Coffee, Winter Days, and My New Political Crush

Sometimes, in quiet moments, I reflect on John Newton’s statement that “I know but two things: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior.”

Other times, I reflect on how I would take just about anything from the Starbucks menu right now, and on what grave desperation must have driven the man who invented Nescafe.

I used to wonder why South Africans seemed to adopt the worst aspects of British culture. Like tea. I mean, I like tea fine, and I certainly like it a lot more now that I’ve figured out you can put a lot of cream and sugar in it. But why weren’t people here coffee drinkers, I asked in bewilderment? And then I realized that if all you knew of coffee was Nescafe, you would turn to tea as well. (Theological analogy here: you know how we’ve all been told that “you’re all of Christ that some folks will ever see?” And you think to yourself, wow, that is unfortunate for them, because I am not Jesus’ best foot forward, as it were? We are the Nescafe to Jesus’ Arabian coffee, y’all. Ponder that rich insight for a moment.)

There used to be a coffeehouse in Cape Town that served real coffee, but it closed down, no doubt because of my patronage. I am the Typhoid Mary of Cape Town coffeehouses; two of the ones I frequented in the past have since closed. I almost want to apologize to the café I’m sitting in right now because they are just darling and obviously their days are numbered. Now all I can find is Nescafe, which lo, is an abomination unto the Lord, who hath made all coffee good in His time. But people don’t *call* it Nescafe; they call it coffee, so I am deceived. Then I saw “filter coffee” on the menu and I thought, score! Nescafe is not made with a filter, right? It’s instant, that’s the whole point, so this must be the real thing. But then it came and it had that distinctive light brown film over the top of it. You’ve never seen real coffee with that film, right? It’s the Nescafe giveaway. So all I could figure was maybe they filtered the water before they mixed it with the Nescafe. Or they put Nescafe in the filter basket. Either way, there was no mistaking that bitter taste. My hopes rose briefly when I saw “café americano” on the menu because I thought OK, American coffee. That’s what they call filter coffee in Egypt to distinguish it from Nescafe; maybe Cape Town is taking its cues from their neighbors to the (far) north. But it arrived with the same light brown film. Hopes: dashed.

A young friend of mine here, who is 20, drinks the stuff like it’s the last drink on earth. I honestly want to stage an intervention for the kid. “We’re all here to let you know we love you but we can’t enable this lifestyle anymore, because it’s so far beneath you and you’re not living up to your potential and we just can’t watch you do this to yourself. Have a latte.”

I worry that I’ll eventually get used to it and even come to like it, the way the Israelites in exile forgot the old ways and assimilated into Babylon. I try to hold on to the memory of real coffee, so that like Nehemiah, I’ll be ready when it’s time to return. (I’ve been spending some time in the Old Testament lately, if you can’t tell.)

On another note entirely: you know who’s glad Michael Jackson died? Mark Sanford. That guy’s news cycle got drastically abbreviated by Jacko’s death, and you know Sanford is lighting candles in church for him in thanksgiving and remembrance. I’m kind of sorry, because I was really looking forward to the inevitable parodies of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” after he said he’d spent five days crying in Argentina. Of course that was after he’d said he was just clearing his head in Buenos Aires, driving down the coast. My friend said that’s when he knew a woman was going to come out of the woodwork: he’d been to Argentina and said, “There’s no coastline in Buenos Aires. I knew then we didn’t have the whole story.” Which was itself after he said he’d been hiking the Appalachian Trail, after leaving without telling anyone where he was going or conferring his gubernatorial powers upon the lieutenant governor. I guess it’s a good thing no one needed a death sentence commuted or the National Guard called in for those five days.

