New CCK

Posted by Bronwen on August 28th, 2008 | Categorized as Introduction | Tagged as South Africa Zulu Afrikaaner Sotho Xhosa Japan CCK Brit | 243 views and 9 Comments

Good Morning, Sawabona, Dumela, Goeie More, Bhota and Ohayo Gozaimasu,

My name is Bronwen and this is my story.

I was born in 1982, Durban, South Africa. Technically I am an English White South African of British descent. What a nice little label, I say to myself. The only problem is that my family came from England to South Africa in 1820, so we have no clue what our ‘British culture’ is supposed to be. Sure, we have tea in the morning, and always have a roast on Sunday, but honestly, that’s about as far as our ‘Britishness’ goes. So here begins the question, “What is my culture?”

For those of you who are thinking, ‘Wait! But I know white South Africans, they have a very definite culture!’ If your friends have a very strong accent which can’t possibly be mistaken for Australian, New Zealand or British, then the chances are that your friends are Afrikaaner whose first language is Afrikaans (a descendant of old Dutch).

Anyway, back to my story. Both sides of my family grew up in very poor areas of Pietermaritzburg in what was then the province of Natal. For those of you who are familiar with Apartheid, let me tell you that the segregation laws often didn’t extended to the lowest rungs of society, and many of the poor areas around the country were mix-race areas. Both sets of grandparents tried very hard to remain ‘white’, clinging to old traditions like scones with jam when the grandchildren came over but that was much later in their lives when they had a little bit of money to spend on such luxuries. My father and mother tell a very different cultural tale, one in which they ate meilie meal (maize porridge, traditionally an African food) for breakfast, and biryani (an Indian food, Natal has a huge Indian community) for lunch. Why? Because they were by far cheaper to make than oatmeal and cucumber sandwiches. My mother was sent away to a ‘white’ boarding school, but my father grew up with a pack of Zulu boys in his neighbourhood. Both he and my grandmother speak ‘kitchen Zulu’ even to this day.

Thanks to the hard work of both my parents, my brother and I were able to live a lifestyle which can be considered middle-class after my parents moved to the big city of Durban. Even then, my parents still kept some of their foreign, can I call it foreign? Or perhaps native culture? I’m not sure what is politically correct these days. We have curry or putu pap as often as we have meat and three veg dinners. By the time I went to school educational segregation had ended. Like my parents I grew up in a world filled with Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Hindu and Gujarti culture. My best friend was a Zulu girl who lived near me, and I often went to her house when they slaughtered a cow or goat and we made offerings to the ancestors. I also went with another friend of my, a third generation Gujarati, to temple or to take meals at her house in a traditional style. We moved a lot, back and forth between Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Gauteng, so I got vast exposure to many cultures. I learnt Afrikaans, Zulu and Sotho at school. At University I did Classics and picked up Latina and Ancient Greek. I was rather good at becoming a cultural chameleon within different groups seeing as I had no cultural ‘anchor’ of my own. When we went to England for a few months with my father on a business exchange, it took me only days (age 9) before my parents were muttering about the fact that I woke up one morning and had begun to put a British accent on many of my words.

There was a huge push by the time I entered University in 2000 to revel in one’s native culture, to be proud of it and to flaunt it as part of South Africa’s ‘Rainbow Nation’, and even then I often found myself thinking, “What is my culture? Where do I fit into this rainbow?”

When I was 22, I moved to Japan to work as an English teacher. Needless to say my chameleon colours took over very quickly and in three years I am almost fluent in Japanese, and am very well versed in Japanese customs, gestures and body language. I even go to the local shrines to pray and for new year ceremonies. I don’t ever remember telling myself that I was going to immerse myself in such a way, it just happened. Before I knew it, the other foreigners were teasing me about ‘Becoming Japanese’.  Then again, I was often teased in South Africa for ‘trying too hard’ or for ‘being a wannabe’.

My husband is also South African, but his parents were born in Ireland so his cultural heritage is still very strong. Four months ago I had a daughter, born here in Japan. She is currently in the local nursery school and we intend for her to stay in local school until such time as we leave Japan, if we ever leave. I was doing some research and this is how I stumbled across this website. I think that she will most certainly be a TDK, but I ask myself, if a ‘TDK is brought up in a culture different to her parents’, what culture am I passing onto my child? I never felt like I belonged in South Africa, and I know that I don’t and never will ‘belong’ as a foreigner in Japan; but I am still happy here.

What is my cultural anchor? For a long time in my youth, I felt that I could just blow this question away. Ignore it. Why do I need a label? Why do I need to feel that I belong? Why can’t I just be the feather on wind, that leaf in the stream that tumbles and bobs, riding out life and seeing where it takes me? Perhaps now, because I have a child, I feel that I should have some heritage to pass on, some grounding for her to be firm in herself. How can she possibly be confident in who she is, if I never was?