What doth it profit a man

I had dinner last night with Lynette, who is my primary colleague on the project I'm working on here, and her friend Sandy, who had been the curator of the District Six museum here and was advising us on fundraising.

Sandy and Lynette are both old lefties, as many who were part of the anti-apartheid struggle here are. They don't believe in unfettered capitalism; they believe it leaves behind too many people and that that creates simmering tensions that will eventually explode into social chaos. It's easy to criticize that from an American perspective, but Africa is not America, and not everything translates flawlessly.

At one point Sandy was saying, wide-eyed, in a tone of hushed disbelief, "You won't believe it but all they care about is money!" I giggled, y'all. I did. It was almost cute. I explained that in America, corporations can actually be sued if they act in opposition to the shareholders' interests. It is not moral or immoral; it is amoral.

But I have been thinking about it more and more. What if we were more shocked that corporations only cared about making money? What if we believed that the shareholders' best interests were served not only by a fatter portfolio but in a healthier planet, a more peaceful world and a more stable population? What if we said amoral is not good enough?

My dad sent me a piece the other day called "Why I Am A Republican," which I could just as easily have renamed "Why I Am Not A Republican." But one of the things that caught my eye was that the writer of the piece said he'd started his own business at 24 and was willing to work 60, 70, 80 hour weeks in order to give his family a better life.

What that really means is "to give my family more stuff." Because that's usually what we mean by a better life: more and cooler stuff. 80 hours a week is almost 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Who really believes his family was better off being essentially fatherless and husbandless? Who really believes his kids might not rather have had him at their swim meets and spelling bees than have him just be the signature on the checks that paid for their lifestyle?

South Africa is challenging companies here to have three priorities: profit, people and planet. It wants them to consider investing in its people and its ecology as important as third-quarter earnings.

It's a radical idea but it may be no less true for that.

Why are you crying? You're a Christian now!

Let me preface this by saying I don't blog for my health, people. I blog to have my ego stroked by positive comments and feedback so I know you guys are reading and I'm not whistling into the wind.

I went to Friday mass at 7:15 am this week. I think we all know what it takes to get me dressed, out of the house and someplace ON TIME that early in the morning. Phen had a slateful of tardies because of my inability to get the boy to school on time, and that was when school was three blocks away and I drove him there in my pajamas.


But I went, because rumor had it Desmond Tutu would be leading the mass. Father Terry--whom you will remember, children, as the man who did *not* introduce me to Archbishop Tutu last summer--made sure I knew about this one well in advance. So I go in to the little side chapel, just a small room, where weekday masses are held. Pretty small crowd on a Friday morning. The dean starts the service with the opening prayer. And then, nonchalantly, from the back of the room, Archbishop Tutu walks in, in his vestments and with his little cap.


I almost lost my breath. It was the real, live, Nobel-Prize-winning, cover-of-Newsweek Desmond Tutu, and he...is...a hobbit.


It's true. He's like two and a half feet tall.

And did I cry when he read the gospel? Of course I did, because Desmond Tutu *lives* the gospel. Do things looks terrible and it seems like evil and brokenness and pain have the upper hand? No, the Kingdom of God will carry the day! And in the meantime we must laugh! Hobbit Tutu giggles. He does not laugh, he giggles. Delightedly. And when you hear it you think, that is how he managed not to go crazy under apartheid. The gospel delights him. He does not merely think it is true, he thinks it is delightful. And he distributed communion and you could tell he loved it, just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that we all got to share it together. He seems so awestruck by it himself that when you go up to receive communion and he says "The body of Christ" you are almost taken aback, you think, "It *is* amazing! This is extraordinary!"

Why are we not awestruck and delighted by the gospel more often?

At today's main service in the Cathedral, he did the baptisms. all done up in his gold vestments and pointy Archbishop hat that is probably supposed to make him look really holy and actually makes him look like the King of the Hobbits. If I were a retired archbishop, I would do the same thing: I would just show up to do the really cool stuff like baptisms and weddings. But my favorite moment came when one of the babies cried when they were baptized and he said, in his heavily accented English, "Why are you crying, eh? You are a Christian now!"

