October: An Executive Summary

So, remember that month called October?

It happened. So did the month that came right after it. I’m fairly certain it was called November, but… you know… don’t go quoting me on that.

Have you been waiting patiently for my next update, dear reader?

Have you been gripping the edge of your seat in anticipation?

I have.

LHR was a little short-staffed these past two months, and that meant it was more slammed than normal for those of us left standing. This is not only because we’ve recently said ‘goodbye’ to two very hardworking interns, (… and the clinic manager had emergency surgery, and the photocopier died a few times, and sometimes our building doesn't have water (or power), and there were literally riots in the streets, and…) but also because many of my colleagues spent several weeks swamped with bail applications and court appearances. Why, you ask? Well, students, in part.

I certainly can’t go blaming all of the October mayhem on the students though. That would not only be unreasonably unfair, it would also just be a lie. There are a LOT of things happening over here right now as 2016 comes closer to an end, and really… I’m starting to wonder exactly how different South Africa is going to look when I leave compared to when I arrived.

So let’s take a look at a few of the things I’ve been up to in chronological order, shall we?

First and foremost, when October began I was at a point where LHR was happy to let me start picking up files on my own. This also meant I inherited a few (hahahahahahahaha…. Literally dozens of) files from two of the interns who had just finished their time at LHR. This was simultaneously very exciting, and mildly terrifying. It was immediately before the UNHCR monitoring meeting too, which meant that everything we’d just transferred had to be in tiptop shape in case the UNHCR decided they wanted to inspect any of the hardcopy stuff.

An accurate summary of my feelings towards the UNHCR.

You also have to remember the number of clients that we help. Every day, our waiting room is alternately filled with nightmares, desperation, and justified frustration; but we only have the capacity to do intake for about 10 new people. No one wakes up in the morning and decides that they’re going to be a refugee for the fun of it, which makes LHR a last resort for many people. To me, that means that every time we open a file we’re holding a significant part of someone’s future as ink on paper, bundled together with fasteners and glue sticks. When I sit down to work on a file, it gets my full attention (to the best of my ability) specifically because of that. It feels like the stakes are high here, because they are.

(The best part of this is that you think I’m joking about the glue sticks. Oh, ye innocent friends and family… if only you knew how often I’ve reached for a glue stick in the past eight weeks.)

Colleagues with a similar fashion sense are clearly the best colleagues.

It also means that when something goes well, it’s a huge victory; both for the clients and ourselves. Even in the short amount of time I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to see the highest of highs, and a couple worst-case scenarios. Both are inherent in the work that we’re doing, and that’s especially so given the political climate here right now. A heavier workload, and extreme case-facts are the reality of NGO work in this sector. I wouldn’t give up a moment of the experience I’m gaining here, but that does mean that it’s harder to find time to sit down and write about the whole thing haha!

On a lighter note, I settled in with a lovely young Afrikaans couple and a friend of theirs as my room mates near the beginning of October. They have two lovely dogs, live in an old character house that is the definition of country living in a city setting, and casually keep chickens. 

The Academic and I, giving some scale to that ginormous Voortrekkers Monument in the background.  It is a gigantic, three level museum and monument to the journey many Afrikaners made up through South Africa. It is a somewhat one-sided view of history, but the building itself is certainly something to experience. 

Looking down from way up on the third floor. We definitely took the stairs. 

Some of the stained-glass windows right up at the top of the monument, letting in some cool light in the afternoon sun. 

... and they took me with them to their family farm one weekend. 

It was beautiful. The clouds were dynamic and stormy, everything was industrial, there were cows, and endless rolling hills. The original plan was to dedicate an entire post specifically to the farm, and just inundate you with photos. Unfortunately, I also got robbed when I went to Pride 2016 in Johannesburg the weekend after. I neglected to load the photos from my phone onto my computer right after the farm trip, so that leaves us with a short paragraph that alternately gushes about the farm, and also provides zero images of its rustic beauty. Not to worry, I’ve been promised that we’re going back on at least one other occasion before I return to Canada.

