by Juliet Tzou The minute we landed in the Johannesburg airport, my parents began warning me to watch out for strangers. It was 1984, and South Africa’s controversial policy of racial segregation, apartheid, was operating in full force As a child of nine, the idea of racial differences was only a vague one in my mind. The only two races I knew of were Oriental and white: the former as my own people and others of East Asian origin; the latter were people I encountered and admired with curiosity every once in a while in the busy streets of Taipei. It seemed as though adults could always succeed in scaring kids to death with their words of warning, especially when those words were accompanied by alarming facial expressions. The atmosphere in the car that took us from the airport to our hotel (our future home for the next two months) was tense. Intermittent conversation between my father and a colleague lightened things up a bit, but whenever the car fell silent, I could feel the tension again. I bet my parents would have regretted those interminable warnings if they had known of all the frightful images their little daughter was beginning to conjure up of her future days in South Africa. Once we found ourselves in a spacious hotel lobby, my brother and I, filled with a sense of novelty, seem to have forgotten all the horrors presaged in the car–the environment was just too welcoming to a newcomer. Without the knowledge of my parents, who were busy checking in at the reception desk, we sneaked out the main entrance to get a glimpse of the sunny streets of Johannesburg at noon.
Just as we were about to embark on our adventure, a severe voice stopped us in our tracks. It was my father’s colleague, “Uncle Wang”, the man who picked us up at the airport. He had unexpectedly turned into our babysitter, looking after us while our parents checked in. He was the strictest babysitter I had ever met in my life. He scolded us for having the audacity to leave the hotel by ourselves, and warned us of how dangerous a situation we could have gotten ourselves into had we continued our explorations. I remember him saying something about black men kidnapping small children, which gave me a very unpleasant feeling. I was wondering with a child’s naivete whether there really could be any all black people in the world. I told myself that Uncle Wang was only pulling our leg; there just couldn’t be anyone with a black face and black body; and if there were, I was sure I would faint on the spot he or she appeared in front of me. I filed away Uncle Wang’s tale of “black men” as a made-up story until the next morning when I was awakened by a knock on our door. Thinking that it was my father returning from his walk, my brother and I jumped out of our beds and rushed to open the door. What a shock to see a nightmare-come-true in front of me–a black woman! She was all black except for the white clothes she was wearing, and she even carried a broom in her right hand, which I assumed was a witch’s broom. Without asking her purpose in coming, which we would usually do when a visitor called, we slammed the door behind us and ran to hide under our beds. It was my mother who opened the door for her and, to our surprise, let her stay in our room for the next thirty minutes or so. I could feel my heart beating fast and hard as we studied the “all black woman” as she moved around the room. I didn’t dare crawl out of my hiding place until I heard the door close behind her. My mother told us that she was only a cleaning woman, and that she would be coming in every morning for the next two months. Since she did no harm to us when she was in our room, I felt sorry from the bottom of my heart for the way I had acted toward her. Though I tried to be friendly to her the next morning, she ignored me and left the room after she dutifully finished cleaning it. I guess she was hurt deep inside. As I gradually came to better understand the nature of apartheid in South Africa some months later, I learned the real reason why the black woman turned away from me when I wanted to befriend her. Like most blacks in South Africa, she considered herself inferior to whites and Orientals; but she had her dignity, and thus assumed a nonchalant attitude in front of us. Though my family and most of our acquaintances didn’t express any prejudicial views towards the black people of South Africa, many of the local whites did. Government policy at that time prohibited blacks from frequenting any public place claimed by whites. The only possible way for blacks to earn a living in a city like Johannesburg was to work as a maid or gardener in the home of a white or Oriental. A minority served as clerks in supermarkets at a very low salary. Fortunately, after years of struggle, the black and white people of South Africa have finally achieved reconciliation. My first encounter with the black woman in the hotel opened the door for me to South Africa–and it was with an initially frightened heart that I gradually came to accept a new culture. And now, looking back, I only hope the black woman was understanding enough to overlook a child’s overreaction to seeing a person of a “different color” for the first time. a
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May 2024
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