Misfit 🙅🏻‍♂️

Winter of 2013, like all winters in Chicago, brought with it an unforgiving brutality. January and February dragged on with gray skies and nasty, snowy slush. What kept me going was the prospect of sunny South Africa’s warm embrace in late March.

College could be best described as a blend of hard work, constant insecurity, plus a side of confusion. Journalism school laid out two career paths in front of me. One, report daily news, with its bleeding and sometimes sensationalised headlines. Two, make my living as a struggling documentary filmmaker, forever at the mercy of grant money. The former’s rushed and on-the-go nature didn’t suit me, nor did the latter’s drawn-out work with lengthy film projects that could take years. For the next four years, I walked both paths, wondering what, if any, my future I would have in this industry. I craved something that combined the hard-hitting, real-world impact of journalism with the creative, artistic expression of film. Nevertheless, I worked hard, because that was what I was told: work hard, things will come to you, and it’ll all be worth it.

Visiting Soweto for the first time in 2013. These kids took to my beatboxing skills. Though it’s safe to say I stuck out like a sore thumb mostly everywhere I went. Everyone thought I knew Kung Fu. (PC: Susan Du)

Late March arrived, a 36-hour series of flights from Chicago to Johannesburg, followed by a week of orientation, led to the first day of my internship. That morning, I put on a purple and white checker-patterned buttoned-down shirt, a pair of brown slacks, and a pair of Penguin sneakers. Everything felt loose, and I looked like I was wearing a large business-casual trash bag. It really defined my dreadful early-20s fashion sense. I was a kid who desperately wanted to impress but ended up looking more desperate than impressive.

My employer was eNCA, which stood for eNews Channel Africa. They broadcasted 24/7 nationally, throughout the continent, and even in the UK for the South African diaspora there. Their Johannesburg headquarters was a large campus with television, radio, sales/advertising all housed in different offices. Like most buildings in urban South Africa, eNCA’s sat behind wrought-iron fences, electric fences, and pole gates with their own security guards. You might have been delivering news and critical information to the people, but you couldn’t trust the people not to steal your stuff. An unfortunate necessity, considering the stories I’d hear about news crews getting mugged or robbed during an assignment.

Past the gates and walls was the front lobby. I took my seat by reception. I later found out it was the brightest and most aesthetically attractive part of the whole office. Its walls are adorned with white and red see-through paneling. Had it not been for the brightly varnished wooden floors, the whole place, along with the constant beeping of keycard-activated sliding doors, looked like a sci-fi film scene. If that wasn’t enough, the dread and nervousness I felt waiting for my supervisor wasn’t too different from the nausea that builds up every time I waited to get my blood drawn.

The front lobby and card key gates. I’ve broken them many, many times, pissing off several security guards. (PC: Ashley Market)

The program I joined at Northwestern University had been sending student interns to eNCA for the last decade. Because of my preference for something that combined news with documentary, my professor arranged for me to join the Special Project Division. The SPD produced 60 to 90-minute pieces on controversial topics, with project timelines long and research extensive. 

The head of SPD, a woman named Penny, eventually arrived for work. She was a short Greek woman in her late 30s or early 40s. She styled her blond hair in a bob and wore a pair of sharp-rimmed spectacles, which always made it seem like her gaze was piercing your soul. On that day when I first met her, she wore some kind of red pattered poncho and displayed quite the commanding presence. I was scared shitless at first sight. I could tell right away she had a no-nonsense approach to life. Great, better not f**k this up. 

We made our way upstairs to the main newsroom, and the front lobby’s red/white texture gave way to drab white walls and exposed ceilings. The main newsroom, open concept and filled with rows of computers, buzzed as the day started. Penny sat me down by her desk and proceeded to give me sage advice. I didn’t know it at the time, but her words would define my internship. More than that, they would lay the foundation of my professional life going forward.

“What you do here is up to you. I’m not going to baby you or hold your hand,” she said while giving me that firm, soul-piercing stare. “It’s up to you to determine what you want, whether that means coming up with story ideas or going around the newsroom to introduce yourself.”

The newsroom, where I existed in a perpetual state of panic. (PC: Ashley Market)

As the child of a Confucian household and the student of strict Chinese and conformist American schools, my entire life had operated around molding myself to the whims of others, following instructions, obeying authority, and working hard. I had become so used to being told what to do, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the sudden invitation to do things my way caught me off-guard. So I did what I knew best. 

I would diligently follow the only set of concrete instructions Penny gave me. Come up with story ideas. Introduce yourself around the newsroom.

