Today we went to a braai in a township called Guguletu, about 20 minutes from campus. A couple of the SOLmates planned the trip, and apparently it’s a really popular spot for lunch on Sundays because for R30 (about $4) it’s all you can eat meat at this place called Mzoli’s. So we get there and we’re waiting for this food FOREVER and I’m getting so frustrated and then all of a sudden, after almost 2 hours, they bring out these HUGE platters of just meat stacked on meat stacked on meat!! It also came with some sadze (in Shona), which I described before as really thick grits, but today I realized what it’s really like is like dumplings. So it’s very ironic to me that sadze, which you eat with chicken and other meat, is the most “authentic” African food I have eaten so far, but it is actually very similar to chicken and dumplings, which is a favorite meal on my mom’s side of the family! So here I am thinking I’m being all cultural and really it’s so similar to what we eat at home! But it’s cool to see the connections across the continents. Also, big difference: today we are with our hands!! Definitely no forks of any kind in sight, let alone napkins. So they sit this huge platter of meat down and everyone was just kind of looking, so of course I dove in! And the best part was, since we had the least amount of people at our table, we had more food to go around, and I CANNOT waste food, so when people were done I was like well, may as well keep going! So I had about 5 huge pieces of the most delicious lamb I have ever tasted in my life, and 2 or 3 of these really good sausages. Not to mention a ton of sadze. Seriously y’all, I pigged out. But please believe I am GOING BACK every weekend… so when I come back with the “junior 30″ or whatever it might be, don’t look at me crazy! Just know I’ve been eating good!!
Oh, let me explain the title of this entry. So while we were at the braai, one of the girls noticed that there were a billion cars all pulled up into this township, which didn’t seem right because townships are known for their immense poverty. So she asked Moses, and he told us that all the people eating with us at the braai actually didn’t live in the township; they were participating in what they call BEE, Black Economic Empowerment. They were people who had “moved up” in the world financially, but they come back to get back to their roots in a sense, and also contribute to the economy of their old ‘hood, basically. Which is AMAZING and WONDERFUL, if you ask me. I mean, you have this socially mobile group who, instead of “selling out” and distancing themselves as far as possible from their more humble beginnings, consciously choose to remain tied socially as well as economically to their former community.
Which led me to think… WOW. Why can’t we do this in the U.S.? From my own personal observations of people in Southfield and at Georgetown, it seems to me that many people who were able to make it “out of the hood” or whatever want to distance themselves as much as possible from that past, except for on certain occasions when it gives you some type of authenticity/street cred. I get that sense from the condescending attitudes of many people in Southfield (which for those of you not from home is primarily Black middle-class) about Detroit, as well as the comments that some Black Georgetown students make about lower-income Black people in general. This is just my opinion, and I’m no type of authority, but that’s just what I see. I wish we could develop more of a consciousness of our interconnectedness as a people, as it seems like these Black South Africans have done. Though they belong to different socioeconomic classes, they realize they have come from the same struggle and are still in this together. I think Black America has largely forgotten about that. I’m curious to know, what do you think?
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