Sawubona! Ngikhona?!

“At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.” –Arthur Frommer

As a self-proclaimed seasoned traveler, I continuously make concerted efforts to embody Frommer’s sentiments. My main objectives often entail a moratorium on expectations, interest in food and food ways, to live like a local for more than fifty percent of the trip, have fun, remember to always check my privilege and be cognizant of possible blind spots. Initially, I envisioned my trip to South Africa would mainly adhere to the previously mentioned tenets. A shift occurred days before departure. The facilitator asked two questions: 1. What are you most curious about for your visit to South Africa? 2. What are your expectations on a personal and/or professional level with respect to your upcoming trip abroad? Since the trip is geared towards service learning, I understood the impetus for the questions but traveling with specific expectations was unconventional for me. Ergo, my responses meant consolidating personal precepts with fulfilling the goals and maintaining the integrity of the trip.

On the day of departure, I reflected on my answers as I gazed out the window of the plane at John F Kennedy (JFK) airport. 1. I am curious about the ways my South African experience will inform my continuously changing world view.

2.  Professionally,  I anticipate that South Africa will shape the ways I  interact with students of varying cultures and truly teach me how to enter the classroom with an open disposition; to simultaneously teach and learn.

I knew if I am to truly experience South African culture, and from that experience learn to enter the classroom with an open disposition willing to learn as I teach, I must begin at the level of language. Since it would be my first sojourn in South Africa, and like strangers intent on becoming familiar, I thought it best to start with greetings. As other passengers boarded, I did a google search for iciZulu greetings. I found:

Sawubona: ‘I see you.

Ngikhona: I am here.

I learned that “inherent in the [ici]Zulu greeting and [its] grateful response, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn’t exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence. A Zulu folk saying clarifies this, “Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu”, meaning, “A person is a person because of other people.”” (Bridget Edwards)

The profundity of the greeting and response is not lost on me; rather it is reflected in the fact that it serves as the title of my initial post and introduction to the blog. Hopefully, the sentiment of truly seeing someone in all of their divinity and humanity (in this case South Africa and South Africans) informs the entire blog as I document my experience.

Sawubona!