I willed myself to go up to random people and knock on office doors. The sight of a kid with a Chinese face who spoke like an American in a South African newsroom caught several people off-guard. If I didn’t get curt acknowledgement or dismissive “yeah, yeah, that’s nice” comments, I was met with the mother of all WTF stares. I told myself this was necessary, even though repeating this process exhausted me emotionally. Halfway through my first day, I switched gears. Come up with story ideas. In a corner of the newsroom sat stacks of newspapers, organised by date. By the end of the day, I had piles of them strewn across my desk. Anyone who read enough of these papers would start to see repeated words. Corruption…Poverty…Protest…Water Shortage…Power Outages.

This couldn’t be it. I thought to myself.

This couldn’t be all reporting meant. Journalism had a human side, a softer, emotive, narrative side behind the hard news. Kudos to the reporters who uncovered shady politics and social ills, but I was never going to be one of them.

Later that night, as I joined my fellow Northwestern students for dinner, the conversations carried from one success story to another of them getting published on the first day or starting exciting stories. How was I supposed to move forward? The failsafe combination of working hard and following instructions was failing me.

Day two came and went with more awkward self-introductions and plowing through newspapers. These were going to be three long months. In the dread and desperation of the moment, I began to accept my position as a misfit, and that coming to South Africa was a mistake. But I had no idea this process would be the perfect setup to force me out of my comfort zone. 

Because day three would change everything.

Invictus 🎥

The second time I was exposed to something related to South Africa was senior year of high school. At the time, I was going through the stereotypical end-of-the-world teenage angst. I was never going to get into a good college. I was failing all my classes. That one girl was never going to like me. I hated the way I looked. I felt like such a disappointment to my parents. You know, that kind of stuff.

To cope, I did what all overachieving, spoiled, and coddled 18-year-olds would’ve done. I went to the school’s choir room, sat behind the piano, and cried about it. It was 4:30pm. The school was so quiet, you would’ve thought the whole place was abandoned.

But whether by coincidence or serendipity, someone walked in on my tear-drenched moment—a girl I had known since the 3rd grade. Not a word spoken. She didn’t even look surprised. She simply sat down and gave me a hug. The candour she showed would’ve swept me off my feet had I been standing. I barely had time to react or give into my macho urges to control my crying before I heard sniffling sounds next to me. The f**k she crying for?

“Because you’re crying.”

Weirdly empathetic, but welcomed catharsis for my fragile teenage heart.

A month later, I asked her to watch a movie with me. She probably thought it was a date, but I just wanted to let her know how grateful I was. It’s not everyday somebody just rocks up, sees that you’re sad, and decides not just to listen to you, but also cry with you. To further suck out any possibility romance in the air, I picked the movie Invictus by Clint Eastwood, about the inspiring story of South Africa’s victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Yup, this movie poster just happened to be hanging on a brick wall outside my apartment.

Mind you, this was also before the age of smartphone Wikipedia and instant Googling. Morgan Freeman is playing Nelson Mandela, how fitting. Matt Damon? His muscles look really big. I wonder what his workout routine was. His accent sounds funny. The woman who plays his girlfriend looks pretty. What’s apartheid? The music kicks ass! Rugby looks brutal with way too much testosterone. What the hell is apartheid?? 27 years in prison? Yeah right. Mandela chose forgiveness? I’d put white people in their place. Armed revolution!

I understood nothing.

But I did realise how wrong I was to believe South Africa was a country where black topped white. That glaring difference played itself out over and over. White kids in uniform played rugby on freshly mowed grass while their black counterparts in rags kicked an old soccer ball on a dirt field. White suburbs had it all: trimmed hedges, large houses, swimming pools. Blacks were relegated to places called “townships” that were cramped and full of tin foil shacks. 

The inequality messed with my head more so than the plot entertained me. For the next week, I Googled and read nonstop about South Africa: Robben Island, Soweto, Pollsmoor, Durban, Johannesburg, places the filmed was set in became real. At the same time, I found out one of the colleges I applied for, Northwestern University, offered a journalism residency program in South Africa. Exciting! The brochure said it was highly selective. Maybe not then.

It wasn’t until years later, during and after my time in Johannesburg, that I would return to watch Invictus repeatedly and pick out all the nuances. To this day, I’ve probably watched Invictus more than 10 times and can definitely reenact it front to back.

Oh, and the girl who watched the movie with me? I asked her to get dinner afterwards and got turned down.

