Now that I’m gone from KwaZulu-Natal, I’m suddenly news. I neglected my phone for several hours as Dennis and I relaxed in the Durban breeze with a little shopping and sightseeing. When I turned it on again, a journalist from the Saturday Independent had been frantically trying to reach me before leaving so that she could have an exclusive story about Suzi the American!
We flew with our extremely excessive baggage from Durban to Bloemfontein, where Elene Cloete met us at the airport with laughter and hugs. Elene is now an old friend who visited us last year during her study trip to the U.S. and I call her my African sister. Her position at the University of the Free State fit conveniently into my Fulbright proposal, so we will be working together once again, as her university students will be my students and she will supervise the service learning internship of my upcoming graduate research assistant Meaghan Dunham. There will be two graduate students from Appalachian State University coming to Bloemfontein in October to serve as research assistants and to undergo internships in the Free State.
The province of the Free State is quite different from KwaZulu-Natal, but the hospitality is every bit as warm. I was welcomed at a tea by the Music Faculty on Thursday morning and introduced to my new colleagues and shown to my temporary office. That same evening, Dennis and I were treated to the Free State Orchestra performance of Handel and Schumann music. All day, everyone spoke quite humbly about this “little orchestra” so I went expecting something like the band in the movie The Music Man. (you know, “76 Trombones” and “Marian the Librarian”). Ha! This was a small orchestra, but packed a powerful performance. The classical repertoire was a contrast to the folk songs I have been enjoying and studying, but the audience was definitely African. That means that after a particularly well-executed piece has finished, there are other timbres of appreciation besides just applause.
I attended a graduate seminar where Matilde Wium, Musicology lecturer presented a paper she had given at a conference themed around the idea of hegemony. I was interested that an entire conference would be devoted to the theme – as it is a major theme in the article that two co-authors and I have just finished revising for an international journal. (Our article focuses on cultural hegemony we find in Music Education and a teaching approach called culturally responsive teaching that could address the lack of balance in our university curricula for Music Education.)
Friday, we drove to the Cloete farm called Waterval in the Eastern Cape town of Barkly East. Elene’s parents hosted us for the weekend, and provided us with a mini-briefing that included a history lesson for Dennis, Afrikaans language tutoring for me and traditional Afrikaans meals for all of us. Dennis rode in a tandem gyrocopter about 400 meters above the earth, which at that location is a little over 5,000 feet above sea level. As I'm returning to work at UFS, I have a different challenge with languages than I had in Zululand. Afrikaans, seSotho and seTswana are three new languages that represent my students and colleagues at the University of the Free State, so saying “hello” or “thank you” gets slightly more complicated. Fortunately, we all have tea every day at 11:00 a.m. so there is some basis for communication through general slurping and nodding and chit-chatting about the day.
As if we weren’t already culturally confused, my Music Department Chairpersons Mr./Dr. and Mrs./Dr. Viljoen (husband and wife) took Dennis and me out to a Chinese restaurant, where the owner/cook Frankie is also a Chinese musician working in my building as community partner. His food was unbelievable and nothing like I have ever tasted. He says it’s not American - Chinese, but Chinese – Chinese, and that’s all the difference. He directs the Chinese orchestra in Bloemfontein, and most of the players take private lessons from Frankie. So he teaches lessons from 7:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. then runs down to the restaurant to cook lunch, then comes back to teach all afternoon – then back to the restaurant for dinner. Whew!
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