The Host/Guest Relationship

I make my bed and tidy up my room every morning. For those of you who know anything about my housekeeping inclinations, this is an extraordinary feat. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I made my bed in my Boston apartment. It’s a simple discipline, but it reminds me daily of the host/guest relationship. My mom taught me the polite thing to do when you are an overnight guest is to make the bed in which you slept. This practice keeps me mindful that I will always be a guest of my host family.

Being a guest brings a different sort of awareness to one’s interactions. I make an effort not to interfere with anyone’s daily routine (by spending too much time in the shower), but also to be more sociable than my introverted tendencies incline me to be (by spending a lot of time in the kitchen). After living by myself for two years, living with a family has been an adjustment. I’m discovering that I’m not used to living in relationship. I’m accustomed to doing things on my own and if not alone then with people of my own choosing. In SA there’s a much stronger emphasis on relationships on all levels than in the US. People are defined not exclusively as individuals, but by the quality of their relationships. There’s a saying, “I am, because we are.”

My mom, in her infinite wisdom, loved to tell me as a kid, “Crystal, you can’t do it alone.” I absolutely hated when she said that. What do you mean I can’t figure out the entirety of SA on my own? I’m a capable individual, right? (Yes, I realize how incredibly ridiculous that sounds.) At times it’s difficult for me to ask questions, because having to ask is an admission that I don’t have the answer already. Sometimes I feel like I’m asking a hundred questions a day. It’s humbling to acknowledge that my hosts have a wealth a knowledge and experience to share with me; that I can’t figure this all out of my own. I’m thankful that I can’t, because cross-cultural living is too complicated to figure out by myself.

As an American raised in the ideals of rugged individualism and the self-made person, the idea of living in relationship is at times jarring. I’m not used to being accountable to other people about where I’ll be and what I’m doing with my time. But on a more profound level, I’m not used to being defined as someone’s daughter or someone’s co-worker. I’m just Crystal—not Crystal living with the Dlaminis, or Crystal working with Mrs. Mahaye at the crèche, or Crystal attending the Machibesa congregation. Those are all things I’m used to compartmentalizing, not things with which I define myself. I think this discomfort is a result of a need to rethink how I view living in relationship by acknowledging that I do live in relationship. As much as I like to think I can do it on my own, I can’t. I don’t believe that’s an admission of weakness. It’s a belief in the strength of living in community. We live interdependently, relying on one another. We have to. I am because we are.

On the ground in PMB

One of my motivations for serving with YAGM was to put faces to the statistics of extreme poverty and disease. It is one thing to listen to figures rattled off from a PowerPoint presentation and quite another to be shown around a township. I wanted to experience “the real thing.” I’m currently living in the province with highest infection rate in the country with the highest overall infection rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. At a 40% prevalence, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) is one of the centers of the pandemic. It doesn’t get more real than this.

Pietermartizburg (PMB), or Martizburg for short, is the provincial capital of KZN. It is a city of stark contrasts. Like many other cities in South Africa it is possible to travel between areas with every developed world amenity imaginable to the desperate poverty of the developing world within minutes. You can find a shopping mall within kilometers of a township. I travel between these worlds on a daily basis.

I live in a neighborhood about a ten-minute khombi (taxi) ride from the city center. It’s a quiet area with spacious houses and well-kept gardens. Yesterday morning I enjoyed watching a troop of monkeys scamper across the road as I waited for a khombi. Before 1994 (the end of apartheid), by law my host family would not have been allowed to live in this neighborhood, as blacks in a formerly white section of the city. (During apartheid cities were racially divided into black, colored, Indian, and white areas. Its legacy is still clearly visible in the geography of the city.)

Each morning I travel to the city center or to the townships, depending on which placement site I’m working at that day. The khombi system is like the MBTA in Boston in the respect that it appears to have no set schedules. But with a lot patience (mostly with myself) and a little bravery I’ve been learning to navigate my way around the city using public transportation. Like any system, it’s much easier to negotiate once one has a better sense of how it operates.

I’ve been officially working for two weeks now, though the majority of my first week was spent in a training workshop on HIV/AIDS and the church. I wasn’t able to go to work on last Friday, because of the Jacob Zuma court proceedings that made the little city of PMB famous for a day. (There was no public transportation, as the khombis were not running their regular routes but ferrying Zuma supporters to the political rally taking place downtown.) To that end it is a very interesting time to be a student of South African politics. For the first time the president of the country, Thabo Mbeki, is not also the president of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). Jacob Zuma is the current president of the ANC.

My sites are with a Christian non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Pietermatizburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness (PACSA) and a crèche (preschool) attached to an Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (ELCSA) congregation. (Are you following the alphabet soup?) I’m discovering that as an American I have a strong need to “do” and to do it right now. I’m seriously resisting the urge to shout, “I’m here!” It’s taken a lot of patience to realize that neither SA or even PMB revolve around the orientation processes at my placements. I’m jumping, as a guest, into systems that were set in motion long before I arrived and will continue long after I’m gone. These first few weeks I’ve been trying to find the places where I will serve most effectively within those systems. Like any system, it’s much easier to negotiate once one has a better sense of how it operates, as difficult as that may be for an impatient American like me.

Kicking the Box

South Africa Orientation (26 August – 8 September)

As our country coordinators, Brian and Kristen said, "The best way to learn about South Africa is from South Africans." This may seem like an obvious statement, but it’s not as simplistic as it sounds. Our first few days were in Johannesburg. We then traveled east to Pietermaritzburg, where we spent the remainder of orientation. There were also day trips to Pretoria, the capital, and Durban. No amount of reading, whether from Fodor’s travel guide or Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, can really prepare you for an immersion into South Africa culture. No number of workshops on cross-cultural understanding or YAGM policy will teach you how to live and work in another context thousands of miles from the one you have known your entire life. There is nothing that can replicate the hauntingly beautiful a cappella singing in a church service, the story of a volunteer caring for her neighbor with HIV/AIDS, or the raw power of the Indian Ocean on the eastern coast. The best way to learn about South Africa is from South Africans–to listen to their stories and to share in their experiences.


A common theme from Chicago was that the “success” of your service is contingent upon how you choose to engage. I don’t think my previous conception a comfort zone exists anymore, because I’ve already consciously and unconsciously stepped outside it too many times. (That’s a really good thing.) I acknowledge that we all live in boxes (our prejudices, fears, misunderstandings, etc.) and place other people in boxes, sometimes intentionally but often unintentionally. From Day 1 landing in Joburg, our SA country group has been asked to “kick the box.” We’re not only expected to listen intently, but to think critically. This year is about pushing boundaries and taking risks (of course not in terms of my physical safety Mom and Dad) but socially, emotionally, and spiritually. Orientation taught us how to engage within our context, to ask questions.

Engagement is not always an easy thing. Engagement is introducing yourself to the mama (older woman, grandmother type) sitting next you at a church function that sings better in Zulu than you ever will and complimenting her as such. Engagement is not allowing your eyes to glaze over through a talk about mission in the context of globalization from a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (It was actually really interesting.), but really thinking about how what this person has to say is going to affect your year. Engagement is taking the risk that leading a game “Red Light Green Light” when visiting a township crèche (preschool) might turn into complete chaos. (Chaos with lots of eager four-year-olds has its fun moments.) Engagement is not only showing up but being present. Therein lies what I think will be the greatest challenge but also the biggest success of my year here in South Africa.