South Africa's Cultural Diversity

I look up as a tall, blonde man approaches the counter. He places a shoe box in front of my manager.
“I bought these for my girlfriend. They’re the wrong size. I want to exchange them for a six. We’re going to Germany tomorrow and she needs them for the trip.”
She looks up at him and smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Her hair is short and Afro-textured.
“Of course, Sir.” She shouts in a string of African dialect and a shop assistant from the footwear wall disappears to retrieve the new size.
“Germany, that’s nice nê?”
“Ja, a vacation. See the country, how other people live.”
“Learn about different cultures”, she laughs, “tasting the German beer will be fun.”
“It will”, he agrees. “Get away from the everyday ordinary.” They smile.
I understand why he wants to travel; to remove himself from his own ethnic culture, the monotony of his society. It’s why everyone wants to travel; the complete immersion of oneself in another culture and environment, to learn, to explore. I want it too, but how far do you have to go to get it right?
I smile and think that after reading countless textbooks on South Africa’s cultural diversity I will never forget the day that I truly experienced it. I left information behind and travelled outside my middleclass, westernized bubble into a world of foreign languages and cultures. And all I had to do to achieve it was take one step out of high school and another into the small backroom of a retail outlet in Sandton City.
Awaiting me was a canteen full of people eating chicken feet who gawked at my sugar snap peas. A myriad of languages I didn’t understand and customs I had never experienced, which became communication barriers only overcome with time and patience. I might at that moment have been working in Somalia or Botswana for all the good being a fellow countryman did me. I was a fish out of water in my own city.
The sales assistant returns with the new shoes and my manager hands them to him. She smiles and says;
“Do you know, in my culture we believe that you should never buy shoes for someone you are dating before you marry them? Otherwise you are inviting them to walk away from you.”He laughs.
“I have never heard that one before.”
He leaves and we close the doors to the shop, preparing to end our late shift on a Sunday. As we all gather our goods my male co-workers start singing. Their voices rise as one, harmonious and beautiful, carrying the tune of an African prayer of which I wish I knew the words.