Maybe I did have some feelings. 

Judgement 🌍

September 16th, 2014: Munich, Germany

“How long will you be staying in Germany?”

“One night, just in transit.”

The customs officers hammered my passport with a loud bang of authority reminiscent of my elementary school teachers in China. Welcome to Germany. I was staying for one night, but that little blue book granted me 90 days. God bless the American Empire. 

Also in my little blue book: the Exchange Permit, good for one year of employment in South Africa.

People say travel puts us in contact with different people, lifestyles, and ways of thinking, and that it teaches us to have an open mind. Even so, even with its real and perceived cosmopolitan glamour, one of travel’s most unavoidable aspects is how stereotypes and snap judgments unyieldingly grip our thoughts.

Immediately outside of Munich International Airport’s arrivals area stood lines of Mercedes Benz taxis. Although bumper to bumper, you hardly noticed the congestion. Customers stepped up, drivers briskly loaded their luggage. No pleasantries, just an address given and a nod or verbal confirmation. The taxis pulled up, stopped, loaded and departed in an almost musical rhythm. The whole thing looked like it was playing out in Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. Just replace Oompa Loompas with taxi drivers and magical ingredients with the power of German engineering.

In contrast, what I witnessed 24 hours later outside Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport was a Willie Wonka assembly line gone wrong. Minibus taxis packed against each other. Some simply sat in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. Drivers honked incessantly. Their partners shouted routes over the noise. Passengers carrying anything from small cases to multiple large duffel bags stuffed themselves in the taxis.

My first thought was, it’s the Global South, what did I expect?  

I first learned the concepts of Global North and Global South in college. The same narrative always played out. The North had it all: life was orderly, governments were credible, and things worked. The South was the polar opposite: life was chaotic, governments were corrupt, and things failed. Africa? Disease and civil war. Middle East? Ethnic and religious conflict. Latin America? Corruption and economic failure. Asia? Pollution and overpopulation. But in the West…in the West we’re alright.

Universities always marketed study-abroad of international research programs to students in an air of superiority—never overtly stated, but the power dynamic simmered beneath the surface. It was all about you. You were going to be the intellectual powerhouse dropped in a clueless third-world country. You were the locals’ saving grace. You were the one to come up with solutions to their most pressing problems. Yes, you had to listen to the locals and learn, but at the end of the day, you were going to make a remarkable impact wherever you were going because of your superb skills and education. 

In journalism school, reporting abroad always meant traveling somewhere with a headline-grabbing issue: refugees, corruption, poverty, the list goes on. We always had to find “issues” worth covering. These countries all had “issues.” When someone says “Man, you've got issues,” it’s not exactly considerate or understanding. Yet here we were, branding and labeling, playing God to shape the images and worthiness of places we couldn't even fathom to understand. I hated this institutionalised thinking, and hated even more so how I once embraced it with open arms.

Looking back at the taxi ranks at those two airports, I find life in the West has gifted me an insidious, condescending, and sometimes dehumanising way of looking at the rest of the world. Is Germany “better?" Is South Africa “worse?” Who makes the call? Must everything be compared to the standards of the so-called developed world?

Loading dozens of passengers into rows of minibus taxis traveling different routes was worlds apart from one, two, or at most three passengers using private taxis. It's not chaos or disorder. It’s spontaneity and flexibility.

It’s energy, vibrance, and freedom.

Ignorance 🤦🏻‍♂️

Young and stupid

The first time I learned about South Africa was from an issue of National Geographic Magazine, around seventh or eighth grade. The cover showed a white girl, dressed in what appeared to be a school uniform, in a class full of black students. The headline read something like “The Changing Demographic of South African Public Schools...” 

A lone white face isolated in a black majority? The image burned into my mind, because it was so different from anything I had seen growing up in the American suburbs. In fact, the opposite was true. My high school had probably 10 black students out of 1,200, and I could be overestimating. 

Then there were the history books: Brown v. Board of Education, George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, and angry white college students yelling at the Little Rock Nine. The world around me always seemed to have been marked by the standoff between resilient black individuals and waves of angry white faces.

I skimmed the Nat Geo article. It talked about an enrollment shift where more black students entered the South African public school system after something called apartheid. White representation was fading or moving to “alternative institutions.”

Ha! The tables have turned! What I saw was so contradictory to my reality, I thought, finally, here’s a place on earth where white doesn’t oppress black. In fact, black is on top. That’s extraordinary. I hope to visit some day. How’s that for some bona-fide ignorance?

Yeah, I still cringe.

