Josh Erdman

3 Mar 2012

i feel compelled to write something despite the 4,996 words i have already written today. who assigns a 22-page paper on the last weekend of a homestay? just a tad-bit bitter. 

thanks 55 sandgate. i know you will probably forget me, but i will not ever forget you.

it is so peaceful outside my window. the rain is tinkling from the gutter while cicadas buzz.

why does it take the threat of leaving to pry open a gaping hole of sadness?

16 Feb 2012

A well-oiled machine hums somewhere deep in the sprawling hills of Inanda, South Africa. Nestled snugly beneath a verdant plateau, the Bekimpilo Trust’s Amatikwe Clinic battles the voracious poverty of its community through regimented immunization. These vaccines are doled out with astounding efficiency, arming its young abantwana for a war being waged within them.

Each day, chilled vaccines are systematically carted by jeep from Durban and are administered to queues that wrap the building. Mamas tug tear-stained toddlers who remember only too well the needles that pierced their flesh. Others cradle wide-eyed infants whose fascination has not yet turned to foreboding—for the world has yet to do them any memorable harm.

Nurses bustle about inside, gears churning in a machine. Mother-child pairs slide from seat to seat, steadily making their way to the back of the room. The chief nurse, shoulders flanked by colored panels, draws a syringe for a young girl. Her eyes probe me curiously as she sucks her thumb, complacently straddling her mother’s lap, thoroughly unprepared for what’s to come.

The machine’s labor produces a common good. A few short sobs later, a young warrior emerges from its threshold. Although her legs wobble in vain as she braves the world, she is armed for the battle of a lifetime. Her arsenal is equipped with enough weapons for many victories—each day a struggle for her health.

7 Feb 2012

Five of us climbed the steps of the V.N. Naik School for the Deaf at half-past seven, the sun just beginning to arc its way through the pallid-blue sky. Children at the gate giggled and gawked, their hands gesticulating in frenzy as we clumsily attempted to return their greetings. Shortly after entering the red-bricked, boarding school-esque building, we were whisked off for a pre-briefing before our tour.

The school has been in operation for thirty years—complacently straddling the pre- and post-apartheid eras. As the day passed, we visited classrooms that ranged 00 through matriculation. Those who cannot perform academically are trained vocationally—giving them a tool belt for use in the labor force.

A younger class gave us personal sign names—combining our prominent features with the letters of our first names. Liz with her curly hair. Rachel and Erin and their earrings. Breanna’s high cheekbones. They loved my beard, signing a “J” as they lined their jawlines. Josh.

Just before our noon departure, we stopped by the speech therapist’s office. As we lined up the reds, greens, and yellows of plastic chairs intended for preschoolers, a family slipped in behind us for assessment. From the looks of it, he was a toddler accompanied by his parents.

Without a second thought, the therapist began to assess the child in our presence. All privacy rights were instantaneously abolished. Shattered into a thousand invisible pieces and scattered across the floor. The questioning commenced and I, unsure of what to do, was cemented to my plastic seat.

The boy was not three or four, but thirteen going on fourteen. “Yeah, he’s a little one,” the man chuckled in response to both the therapist and my shocked reactions. He was not the boy’s father, but his cousin—the woman, the man’s mother. The child was orphaned in 2002 when his parents died from AIDS.

Fuming, I whispered across my shoulder to Erin, “We should not be here.”

“I know.”

The woman continued. She leered out and over her gold-rimmed spectacles and down at the boy. Her clipboard a makeshift barrier separating her from the family. She began to write. Plaited black hair slinked in coils at her shoulders while her pencil scribbled furiously in a scratchy scrawl. “Has the boy always been deaf?” The man responded no. He said the boy began losing his hearing two years ago following the start of his own antiretroviral treatment. The therapist, painfully oblivious of her violation of the boy’s privacy, his rights as a South African, continued.

After she deemed him extremely deaf, the trio began enrollment paperwork. She asked the older woman, his custodian, to sign. “She cannot write,” the man stated. The practitioner turned to us, “Many people from rural areas are illiterate.”

I seethed. The man caught my gaze and quickly looked down at his shuffling feet. The old woman did not understand, shifting her eyes in confusion. And slowly, all the while, the boy’s back shamefully inched toward us, shrouding his face from view.