Life is what you make it.

Please don’t be too alarmed about the robbery. Crime is a reality in SA, and all in all I was very lucky with this one. Someone came up behind me and cut open my bag while I was with friends listening to one of the performers, but all they got was the phone. I have since gotten a different phone up and running, and the mother of one of my room mates patched the hole in my bag. (She is made of love and tiny perfect stitches. I have fed her wine and cookies several times, because I am so happy with what she’s done to my bag!) Anyway, I was aware of the robbery when it happened, but wasn’t quite fast enough to catch the thief when I turned. Really though, that’s probably a good thing. Chasing people with knives is an awful idea.

What else have I been up to other than work, and walking in the streets throwing glitter?

Eating. All. The. Food.

Seafood paella at the Neighbourgoods Market in Johannesburg.  It was delicious, and I have no regrets. 

If you’ve ever wondered what food would be traditionally South African, the answer is really very short: meat.

I’ve talked about braai-ing before, but I don’t know that I’ve really communicated the sheer amount of protein that is consumed at the bottom of this continent. For example, I had the chance to braai with two lovely women this month who laughed when I asked if there were any vegetables with dinner.

Guys, I’m not even a huge fan of veggies. I’m not that person who sat next to you in law school and casually ate an entire yellow pepper like an apple, or who always had carrot sticks and beet salad in her lunch box. (Both of those people exist, in case you were wondering.) So when I say that I asked about vegetables, please understand that the fact that I now actively seek fresh veg literally whenever I see it is highly comic.

Oh look... a casual South African dinner table!
(Ok no actually this is Viktor Polish Meats at Neighbourgoods Market, and you should eat there.)

Dinner began with a lovely appetizer of bacon rashers, which are like bacon, but thicker and with a thin section of bone along the edge so you can pick it up and eat it as finger food. Then we moved onto the second course of woers, which is a very Afrikaans version of a hot dog/sausage/bratwurst. Then we moved onto chicken. Chicken was the main, and it was done four ways. It was delicious, and beautifully braai-ed, but at this point I was looking around for something even vaguely green.

Ha! Rookie.

Then we moved onto the lamb.

And then the beef.

And then a single bowl of salad with tomatoes, peppers, pumpkin seeds, and avocado slices made an appearance.

I basically ate the salad. Like… by myself. I may have gone back three or four times for separate helpings out of sheer force of will, but that’s only because there were other people at the table... and it would have been inexcusably rude to just eat the whole thing directly out of the bowl without sharing.

But I thought about it. 

Last(-ish) but not least: I got to go be a colossal law geek, and it was wonderful. There is a watchdog position in government here called the Public Protector. I suspect the job itself is vaguely similar to our Privacy Commissioner. South Africa’s previous Public Protector was Madame Thuli Madonsela, and I was very privileged to have the chance to hear her speak at a lecture on good governance. If you haven’t had the chance to read about how this woman showed up and stormed corruption with her unflappable calm, you really, really should.

Want to see the lecture that I saw? Good news! You can check out a recording of it here:
http://www.enca.com/south-africa/catch-it-live-madonsela-good-governance-lecture

Definitely only had the chance to attend this lecture as The Academic's +1. Just to be clear, if you're ever travelling with The Academic and she happens to start a sentence with "Would you like to come to - " or "So I was thinking go doing - " the answer is "Yes. I'm in." 

I also had the opportunity to attend a conference held by the International Association of Refugee Law Judges. The conference was very well done, with experts and judges coming in to speak from literally all over the world. I also had an incredibly proud moment when I realised the (Canadian) Immigration and Refugee Board was not only present, but its members had spent several days before the conference doing a workshop on best practices for assessing claims with the Refugee Status Determination Officers here. They did a whole section based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or similarly (potentially) very sensitive/personal issues, and spoke as panellists on a variety of topics. Guys, I was so proud to be Canadian I might as well have leaked maple syrup in happiness.