Which brings me to what I loved best about this story: I loved Jenny Sanford. Y’all, Jenny Sanford is my new favorite political wife. (Before her, Bill Clinton was my favorite political wife. Hee.) All those press conferences where betrayed political wives stood with pained smiles plastered on their faces while their husbands publicly copped to various forms of infidelity, be it with men (Jim McGreevy, I’m looking at you—FYI he’s in seminary now to become an Episcopal priest), women (John Edwards and a whole raft of others) or boys (that one’s you, Mark Foley), had become so painful to watch. I love that Jenny basically said, “I’m going to the beach house, and you need to man up and take your licks on your own. Peace out!” I saw a parody of a Facebook page that cracked me up: it said “Mark Sanford has added ‘Buenos Aires, Argentina’ to his ‘Places I’ve Been’ application,” followed by, “Jenny Sanford has added ‘Not Your F****** Press Conference, Mark’ to her ‘Places I’ve Been’ application.” (See it here at http://www.slate.com/id/2221581/. Ha! If Jenny Sanford ever runs for office, I am working for her campaign, and I’m not even a Republican. That girl’s got spunk. (And personally I think she's the one who sent the incriminating emails to the newspaper, since they were forwarded from Sanford's private account. She went all Thelma-and-Louise-driving-off-a-cliff on him: if we are going down, it will be in a blaze of glory and press coverage, mo'fo'.)

And to end, it is about 70 degrees here today. In the dead of winter. And people are actually walking around in scarves and mittens. Every time I come here, my Cape Town friends warn me that “it’s freezing! It’s bitterly cold! You must bring warm clothes!” And I think, hmmm, I seem to recall Cape Town winters as being quite mild, but maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. Maybe they’re worse than I remember and it’s just that they pale in comparison to Boston winters, where it actually hurts your skin to go outside. And then I get here and no, it is as mild as I recall. It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, in which I am Charlie Brown and either my memory or my local friends’ deeply skewed sense of “bitterly cold” is Lucy. Here’s how Cape Town looks today:




And here's how Boston looked as recently as April:


Exactly.

Cape Town Catch-Up

Hey peeps! I know I’m grossly late on the posting, and it’s been a busy 4 weeks so I won’t try to sum it all up. But here are some random musings over the last weeks:

1) Lauren and I are in locked in a death match to see who can gain more weight for her wedding. Counterintuitive for most brides and bridesmaids, I know, but we never claimed to be a normal family. She wants to be fit and toned for her wedding, which has spiraled into an obsession with weight-lifting and protein supplements. (Money quote: “I eat as much protein as a mid-size Texas ranch. If you slaughtered every animal on that ranch and ate it, that’s how much protein I take each week.”) Never one to be outdone, I am also lifting weights and eating at McDonalds nearly every day in an effort to pack on the weight and not look skeletal in the strapless bridesmaid’s dress she has chosen for me. Clavicles can be sexy but not if they’re jutting out three inches from the skin. So far she’s winning, but I have hit 111 pounds!—which puts me over the 110-pound mark I have not been able to break in well over a year, and within reach of the 115-120 pounds that is my normal weight. We’re both drinking the protein shakes but I haven’t ventured into the territory of the pill supplements because they all seem to have a lot of testosterone, and I’m afraid I’ll grow a mustache. And maybe a penis.

2) I have located a store—possibly the only one in Cape Town, lo, in South Africa—that sells Dr. Pepper. Behold, the beauty of my dietary staples:

Yes, that is a can of Dr. Pepper—doesn’t it just gleam with the promise of goodness?—and Nutella. I eat them both, frequently together.

3) It has been pointed out to me that every time I leave the country, significant Americans die. Last trip, it was Tim Russert (oh Tim, I missed you all through the elections). This time, it’s Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and the guy who sells OxyClean.

And Michael Jackson.

Y’ALL. MICHAEL JACKSON. I can’t even tell you how done in I was. “Thriller” was the first real album I owned, along with the soundtrack to “Annie” (the Smurf and Strawberry Shortcake singalong albums I had earlier in my childhood do not count as real albums). I was 5, maybe 6 years old. I wanted the floor to light up when I stepped on it like the street did in the “Billie Jean” video which technically I wasn’t supposed to watch since I wasn’t allowed to watch MTV but which I watched in total awe at friends’ houses and at my grandparents’ in the summer because they didn’t know the rules. (This, children, was back when Music Television actually played music videos. I know it’s hard to conceive. Also, gas used to be less than a dollar and there were only like 30 cable stations. And we walked to school uphill in the snow and we liked it.) And even as he brought the crazy as the years wore on, that early luster couldn’t be tarnished.

