One of the cool kids

I’ve never been one of the cool kids.

Sure, it didn’t help that my mom dressed me in turtlenecks and stretch pants until I was ten, or that I used to sew my own felt “pocket-mice” and wear them in my breast pocket, or that I was one of the last girls in the seventh grade to start shaving my legs. I can’t reminisce about the high school parties because I didn’t go to any, and the first time I was offered alcohol in college – as part of an initiation ceremony – I did a water shot instead. Oh, and marching band uniforms – need I say more?

But there it was on the front page of the Metro, a British commuter paper, on November 5: “The day America became just a little bit cool again,” with a picture of Barack Obama smiling and waving.

Me? Cool? It’s true. In the past two weeks, no one here in England has bullied me for covert violence, nation-building or economic imperialism. In fact, they haven’t even teased me about my accent. Instead, everyone wants to talk about the election, to rehash my team’s victory. That’s never happened before.

I don’t know if I can take credit for my sudden coolness. Sure, I voted. I followed the election, but so did half of the Brits I know. I didn’t campaign or register voters. I didn’t pen any brilliant columns urging people to vote for Obama. I didn’t give money to the campaign. And I certainly haven’t discovered a newfound sense of fashion in the past two weeks. I’m wearing a turtleneck right now.

Yet somehow, I’m cool by proxy. Everyone wants to be an American now, because we have the greatest claim to the excitement that’s sweeping the world. In these days of escalating food prices, economic recession, the terrorist threat and global warming, the world has experienced an unprecedented, universal wave of optimism, and everyone wants a piece of it. Around the world, the population of “Canadians” abroad has probably been halved.

Now that I'm part of the “in-crowd,” does that mean someone else will end up a loser? Maybe. On November 5th, a British friend complained: “Half of our humour is gone – we can’t make fun of you Americans all the time anymore!”

Will my new “cool” status last? Obama’s inherited such a mess that it’s impossible for him to live up to his promise. When I railed on Bush recently to a friend for “killing people,” he reminded me, “Obama’s going to kill people too, you know.” The war in Iraq is not yet over, and commitment in Afghanistan is likely to grow. No one knows for sure how to rescue the economy, and we can’t afford to restructure health care, reinvest in public education and launch a “Green New Deal” at the same time.

So I’m going to bask in my newfound coolness it while it lasts. I can already feel it starting to wane.

But whaddya know? Nowadays, turtlenecks and stretch pants – at least in England – are back in style.

Obama is my president

"I'm proud to call myself an American for the first time in my entire life. I'm so happy."

She had a British accent, but she was crying, laughing, on her toes through the entire speech. Her mom was American, she told me, but she'd always been ashamed to admit it until now.

When I'd arrived at East Slope bar at one (that's 8 p.m. EST), I waited for half an hour outside the door before I was even admitted - the bar was filled to capacity. An American exchange student from Philadelphia and I stood on our toes to glimpse the big screen: Pennsylvania predicted to go Obama. We screamed, then whined: "Americans should get in first!"

But we did get in, and state after state turned blue: Pennsylvania. New Hampshire. Ohio. New Mexico.

Then, at 4 a.m.:

California.
Washington.

And the banner: "OBAMA VOTED PRESIDENT." How did it happen so easily, so fast?

On the way home, I passed a group of people on my bike. "Obama!" one yelled. "HE'S MY PRESIDENT!" I screamed back, then laughed gleefully, listening to Paul Simon. I couldn't keep myself from yelling the news to people at the bus stops on the way home:

"Obama's the president!"

November 4th

I have grown up in a time when so many Americans have been afraid to be proud of being American.

I have come of political consciousness in the seven years since September 11, 2001, as America has been increasingly vilified by others, increasingly polarised within. I have voted, but I have rarely felt that my voice was heard.

I left my country in 2006 feeling relieved to get away. And I have found my place in the world while apologising for my country. Once, the words were spat at me: "Everything evil comes from America." Other times, many times, I have laughed along with others at my country because mourning it has done no good.

