It's intriguing how different South Africa is from the United States and Nigeria. One of the first things I noticed was hair. Coming here, I had to mentally prepare myself to see all weaves, some side looks for my natural hair and other things of that nature. As a matter of fact, I considered saving myself any uncomfortable feelings and simply having a weave for the trip. I decided against it however. Nigeria is notorious for the weaves and wigs and natural hair is more of a rarity and of course I expected no less from South Africa. I was so wrong. Here, at least judging from the festival, natural hair is the majority and weaves/ wigs the minority. Whoaa that was a culture shock. I've seen so many people with locks - they are always in designs so I can't help staring when they walk by, people with shaved heads, straight up natural hair, some girls with mohawks; I saw this one girl with shaved sides and the middle of her head braided into this spiral design. It was so edgy and cool. I was like mayne I wish I could pull that off, danggit, if only my head wasn't so big.
It's also interesting how race is categorized here: black, coloreds, and then white. This colored category is the most confusing ish ever. It's seen as its own separate entity, with coloreds marrying other coloreds, producing generations of coloreds, who by the way, speak Afrikaans. It's so different. It's not so different from the U.S. though when it comes to who guys prefers. The guys I'm cool with here, love the "yellow bones" as they put it aka red bones as we call it in the U.S. It's all about them light skinned girls. smh. Nothings wrong with it, but can dark skinned girls get some love too??? LOL
So unto performances today: we saw this dance from a company who uses "differently-abled" dancers as well as actors to give further meaning to the term "integrated dance." It was, to say teh least, an experience. Basically the dance, Love Affair, challenged perceptions of disability and gender. I was so into it, trying to understand, trying to see what they wanted me to see. It was very different, "weird" as one of my friends put it, but I actually liked it. It was touching and I feel like if I had a disabled friend, I would have been moved to tears. Other people in the program didn't care for it though *shrug* to each its own.
We also an hip hop group from Durban, ah! That was a joke. I had my fun though being extra hype for some pretty lame music. It makes it all more enjoyable. We also saw this weird physical theatre show, Inua. This was hands down to me the worst show ever. My professor felt the opposite, she loved it, and read into the movements; she raved about the ingenuity of it, how it showed a transformation of man etc. I just felt it was bullsh*t. The girl rolled around on the floor like a baby, made weird noises, I was like wtheck is going on? She dressed like an eskimo, acting in my opinion STUPID. Then again, maybe my mind is just so closed off that I can't see the beauty or cleverness of it all. I did also sleep through some of it- I'm sure that doesn't help. LOL
No comments:
Post a Comment