It was an off-the-cuff comment and everyone laughed, but I have been thinking about it all day. I'm not saying Christians should be happy all the time. There are times when our hearts are meant to break with the things that break the heart of God. There are times when we should rend our garments and beat our chests (metaphorically, of course, because that is no longer a culturally acceptable form of grieving) over the grief and injustice in the world. But we should laugh, and we should laugh a lot. Because baptism reminds us that our sins are buried with Christ's death and we are raised with Him into newness of life. We share a common table and a common bond. We get to be the heralds and celebrants of a new way of living, a way that says the Kingdom of God is pressing in all around us if we have eyes to see, a way that assures a broken world that its grasping, frantic way is not the only way to live. We are in on the great secret that God's love will sweep away every ugliness and injustice and He uses us to do it. We are confident of a day when "he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have all passed away. He that sits upon the throne says, Behold; I make all things new."

I make all things new. Raised to the newness of life. Our holy laughter should echo around the world. We should never get over it.

Why are you crying, eh? You're a Christian now!

A Medical System You Can Love

This story, if one thinks about it too long, is slightly horrifying. So don't think about it too long, just take pleasure in the fact that it worked out for me.

A medication I use purely for vanity purposes--i.e. so I won't break out like a 15-year-old--did not survive the cross-Atlantic trip well. I had had to have a prescription to get it from my dermatologist, but who knows how things work here? In Egypt there was nothing you couldn't get over the counter, so I decided to give it a shot. I walked into the pharmacy with my bottle of no-longer-functional acne lotion and said look, this apparently doesn't travel well, and do you happen to have the same thing here? So the dermatologist looked at it and came up with something that isn't exactly the same, but had basically the same active ingredients, so, you know, close enough. But she said, "You have to have a prescription for it." Damn. "But I don't have a doctor here in Cape Town," I said, thinking to myself, "and I'm pretty sure my Harvard student traveling insurance is meant to cover things like dengue fever and bot flies, not acne medication." So the pharmacist leaned in and said, "This isn't exactly legal, but welcome to South Africa." Already I'm loving her. "You can't get this without a prescription at any *public* pharmacy. But go right across the road here to this private pharmacy and sometimes they'll just let you pay cash for things without a prescription."

This is awesome.

So I trek across the street to the private pharmacy and it's packed. And it is packed with people who are seriously sick and trying to get stuff like antibiotics and anti-retrovirals (is that stereotypical of me? It probably is. You know it's true though.) So I'm packed in line and I'm scanning the pharmacists, because you gotta pick the right one. Definitely not the old white guy with the Dutch last name, he looks like a rule-follower. Also not the harried-looking woman arguing with an increasingly agitated woman who can't afford her toddler's medication; clearly she's having a day. Nope, the guy at the end, the young one who is flirting with all the women--that's my guy.

So I roll down to him and offer my most charming smile and guileless stranger-in-a-strange land affect as I tell my story, and he cheerfully turns around, takes it off the shelf and hands it to me with a smile and says "That will be 112 rand, miss." Which is literally $14. WHICH IS LESS THAN MY CO-PAY ON THIS MEDICATION AT HOME.

If I needed, you know, insulin or Xanax or anti-hallucinogens, this system would distress me. As it is--$14! I might stock up before I leave here!

By the way, I am having breakfast with Desmond Tutu tomorrow morning, for any who were feeling like their lives were pretty cool and needed to be put in their place.

...And Brief Tirade About Crazy Old Leftists

I went to a panel discussion today about xenophobia in South Africa and how the Zimbabwe crisis is contributing to it. Elinor Sisulu, a native Zimbabwean who married into the very powerful South African Sisulu family, and two guys were talking. All were in some way involved in the anti-apartheid movement, or what is here often simply referred to as "the struggle."

So all due respect.

HOWEVER. Crazy old leftists annoy the heck out of me. These three are going on and on about imperialist agendas and how the US and UK just want a piece of Zimbabwe and resistance, struggle, imperialism, fight the power, ad infinitum. And one well-meaning little American tourist (not me, because at this point I'm too annoyed to ask civil questions) asks, "What can we do as Americans to help the situation in Zimbabwe?" And one of the panelists said, "We truly thank you for your solidarity with us in our struggle, but the best thing you can do is work on your own country." And some people applauded.

Now look here. My country is not perfect. We have our share of shady machinations, to be sure. Do you know what we don't have? We don't have A) hordes of people rising up to torture, maim and kill political refugees, or B) a country that over about 15 years has totally degenerated to a state of nature where the life expectancy is the lowest in the world (just think about who you have to beat out to be the lowest in the world--it means you are better off in Chad or Sudan or Burma right now than you are in Zimbabwe) and the currency is totally worthless. What we do have: a PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER AFTER ELECTIONS. Can you even imagine, in your wildest dreams, an American president saying, as Mugabe did today, that he will simply not cede power, no matter the outcome of the election? Try and imagine it. You are laughing, aren't you? Because it's absurd.