Signal Hill, Cape Town, March 2013. Sun’s out, tongue’s out. Young and stupid. Nothing’s changed.

Suspended 🛫

September 15th, 2014: Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean

My home suburb of Vernon Hills has a distinct smell, especially in the early autumn rain. The scent of foliage mixed with the afternoon mist gave me one last humid embrace. I took in several gulps of air, not knowing when I’d breathe it again.

Time started to feel funny. In the days of family vacations and cross-country college tours, drives to the airport felt horrendously slow. This time, it seemed, the more I desperately clung on to the present, the faster it passed me by. Blink once. We were cruising down I-294. Blink twice. We were unloading my luggage. Blink a third time. My mother and I were walking to airport security. Neither of us said a word. We could only put one foot in front of the other and head towards our inevitable separation.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate long, drawn-out goodbyes. You’d think after a childhood of moving cities, immigrating countries and leaving people, things would get easier. They never do. One last embrace, and the only words my mother could muster were “Be safe,” over and over again. The moment brought me back to being seven years old, back in China, leaving my uncle at the Beijing airport to head to the United States. History doesn’t repeat, but it sure rhymes.

I turned around and tried my best not to think about what my mother was going to do later that night, with my father still abroad, back in an empty house. She’d later tell me that after she had sent me off, that same night she slept in my bed.

The O’Hare concourse: I have a real love-hate relationship with this place.

As heavy as I felt, pain gave way to instinct. From security checkpoints to finding my gate to boarding the aircraft, everything felt second nature. I had been an airline brat for almost a decade. If international flying was a competitive sport, I’d be a world class athlete, literally. I drew flight plans in my head, connected dots on the map between major cities, and knew what “exit” and “passport control” looked like in at least ten languages. My next stop, Munich, Germany. Uitgang and Automatische Passkontrolle. From there, an 11 hour flight to my final destination, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Crammed in a pressurised cabin at 35,000 feet was the one place I felt comfortable. So much so that I’ve got the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic flights down to a science. For the latter, it’s usually 7-9 hours. Hours 1-3, you’re alert. The cabin is booming, but also quiet because your ears are popping. By hours 4-6, a fake sleep sets in. The cabin darkens, and you’re full from salty, microwaved food that tasted like a mix of fine-dining and cardboard. By hours 7-9, you try desperately, but still fail, to fall asleep.

The only drawback is the isolation. Life becomes suspended, as if closing that plane door was like hitting the pause button. There are only strange faces around you. In-flight entertainment provides only brief distractions. You anxiously glance at your smartphone, thinking of everyone back home.

But there’s no connection.

Leaving 🇺🇸

September 15th, 2014: Vernon Hills, IL, United States of America

Hasty departures absolutely suck. The curse of flying with standby tickets means you will always be at the mercy of the masses who actually pay for their tickets. Or, in the case of my first flight to South Africa, at the mercy of the few who flew our planes.

 I was due to leave for Johannesburg on the 16th of September, 2014, but Lufthansa pilots were about to go on strike that day. My mother, a devout employee and all-knowing sorceress of the airline industry, went with her instinct, called me, and rushed me to finish packing 24 hours earlier. She decided to put me on the first flight out to Munich, Germany on the 15th of September. It was a Monday. My father was in China for business and was supposed to be back tomorrow. I didn’t get to give him a proper goodbye.

 In the same way I answered all life-changing phone calls, I took this one sitting on the toilet. My mother was hysterical. Two years later, when I would eventually return home to the US, I’d often look back on this moment, when her level-headed instructions suddenly cracked into grieving sobs. I’d ask myself how much pain I put her through. Her only son was about to leave for a destination that to her, for all she knows, was part of a continent that frankly doesn’t have the best international reputation.

 My mother asked for a half day off from work to be able to take me to the airport, and so that we could spend few more precious moments together. When she got home, she tried her best to distract herself by taking me through my checklist. Clothes? Check. Toiletries? Check. Laptop? Check. Old malaria pills? Why the hell not? I let her dote and say whatever. She just wanted to be a mother for a little while longer.

The Africa exhibit at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, 2012. Having and envisioning a long term goal.

 I lugged two suitcases downstairs. It’s shocking both how much and how little I needed to pack. As I put down the second one, I found myself sitting at the bottom of the stairs, shoulder to shoulder with my mother. She had been crying all day and was grimly staring down at my luggage, as if they had wronged her in some way. She was trying to stay strong, but the tears were like reservoirs behind a cracked dam.