Frankly I felt like Cape Town wasn’t sufficiently mournful. I mean, my friends back home were all talking about commiserating with people on street corners and parking lots, and here? Nothing. I had a brief moment of connection with a car park attendant who sang “Beat It” with me in the middle of the sidewalk, but otherwise nothing. Possibly, though, it’s because Capetonians are simply holding to the same belief as the guy who sold me new earphones for my iPod the day after Michael died. I mentioned the sadness and he informed me MJ was not really dead. He just needed a rest, so he faked his death and has gone to Cuba with Tupac.

Clearly, this man is my new boyfriend.

Can I briefly mention how excited I am for the funeral? Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli—it’s going to be like every VH1 diva concert rolled into one.

I will finish by noting that I attended a meeting recently in which people were asked to fingerpaint their emotions regarding apartheid and the struggle. Maybe for my next act, I’ll knit my reaction to the Holocaust. Or perform an interpretive dance about Tianenmen Square. I’m a lot more cautious about the meetings I attend now.

Bridal Shower Hilarity

I was in Philadelphia this weekend for my little sister's bridal shower. Lauren is moving on up, guys. To a de-luxe apartment in the sky. No seriously, a 10th-story condo in the ritziest building in Philly. The Jeffersons only dreamed of such grandeur.

(You're all humming the song, aren't you? "Fish don't fry in the kitchen, beans don't burn on the grill, took a whole lot of tuh-ry-in', a-just to get up that hill...")

So the bridal shower. Lauren doesn't like to be the center of attention; in fact, when she has to be, she actually channels her alter ego, who is named Rhonda (sort of like Beyonce becomes Sasha Fierce, except imagine Beyonce without the talent or, you know, anything resembling rhythm). She refused to let my mom's friends give her a shower. She told her mother-in-law she didn't want a shower. The mother-in-law, whose name--I lie not--is Wenchie, decided to host one anyway.

So Lauren? A little peeved.

But Matt, the peacemaking fiance, assured her she would like it because the theme was Mexican food and margaritas. Our girl does like a good margarita. Or a bad one. Any margarita really, she's not terribly discriminatory.

We arrive at the shower, and it turns out the theme is not Mexican-n-margaritas. The theme is Ladies Who Lunch. There is a lot of pink everywhere, and food like curried chicken salad and brie, and not a bit of liquor in sight.

I know this because as I am making do with raspberry lemonade, Lauren is practically looking under the tablecloths for the margaritas. Alas, there were none. (This could be an issue in their marriage, based on what I saw the rest of the weekend, ie "Lauren, will you walk the dog?" "No, Matt, because you said there would be margaritas and there were no margaritas and I hate you.")

The rest of the time was spent watching Lauren fake enthusiasm over carving knives and serving trays, though by the end I feared she might commit hara kiri with one of the knives. Boy, it is wasted on a girl who is perfectly happy to eat pizza off of a paper towel.

However, the photos are cute, particularly the one of her wearing the hat made out of all the ribbons and bows from the packages. I like to call this photo "I'm smiling on the outside, but I'm slowly dying inside."

And here is a cute one of the two of us in our springy dresses, which I will take with me to Cape Town and admire all through the next two months of winter, because I am resigned to the fact that summer has disappeared from my life.

Really, South Africa? Really?

Today I received an email from a church where I have worked in South Africa warning against unnecessary travel due to swine flu.

If this is a subtle invitation not to come because living in the same hemisphere as most of the swine flu victims obviously makes me a threat, I would like to remind the AIDS capital of the world that they have bigger fish to fry. I'll be just fine.

And I'm still coming.

I'm Baaa-aaack...

So...I haven't blogged all year. Brief rundown: there was school, and then there were tests, and more school, and some papers, and sometimes I skipped class, and it snowed like I lived in the Arctic tundra, and then it snowed more, and more school, and did I mention it snows a lot here? Because it does.

HOWEVER. Today it is in the mid-80s and sunny, and I laid by the Charles River in my shorts and bikini top and read a mindless novel that had nothing whatever to do with the loads of final exams and papers about to descend upon my head, and I ate ice cream and now I will take a nap. And as I write this, I am eating chips and queso while I wait for a pizza to cook. And then I might eat ice cream again. It's how I get ready for swimsuit season, y'all.