So maybe the glare from your glass house is blinding you a little and you want to put down those stones, crazy old leftists. That's all I'm saying.

I talked to one of the guys afterwards. I said look, let me freely admit I'm a bratty American. I think we're kind of awesome. I might note that people flee *to* us and not *from* us, ahem. But here is my question: what do you think the imperialist agenda is? Do you think they want to take over Zimbabwe again? Because here's what I think: I think they want to invest in it. I think in a global food shortage, they'd get those farms back up and running. I think the mining industry would take off again. And I think investment is preferable to aid and more sustainable. So Ol' Boy says, "I disagree." Riiiight...depending on aid for...ever? Is a sustainable solution? And he said, "The people who profit there are the mining companies and the industrial farms, not the people." Ah, leftists, always with The People. Well, I pointed out, The People do not currently have an infrastructure or the machinery or skills to go about mining or farming on a large scale. This is not a kibbutz we are talking about, these are highly skill-specific industries that will require a significant outlay of capital on the front end. (Papa, are you reading this? And you thought I didn't know anything about economics.) So of course they will get something back, but I think the country benefits too. And I would point to our very own lovely South Africa as an example. Mbeki, who is crazy and disappoints me every day, nonetheless has done a lot to make South Africa attractive to foreign investors, and I think South Africa has benefitted from it. By, you know, being the only thriving economy in the region. And this guy actually said, "Sure, there's a tiny slice of a black middle class now, but it's about 11 million people. That is only about a quarter of the population."

I was floored.

Fifteen years ago--FIFTEEN YEARS AGO--as in, when Bill Clinton was president; as in, not long ago AT ALL--this country's people were being strangled by the apartheid regime. They were grossly undereducated, poorly housed, underemployed, and had their psyches damaged in ways many of them will never recover from. Yet a short 15 years later, a quarter of them are middle-class. I'm not saying the work is done, there's a long way to go. But 15 years in, a full 1/4 have reached the middle class. And that number is only set to grow as education improves.

I'm sure the Old Left has something valuable to contribute to the process. All voices are welcome in the marketplace of ideas. But I would say of capitalism what Winston Churchill said of democracy: "It is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Brief Ode to America...

I met this really cool guy at a Harvard gathering for Cape Town alums the other night. (Side note: Father Terry--my supervisor at the Cathedral and whom you may remember, children, as the man who did *not* introduce me to Desmond Tutu last summer--had asked what I was doing this weekend and I said "I'm going to a Harvard alum gathering at the Mount Nelson hotel." He: "Oh, what are you all Obama supporters or something? What brings you all together?" Me, staring blankly: "Uh, the fact that we all went to Harvard." He: "But that place is posh! Seriously posh!" Me: "OK, you know what? I do own clothes that are not cargo pants and hoodies. I can dress up and mingle with the hoi polloi, thanks so much.") Anyway, back to Cool Guy: he is originally from Nigeria and came to the US at 8 years old speaking no English. Did his undergrad at Princeton, got his MBA at Harvard, and is now working at establishing a presence for JP Morgan here.

Now I know America is imperfect, gap between the haves and have-nots, unequal education, etc etc. None of it minor, none of it to be sneered at, and we have a lot of work to do as we strive toward that "more perfect union" part of the Constitution. But we are still the place where a bright 8-year-old kid who speaks only Ibo can, 10 years later, go to Princeton. And we deserve to feel a little bit good about that.

Fear Factor, African Style

I am living this summer at a convent. If you put together all of your stereotypes of what a room at a convent that also boards young women, and protects their chastity, would look like, you would have a rough approximation of my room. The walls are a sort of two-shades-lighter-than-Pepto-Bismol pink, the carpet and draperies are a dusky rose, and the two chairs that sit by the doily-covered sitting table are covered in an upholstery that may be familiar to you if you have a 150-year-old great-aunt. However: private furnished room and bathroom, full-length mirror, private entrance and exit (meaning the 11 pm curfew does not apply to me! In loco parentis my ass, chumps!), and a TV and DVD player—yeah, I can make this work. And it’s walking distance to work.

So let’s talk a little about South African television. Big into sports, I’ve watched a lot of the European soccer championships, and rugby matches are on regularly, but that’s no different from home—I mean the sports are different, but not the ubiquity of them. There are soap operas—mostly South African ones, which are hilarious because they have subtitles as the characters regularly slip into languages other than English; but also a healthy dose of “All My Children”; and I woke up the other morning to the disconcerting sight of Sesame Street in Afrikaans.

