Tara is doing a series of interviews with people from different backgrounds in order to examine our changing world through their eyes. This is the second of those interviews. For the first, click here.
I moved to Alabama when I was eleven; it was the first time in my life I’d heard of the KKK. The stories I was told seemed bizarre…how was it possible that people would have the idea to burn crosses, to torture others, to hang people from trees? I was naïve and curious, and so I did what I usually did when something confused me. I asked my dad. “Some things don’t make sense,” he said first. And then: “People are scared of what they don’t know.” A new version of the world was presenting itself to me.
In that first year of middle school, my history class watched black and white clips of Martin Luther King and other 1960′s “riot” footage from Birmingham, Alabama, which was just south of the town where my family had moved. It was surreal—police spraying passive protestors with fire hoses and tear gas, beating them with batons because of the shade of their skin.
I wasn’t sure why I had never been introduced to this part of my country’s past (or perhaps I was, but only fleetingly) while living in “the North”, as the Southerners liked to say. Maybe graphic violence and controversial topics are avoided in elementary school curriculums… I remember my friends from New York and D.C. calling to ask whether people were “still racist down South?” Looking back, I’m not sure that things were really much different elsewhere in the country. Some people feed off divisions, (whether geographical or racial or social), some do not. Some people will always fear the unknown.
The following interview with two South Africans reminds me of those first-time moments of exposure to the darker side of human experience. Those pivotal moments in life where we peer into the shadows and see monsters. But this interview also brings insight into a world where recent turmoil exists, where people have worked together to overcome gargantuan obstacles. These are the stories that give hope—that help us to learn, to change, and to move toward something a little less terrifying, something that doesn’t wear pointed hats or go bump in the night….
The week I set about moving from Anchorage, Alaska, I show up with a box of clothes for the One Family Birth Center and Natural Health Clinic. I’m due (couldn’t resist) to meet Nava and Rob Sarracino, who work there. Rob’s on his way, and Nava and I sit down at the large table near the kitchen area of the clinic. On the wall beside us looms an enormous painting of a native woman—pregnant with feathers extending from her outstretched arms. Very Alaskan and very appropriate for the clinic.
Tara Goedjen: I was thinking about these ideas I mentioned to you before—creativity and adaptation to place. But let’s start at the beginning. You came to Anchorage recently.
Nava Sarracino: About five months ago.
TG: From South Africa.
NS: We were in Cape Town. Which is stunning, really a jewel of a place. For me, it’s probably the most beautiful place in South Africa. Very diverse. It’s got European culture, Cape Coloured culture, and increasingly more Black African culture. The two largest white groups are the Afrikaans and the English speaking who came through from Europe. The Afrikaans speaking population trace their roots back mainly to the French Hugenots and Dutch Protestants. The “Cape Coloured” culture traces its roots back to a mixture of different cultures—three of those ethnic backgrounds being Cape Malay (slaves brought over from Malaysia), Bushmen, and a mixture of European and indigenous populations. Finally, the other large ethnic grouping in Cape Town is the Xhosa-speaking Africans (classified as black under apartheid, this is the tribal group that Nelson Mandela is from).
TG: What are some of the differences you’ve noticed so far, moving from Africa to here?
NS: When I’ve been in the States there’s a sense of being taken care of that’s very calming on the soul. In South Africa you’re faced constantly with poverty and with people who aren’t being taken care of. Huge groups of people are poor, and you know that they go to bed hungry, and that they don’t have jobs.
TG: Obviously poverty exists everywhere, but it sounds as though you’re speaking of a completely different level.
NS: Here it seems that there are so many resources available, that if you want to make it you can. There are so many people willing to help. And there are the schools. And that’s been a big change [between the US and South Africa], which has been good. Because in South Africa, if you’re a bit aware, then it’s a pull on you, always, because you see the poverty all the time. But also I think you can get upset here because you see the vast consumerism, that’s also coming into South Africa among all population groups, but I think people in South Africa just can’t afford it as much so it’s not as blatant, in a sense.
At this point Rob enters the room. He sits next to Nava, his short blond hair contrasting her own, which is long and dark. Rob and Nava, who I guess to be around my age, are the type of people who would be called “soulful” in the South I spoke of in the introduction to this interview. When they’re together it’s impossible to resist their good-natured energy.
NS: It has been so refreshing to not worry [about crime]. I walk wherever and I feel safe. You don’t have to worry about turning your back, you don’t have to worry about your purse. It’s such a freedom off of you. But at the same time, there’s a spirit in Africa that I just love. There’s a certain energy there that’s not here. And I think it’s…you probably find it in any place where people are still rural. People who’ve got that connection to the Earth. And I haven’t really found it here. But in Africa there’s a real sense of spirit, and people are really loud…the African spirit is a talking, vibrant spirit, and it’s different here. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people I’ve met and been around in Alaska are very practical—they know how to make and fix things, and seem quite self-sufficient in that respect. In South Africa, because of the cheap labor, you don’t need to do as many things for yourself. A lot of the people I know haven’t been brought up learning to do very many practical things unless their parents are in the trades.
