South Africa

There’s a class in the fourth semester called “CCU”, it stands for “Cross Cultural Understanding”. Sounds pretty cool, right? It’s basically class to understand about the other culture in the other country, so it’s not causes any misunderstanding. For example: If we in Africa, the way to say thank you in there is by spit up in front of the person that you will say thank you to. I mean, if you did that here you may have you ass kicked. Or in Japan, the way of they meet is by bow to each other. It may seem and sounds a bit strange to us, but it’s a culture in there.  Different with Arab, the way of they meet between a man is by hug and cheek kiss each other. If we do that here, that would be weird right? Even super weird, some people may thought you a…you know, right?

Well, first the lecturer made a group that had three persons in each group. And then, we have an assignment that we have to represented the culture of the other country by showing and demonstrated their dance (with the music obviously), costumes, foods, and plus a paper and power point presentation. If that’s not bad enough, my group is chosen to be representing an African culture! South Africa is more detailed. So great, super great…

But anyway, it’s no use to complain right? So, I started to search and looking for an information about African culture. Using a Goggle, I mean Google. Goggle or Google? Ah, whatever… Anyhow, I’ve got some information about Africa. And the weirdest thing happen, I start to like this country. South Africa, the country where the white people and black people (I’m sorry if I say it like this, I swear I don’t mean to be racist) live in harmony, of course by now. Cause in the past, there is a “apartheid” problem but I don’t want to bore you with the past history. The country seems nice, the people also seem nice, it’s happy with the “diski” dance, and it’s colorful with the different race in there. What a beautiful country, it really is. In fact, I willing go to the South Africa knowing that how beautiful is that country. I put South Africa in the list of “the country that I want to visit” after United Kingdom (England), United States (New York), United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi and Dubai), Japan, and Australia.

I want to tell you what I have been found about South Africa so far. First, there’s a traditional food from South Africa called “Biltong”. It is similar to beef jerky in that they are both spiced, dried meats, but differ in their typical ingredients, taste and production process; in particular the main difference from jerky is that Biltong does not have a sweet taste. The word biltong is from the Dutch bil ("rump") and tong ("strip" or "tongue"). It sounds delicious and looks yummy, in my group presentation later we have to make that food to be served for all audience in a class. I hope I can make it as same as the ingredients says. Second, there’s a dance called “Gumboot Dance” which is a dance that conceived by black miners in South Africa as an alternative to drumming—which authorities restricted^. The boots were a solution to a problem of often flooded gold mines in which men otherwise stood in knee-deep water toiling at their work stations^. But there’s one catch, and that is the costumes. The costumes is very exposed almost a half part of your body actually, it just covered the “top” and “the bottom” of your body. Can you imagine if I wear that kind a costume? Oh no, don’t imagine it. It’s gross. Well, anyway I have a lot of fun from searching an African culture. I just wish that everything will go smoothly when my group represented the South Africa culture, Amin. For me, it’s time for Africa!