I arrived in Johannesburg in a daze. After a 20-hour long flight from Sydney, I managed to (a) not find my airport pickup, and (b) leave my new camera on a seat at the airport after the excitement of finally finding my airport pickup took hold of me.
"Willy! I left my camera inside the airport!!" I said to Willy, the driver, as we left the terminal building and walked towards the car. He was a small skinny man, and the few teeth he had were as black as his skin.
"You have all bags here," he tried to convince me, obviously not pleased with the fact that I was going to take up more of this time.
"NO! Camera. Bag. Inside. Airport!"
I sprinted back toward the airport again. I sprinted like I never sprinted before. I secretly thought to myself, my legs must look really long right now because I was moving so fast. When I got inside, the airport security guys had just taken my new camera in its new camera bag from where I had left it. I flagged them down and screamed that it was mine. A crowd gathered to watch the commotion.
"Check if everything is in there!" A rugby-sized white man told me.
"Make sure you check!" His wife reaffirmed.
"把包检查一下！不能相信这些黑人警察!" [Check the bag! You can't trust these black cops!]
Out of nowhere came this voice in Chinese. In my daze, I thought my always sensible dad had appeared in an apparition. The voice introduced himself as Frank Cheng, a fifty-something Chinese-South-African who lived in Johannesburg and a prominent member of the local Chinese community. Here we go, I thought to myself, another one of my people fitting the stereotype of feeling superior to anyone darker than them. Little did I realise then that in South Africa, this wasn't a stereotype afflicting just my people. To say that "race" is an interesting issue in South Africa is an understatement. It is a topic that pretends to be above itself and moved on from the Apartheid era but yet still permeates everyday life.
Back to the situation at hand. I was surrounded by black cops who wanted to take a statement from me, white South Africans who yelled for me to check my bag, and a Chinese-South-African who was by then asking where in China my family hailed from. I did my part for international race relations by thanking the black cops for finding my camera bag with everything still inside it, appeased the white South Africans by going through every pocket of the bag, and went through most of the family history with Frank Cheng. It was a happy moment. People of all colours were pleased that this socially-conscious young woman got her camera back, ready for all the happy snapping in Africa. Except for Willy-Few-Teeth, who was impatiently tapping his watch at me.
Text to parents: "Arrived safe. No dramas at all."
"Willy! I left my camera inside the airport!!" I said to Willy, the driver, as we left the terminal building and walked towards the car. He was a small skinny man, and the few teeth he had were as black as his skin.
"You have all bags here," he tried to convince me, obviously not pleased with the fact that I was going to take up more of this time.
"NO! Camera. Bag. Inside. Airport!"
I sprinted back toward the airport again. I sprinted like I never sprinted before. I secretly thought to myself, my legs must look really long right now because I was moving so fast. When I got inside, the airport security guys had just taken my new camera in its new camera bag from where I had left it. I flagged them down and screamed that it was mine. A crowd gathered to watch the commotion.
"Check if everything is in there!" A rugby-sized white man told me.
"Make sure you check!" His wife reaffirmed.
"把包检查一下！不能相信这些黑人警察!" [Check the bag! You can't trust these black cops!]
Out of nowhere came this voice in Chinese. In my daze, I thought my always sensible dad had appeared in an apparition. The voice introduced himself as Frank Cheng, a fifty-something Chinese-South-African who lived in Johannesburg and a prominent member of the local Chinese community. Here we go, I thought to myself, another one of my people fitting the stereotype of feeling superior to anyone darker than them. Little did I realise then that in South Africa, this wasn't a stereotype afflicting just my people. To say that "race" is an interesting issue in South Africa is an understatement. It is a topic that pretends to be above itself and moved on from the Apartheid era but yet still permeates everyday life.
Back to the situation at hand. I was surrounded by black cops who wanted to take a statement from me, white South Africans who yelled for me to check my bag, and a Chinese-South-African who was by then asking where in China my family hailed from. I did my part for international race relations by thanking the black cops for finding my camera bag with everything still inside it, appeased the white South Africans by going through every pocket of the bag, and went through most of the family history with Frank Cheng. It was a happy moment. People of all colours were pleased that this socially-conscious young woman got her camera back, ready for all the happy snapping in Africa. Except for Willy-Few-Teeth, who was impatiently tapping his watch at me.
Text to parents: "Arrived safe. No dramas at all."
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