I have come of political consciousness in a country that was still 50 percent disenfranchised by choice, a country much of the world still doesn't believe will dare to elect a black president.

And I have watched this race for more than a year, barely daring to hope. I have scanned the news reports, sometimes indignant, sometimes frustrated, sometimes afraid.

I know that the election means only new challenges. No person can absolve the sins we have committed or solve the problems we face. No one can restore the ozone layer we've depleted, rewind Katrina, erase the taste of American arrogance and greed that's still sour in the air.

But it is not about a savior for America.

It is about every American whose voice will be heard for the first time. It is about people in Uganda, and France, and China, and South Africa, and Thailand, who are watching with bated breath, who have followed this election religiously though we know nothing of their own politics. It is about every person who lived under Jim Crow laws or who has been the target of a racial slur or who has doubted what she can achieve.

Today, I remember the way I felt on a crisp, clear October night at Boston Common, after I saw Obama speak. As the crowds cleared, autumn leaves scuttled across the pavement in the breeze and words hung in the air, fat with possibility.

I can't call it, and I'm afraid writing this will jinx it. Maybe it's easier to feel confident from across the ocean. But this election is something much larger than myself; my words will not change what has been set in motion. All I can say is...

Bring it on.

"I didn't realise it was... That Bad."

Last Thursday, I went to a screening of the final presidential debate, sponsored by the Uni. Sussex Politics Society. Discussion was led by Professor Robyn Kolodny, an American professor on a Fulbright exchange who is an expert on American politics and election campaigns.

I was stunned by the turnout. A classroom meant to seat about thirty was overflowing; students were standing in the back and sitting on the floor. A few Americans came, but by and large the students were British, judging by their accents.

It's striking how much people here care about the American elections; one English girl even said she'd spent her summer in Florida campaigning for Obama, which reminded me of a South African acquaintance who's spent months in America doing the same. The awareness and interest 'across the pond' - I also saw a huge photo of Palin this weekend on the front page of the Bergen Tidende, the newspaper in Bergen, Norway - is a constant reminder of how much the American election does influence the rest of the world.

And the general assumption: everyone is for Obama. The president of the Politics Society talked about watching the elections in East Slope bar on November 4-5: it'll be a party "unless the wrong side wins", he said, to laughter. "Joe the Plumber" drew a lot of laughter, too; most audience members seemed to view McCain with incredulity, almost as a joke.

After the first segment, people asked Prof. Kolodny to explain - what's Acorn? who was Ayers? The most interesting part of the event, though, was the discussion following the healthcare segment of the debate. (Video is no longer available, but here's a transcript of the debate.)

In Britain, the NHS (National Health System) is free. I repeat: FREE. Everyone is guaranteed healthcare; it's treated as a right. Private insurance and care is also available, for people who want top-notch care or more expedient surgery. I'm no expert on the system, but so far my experiences have been good; I saw the doctor for a persistent sore throat, quickly and free of charge, and a friend of mine was seen quickly and taken care of well when he sliced off the tip of his finger. And what I sense so far is that, by and large, the English seem happy with this system.

So when McCain used "England" as a dirty word in the healthcare debate, some students seemed bewildered:

McCain: "Senator Obama wants to set up health care bureaucracies, take over the health care of America through -- as he said, his object is a single payer system. If you like that, you'll love Canada and England."

And it's true - one of the biggest fears in the American psyche is that we'll have to wait months to see a doctor, that we won't be able to get a good doctor. That's what we always hear about Canada and England - that the quality is terrible and the waits are long. We're scared.

From this side, it looks different. Students seemed shocked at the cost of private medical insurance: an average of $12,000 a year for a family, an expense McCain's $5,000 tax credit won't begin to assuage.

(For a useful summary of both Obama's and McCain's plans, information on how they would benefit different demographics, and links to independent analyses, check this out.)

One girl raised her hand. It seems so obvious that Obama's programme is better, she said. I guess I just don't understand why Americans would vote for McCain.