SPEAKING OF swimsuit season, I could not be more excited for the next several weekends. Here is my rundown: May 2, I will be chilling at the Country Home with Kim and her family for her sister-in-law Mandy's baby shower (Mandy, fair warning: I find newborn gifts to be a wee bit boring. They are pastel and lack panache. I am hoping to find a disco-ball-themed mobile for the crib because that? Would RAWK.) Weekend after...so far nothing, but I've not given up hope. Weekend after that, I fly to Philadelphia for my little sister's wedding shower. We fully plan to drink our way through the shower anyway, but just in case we're not *completely* slobbering drunk by the time it's over, we'll be heading to Sonic for a cherry limeade with rum. Mmmm, summertime. Then comes Memorial Day, which is in Atlanta with Mijha and Runako and also involves rum, though perhaps not with cherry limeades, and laying by the lake. My tan will be killer, y'all, and not just in the melanoma kind of way. And then the weekend after that I am going back to Philly to hang with my sister and her fiance at the Jersey Shore. Somewhere in there are three 20-page papers to write and two final exams to take, but I haven't really figured out how they fit in yet.

And then...I head to South Africa. Where my tan will disappear like so much gossamer in the wind because it is winter there and it is wet and rainy and gets dark at 5 pm, much like the last six months of my life.

So in an effort to fend off the anticipatory Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD...awwww) brought on by the prospect of YET MORE winter, here are the things I am really, really excited about my return to SA:

1) The minibus cab. Oh, beloveds, the minibus cabs. I don't have words for the glory of a vehicle that is meant to seat seven, easily seats 15 along with children and sometimes livestock, and blares hip-hop music at rocket-launching decibels, all while adorned with airbrushed pictures of Tupac. And costs you roughly sixty cents to ride.

2) The little bakery that sells lemon meringue puffs and milk tarts, which I ate every day last summer and are exclusively responsible for the fact I didn't die of malnutrition.

3) The Labia Theater, which is NOT EVEN A PORN THEATER, Y'ALL. The name misleads, no? Instead, it is a fabulous mix of first-run releases from the US and artsie/independent flicks from all over. Love. It.

4) South African soap operas. To die for.

5) Learning to drive a stick shift. Those of you who know that I can manage to get in wrecks in my own country, where I (ostensibly) know the rules and the roads are wide and flat, can only imagine how I might fare learning to drive stick shift while also remembering to look the opposite way for traffic (an omission that has nearly cost me my life on more than one occasion) and remember the Capetonians regard traffic laws as suggestions more than rules. Hints, if you will. But I have been told I should learn to drive a stick shift there and get my international driver's license, and I might just undertake it. Or I may just rely on the aforementioned cabs.

6) Evensong at St. George's Cathedral. Beautiful, mystical, as high-churchy as you could want.

7) The beach, which is stunning even in winter, and watching the sun set into the water is one of my favorite experiences in Cape Town.

8) Breaking the code for the 14-step tea making process that one of the Cathedral parishioners has. My tea making process has three steps: 1) boil water; 2) pour over tea bag and sugar; 3) add milk. I am dying to find out where the other 11 steps fit in.

9) Eating lemon meringue pie on the floor of Lynette's office. I eat and crack jokes, she works. It's a system that works for us.

10) And finally, the experience I most hope to recreate in Cape Town: the last time I was there, Lynette, an older gentleman named Jack and I went to eat fish at Hout Bay. As we drove back, comfortably full of fish and chips, Jack put on his favorite CD. What was it, you ask? Was it the music of the resistance? "Amandla," perhaps? Bob Marley? Gum shoe dancing? No, friends, no, don't be so provincial. It was "Kenny Rogers Sings Your Favorite Love Songs." Now they were not *my* favorite love songs, or they would have included the classic "Islands in the Stream." Also? "Back That Ass Up." Timeless love songs both. But as we drove past the beautiful Cape Town coast, Table Mountain looming above us, and Kenny crooning "Endless Love" (for the record, Kenny is not as adept as I am at singing both parts of a duet. See my version of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" if you really want to know how it's done), I got tickled, y'all. I was like: it's AFRICA, and I still can't get away from Kenny Rogers.