But what is most bizarre to me is their unyielding affection for, and apparent insatiable appetite for, American reality television. And not even the really fun ones, like “I Know My Kid’s A Star” or “Celebrity Fit Club: Boot Camp.” No, we’re talking “Survivor” and “Amazing Race” and “Fear Factor.”

“Fear Factor” is the one I don’t get. Really? In Africa? I mean, I get that if you are an overfed, overprivileged American, watching people face down spiders and eat bugs pretty much sums up all your nightmares. But if you’ve survived apartheid, or live in a shanty with no plumbing or electricity, or you’ve fled a neighboring country because of oppression or lack of opportunity or because your currency is roughly 2.5 billion dollars to one American greenback (yes, Zimbabwe, I’m looking at you, and yes, that is the actual exchange rate now, not an exaggeration—wrap your mind around that if you can), then is watching someone eat a slug really going to freak you out? I mean aren’t you just like, “amateurs, when I was making my 1500-mile trek here from Congo after having my hands cut off I would have *killed* for a slug to eat”?

Imagine what an African version of Fear Factor would be like. Seriously, what’s even left to be afraid of?

Back to the Mother Land

Hello again, cats and kittens, greetings from Cape Town! I have been here about a week, for a longer stint this time, 10 weeks interning at St. George’s Cathedral. Again, in the dead of winter. Oh, for a swimming pool and a chick-lit novel. (Do you hear that, Mom? It’s all I want when I get home.)

So I got in Saturday night, got settled at my hotel, and went out to the corner store for something to eat. I was kind of morose—28 hours of travel, jet lag, hadn’t showered; it was cold and kind of blah and I was missing home and all my peeples and Phen and thinking longingly of all the summers of the past that I spent playing in the swimming pool and at the beach with kids and taking them out for ice cream and having dance parties in the classroom. I’ve got a great picture from that era of a 6-year-old Michael Breaux (admit it, all of you who know him just went “Awwww” at the mention of his name), a slight sunburn across his tawny cheeks, who had spent the day building sandcastles and playing in the surf and flying kites at the beach and had fallen asleep at Sonic with his head on the table…in a pool of melted ice cream. That, my friends, is what contentment looks like.

Anyway, so I’m missing the old days and wondering if I shouldn’t have stayed home and worked at my own church this summer and rerooted myself in my community, and I am in the grocery store, which for me is one of the primary places one can feel isolated in another country, because *their* food is never *your* food. Even if it is in name, it is not in fact. The packaging and look is different, and you realize that you had not reckoned on how much of the predictability and security of life was bound up in the familiarity of the packaging of Dannon yogurt or Doritos. Oh, they have Doritos here. They have Sweet Chili Doritos. What in the name of all that is holy is sweet chili, you ask? I don’t know, and I will not be finding out. If it’s not my Nacho Cheese Doritos, or perhaps Cool Ranch Doritos, I have to leave it alone. (Doug, I am thinking here of the ketchup-flavored Pringles you encountered in Palestine.) And of course one’s culinary wanderings are exacerbated by people like Dan Walmer, who is supposedly a man of God, who likes to flaunt his regular trips to Sonic to get the Route 44 Watermelon Slush knowing there is not a Sonic on your whole damn continent. Dan, you owe me a Route-44 cherry limeade at the Sonic happy hour when I get back in August.

I’m wandering the aisles, forlorn and displaced, a stranger in a strange land, and then I see it. Shining in the refrigerated aisle like a beacon of sweet, sweet goodness. Friends, I see Dr. Pepper. Those of you who followed my adventures of yesteryear know that it could just as easily be called Quest for a Can of Dr. Pepper. And here it was, in all its glory, and it even had the right packaging. I mean beloveds, the CAN even looked the same. Do you see the hand of the Lord here? Do you see how He heard His child’s cry in Egypt (well, South Africa, but same continent) and came to deliver me, as the Israelites of yore? I mean the only thing that could have surprised me more is if there had been a Starbucks in the store. (By the way, the presence of Starbucks in stores like Target and Kroger? Is what makes us the greatest nation on earth.)

I snatched up that Dr. Pepper and willingly paid the 14 rand for it, even though that is almost $2, which would be usury for a 12-oz can were it anyplace but here. Here, it was a bargain, plain and simple. And I drank the Dr. Pepper. And it was good.