We wanted to invite the TSiBA students, but we weren’t exactly sure how to go about it. We knew that some of them couldn’t afford the R15 (15 rand, around USD 2) cover fee, nor drinks. We didn’t want anyone not to come due to lack of funds, and we didn’t want anyone to come but feel alienated because they wanted to drink but couldn’t afford to. On the other side of the same coin, we didn’t want to insult anyone by paying for him/her. We also had to figure out their transportation to our place before heading out to the club, and their transportation home afterwards, or who would sleep on which couches back here.
Needless to say, it was quite a production.
We totally pulled it off.
I couldn’t help but have a touching little moment on the bus over. We all stood in our seats or in the small aisle and danced to the hip-hop playing over the speakers. When we came to stop lights (‘robots’ here), the bus shook with music and our dancing. We waved around. As a rainbow of Americans and South Africans mixed dancing and laughing, I couldn’t help but think that were we doing this one generation ago, even in the year of our birth, each one of us would have been arrested and thrown in jail.
As the night progressed, I found myself sitting on one of the long, white couches silently surveying everyone, paying attention to people who may have had too much to drink, trying to make sure that no more glasses or bottles broke and sprayed glass across the floor, or no more unwanted lap dances broke out… One of the other Northeastern students, of whom I’m quite fond, plopped himself down next to me and asked how I was. On his other side was Nqobile.
It went something like this:
‘Hi, Meaghan.’
‘Hi, ———.’
‘I’m...drunk.’
I laugh. ‘I see that! You feeling okay? How about a glass of water?’
‘Yeah, that’s a really good idea. Nqobile, how are you? Are you having a good time?’
She answers affirmatively.
He proceeded to engage Nqobile in a discussion about how unfair the world was, how he could just step out of South Africa back to his privileged life in Boston. He said that it wasn’t fair--life wasn’t fair. He asked who he was to her, who had gone through so much and come so far. Who was he to come here, see things, try to change things? He didn’t deserve any of this--his place of birth, his skin colour.
Nqobile laughed her big laugh, smiled her big, bright smile, and put her arm around him as well. She said that life certainly isn’t fair. She said that yes, she had come through a lot, and she was privileged to be where she was; she was privileged to know a boy named ———, to know a girl named Meaghan. We may not think that we’re changing much, but she insisted that we were changing so much just with our presence. Each of us is privileged in a different way.
He said that when he was naughty as a child and was punished, he would complain and his mother would tell him that life wasn’t fair. What was her mother telling her as family members wasted away with AIDS, as abject poverty surrounded them, as she couldn’t continue school because she couldn’t afford to go anymore?
He said that he wanted to stay here and do more. She said that we would go back to America and bring what we know. We’ll bring even more funding from the Americans. We’ll disseminate knowledge. We’re changing things just by setting foot in South Africa.
He said fuck America. It isn’t worth saving, and the ignorant people pay no attention to their government or the rights afforded to or stolen from them.
She insisted that we all have a place, whether it’s fair or not.
I love these students. We are amazing.
Last night, I silently sipped Jameson to impressed South African faces. I ran up the stairs to the dance floor and spun around and around people dressed in all sorts of different ways, skin colours from my delicate ‘transparent’ through Asian students, Indian, mixed race, deep dark black… It didn’t matter in the dark. It didn’t matter if I was back to back with a black girl, face to face with a white boy, sandwiched between two South African boys (it was an Oreo!) or bent in a backbend in the middle of the floor on my own.
I had the most transcendent experience that night, as I suppose I will continue to do. I’m normally not too aware of the colours of people’s skin around me. Once, in the eye doctor’s office, I read 3 articles in Jet magazine before realising that there were no whites in it. Sometimes, though, at night around Northeastern or on the bus to Dorchester, I’m very aware that I’m the only white around. It happens, and it bothers me that it happens.
Last night, though, I truthfully can attest that I didn’t think about skin colour once, except meditating on the bus as mentioned. We were just 40-50 students having a ridiculously unbelievable time that was a tremendous success. I could say that it was a passive resistant action against Apartheid, against racism everywhere, but it was really just an awesome night out.
finis
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