Professor Kolodny explained it well. Our American healthcare debate is framed in terms of choice and freedom, she said. Americans cling to the idea of choice in their health care - the idea that "I can go to any doctor I want" - but that choice is, in fact, only an illusion. You can go to any doctor you want... IF that doctor is on your insurance plan. IF (for some people) that doctor accepts Medicaid or Medicare, which many doctors don't because government remuneration is far less than what they'd get from the private sector. IF that doctor can accept more patients. IF you can get an appointment.

We're also obsessed with the idea of "on-demand healthcare". We want to be seen NOW - we don't want to wait. Yet in the States, you'll often have to wait weeks for an appointment. But we believe we have control over the situation, because we spend an entire morning on the phone calling different clinics, waiting on hold, until we find that at one place we can get in in six weeks while at all the others it'll be two to three months. Is that truly "on-demand"? I remember calling around to find someone to see me when I needed to send in my health information to the Marshall Commission. I had two weeks between being invited for an interview and flying to Chicago on 13 November; there was no one who could see me before early December, including the student health service at UMass, to simply give me a physical.

I added that our system is so complex that few Americans really understand it - even those who make an effort to do so. Robyn pointed out the amount of paperwork we have to do each time we leave the doctor's office: Was it an auto accident? Because then your auto insurance has to pay. Which insurance company pays for this, what do you pay out of pocket, what's your medical history... Sometimes, she said, she spends an hour on filling out forms after visiting the doctor.

I realised as she spoke that these sensibilities - of choice and freedom - are deeply ingrained in my psyche - but that British students were hearing the issues framed in new terms.

After the showing, a few people stayed around to talk. One English girl said to Robyn, "I didn't realise it was... I don't want to say it, but... that bad." Hilary and I laughed, but it was telling: to most of the rest of the world, it's common sense that the GOP platform is ludicrous, and American political rhetoric is often absurd.

globalised

I've spent the weekend in Bergen, Norway, visiting three of close friends from Cape Town - Therese, Helge and Kristin, all housemates from 73 Arnold Street. Therese and Helge have both visited me in the States, and at times they know me better than I know myself - so most of the time, drinking beer and eating big breakfasts and traipsing through coffee shops with them has just felt like home. Then there are the moments when I feel a silly grin spread across my face, turn to my friends and exclaim in wonderment, "I'm in NORWAY!" or ask "...wait, HOW far north are we again?!" or try again to practice my "Æs" and "Øs" and "Ås".

And then there are the moments that call for a reality check. Drinking South African Amarula and Norwegian beer, I discussed the election with a Norwegian scholar of American politics, as well as the merits (or demerits) of Budweiser, which is available in England as an expensive import beer. Meanwhile, Helge taught Therese to dance forró, a popular dance he learned while in Brazil this summer, and I shared my memories of a Cuban salsa bar in Cape Town.

Later, we went to a birthday party for a Norwegian girl who spent her senior year of high school as an exchange student outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I met another party guest who's travelled twice to Tofo, Mozambique; we exclaimed over mutual acquaintances and swapped whale shark stories, and she asked me for advice about renting a car in Johannesburg this December. Someone's iPod was hooked up, and I heard South Africa's Freshlyground just before a Ray LaMontagne song that reminded me of Amherst.

After that, Therese, Helge and I went to Cafe Opera, where we danced to reggae with a crowd that could've been transplanted from Cool Runnings in Obs. On the way home, we walked past posters in every 7-Eleven window advertising Ben & Jerry's Phish Food.

What a world.

and...takeoff

Sunday: flying to D.C.

Tuesday: flying overnight to London

Friday: moving to Brighton

Saturday, 27 Sept: turning 22, moving into my house

The times they are a-changin'.

autumn

Last night, I dreamed that a house fire was slowly eating away at my bedroom. What to save? I stressed as the flames flicked away at my windowsill. Immediately, I dove into the back of my closet and hefted a shoebox of journals into my arms, sprinted them to a safe place, and left them to run back for more. People were all around, but no one was helping me. When I returned to the journals, a woman I didn't know had picked them up and clapped them so thousands of little tiny leaves fell out; the journals were now empty. I had no time to sweep up the leaves - the words - much less hope to get them back into the same order.