Want to see their workshop and conference schedule? Yeah you do! 'Cause they're coming to Canada in May 2017 and you should absolutely take that as an excuse to go visit Victoria.
http://www.iarlj.org/general/conferencesworkshops 

… and I had the chance to attend the latest appearance of LHR in the Constitutional Court, on the case of LHR v Minister of Home Affairs.

This is inordinately exciting if you're me.

Right, and I got caught in a protest march with the EFF. It ended up being incredibly educational, but at the time I was very aware that I was watching what began as a peaceful protest become a riot… from the inside. That was pretty scary at times. As someone who is so white I practically glow in the dark, I maybe wouldn’t recommend protesting with the EFF in particular. 

This was the only time during the protest I felt it was safe to pull out my phone and take a quick photo. Most of the time, I was one of what I suspect was nearly a thousand people. I did not end up with the EFF on purpose, but once I was there it was absolutely safer to be a part of the group than to be outside of it. So if you happened to stumble on a photo of me with a whole bunch of people in red (and a protest sign) that's what that was all about. Unsurprisingly, I was a bit of a stand-out in the crowd. Many people took selfies with me. 

So… you get the idea. October was a little packed down here.

November was an adventure too, but that is definitely fuel for another day. My plan is to get back to two entries a week, but at this point I’m not guaranteeing anything. This isn’t really like France, where living abroad was more of an extended language-learning vacation with buckets of lemon meringue tartlets. This is definitely working abroad.

And with that: Enjoy your snow Canada! It’s a balmy 25 degrees and stormy here, and this girl is signing off for the night with no worries of shovelling a sidewalk tomorrow morning ;-)

I found a giraffe!

Ok wow, did last week ever take off at light speed.

First, I met a lovely human being who it turns out used to go to Cambridge with one of my professors at law school. She is delightful company, full of excellent suggestions for adventure, and is handling the unruly behaviour of her research subjects very well. We’re going to call her The Academic.

So the weekend before last, The Academic messaged me something along the lines of "Hey, have you had the chance to see Groenkloof Nature Reserve yet?" Nope. Nope I had not. "It’s about a 10km hike through the bushveld just outside of Pretoria, and it’s supposed to be very nice." Excellent. 10km is pretty much the perfect distance for a morning hike, and I haven’t really had the chance to see anything but my work place and neighbourhoods inside the city of Pretoria.

I was honestly not expecting there to be wildlife.

Literally the first thing we did was walk headlong into a mother giraffe and her calf.

They were so close!  

I laughed afterwards, because as soon as I realized there was an animal in front of me with her young, I did exactly what years of overnight camp in the Rockies has taught me to do when you meet a bear: I started a conversation.

"Hey giraffe-raffe-raffe... We're just hanging out over here... good to meet you... I see you're a little surprised too..."

The Academic found this all very entertaining.

Then we found some zebras!

Hiding wisely in the shade. That is a small herd of water buffalo behind them, as well. 

And THEN we startled an incredibly indignant ostrich.

Having now encountered one outside of a zoo, I can honestly say that I don't know if it's possible to be an ostrich with dignity. They're really very ruffley, awkward birds. 

Last but not least, we met what we thought was a springbok. 

The suspected springbok. Springboks are actually quite graceful looking creatures, but this one was a little thickly-set and dull in colouring to be a real springbok.

However, upon googling springboks once we got back, we're now fairly certain they were actually some other sort of deer-like savannah animal.

At no point before we arrived was I expecting there to be anything more exciting than some sort of bird. Guys, I am now 9000% sure that I am in Africa. Casually running into a giraffe is about the most happily African thing I can think of.

Deer in the headlights! There was an area at the start of the route set up for groups to come braai, and the whole place was done up with skulls and antlers. Can we take a moment to appreciate how heavy those must have been for the animal that had to carry them around?

The whole hike was marked with these little yellow boot prints, which was novel from a Canadian perspective. 9/10 times you don’t really need a trail marker in Canada, at least in my experience. The trails themselves tend to wind through trees, and as a result are fairly obvious. That was not the case here. Everything was ruggedly red, and the plant life was gorgeous, but scrubby. All of this made staying on the trail a bit of a trial-and-error endeavour until we found the first yellow boot print.

