Musings from America 2 - Stranger in a strange land

Over the next few days, I met a lot of people. First the Wedding Blessing, then the baby Shower and various visitors come to see the people from England.

One thing that struck me was the fact that I was the sole white person, its not often you get the feeling of what its like to be the minority. not that I was not made welcome, though I am not sure whether they came to see Tsisti or find out about this new person, probably both.

What we have here is a mixture of American black people, presumably descendants of the Salve Trade, but these are true Americans and do not have knowledge of Africa or its languages, together with more recent migrants, mainly from Zimbabwe and apparently all related to Tsitsi in some way.

Now I use the term 'related' with caution, as the Zims have a different use of relationships. If your Mother had you and her sister had a child, the children are not thought of as cousins as we, the Anglo Saxon do, but sisters. Throw in the inevitable situations of second wives/husbands and children of failed relationships then the complex interactions and connections are pretty incomprehensible. Most of the people I met were on the generation down stream so Tsitsi is mainly a Mama or a Gogo (Grandmother). The interesting twist is what I was called.........I guess there was some room for different attitudes to my status. Hence I have been called Malcolm, thats simple enough, Mr Malcolm which I think is a sign of respect for an older person, but I have also been Daddy, as the partner of the Mama, though the person saying this was not a direct daughter but as described above. I have also been Uncle which seems a catch all, for those who have some Aunt or Uncle type connection, apparently its means Big Uncle ................OK my head is hurting trying to sort this out, but finally the concept of in laws, father in law, step father etc seem to be totally missing.

This is not a complaint as everyone seemed pleased to see me, well at least I think so, there is always some uncertainty when the Africans start talking in Shona, a totally incomprehensible language, I looked at the grammar and gave up!

Of course the Americans are also excluded, as the Shona speakers switch seamlessly from English to Shona and back again, several times in a sentence, when there is a room full, there is never, I mean never, a pause, someone is always talking and often three or four at once.

The hospitality is tremendous and food is always being offered and the generosity of spirit is uplifting, One lady who is sister, on the loose definition, is lending me her car.........maybe I will eventually catch up, but in essence it does not matter, people are people some nice some not, guess you just live with it. 

There is a saying that the UK and USA are separated by a common language. I find that I am picking up expressions already, interstate not motorway, sidewalk not pavement, gas for petrol, diesel is more rare and most cars are petrol, I am driving this V8 Nissan SVU but the price at the pumps equates to about 40p at litre or liter ! and they complain about the price, they are astonished when I tell them we pay c £7 a gallon, and am astonished that we now accept this as normal. Anyway I digress, some more words, prawns are shrimps, no matter what size and the supermarkets contain things we do not see in the UK, giant bottles of egg whites or indeed whole eggs beaten ready for scrambling, no messy shells !

I am looking forward to more exploration of our differences, such as being able to go through some red lights if no one is there, overtaking on either side and I have yet to try American fast food, clearly I should not, but I need to be able to say I have been in a Taco Bell, Dunking Donuts and Macdonalds rivals like Wendy's.

I have also been buying stuff on line some before we left and delivery here in Tennessee, others since, I have got some good bargains but sometimes they don't like UK cards and if your delivery and billing address do not match, I seem to have overcome this by using Paypal and a preloaded Dollar debit card. I am now ok on amazon.com, maybe to be expected they will sell to anyone, anywhere, but have yet to try ebay. Specialist websites are also mainly OK and there is a huge range of products not available in the UK. Tsitsi prefers the mall and the huge range of physical shops, we went through a place called Madison and I do not exaggerate in saying that every kind of shop spread out in small areas  along the main road stretches for 4 miles, non stop apart from Car Dealerships, Banks, Doctors, Dentusts, vets et al. The USA is the place for shopping without a doubt. The prices are very attractive in general, ordered some boots for my son in law and he has saved £40.

Its only been a few days, but already I feel generally confident, yes I am unfamiliar with the geography but SatNav copes and I can navigate unfamiliar roads whilst driving on the right. The only problem is that there is so much to see that you can be distracted and keeping in the right lane for turns needs concentration.

All for now, but I confidently expect new stuff to emerge from the IPAD onto the blog, thanks for reading....