It's a clue, but to what? Guard them more carefully? Or start writing more?

Party trick

When I moved to Cape Town two years ago, I had no interest in learning Afrikaans. "The language of the oppressor," I thought. "I'll study Xhosa." Two years later, my former students still laugh at my attempts to click: "Two percent."

My relatives joke, "Wouldn't it be easier to just keep a little machine in your pocket where you can press a button whenever you need to--" and they imitate the "x" and "q" and "c" I've just been forced to share, my party trick, entirely lacking in authenticity. So funny, those Africans.

tea

Long life milk in my black tea. Suddenly I am in Mozambique, on a wooden deck over the Indian Ocean, eating crusty bread with butter. The girl who dances on the beach and climbs in the rafters, happier than I’d ever been in my life.

Yesterday I had lunch with Alex. She’s been here six weeks with the year ahead of her and she’s headed to Mozambique in a week and a half, on the same trip I took. She glowed, used the word “unreal” at least ten times, and I could see that she is in love, the same way I fell for Cape Town. I felt as though I was meeting myself two years ago, and I was jealous.

The milk tastes the same, today – but instead, I am in an office, sounds of construction instead of the ocean.

The horse ride from hell

"This woman is like, a championship rider for South Africa," Janson gushed excitedly. "This is gonna be awesome."

It was Monday morning, 7:00 a.m. The five of us interns crammed into a rental car and sped away from the City on the N2. It was mercifully clear of traffic, unlike the twenty-plus kilometres of dead stop stretching from Khayelitsha to Cape Town, and I felt indulgent, adventurous and glad to be alive. This early-morning horseback ride in Gordon's Bay would be an interns' last hurrah of sorts; Bogey had to catch her flight to Chicago at 1, and Janson would leave tomorrow. We watched multiple sunrises - four? eight? - as the sun flirted through the jagged peaks of the Stellenbosch mountains, laughing exultantly, a clear day without a cloud in sight.

Two kilometres down a dusty dirt trail, we found the farm. A man opened the gate, wearing a shirt: "Dive Adventures." Janson and Denita had met him on the beach during the two-week EPRI conference at Villa Via in Gordon's Bay, and he'd taken them for a boat ride, put in a good word for his wife's business. The wind was surprisingly fierce and we shifted from foot to foot next to the stalls, rocking ourselves warm, as the woman asked about our riding experience and thought out loud, pairing us with horses.

Inside, we signed a waiver. "This is just so if you fall, I'm not liable," she said.

"Has anyone ever fallen off?" Janson asked, jovial. Just last week we'd signed a waiver for skydiving; this was simply par for the course, but Janson likes to make conversation.

"No, never," she said.

"And how long have you been doing this?"

"Twenty years."

Back outside, the woman showed us how to hold the reins English-style - with two hands, unlike in America - and Dylan, who would be our guide up the mountain, helped hoist us over the animals' broad backs. I got the only mare, dark brown and sleek and without a proper name. I leaned into her neck as I waited for the others, brushing my palm over her fur, whispering that we were going to be friends. She bent her head down and started munching some grass.

"Whoa!" - gasps - I turned just in time to see Dave fall. His horse had broken away, trotting straight for a tree with a low-hanging branch. Dave had no choice but to bite the dust. He sprang up, limped around stiffly in gray sweatpants, now earth-streaked, as the woman said, "Walk it off, just walk it off, it'll be fine." But the tone had changed. For the first time I remembered that what we were doing was in fact dangerous – that a horse accident, if you landed just so on your spine or your head, could kill or maim.