And then he launched into "Unforgettable," because you know what? IT TOTALLY WAS.

So there you have it...10 things I am really excited to revisit in Cape Town. 5 weeks and counting!

Whose Bible is it anyway?

I know, I've been a slacker about posting, so here's a summary of the last three months: work, home, summer, family, hurricane, back to school. Also, I ABSOLUTELY will post about Mijha and Runako's wedding but I am waiting until I have the photos.



This post is about something else, though. I am taking a class with the illustrious Peter Gomes: pastor of Memorial Chapel at Harvard, author, "Colbert Report" guest, and invoker of the best offertory plea I have ever heard: "The good news is, we have all the money we need to do all the great things we are called to do. The bad news is it is still in your pockets!" The course is on the Bible and the history of interpretation. It is not a Scriptural interpretation class per se--we are not examining the historical-critical method vs. the literary method vs. the Jesus seminar we-vote-on-what's-true-with-colored-beads method (a rigorous academic and spiritual discipline, to be sure); we are looking at the way Christian communities have understood and interpreted Scripture over time. It is raising questions that I have grappled with before, but that are always worth looking at again, namely:



Whose Bible is it anyway?



For most of Christian history, the Bible was purely the province of educated men, monks and theologians, those who had devoted their lives to its study. Even pre-printing press, they were leery of letting just anyone have access to the Bible; even the very wealthy, who could afford a handwritten manuscript, were discouraged. They opposed the translation of the Bible into the more accessible Latin, and later into various vernaculars.



The thing is, this is not because they held Scripture in low esteem; it's because they held it in such high esteem. They understood that this complex, mysterious, esoteric, inspired, opaque, illuminating, maddening collection of 66 books in three languages written over 1500 years (at least) was incredible powerful, and incredibly difficult. And in the wrong hands, a powerful, difficult book becomes a powerful, dangerous book. Anyone can get a book wrong. And misinterpretation leads to misappropriation and then that's where the fun really begins. So, believing that the gospel had been conferred by God, received by the apostles and proclaimed by the church fathers, they saw part of that charge as protecting Scripture by keeping its study and interpretation in the care of those who had devoted their lives to the languages, history and hermeneutics of Biblical study.



I'm more sympathetic to this than I once was. Maybe it's because I'm in my third semester of Greek, which means I am up to my elbows in translating Matthew and Mark--and we haven't even gotten to Paul yet, whose first-rate mind and delight in wordplay has challenged and perplexed translators for centuries. Greek has a complexity that English cannot begin to grasp. A word can have several meanings; translation is more art than science. My tortured Greek translations from last night's homework sounded something like "The men who were destroying democracy once a long time ago continuously are considering killing the public speakers now but maybe in the future by themselves or maybe with their friends because they are not to be trusted, insert random pluperfect participle with no relation to any of the previous clauses here." Tragic, and totally normal for Greek. Or consider a common phrase in Scripture, "agapeo tou Xristou"--the love of Christ. Does that mean our love of Christ, or Christ's love of us? Whole theologies hinge on this, and the English gives us no hint of this.



Or consider something I came across in a reading for another class, the reading out of Exodus of Moses' call to return to Egypt and command Pharaoh to let God's people go. It's a passage I've read a dozen times, but I noticed something this time I had skimmed over before. As they are journeying to Egypt, God decides to kill Moses. Doesn't tell us why. Doesn't warn him. Moses is about to get the holy smackdown--IN HIS SLEEP--when Zipporah somehow senses something. So she cuts off her son's foreskin and lays it across Moses' genitals, saying "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood." (Modern translation: "Ain't this a bitch.") What are we to do with that? Do you want that in just anyone's hands? Whose hands are the right hands?



So I have a greater sympathy than I had in the past for this perspective, this sense that to handle the Bible responsibly, we must know its history, its culture, its languages, its traditions, its history of interpretation through the ages. It is the work of scholars and sages, men and women who devote their lives to fathoming an unfathomable book.



But.