Antiretrovirals prolong the lives of persons living with HIV. These encapsulated bursts of vitality are not without devastating side effects.  For adults, stomachs balloon from lipo-dystrophy while spindly veins bulge beneath stretched skin. Children have an additional complication. Many lose their ability to hear. The medication is ototoxic and poisons nerves within the ear. That which gives them life, takes it away. They fall into silence, fated to a severed life bound by regimented doses of medication. They are HIV+ and deaf. You tell me, who will hear them?

26 January 2012 

Class ended early today. Zed saw off his baby girl—whisked away by airbus to Cape Town for study at the university. After being dropped off at my homestay, the afternoon passed listlessly. I cracked Mountains Beyond Mountains, only to quickly succumb to fatigue. I set myself up to fail, I admit, unwisely reading in bed and groggily stumbled out to Mama May cooking in the kitchen two hours later. An older man from next door, the father I assume, came over and introduced himself. I could tell he was having quite a bit of fun with me, rapidly rolling through Zulu greetings met by my blank, smile-plastered stares. Ngani! Mama May is bustling about the kitchen now, preparing dinner. The quiet buzz of what I assume is Zulu radio continues in the background as it has for the last hour. Carl just returned from charging his MP3 player at a friend’s house. I wonder if Brian will join us for dinner. He mentioned something about not returning until Friday or Saturday, so we’ll see. The birds chirping, the neighbor boy’s mumbles just beyond the cracked front door, Mama’s dicing knife, distant shouts, and the radio’s murmur all blend into a foreign cacophony I have trouble drowning out. We just had a very unsuccessful Zulu lesson. Good thing I don’t know anything useful. I can say ancestor and fat woman. Amadlozi. Sdudla fehlefehle. Fantastic. They say I will pick it up, but I am extremely skeptical. I know that this experience is definitely outside my comfort zone, but I need to keep plowing full speed ahead. I always stop doing things when they become uncomfortable. Can’t really do that now. I’m stuck here so I’m going to just do. Zed used an analogy I readily identified with. He said this experience will be like a ‘w’ with its highs and lows, for it probably will have many peaks and valleys. Bring it.

Few days late due to lack of intarrrnet..

25 January 2012

Tonight marks night one in my homestay. A small lizard scurried under the door and into the hallway throughout that last sentence. Just a little taste of Africa for ya. He’s back again. Anyway. Today we went to a local auditorium and everyone met his or her ma. Mine is Mavis, aka Mama May. When we arrived, Brian, whose 28th birthday was today—HAPPY BIRTHDAY!—, was watching TV on the couch with a friend. They were friendly—quite lovely, actually. After Mama May showed me to my room, I went back and joined the guys on the couch to watch TV. They were watching the Cup of Nations. No surprise there. The two were very engaging & we chatted about everything from politics to music to my personal life and university. Later, Carl came home just as Brian was going out and things commenced as if uninterrupted—simply the same with the new brother. Dinner was delicious, but my whole being lac-tarded really was tripping Ma up. She very much liked my gifts, the picture frame in particular—how it folded in half, all fancy-like. We watched Generations, of course, followed by some American movie with Jim Carrey. I am still thoroughly surprised by how being an American celebrity translates into being an international celebrity. Lucky bastards. So I am fading very quickly, but first I want to touch on one quibble. The whole toilet not having a seat thing compounded with my filthy irritable bowl syndrome is going to play out very interestingly. Also, I need to get better with kids because there are literally thousands here. So that was not one quibble, but two, however all in all I am pleasantly surprised. As Zed would say, I’m stylin’. This is by no means home, but this is by no means impoverished in every sense of the word. Baby steps towards understanding the plight of the world’s majority, I guess.

21 January 2012

Today, the wind swept us not to Johannesburg, but to Soweto, a small township southwest of the city central. Red-bricked shanties sprawled over the hillside as we passed through unnoticed by way of the interstate. Coal stacks loomed menacingly, covering us in shadow. Their bodies were artfully branded—the tattooed murals commemorating an exhausted way of life. As we descended from the pass, eyes leered out from darkened faces, their owners languidly meandering about dusty paths that, to them, were only too familiar. As I peered out from the shelter of my car, a man’s gaze met mine. I felt a prick, causing me to quickly turn away. Simply with his stare, he challenged the white privilege glowing from my being. In that moment, I could only begin to feel the bloodstained history of Soweto. 

Later. We walked past Phefeni Junior Secondary School. It was there, June 16, 1976, where the young Hector Pieterson fell. He was pierced as he protested, an Afrikaans policeman’s bullet ending his life. Because of Hector, South Africa began to weep Apartheid’s bloody tears. Riots blazed the countryside like wildfire.