RS: I think what Nava’s saying is that in South Africa there’s a much bigger gap between rich and poor, and a huge economic and social divide between blue collar and white collar jobs. So a lot the people in the trades professions get paid bare minimum wage to get by. It’s only the people who own the resources who make money, so there’s less of an attraction to go into the trades. And if you want to make money you have to be a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or entrepreneur.
NS: You have to study.
RS: And there’s not much [middle ground] between the two. You’re either struggling to make ends meet and struggling to get food and a roof over your head, or else you’re doing really well and enjoying the material side benefits of life.
TG: So that spirit of Africa, is that ubiquitous among all the groups there? That vibrancy you mentioned, is that across blue collar and white collar workers, so to speak?
NS: That vibrancy would probably be attributed more to the black African and coloured populations.
RS: Did you define what coloured means?
NS: I did.
TG: These terms are accepted? They seem different then how the United States might refer to ethnicity.
RS: That’s what I wanted to say. It’s probably the only place in the world where it’s a specific racial and ethnic term that has been accepted, and which is a specific description. It’s got no relation to the word “colored” in the states, and also it has no trace to the way that the word “colored” has been seen in such a negative light in the states. So it’s the same word, but used in a different context.
TG: I see. So growing up in South Africa for you…with its extremely rich history…How would you speak to that? Coming from the perspective of someone who has witnessed that world.
NS: Growing up in South Africa, the blacks and whites were separated. The whites lived in one area, the blacks lived in another. The whites were protected; the blacks had a lot of restrictive laws and rules they had to follow. My parents moved there because we were Baha’is. And among the Baha’i faith there’s a very strong principle about the unity of the races and the idea that we’re all one people.
At this moment our conversation’s interrupted when a midwife enters the center. Rob directs her to the room down the hallway…
NS: I was aware of the segregation that was happening, but I really had no understanding about what was going on as a kid. So the first time the blacks could vote in the country, I missed it, kind of, because I was very detached from politics, because it was more like “we’re Baha’is and we don’t believe in this system” and I didn’t really know what was going on in my country. I was kind of blinkered in the sense that I already believed that we were all one people. So I didn’t actually get involved in the politics. And only later on, when I was older, I saw this movie, Power of One…
TG: …It influenced your perspective. What was it about?
NS: A white family who moves into a black culture. And I remember watching the movie when I was fifteen. Apartheid had just ended, and I couldn’t understand that this was my country that the movie was about. I didn’t get it: this happened in my country? I didn’t understand. And I remember I was quite traumatized. And I remember watching another play about black political instigators being arrested and tortured, and I couldn’t fathom that this was happening and that it had happened and I didn’t know about it. Before that I had always seen myself as an American, because my parents had moved from America and I was proud of the mentality: America has no prejudice, America is the land of the free, South Africa has all these problems. And then after watching that movie, it was the first time that I was aware that I loved South Africa and that I wanted to be in South Africa. It was the first time that I was very aware of what had happened, and sad that I hadn’t understood and hadn’t been more proactive.
TG: How old were you when you moved there?
NS: Four.
TG: So you approached your surroundings with the innocence of a child.
NS: Exactly. And I remember everything. When I’d walk up to shops, I was very aware that we must smile at all the black people, because we don’t believe in inequality, so I remember me and my sister would smile and say hello to everyone walking on the road.
TG: When others wouldn’t.
NS: When others wouldn’t because there was a separation, you didn’t mix.
TG: And what year did apartheid end?
NS: 1992.
RS: 1994.
NS: Wasn’t he [Mandela] released in…?
RS: 1990. Just a little comment on that. I was much more immersed in and much more aware of what was going on then Nava was.
NS: My family’s very idealistic.
RS: And her perspective reminded me of watching a movie on Nazi Germany or on the subsequent years following WWII…hearing about the Germans who couldn’t comprehend what was going on. And this is to a much smaller extent, someone like Nava whose parents and family come from quite an aware, socially responsible, socially active background…yet Nava would grow up in an environment when she almost wouldn’t realize what was going on. It made me consider the Nazis and think how could they have not realized what was going on, how could they have bought into this system? Not that Nava bought into the system but she didn’t really realize what was going on, so it just made me think about our lives and where that might be happening on all levels. Even in the states today.
To be continued…
For the second half of this interview, click here.
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That was great! Looking forward to Part 2!
I am, too. I really liked Nava’s line, “Here it seems that there are so many resources available, that if you want to make it you can.” Refreshing to here an outsider’s view of America speaking to it’s opportunity and not the typically myopic militaristic view.
Nice interview, Goedjen.