Following the yellow footprint road.

Anyway, after the weekend The Academic and I both went back to work. I am becoming more familiar with what exactly LHR can and cannot do (which is satisfying) and how that impacts the human beings in front of me (which is often not satisfying). What I’ve been particularly surprised by (legally) is how often we run into cases of people becoming stateless. It was less than a year ago that I sat in a classroom and asked one of my very qualified professors several questions about how citizenship is inherited, chosen, or bestowed upon a person; and how it can be lost. The short answer was “It’s not common to become stateless in anything but extreme circumstances. You’re probably never going to run into it.”

I’m running into it, and I just need to let you all know that it’s not ok. The world is filled with literally billions of people. Surely someone out there has already started to put their mind to how to solve this issue. Especially for minors. At some point I am going to have to sit down with Quicklaw and dig into it. (Just in case this also happens to be a burning question that keeps you up at night, stay posted.)

More decorative dead things at the braai-pit. 

The wildlife at home is slightly less exotic than Groenkloof, but it is definitely affectionate enough to mitigate some of the emotional labour I do at work. Roman, for one, is the lovely fellow who greets me enthusiastically at the gate, and never fails to arrive on the scene when I have an avocado in hand.

He is the king of avocado beggars. 

There are also weaverbirds on the tree above the pool. I’m going to assume that it’s safe to say you did not spend countless hours of your childhood watching the Discovery Channel, and take a minute to geek out about weaverbirds.

This is the impressive species of bird where the male zips around stripping thin leaves off of everything nearby so he can bring it back as building material for his nest. Hording material for nest building is common, but the type of nest that these little fellows build is not. They take the strips of plant and tie knots with them until they have woven a hanging basket.

An example of a complete, woven nest. 

I just want to be sure this is clear. They tie knots.

With their beak.

I find this endlessly impressive. Once the male has spent his time carefully engineering his nest, he invites females back to his seduction basket/intricate net of wonders/love nest/tiny work of structural genius as part of courtship. She then gets to decide whether it is architecturally sound enough for her liking. If it’s not, she attacks the thing until it comes off the branch or is completely undone.

Also a complete woven nest (top left) but more excitingly, a little yellow weaverbird (on the right).

Potentially I am too impressed by everything that goes into the making of one of these nests, because I’ve started getting personally offended every time I see the remains of one floating along the surface of the pool. All that work! All that time! How could she be so cruel?!

If they’re not careful, these weaverbirds are all going to end up with pop culture names based on the level of destruction involved when they destroy nests. I figure I’ll start with the Kardashians, and see how far I get. Generally it's more interesting if you give the wildlife names.

The correlation between naming things and making them more interesting? That definitely also applies to the rat that lives in the ceiling at work. Much to the horror of my two supervising attorneys, I’ve named him Norbert. 

Eat, Love, Braai

It’s been a full first week guys. I showed up Monday morning all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just raring to go. We jumped through the final hoops of getting me hooked up to the office computer system, and I now have my very own work e-mail. I’m thoroughly convinced this makes me much more legitimate.

Now that I’m plugged in on the technology side, it is amazing how quickly I’ve been sucked into the work happening here. My colleagues have patiently answered my questions all week, and laughed with me as I adjust to some of the norms here in SA. One of those norms is how openly, beautifully, and hilariously carnivorous this nation is. Everywhere I go I run into some form of grilled meat, and there are usually caramelised onions nearby. Portions are phenomenally large, vegetables only seem to make an appearance sometimes, and so far (just about) everything I’ve tried tastes amazing. The most social way to prepare meat is to have a braai, which is basically marinating the meat and cooking it over an open fire, South African-style. 

This is a braai (rhymes with 'try'). It smells like primal satisfaction and campfire. I highly recommend it.