Pondering this, I missed the second fall - Denita's horse, over on the lawn, also tried to run her into a branch. Jolly as always, she laughed it off, but the horses sensed the fear. They started pawing, snorting, turning 'round themselves. "I think we just need to get them out of this enclosed area," Janson said, and the woman agreed. A reshuffling of pairings, and as soon as five seats were in saddles we were off.

And all hell broke loose. Janson kicked his horse gently in the side - a 'giddyup' - and the creature bolted. Bolted. Somehow I reined my mare into a trot as the others began galloping down the road. Don't follow them, don't follow, I willed the creature underneath me, my heart pounding in my chest as I watched a scene of mayhem speed away and crest a hill: the horses turned their heads wildly as they sprinted, snapping at one another, crossing paths; two girls with no experience clung desperately as they bounced, feet fallen from the stirrups. "I'm scared," I called urgently, irrationally - no one could hear me.

When I cleared the rise, Bogey was standing at the side of the road, holding the back of her head and looking as though she wanted to cry. Dave was dismounting his horse. Denita and Janson were at the bottom of the hill, recovering their runaway horses. Turns out Janson had seen the downhill stretch and decided he was better falling off than staying on, slid from his horse and fell to the ground. Denita's horse trampled over him, stepped right on the back of his calf. When Bogey's horse saw this, it stopped and she flipped right over its head, landed on her back and the base of her head. As Denita and Janson rode back up the hill, the woman caught up, told us, "If you still want to go out, I can take you... I'm sure they've got it out of their system by now."

"No, I really think we're going to have to cancel," Dave said firmly.

Inside, I rooted in the kitchen for ice and plastic bags for Bogey. Janson cut his pants off above the knee and iced the large bloody wounds on his knee. He's an Army man, West Point bred, two Iraq tours under his belt, so he was stoic - "I'll be fine, I'm fine." But Bogey had an 18-hour flight ahead of her, so at 10 in the morning we found ourselves not on a mountaintop but at a Strand clinic, to make sure nothing was wrong. The woman did not apologise; she praised me for handling it well, blamed Janson for kicking his horse in the ribs.

Looking back, there were warning signs. The fact that Denita's horse had lived wild in the mountains for four years, the woman told us, before they blindfolded it and lassoed it and domesticated it. Her brazen insistence that it'd be fine after Dave fell the first time, her apparent lack of concern.

"We can't go to work after a morning like that," Janson said. We agreed. We spent the afternoon in the sun at a winery in Constantia, thankful to be alive.

Morning run

I like to run by the rugby. It took me by surprise, my first jog back in Cape Town, the way the Saturday morning whistles, muddy shorts and parents with thermoses reminded me of crisp Octobers, my R.O.Y.S.A. jersey over a black turtleneck, eyes on the ball, that tightening in the chest of physical exertion mixed with cold.

I could feel the depth of tradition and culture: fathers yelling sharply in Afrikaans, young men raised in an old British boarding school culture of prefects and head boys. I was witnessing, I knew, something old and sacred I could never be a part of. Something that has belonged to many, but never to me. In a moment, South Africa grew even deeper, richer, more textured. It so often does.

Yet in a strange way - It was an otherness that somehow belonged to me, too. I looked upon the scene not as a vignette of another culture but as a memory of my own - as the soccer player that was me, the onlooker at so many high school football games. I could imagine a childhood and adolescence spent amid shouts and whistles and sweat while the mountains kept watch in the sunshine. In the end, the rhythm and the meaning are the same.

As I jogged back up the road, returning in the direction from which I had come, I approached and passed a tall, handsome boy striding down the road, with a slight limp born of physical exertion and pride. He's in his prime, I thought - senior year, grade 12, that moment when you are on top of the world. Life is steeped in meaning, significance, tradition, culmination, and the future is opening up ahead.

It felt good to be back in Cape Town. Home.

Thanks, Karen

I needed a new blog. "katiesafrica" no longer holds when I move to England. It doesn't hold here.

Will I still call myself a journalist next year? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But my intention with this blog is to be a journalist - to share my observations and reflections. To report on the places I go, or the places I am. Or the places I'm leaving.