The contrast between developed and undeveloped areas of the world that I mentioned in my last entry is actually a regular challenge working in South Africa. Parts of the country are quite developed, as you may know, while the rural, predominately black areas where we are working are nearly the same as they were during apartheid -- with the exception of the recent addition of electricity. Running water, in most villages, is still a distant hope.
This morning I was waiting for the beat-up public minibus taxi on the dirt road outside my house in Tshifudi and a funeral procession passed by on its way to the cemetery. Instead of limos and sedans, this procession was mostly made up of pick up trucks with loads of people dressed in tattered clothing crammed into the beds. (an interesting aside: I was trying to be somber as the group passed, but many of the people shouted out my name, grinning and waving to me as they went by.)
Now, just a few hours later, I am sitting in an air conditioned Internet cafe in the former Akrikaner town of Makhado (formerly Louis Trichardt). Next to me is a 7-year-old white boy playing a violent video game where characters shoot each other with AK47s in realistic looking street battles. (He just told me it is called "GTA San Andreas.") He and three of his friends are playing each other, occasionally taking swigs from bottles of Coke.
In my village, kids still play with homemade push vehicles they make out of wire and rusty tin cans. Coke is a big treat. If I buy one at the little Spaza shop, several children will ask me for sips before I make it home.
There are a handful of fortunate people in my village who have cars and maybe computers -- my family is one of them. They have an older but still workable computer, satellite TV and a refrigerator that is often stocked with cold drink (soda). But some of the extended family members live in thatched roof rondavels and cook over an open fire. They don't have cars.
So I can be in my house where my host brother is watching MTVs "Pimp My Ride" and walk outside to where few people have rides. I can walk down the street with a barefoot youngster who's heading to a dilapidated rondavel home where she will make her own dinner alone because her mom spends most of her day working as a domestic in Johannesburg and pass her classmate who plays in the garden of her family's modern brick house with air conditioners in all of the windows.
And daily I am confronted by the question: which way of life is best? Is westernizing rural Africa its salvation or its downfall? The answer is never clear.