South Africa is also famous for wine, and I have found that most people here are heathens like me. It’s so hot that white wine is actually served with a bowl of ice and a spoon, separate from the bucket of ice that the wine bottle goes in. Any idea on why? It’s glorious. They actually give you ice cubes to put directly into your wine. This is a thing of beauty and I want it to be normal everywhere. For years now I have been dropping an ice cube or two into my white wine to keep it crisply chilled, and that is generally frowned upon by wine aficionados. (Somewhere, my French host family is cringing in horror and they don’t know why.)

Back to the meat though. This past Saturday was Heritage Day in SA, and that’s a cause for food and celebration. Heritage Day is a national holiday where everyone in the Republic is invited to walk the streets, attend work, and generally live their lives in clothing that celebrates their heritage. This means that right off the bat I had the chance to see my colleagues step up and represent (culturally) where they’ve come from, which was really, really cool. Both of my officemates are originally Nigerian, and one is the daughter of a seamstress who deals in these incredible African fabrics. The colours are explosive, the patterns are bold, and the beadwork that goes with it all is pretty unreal. I am definitely looking forward to dropping by in the next few weeks, once they’ve stocked up again. Right now it sounds like it’s slim pickings. Heritage Day is a big deal, and everyone wanted to look their best, so of course the shop is running low.

This skirt that started it all... one of the attorneys in our office found this fabric while she was vacationing in Mozambique, and had it made into a skirt at the shop. We're like fashion lemmings, it's ridiculous. Now everyone at the office wants one.

Needless to say, several members of our office made a trip to this shop and contributed to the economy. The whole thing was fabulous. The head wraps some of the women elected to wear are called doeks, and even just aside from whatever other garments are being worn, a doek can be a statement in and of itself. They can be tied in flowers, a variety of bow-like figures, artistic knots, or flared right up and crinkled. There is a very fun young woman who works the reception desk at the college next door, and she regularly shows up dressed in Western business casual with a doek wrapped around her head. It’s a practice I entirely support, and I’m actually hoping they become more widely used back home. They are great flash of culture, colour, and fun. All things that are sort of shuffled under the rug in a business setting in North America.

  

Which brings me to an interesting place, and maybe you’ve pre-empted this already. When confronted with the dressing up that comes with Heritage Day, I promptly realised I was kind of stuck. Traditional Canadian clothing? What exactly does that consist of when you’re a third generation Canadian white girl? Initially I thought it was a bit of a silly problem, surely I could just dress in red and white (no differently than Canada Day), and be quite satisfied with that.

I was not satisfied with that. Not satisfied with that at all. The more I heard, the more I realised the purpose here was to celebrate a culture, not really a nation. There are many distinct cultures in SA, and it is totally normal for that to be reflected in everything from politics to fashion. For example, the riots that took place here a few months ago were much more grounded in the ANC’s attempt to run a candidate for office who was from a completely different tribal and cultural background than the community in the riding she was trying to win. Needles to say, it did not work. So it’s not like people were dressing up in patriotic South African colours and celebrating the birth of the Republic, or the end of apartheid, or even coming together. Really it’s about having the chance to celebrate your culture, your heritage. Also a chance to see where everyone around you comes from, and understand them better.

Remember those years I worked at the Calgary Stampede? That was a thing. It's ok, I know you're secretly terribly jealous of my hat and bandana. Please don't all applaud at once. 

This is when I started running into actual problems. What is traditionally Canadian clothing-wise? Ok before you yell ‘plaid!’ or ‘denim and cowboy boots!’, please note that yes, as an Albertan I did contemplate those. That being said, I brought exactly one very lightly plaid shirt, and certainly did not have room to pack my boots. I will also have you know that I was unwilling to show up wearing my toque, or red mittens, or a scarf. It is way too warm for that shenanigans here. I switched tactics:

I started asking around for what people here thought of when I said ‘traditional Canadian clothing’. It uh… didn’t really solve my problem. People overwhelmingly said they thought of traditional Canadian clothing as First Nations garments. Feathers, fringe, fine beadwork, moccasins and head dresses. That makes a ton of sense, but you will not catch me dead in a Stoney headdress, or a Cree vest, or wearing Blood facepaint. Cultural appropriation is a big deal. To show up with anything like that as someone who has never been invited to participate in a First Nations cultural event that involved my dressing up is pretty far over the line. I don’t think it would be alright to do it here just because there is (potentially) a lower risk for being called out on it.

