Since 1989, I’ve made many two- to three-month-long forays “back home” to KZN from California. After my most recent foray unexpectedly extended from three to six months, I suffered a dose of culture shock co-morbid with a dizzying dose of, well, let’s call it
bureaucratitis.
Culture shock is a state of critical assessment, psychological discomfort, even alienation that follows the initial euphoria a traveler experiences with immersion into exotic places, people, and things. It has an incubation period of three to four months in the unfamiliar or foreign place. It’s neither contagious nor terminal and the traveler slowly adjusts to and accepts her new circumstances.
Bureaucratitis is an acute state of anxiety, high blood pressure, and disorientation caused by reluctant visits to a local municipality or post office.
Bureaucratitis worsens with an impending visit to the Department of Home Affairs.
I suffered my first bout of culture shock as a young adult after I left the spectacular rural countryside near the Valley of 1000 Hills that had been my home. A child with an adventurous spirit, I’d explored the Valley on horseback or (bare) foot and I knew the land within a five-mile radius of home like the back of my hand. It was my version of church, mosque, and temple.
The same adventurous spirit led me to explore urban San Francisco, albeit with maps—and good shoes—rather than rural skills and horses. Going from a dorp populated by fewer than five hundred to a conurbation of several million was challenging. It helped that I spoke English, a version of American.
My recent episode of culture shock co-morbid with
bureaucratitis called for mental agility, physical flexibility, and several Grandpa Headache Powders. Episodes of this malady are not contagious either, but I plan to minimize visits to bureaucracies to prevent relapse. It’s been, as we say in America, “quite the ride.”
Urban and rural
In ultra-urban California, I “do” a laid-back version of the Californian “lifestyle”: commute, work, socialize, and drive, drive, drive. In KZN, I kick back, enjoy the birds and monkeys, complain about South African drivers (why do they ride my tailpipe?), the lack of on-demand wireless access and the repetitive TV shows (how do you stand it?) and shiver at the omnipresent undertone of violent mayhem.
Being bi- or multi-cultural can feel like a zero-sum game when Americans ask, “Where are you from?” and South Africans say, “You sound like a Yank.” I respond by adjusting my accent as needed. Over there, I pronounce battery “badder-ree,” and over here, “bat-tree”; an elevator becomes a lift; interesting goes from “inner-esting” to “in-tris-ting’: hawk from “haa-k” to “hork”; poop (as in dog poop) from “poo-p” or “poo” to “poep”; and Z, “zee” as in “zee-brah” becomes “zed” as in “zeb-rah.”
Right-handed, in California I eat hamburgers, French fries, hotdogs, tacos, and cookies with bare hands. For genteel meals, I place knife in right and fork in left hands to cut and manipulate food, lay knife across the top of the plate, and switch fork from left to right hands to eat.
In South Africa I eat mealies, marmite sarmies, and biscuits with bare hands and everything else with fork in left and knife in right hands.
There, I drive on the “wrong side” of the road (although four-, five-, and six-lane freeways make that concept obsolete), put “gas” instead of “petrol” into my car’s fuel tank, check under the “hood,” not the “bonnet,” and place groceries in the “trunk,” not the “boot.”
Here, I drive on the “right side” of the road…until potholes force me to veer to either side and the “shoulder.”
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Potholes: ties that bind?
A bakkie spotted in a Pietermaritzburg parking lot.
(Photo: S. Galleymore, 2018.) |
Potholes’ potential
The road sign displayed “Potholes.” That’s not a sign seen in California, so I suspected it meant something in isiZulu (as in “ama-po-tol-es”)…until I drove my car into one:
ah ha!
Acclimated now, I veer hither and thither across roads avoiding potholes like every other driver. Yet, potholes offer enormous potential. Every South African, from drivers of the fanciest to the humblest vehicles, to passengers and pedestrians, knows a pothole. By presenting “nothing” where “something” ought to be, potholes highlight the conflict between rates-paying South Africans and rates-challenged municipalities. Potholes’ axel-grinding ubiquity forces equality across all political constituencies. And therein lies their power. Every South African would clamor to support the political party that disappeared the country’s potholes. Fix the potholes, run the country. (Don’t tell Juju!)
