Not all Braais, Beaches, and Bar Ones

So, after living in Port Elizabeth for three months, we have started to learn a little bit more about our surroundings.

For starters, we have learned a little bit about how inefficient SAPS is. The South African Police Service is a pretty big joke. I have always resented cops a little bit back home for cutting in on some of our fun, but at least those cops are productive and do their work. We always spot cops around here giving random pedestrians rides, chatting and laughing on the side of crime scenes, or driving with no regard for any traffic laws.

I’ll start off with some depressing stuff and finish with a funny story we heard.
First off, there has been a lot of debate about what Jacob Zuma (the SA President) has been saying in the media about cops. One cop was cop was caught in a tight situation and decided to shoot his way out of his surroundings, injuring a couple of people and killing one. Jacob Zuma was quoted – or misquoted – saying, “sometimes cops need to shoot to kill” in order to do their job. This has been a hotly debated subject with leads me into the most depressing story I have heard. A three year old, I repeat three years of age, was shot dead by a police officer in Soweto last week. He was seen playing with a small pipe, which a police officer mistook for a handgun. The officer shot the little boy point blank for what he thought was good reason. No comment necessary…

Our closest encounter with the cops has been quite frustrating. We got broken into one night while we were all sleeping. We live in a gated complex of condominiums with electric wire lining the entire complex around its tall brick walls. One night, a burglar came in our back door while we were sleeping and stole a bunch of stuff from our first floor. I woke up the next morning to find my computer, my camera, my iphone, my backpack, and my new shoes all gone. Rosie also lost her computer and Ipod. We called the cops at about 8:30am. They showed up at 2:30pm to our place. We all missed an entire day of work waiting around for them when they said they would come “just now.” They took a report and said the fingerprinting guy would call and set up an appointment. No fingerprinting guy ever came by to help.

One week later… The four of us are eating dinner and listening to music as we always do. We hung out after dinner reading on our first floor. At around 11pm Mike decided to go upstairs and get ready for bed. He was casually looking around for his wallet when he noticed his Barcelona jerseys were no longer hanging on his wall. He thought that it couldn’t be possible. We had been robbed again. We had been robbed while eating dinner downstairs. Mike had had his window open slightly that leads to the back porch, which is on the second level. While we were eating dinner, the perpetrator climbed up onto the back porch, came in the back window, and nicked his wallet, his camera, and his favorite soccer jerseys. We waited up all night together until about 5am when we finally decided the cops were not going to show. We had called them each hour since 12 midnight. Mike went to the cops the next morning and had to make quite a scene before the cops took him seriously at all. He missed all of work on Friday waiting for the cops to come by the house and take another report. The cops never came. He went by the station again on Monday and the police sergeant said the fingerprinting guy would come around on Tuesday. Mike missed work all Tuesday waiting for the detective. We left around 6pm to go out for a drink and the detective called saying he was outside our gate. We told him we would be back in ten minutes and to wait for us. We got home ten minutes later and he was nowhere to be found. Mike tried all week to get more attention but not much was done. We took matters into our own hands by bolting up the back windows, getting a lock for our back gate, and buying a motion detector. I guess that’s what people have to do in this country. I met a girl just last week and discussed this with her. She assured me that no one here is looking out for the people on the ground. Her friend was raped and the police just sat around laughing while the girls waited for attention at the station. “The only way to be safe is to protect yourself,” she said. We now know that every night we have to go through a checklist of things before we can sleep comfortably. This is just the way it is here. A little different from Bowdoin or Carter Dr.

And now, for a little fun. Motherwell is one of the townships where we work in Port Elizabeth. Parts of Motherwell are considered some of the most dangerous in Port Elizabeth. They government decided to build a police station in the depths of Motherwell, just on the fringe of the dodgiest neighborhoods. One night a group of 20 or so hoodlums, armed with guns bombarded the police station and robbed it blind. AK-47s, Assault Rifles, and more were all jacked straight from the few helpless officers on duty. I couldn’t believe it when I heard this. The story got better when we heard that the police station is now lined with signs saying, “ADT security services protects this property.” Who is really watching out for whom here?

As much as South Africa tries to be a first-world nation, there are a lot of things that it lacks. The President is always criticized in the paper for giving out bogus pardons to friends for tax evasions and things like that. The Department of Education has had numerous money scandals which is depressing when I see the poor state of the schools we visit everyday. Higher-ups are seen driving around $100,000 sports cars, which they use as “business cars.” Cops drive around in Saabs and BMWs. I have been planning a soccer tournament where children have the opportunity to get tested for HIV. We are trying to use the Department of Health to help us test kids and community members. I’ll go into more detail about this in a later blog, but dealing with these women and trying to get them to help you out is like dealing with the mafia. We have to do them favors in order to get them to do their jobs. It has been really frustrating.

South Africa is a beautiful, wonderful country, but it is warped by poverty and a great divide between social classes. There have even been instances where our own coaches have been caught lying in order to make an extra dollar or two. Our coaches can also be extremely lazy at times and you wonder what they are actually involved in GRS for. Most of them do great work, but others have different motives in mind, which is another frustrating element of working here. Then again, they do deal with hardships everyday that I could never imagine. A lot of them are supporting five or six people on this part time job.

South Africa is also a nation still coming out of an era of racism and inequality. There are white neighborhoods, black townships, and colored townships. It is uncommon to find a lot of mixture in any part of the city here. Some may say they see things like this in America, but here it is a divide like you have never seen before. It is visibly still segregated in many elements of life whether there are still signs that make sure of it or not. Going to bars and restaurants in different parts of the city is the best way to see it all. Lucky for us, we get to experience the different sides on a daily basis. In Port Elizabeth it is not nearly as bad as stories we have heard from the more rural parts of the country. Some of our friends are working in Kimberley and Richmond, South Africa where people are very outwardly racist.

South Africa is a tough place to get used to and this is what we are starting to realize as reality sets in and the honeymoon period of living here starts to wear off.