Dealing with Aggressive Speech and Action from my Homeland
Trying to readjust to a culture I no longer identify with.
Three months ago I returned to my homeland of South Africa to visit my parents before continuing my travels.
Unfortunately, my father passed away a few weeks later and my plans dissipated like alka-seltzer in a glass of water. My focus became ensuring that my mother had all the support she needed as the estate got settled.
How to make friends and influence people
Well, not quite, but I realized that if I was going to make it through the better part of a year in one place, I needed to get by with a little help from my friends.
The only problem was that I didn’t have many nearby. It has been twenty-one years since I lived in this country and most of my former connections have evaporated into the thin air of life. People grow and change, connections lose intensity as we move in different directions and proximity increases.
Much of my tribe is now located in North America.
I reached out to my oldest friend who still lives here and she put me in contact with another. A person, she said, who is in the thick of it all with a hoard of contacts.
I jumped into my father’s 1994 Toyota Corolla and made the hour-long drive into Cape Town where I spent a lovely morning chatting and establishing the beginnings of a new friendship. A week later, I was on the highway heading back into the Mother City to hang out on a Friday night with my new connection and a few others at a house party.
It was here that I reacquainted myself with the aspects of South African culture I never liked.
The pressure to drink
As far back as I can remember, the pressure to drink in South African culture has been high. For some reason, peer pressure seems to be more prevalent here than in some of the other countries I have called home.
I was never a big drinker. My parents are from the Silent and Baby Boomer generations and an alcoholic beverage was the norm on most evenings, before or after dinner — or both. Alcohol was seen as a part of life, not a necessity but also not forbidden. From as early as sixteen, we were permitted a small tipple under my parent’s supervision should we wish to indulge.
My sister didn’t seem to bother with it much but I enjoyed the occasional beer shandy (a small amount of beer topped up with lemonade soda) or a mixed drink. Apart from my eighteenth birthday, I never overindulged. Alcohol didn’t hold much allure for me so I became the driver for friends who wanted to have a good time.
As I didn’t go to college after high school, I began working in a bank shortly after graduating and made a group of friends five to ten years my senior. This is where the pressure to drink really started. Thankfully, I held firm to my choices but the pestering wore on my nerves. I felt like a kid on the school grounds being coerced to conform to the masses.
I hated it!
Back to the present.
The insistence to drink started almost as soon as I put my overnight bag down, and it didn’t stop until just before I went to bed. Had I been able to jump in my car and head home earlier I would have, but the highways are not safe here at night, especially for a woman travelling alone in an old car.
It was tiring and put a negative spin on the evening.
Aggressive speech and action
The guests at the party were karaoke junkies and while I don’t mind watching others have fun behind the mic, it’s not my jam, so I sat back and listened to the crooning of the group as they enjoyed their music-fuelled evening.
When I moved to Australia in late 2007, I remember someone mentioning how aggressive the speech was from South Africans. I was shocked when they said it and immediately wanted to defend my people but as I pondered the observation, I realized that I couldn’t deny it.
Since then, I have been very aware of my language and the words I choose to express myself. Occasionally, my conditioning comes out and I find myself unconsciously throwing a kill, beat, thump, or smack into a sentence when joking with others, but I try not to.
As the party continued into the night, alcohol flowed and cigarettes were inhaled at a rate that surprised me. I had forgotten how many South Africans smoked. Nonetheless, I had a small glass of red wine and then switched to water as I watched the goings on from the kitchen area, trying to help my lungs evade the thick cloud of smoke settling over the living room.
While I enjoy a glass or two of wine or a beer, I’m still not a big drinker and indulge once a week or fortnight. I definitely don’t get very tipsy with people I don’t know, that’s for sure.
With the addition of alcohol, my host became a little more aggressive in her desire for me to sing. Pushing a microphone into my lips and my head back into the microphone shortly before the evening came to a close.
It horrified me.
The force she exuded wasn’t expected and it put a sour taste in my mouth, breaking much of the trust we’d built.
The clear light of day
As I drove home early the next morning, takeaway coffee in hand, I contemplated the moments of verbal and physical pressure I’d felt the night before, not keen to put myself in that position again.
While I’m aware that people are people and no matter where you go some have more aggressive personalities than others, I am also aware that cultural norms can transcend individual personality types. Some cultures are conditioned to be more aggressive in speech and action.
Having been based in Canada for the last five years, I’ve created some loving and gentle friendships, both in the Great White North and across the southern border into the US. I’ve been in a live-and-let-live environment for some time now, including my travels through Turkey and Brazil.
I have friends who drink and friends who don’t. I have friends who smoke and those who don’t. I have friends with food allergies and friends who eat almost anything. Regardless, each one respects, and is respected for their individual choices.
Even my vegetarianism finds itself under the microscope here in the meat-centric country. Brazil is also a highly carnivorous country but the people I met were more invested in making sure that I too was catered for.
While I acknowledge that my recent experience was at the hands of one person, it was merely the tipping point after months of pressured, passive-aggressive, and aggressive-aggressive speech directed my way. My time back in the culture from my youth has illuminated even more how I no longer fit in here. How different I have become and how much I love those differences.
In the meantime, I will deal with it as best I can until it is time to return to the continent where my soul takes a gentle breath.
Oh dear one- I am sorry that this happened to you! It is hard on the heart when potential friends turn out to be so unavailable for connecting - so obvious to the Truth in themselves and in you - when their listening skills and ability to understand and connect have been blunted by too much alcohol and/or other drugs. I've had similar experiences at parties. In some cases, I subsequently did take a step back from further such activities with those who ignored my wish to stay more aware. I'm all for the fun of karaoke myself but the choice to participate, and when to participate, is done in consideration of others, and what is enjoyable for them. As you described, it is not enjoyable if it becomes a demand. As you felt, I usually leave when the alienation grows. Alas, leaving was not an option for you. I'm saddened to think of your retreat to the kitchen sidelines. Going forward, may you find persons with whom you can share quieter, enjoyable, activities - beach walks, hiking, food adventures, books (like in-person or online book club?), volunteer animal rescue, etc. Volunteering and joining specific group activities (eg. film festival) have been my ways to find new friends. Growing up, I had 'training' in finding friends. My parents moved a lot: having attended 9 different schools before graduating high school resulted in learning how to look for activities that fit first, and then the friends were found there.