Harlem, Alabama

I went by the Slave Lodge today, a museum about slavery in South Africa. Interestingly, the slaves here weren't the indigenous people, the San and the Khoi--the Europeans didn't want to enslave them because they wanted to trade with them. So they imported slaves from Central Africa and Malaysia and Southeast Asia. One particularly compelling exhibit was about the civil rights movement in America, particularly school segregation, and its comparisons to apartheid in SA. And the BEST MOMENT--Mijha, you're so bummed you weren't here because you'll think I'm making it up--was when this African guy was saying it seems like the South always gets depicted as the only region with racial issues but that he thought it was because whites in the South were more threatened by blacks since blacks made up such a significant portion of the population and therefore were a substantive threat to political and social hegemony. Bravo, African guy! (not to mention he was elucidating one of my pet peeves, the vilification of the South as the only home of American racism) And then this AMERICAN GIRL--oh, the shame--proceeded to explain to him that it was because at that time, there were NO BLACKS IN THE NORTH! None! Apparently the Harlem Renaissance happened in Harlem, Alabama! Mijha, does your dad know? Why then is he in exile in New York? And the African guy looked confused and said, "Not even after the Civil War?" Again, we hang our heads in shame that he knows more about our history than we do. And she allowed that there were a few after the Civil War. I tried to stay out of it, I really did, it was a private conversation and all. Except it was the civil rights movement, and there were photos of Ruby Bridges and Barbara Johns and Thurgood Marshall everywhere, and I just couldn't let her go on being ridiculous all over Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit." So I sketched a brief history of the Great Migration for them, and residential segregation in the North, and busing in Boston, et al. I couldn't help it. She can't be helped but he seemed like a bright young man.

Oh, and there was a video with Ted Shaw so I waved at your uncle, Runako.

Let's talk about how much I love Father Terry. He is the sub-dean at St. George's Cathedral, and he sees me abour every other day for chats about South Africa and the church's role in rebuilding it. Or at least, we talk about that for like 10 minutes, and then we're on to Sudan, and liberation theology, and do I really think G.W. is a Christian, and do I think he is stupid or crazy like a fox, and the evangelical response to homosexuals. I tell you, I am FASCINATING to Father Terry. He is taking me to the diocese's home for AIDS orphans tomorrow, and today he set me to work in the church's soup kitchen for street people, which led to an interesting conversation on mercy ministries vs. justice or long-term restorative ministries. I met a couple of other American and European volunteers there, and it was intriguing, and a bit troubling, how jaded they were. This 19-year-old Swedish kid said he thought he'd feel more sympathetic to street people after working there, but he feels less, because none of them are trying to do anything better with their lives so he figures they deserve it. I think he wanted them to be the "deserving" poor, sort of Oliver Twist-y with large eyes like in Keane paintings. And instead he found that hard lives make hard people. I didn 't find them troubling--the kids in particular had the same mix of charm and menace I'm used to in the kids I know, where if one tack doesn't work they'll use the other. And the older guys just aren't entirely there. Although Bouje, the most flamboyantly queenly street guy I have ever seen with his sparkly pink turban, deserves his own TV show.

Love from South Africa and its lovely, tragic people. As Shane Claiborne says, "We are all wretched, and we are all beautiful. May we see in the faces of the oppressed our own faces, and in the hands of the oppressor our own hands."