Chief Hector Crawler. A fairly famous Chief of the Stoney Nakoda nation right next door to Kananaskis country near where I grew up, and a great example of traditional First Nation clothing. 

So… this left me in a bit of a quandary, what to wear to Heritage Day? My host initially suggested red plaid, and I thought about dropping by the mall to see if I could find anything lumberjack-appropriate, but then she came up with another suggestion: Why don’t I borrow a dress from her in a Kenyan pattern, and toss on some Kenyan beaded bracelets as well? I was thrilled by the offer. I’d get the chance to participate, and to do so in fun African colours.

Do you see the catch on this though? It took me a bit to realise what I might doing, and I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. If my host were a Kenyan woman, her inviting me to borrow her dress/beads and wear them to an event meant to celebrate heritage would have made sense. That’s an invitation to participate in culture from someone inside the cultural group, and I think invites like that are amazing chances. My host is not Kenyan though, and that got me wondering where the line is for cultural appropriation; what is appropriation, and what is not? By wearing a Kenyan dress and traditional beaded bracelets instead of a feathered headdress, have I just side-stepped appropriating one culturally significant thing and picked up another in its place?

Celebrating Heritage Day in my (borrowed) Kenyan dress.
Those beaded bracelets were by far my favourite though. 

Perhaps more importantly, why was I more comfortable wearing the dress instead of the headdress?

The conclusion I’ve come to rests on an uneasy balance between commercialisation and respect; and I’m still not totally sure it’s right. My line of thought is that by the very nature of a thing being for sale by a group with rights to it, an invitation is being extended to own and use the thing. For example: If it weren’t so warm here I’d be totally comfortable wearing a pair of Manitobah Mukluks.

If you haven't checked these out, I solidly recommend it.
They're a gorgeously made product, and the company makes sense to support from my perspective. 

In the end, the Kenyan dress and bracelets aren’t so different from the mukluks. Yes, I did borrow them from the woman hosting me, but I also could have picked up half a dozen dresses just like it in other Kenyan patterns at the market the next morning. I am way more comfortable with wearing something that is clearly commercialised, and not (to my knowledge) an appropriation of something sacred.

There is a flipside to this though. What happens when fashion steps in and pulls something that is sacred or traditional into the field of commercial gain? There's a great discussion of the problems inherent with that here. The short of it though is that a voice from inside the community needs to be leading the charge in sharing to really avoid appropriation, more like this. I think that’s where the balance has to come in though, and some buyer discretion.

For example, there is a Zulu headband here that makes me smile every time I see one. Just look at that white tuft in the middle! Look at it! It’s amazing! Be excited with me about it!

Ahem... this particular headband is only worn by married Zulu men.
As such, I lack all qualifications required to wear the headband. 

So there’s an example of something that is commercially for sale, but is grounded in tradition and still has some level of meaning in the modern world. Everyone I met who was wearing a headband was indeed married, and appeared to be male. (I don’t know if Zulu people are distinct looking, but my colleagues so far have indicated ‘no’.) That makes the headband exactly the kind of thing that pushes the responsibility of respect onto the buyer. Just like I wouldn’t buy a pair of mukluks and use them to dress up like a First Nations stereotype for Halloween, wearing a Kenyan dress and a Zulu headband seems pretty highly disrespectful.

This leaves my whole cultural appropriation conundrum in that wonderful (read: horrible) grey area of ‘do your research!’ and ‘be aware of what you’re buying!’. Optimistically, I’m going to take the ambiguity of it to mean I’m at least getting closer to the messy reality surrounding what should be a relatively simple kindergarten principle: Don’t take what’s not yours.

In case you're looking for a funny, easy, adorable read this fall.
Also a great lesson on things we were supposed to learn in kindergarten.