 As I placed my hand on her shoulder to try to comfort her, a sudden wave of emotion caught me by surprise. Not sadness. Fear. Since I had received my one-year work permit 10 days ago, I had felt nothing but joy. Sunny, energetic South Africa was waiting for me. Yet now, to come so close to actually stepping out of gloomy, tired, boring America, I not only refused to spring forward, but I sank back. When will I see home again? Will I fit in over there? What am I doing this for? Doubt consumed me.

 Soon, I heard only my own sobbing. Further down the line, a lot of people would say to me, “You went to South Africa? That’s so brave!” or “You’re fearless, you lived abroad on your own!” Truth is, that was the first time I had ever felt so terrified of the unknown. As my insides wrenched, my world turned inside out. This was no study abroad trip. This was the real deal—planting myself on another continent and facing the “real world” in its full weight. Childhood extinguished by adulthood. Familiarity choked by the uncertainty. The house trembled in anguish as my mother and I embraced, neither wanting to let go.

In Transit: Between Chicago and Johannesburg

Chicago is one of the few places on earth where an immigrant from Kazakhstan can study Thai martial arts taught by a Moroccan instructor. It’s one of the few places on earth where the children of Chinese and Mexican immigrants can enjoy Italian pasta while making jokes in Spanish.

Johannesburg is one of the few places on earth where you’d hear Hausa, Zulu, and Swahili down one street. But when you take a turn, on the next street you’ll hear a blend of Afrikaans, English, and Portuguese.

In grade school, we were always taught that the United States was a “Melting Pot” of people of all nations.

Reflecting upon South Africa’s diversity, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it the “Rainbow Nation.”

I’ve lived in both Chicago and Johannesburg for a combined half decade now. The farther they become separated in my mind by time, the more similar they appear. We don’t melt together. We don’t reflect the rainbow—at least not in the way the colours of a rainbow blend in nature. We look more like one that’s been scribbled by a kindergartener who has picked up markers for the first time. Each line of colour visibly and clumsily drawn, yet separate and distinct. 

Summertime in Johannesburg, 2015

In Johannesburg, it’s Sandton and the rich northern suburbs in a standoff versus Alexandra (the city's poorest, most densely populated neighbourhood) and the surrounding Southern and Western townships. In Chicago, it’s the Loop and the North Side in a disparate coexistence with their West Side and South Side neighbours.

In Johannesburg, the M1 highway stands guard between South Africa's best schools, wealthiest estates, shopping malls and Alexandra township’s tin foil shacks, crowded streets, and rivers of garbage. As a reporter, I would spend the morning interviewing an old man who lost his grandson in a shack fire. At night, I would retreat into my gated sanctuary to enjoy a hot meal, shower, and warm bed.

In Chicago, the Red Line looks like a colour gradient that gets darker as the trains move further South. As a videographer, I would spend the morning capturing streets filled with boarded up windows and police cameras. At night, I would retreat back to a haven of restaurants, parks, and bright lights back North.

Living as an immigrant and former expat while doing the work I do, I’m constantly in transit, crossing rifts between islands of wealth and oceans of poverty, in a world populated by borders, translated signeage, and racial-ethnic checkboxes. I seek to find the ever-so-elusive ability for humanity to unite—to forgo the perceived differences and alienation of the other. 

No wonder it’s easy to see this city as an opulent utopia.

Chicago and Johannesburg have both shown me how monumental of a task that is. They’ve also shown me how insidiously effective we are at carving divisions. How do I reconcile the old man’s burnt-down shack in Alexandria with my neat one-bedroom cottage in Pine Park? How do I reconcile the sheer wealth of Michigan Avenue with the boarded-up businesses of 63rd Street and Cottage Grove? How do I reconcile million-dollar rugby complexes with footballs made out of plastic bags?  How do I reconcile my habit of buying fresh fruits with another neighbourhood filled with Church’s Chickens and Shark’s?

I have caught few glimpses of communities that have flourished on the foundation of cross-cultural understanding, too few. But I have seen countless communities splintered by ignorance: both unintended and the mal-intended. Maybe it’s our human tendency to lean towards negativity. Or maybe the damage done to those splintered communities left too many scars in my mind, scars that the love of people trying to build something together cannot fully heal. 

It’s easy to cross the rifts but difficult to build bridges. I can do the former but cannot even lay down a single brick to do the latter. Yet I stay in transit. I keep trying. Out of a persistent or perhaps foolish ideal that doing something and failing is better than doing nothing.