I can't entirely get on board with this, perhaps because I am still an evangelical at the core--as Gomes says, in the end, we are where we came from, and I come from a Southern Baptist home and church that inculcated Scripture as soon as a child's mouth could shape the words. I think in Biblical rhythms; its language is as natural to me as my own. And as a result, I have access to wisdom I could not have on my own. I know, when my emotions are haywire, that "the heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9), assuring me that the heart is not always trustworthy, and that there are depths in me unknown to any but the One who created them in me. I know in difficult times that "when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10). I know that I am engraved on the palm of God's hands (Isaiah 49:16) and that He stores my tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). I think of the David narrative, which I have loved for years, and the different angles and lessons I find in it every time, like a prism.



I think, too, of the teachers I have had who were not Biblical scholars, who were just ordinary people who loved God and the word, and the insights they have offered me that rival any I have gathered from the scholars who write the commentaries. Like the woman who noted that when Revelation 19 tells us that Christ "has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself," it means there is reserved a name for Christ that has never been blasphemed, never been uttered casually or as a curse, never been defiled by the actions of His church. Something has stayed sacred, something is yet untouched. What a beautiful idea.



But go beyond the Bible as individual devotion and imagine what Christianity would be if we did not have the liberation narrative of the African-American slaves, whose telling of the freedom story of the gospel transformed and sustained their community, whose spirituals were modern-day psalms of lament, and who cracked open the gospel for us in a way from which we are still learning. Could we have counted on the scholars to do that for us, or did we need an illiterate, oppressed people to see what the wise of the world could not?



As a Southern Baptist kid, you learn about what we call "the priesthood of the believer." That means that the Holy Spirit and I can read Scripture together and I don't need anyone else to tell me what it means, I can stand before God on my own. It's very populist, which I like. It's also wide open for abuse. Anything powerful can become powerfully misused. Water is a good thing, until a hurricane washes away your city. Fire is a good thing, until it burns down a forest. The greater the power, the greater the potential for destruction. And certainly the many folks--Creflo Dollar, I'm looking at you--who misappropriate the gospel, who preach a false gospel of prosperity and affluence that I believe is anathema to a God who loves the poor (who, by the way, make up most of the world) are evidence of what happens when Scripture is misinterpreted and misappropriated.



So we need checks on it. Scripture should be interpreted in community--we need people to rein us in, to say "whoa, we're getting kind of crazy here, I don't think that's what it means." We need the elders in the faith who have wisdom and experience, and we need the young folks who have zeal and an openness to new things. We need each other in this venture of reading God's word, and I suspect that is what He had in mind all along.



I have a dear friend who is a priest and tells the people in his confirmation class that the Bible is "not one book but 66, not English but in Hebrew and Greek, not a written record but an oral tradition, not Western but Semitic, not individual but communal, not democratic but patriarchal, not self-seeking but seeking the good of the group." I think he is right, but I can't help thinking that if I were a 13-year-old confirmand in his class, it would put me off ever tackling the Bible. We must have a healthy respect for its complexities and subtleties, but not so much that we are afraid to approach it, and willing to allow what we are told on Sundays be the extent of our dealings with it. And we should be more Biblically literate--we shouldn't be afraid to talk about the culture in which Scripture was written, or how traditions and understandings of human psychology have changed; we should take very seriously the task of translating ancient texts into a 21st-century world. And we should stop--please, please, let's stop--referring to it as a manual. People, no one has ever been inspired or transformed by a manual. Whether it is for my digital camera or my DVD players, I usually a) don't know where the manual is, and b) only look for it when something's gone wrong. Let's get rid of the manual metaphor, this is not a new Toyota I'm talking about where I'm just trying to figure out how to get rid of the child locks. Most of all, let's not be afraid to say that it doesn't make sense and we don't get it. I'm still not getting that whole Moses story. In fact, I'm trying not to think about it too much.



The thing is, the early church fathers were right: the Bible is a dangerous book. But maybe we are meant to be a dangerous people. Not in the way we sometimes are, where we are dangerous in a toxic, oppressive, my-way-or-the-highway-to-hell kind of way; but dangerous in the way that turns this broken, hurting world on its ear by proclaiming that there is a different way of doing life together, and that the Kingdom of God is a new world being birthed in the shell of the old one, and things can never be the same. That is the most dangerous message I can imagine. And the most exciting.



So whose Bible is it? It's mine. And yours. Together. Let's do this thing.

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.