Sticking Out

 

Our eyes lock. Now I am sure it is going to happen. Confrontation is set in motion. I am not in the mood to play this game. I didn't mind playing it while I was living here, but not today.

"See them?" JC nods behind me. I don't turn around, it would be obvious. "Time for them to make some money. The end of the month is a long way off."

 

I resist the urge to turn around and look. I had seen the police truck slowly go down the road, and had seen it make a U-turn, now I could only assume that they had set up a road block directly behind us. I thought I could do it inconspicuously, turn around, see where they were. But I didn't do it conspicuously, it was obvious. And then as he had pulled over a car for no reason, he looked at me. I don't know if I really saw it, or sensed it, but there was a grin.

 

I equaled money. I bet he was certain I would pay the bribe.

 

Maybe it was all imagined, but I knew I stuck out. What white person would be hanging out in Soweto on a Sunday afternoon? What white person would be standing outside, next to his shitty Mazda rental, talking to another foreigner. A Zimbabwean. Was I a xenophobic-fighting sympathizer? Maybe I was a lawyer working for human rights, in which case the policeman needed to calculate his risk carefully. In my green Carharts, worn Asics, and t-shirt, I didn't fit the look. But still, I knew I was being targeted.

 

I remember the night I asked my friends how exactly I was suppose to approach bribing the cops. Ironically I asked at dinner one night, and then a few days later I was pulled over. I didn't need to flash some cash, in stead when the officers saw my stethoscope, I was immediately let off. Even though I had a valid drivers license, a fully registered car that was insured, as well as a car which has recently passed a safety inspections, I knew that none of those would mean shit if I were pulled over, and said policeman needed some drinking money. But I soon learned that having my hospital ID card, and a stethoscope would keep the cops respectful. Perhaps it was simply bad Karma to detain a doctor. Though, I should mention that my colleagues had plenty of stories of speeding at night, being pulled over, and simply lying that they were on their way to the hospital, often to try and save the life of a dying child, or a sick pregnant lady. While living here, I did learn how to manipulate the truth.

 

But I had no desire to lie today. I didn't have a stethoscope or my old Bara ID to back me up. (Though I almost brought it with me for just that reason).  I had no desire because I was looking forward to spending the day with a friend and his family. I also was annoyed at having been pegged the sore thumb. It didn't seem odd to me to be here in Soweto. I had long grown accustomed to being the only white person at the gym, at the mall, or even deeper in Soweto. But all of a sudden, I was acutely aware of how much I stuck out; I knew I was going to be targeted. Fucking cop.

 

In my time here, JC taught me a lot. The focus of our conversation often went to politics. As I tried to figure out how the hell it was that Mugabe has kept such a long rein on Zim, and wondered why MDC hadn't been able to overthrow him, or why the people hadn't risen up against the government, JC would explain the deeper issues which precluded these actions from happening. I had deep admiration for him, and his wife. Would I have the smarts to flee my home, and figure out a way to survive in a foreign country? Not just survive, but to rebuild a life in a country in which a year earlier the local has sought to actively kill foreigners. Xenophobia was alive and well. And sadly xenophobia is alive and maybe still well? Ug. Months ago JC emailed me that he was working, as a teacher. This man continues to humble me. I couldn't wait to see him and his family.

 

The night before, I was having dinner with Juno, who had been one of the ID consultants that I worked with. When I told her I was going to be seeing JC the following day, she asked for his number, saying they had lost contact since she had left Bara. Ironically, when I saw JC earlier in the week, he said he hadn't been able to get in touch with Juno, and though he has lost her number. I didn't hesitate to give patients at Bara my personal mobile phone number, but I felt this made me stick out—almost as an overly sympathetic doc. This was frowned on by many of my co-registrars (residents), but to those in the HIV clinic, it was a standard practice. The ethos was that as their clinicians, the patients needed to be able to get in contact with their physician should problems arise—day or night, or even weekends. It was an ethos that I firmly believed in. For years I had told my clinic patients back in Massachusetts how they could get in touch with me via the hospital operators, who would then send us a pager method. It would happen, from time-to-time, that they would call for advice, for medication refills, and on rarer occasion when something else was going on, like depression or domestic violence. The pager, though, added an extra barrier level; they couldn't directly get in touch with me, and it afforded me a certain ability to screen their needs as well. But when my patients at Bara had my mobile number, the same number that my family, friends, and everybody that I knew had, it made me feel vulnerable at first. What would I do if I were constantly harassed by a patient? Would I go through the headache to change my number. The possible abuse that I worried about, never materialized. And after a while, it just felt natural that my patients had my phone number. And in fact, my patients knew that when they were hospitalized, that if I hadn't seen them by the afternoon, they were to call me, and tell me which ward they had been moved to. If I hadn't seen them by the afternoon, it was because I couldn't find them!

 

And so there I was, standing outside with JC; a white foreigner talking to a black foreigner, in a neighborhood in which "I didn't belong" while under the watchful eye of one of Johannesburg's-less-than-finest, looking to make some extra cash. I didn't want anything to interrupt my afternoon to catch up with my friend, and his family; but I was expecting confrontation. In the back of my mind I kept thinking of the story Carlos had told me days earlier when he had been pulled over. A Spanish National, driving with his Spanish drivers license was almost arrested when he didn't pay the bribe to the police officer. How was I going to spin the possible story that was developing??

 

JC, his wife, and daughter and I got into my Mazda, and backed out into traffic. The policeman was in the middle of the road. I felt my heart rate pick up; the adrenaline was certainly flowing a bit quicker in expectation of the confrontation which was moments away. Our eyes locked for a second time. Where my actions came from, I'm not sure, but I simply waved and smiled as I rolled down my window and said hello and just kept driving…  Confrontation averted, that time.

 

 

 

 

BPB