more will you be surprised.

http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/

The first thing that strikes you is that the tickets that are given randomly distinguish people into Whites and Non-Whites... no there is nothing racial about it, me and my husband are both Asian, we got two tickets, one labelled "White" (Blanke in Afrikaans) and "Non-White" ( Nie-Blanke) and then we had to go through separate doors titled the same, into a tunnel kind of exhibition... this act in itself strikes you as extremely discriminating... it did to me, but that's exactly what used to happen down here. Then there is a passageway and an exhibition showing us enlarged posters of the "Identity cards" that people carried. The thing that felt strange to me was, besides name,  and gender, there was the "Ethnic" grouping. Also there was a group called "the chameleons" well, surprising as it may sound, the Apartheid Government termed the Citizens of the country so in 1985. This group of people officially changed their Ethnicity  from either "Indians" to Coloured, Coloureds to Indians, Malays to Coloured and so on...

When we emerge from this horrendous passage, we are re-united with our co-passengers, who had been passing through another similar tunnel... We emerged into an open courtyard where the Johannesburg sun was shinning down... it felt like a breadth of fresh air... the sensation after passing through a tunnel, the exhibits of which keep reminding you of your Ethnicity, to say the least, is not at all pleasant. I just imagined, what might have been the situation for this country's citizens who had to carry those evil cards at all times which shrieked out distinction and you could do nothing about it...

There were many, many similar exhibits stating the history of South Africa. The settlement of the Dutch colonists on the western capes of the country, who first trekked up the Highvelds into the interior to set up cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria, how the English came later and the beginning of the Apartheid ideology which started as an innocent idea to preserve the culture, tradition and the history of the first "Afrikaan" people and then turned into an heinous practice and later into a hated state policy.

As one passes through the museum, one is time and again reminded of the differences that exist among us, and also reminds us, that it is these differences which unites us rather than divide us... Sure we are different, each and every individual is different, but it is this, that makes us "humans" , if we were all same, we would rather have been machines...

At the end of all the exhibitions, there is a place, a kind of forest with a huge man-made lake, the clear waters of the lake reflect back at you and you realize whatever our race may be, whatever our color, whatever our language may be, and whatever our religion, we still are "human beings" and that's the only thing that's worthy about us.

A visit to this place actually makes you evaluate your humanity. It drills into you that no matter how bad the conditions may be, there can still be hope for better...



Saturday, April 2, 2011

Is "SHE " a curse?







Between the hullabaloo of the Cricket World cup and the Men in Blue performing extraordinarily... one news item that would otherwise have made the headlines of every single news channel and print media have got lost in translation. I am talking about the miserable child sex ratio of our nation which has dropped from 927 in the year 2001 to 914 in 2011. What does this mean? From whatever I could gather from the Net and the print media is that... based on the provisional Census data for 2011, there are in the age group of 0-6 yrs, 914 girl child for every 1000 boy child.
This shows a tremendous increase in female infanticide. A nation that boasts itself to be the 3rd most growing economy with a Purchasing Power Parity to be 2nd in the world, such a woeful state of affairs is indeed shocking. India has a Lady President at helm, a lady is the chairperson of our ruling coalition govt, one of the most populous and the largest state of India has a lady Chief Minster... and the most densely populated state in our country is rooting for another lady Chief Minster... so how come in a nation so dominated by the fair sex, does her counterpart in the infancy of their lives face such discrimination? It is indeed a question which, not our policy makers, but we the common people, have to answer.
The provisional Census figures show starkly the north south divide. The three worst performing states are Haryana (830 female child/1000 male child), Punjab (846/1000 machild) and J&K (859/1000 male child). Among the states which have shown an improvement over the the data of 2001 are the states of Punjab which showed a steady increase of over a 48 point while Haryana has an 11 point increase from 2001. But it is J&K which has shown a steady decline in child sex ratio, decreasing by 82 points. It is followed by Maharashtra which shows the next biggest decline in child sex ratio.
The grim story behind gritty numbers are that the girl child is not welcome in the families of the young, prosperous India. The three states that have been mentioned aforesaid are among the three having a high per capita income. Even Maharashtra which is the most industrially advanced state of India does no longer want a girl child. Notice that many "low income " states of the nation like Orrissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh haven't made it to the list. Also the seven north east states are actually heading the list of states with higher female sex ratio.
The overall Female sex ratio has undergone a change for the better, there are now 940 females per 1000 males in India as compared to 933 females/1000 males a decade ago. But this does not take away the fact that actually more and more girl child are dying a faster death at their birth than the ones who get to live.
Coming to a horrendous fact, some years ago, an Indo Canadian Scientist reported in "the Lancet" that pre natal selection and selective abortion were causing a loss of 500,000 girls in India a year. Scientists say that most economically well off nations have a more than equal sex ratio and a country with higher GDP and a poor sex ratio is an anomaly.
This problem is one of the many which no law can actually solve, the right to give birth to a child actually depends on the parents, no matter if the apex court considers abortion as murder. I just ask one question, are girls so bad that they don't even have a right to see the light of the day. Abortion is a criminal act in out law, but now it has been proved that only the more well off are going for it, paying huge sums of money for the dastardly act. I ask young mothers and fathers, the literacy rate of India, in the new census figures is a lofty 74.6%, how could any of you stand this? A girl child is as good, if not better than her male counterpart, so why this discrimination? Sadly in India, they are not even given a chance to prove their worthiness. The absence of the girl child will definately be felt, if not now then 10 years later, and then the society will pay a hefty price. Maybe we deserve this, for we are all guilty of murder.

Reflection muses...

Language is the basis for recapturing experience...

- Cyhthia Selfae