Recently, a local newspaper profiled two eighty-year-old pensioners, apparently
gatvol with the status quo, who voluntarily filled potholes in their neighborhood, and at their own expense. Soon after, municipal road workers binged on partially filling potholes around town. In my neighborhood, workers went further. They filled potholes… resurfaced the road, both sides…painted lines, both sides …for five hundred meters. Then, finished and klaar, they left the rest of that road and all the other roads in the neighborhood as rough, torn, and dangerous as ever.
The cynical might see that as a metaphor, but I’m optimistic. Potholes communicate a positive message in our subliminal
lingua franca: we’re all in this together.
Municipal woes
During my visit, my initial euphoria at being “back home,” my joyful exploration of what was new with people, places, and things, turned to despondency over the course of five visits to the local municipality to transfer one vehicle license. I quickly discovered my “spoiled American” persona. I’d drive home after each visit, shoulders knotted, belly clenched and heart thumping, and mutter, “Ag, I’m telling you,
I’m gatvol with this bloody nonsense!”
America has its drawbacks—among them violence, exploitation, and over-consumption—yet it really is the “can do” country, with “can do” people born to the mantra “time is money.” For example, ten years ago, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) held the reputation as ultimate bureaucratic nightmare. Customers complained lines were “too long,” that it took “up to an hour” to “do anything,” and that trips to DMV meant time away from work (again, “time is money”). DMV responded. Nowadays, a customer sets an appointment, arrives on time, and is finished and klaar within twenty minutes. Or completes business on DMV’s reliable and easy to navigate website.
Over there, DMV taught customer-facing representatives that their job is focusing on customers (at least pretending) and presenting fast, efficient, courteous service.
Over here? Not so much.
Municipal customer-facing representatives appear less in-tris-ted in customers and efficiency and more in-tris-ted in morning tea break.
I’ve never licensed a vehicle in South Africa before, so I may have approached the task with heightened expectations. I assumed procedures would differ, but customer service is, well, basic….
Procedurally, both countries require drivers to hold a valid license and most (although far from all) drivers do. Everything else is different. Americans, for example, register while South Africans license vehicles.
My first surprise at KZN’s equivalent of DMV was shouting through thick glass to communicate with the customer-service rep. Then understanding new nomenclature: license vs. registration, license vs. license, etc. Then explaining, loudly, who I am, where I live, and why I use my passport as ID. (“I’ve been to Home Affairs four times and my ID card still hasn’t been issued.” People snickered knowingly but no one doubted.) At the end of my first visit, I requested a list of the documents needed. The representative wrote in the margin of my already-filled out RLV form, “proof of address”; that was it. Well, that’s easy enough, I told myself.
Not so. During my third (fourth?) trip the customer-service rep shouted for what sounded like my “low poo.” “What’s a low poo?” I shouted back. “A low poo! A low poo!” she insisted. At a loss, I turned to the audience listening to the high-volume goings-on. A kind observer explained. “It’s your log book.” In fact, a “low poo” isn’t a book but a one-page certificate-like document. No “low poo,” no transfer.
After each visit I’d recuperate, build stamina for another sortie, and return. For my fifth visit, armed with passport, proof of residence, RLV and NCO forms, “loo poo,” even a signed, notarized letter from the previous owner (just in case it could expedite the process) I expected the worst.
I was shocked when the customer-service rep slid the completed documents to me through the narrow counter slot.
Then she asked for 397 rand. Cash only. I had 240 rand.
Panicked, I turned to the audience; some met my eyes, most looked away.
I pleaded. “Can anyone lend me two hundred rand? I’ll leave my paperwork with you until I return from the ATM. Please. I can't come back here. This is my fifth attempt at completing this transfer. Please.”
People shifted uncomfortably, shook their heads, ignored me. Desperate, I announced my name, my car license number….
Then Ben, bless his heart, pulled out his wallet.
I took the money, paid the fee, and dashed off to the ATM.
Just like that, vehicle transfer finished and klaar.
I wanted to give Ben a giant klap of goodwill, but I refrained. Who knows? He may have misunderstood that klap as aggression rather than how it was meant: confirmation that, with people like Ben in it, the world remained a kind and generous place.
Driving home, exhausted from the workout, I realized that not only did I not yet have my ID card from Home Affairs, my new vehicle would need a Certificate of Road Worthiness. What is that? How do I get it?
Ag, I’ll be “back home” soon and I’ll figure out that stuff when I return, after I’ve recovered from this trip….
