"Life is so hard, ma'am. Life is so hard."

I lost it this morning. I seriously lost it. I lost it so badly that I posted this to Facebook:

You know what gets me all fired up? The way so many white people treat black people here. I brought Miss to the eye doctor because she can't see. The optometrist is treating her like she's an idiot. Over my dead body will we be buying glasses here. I am absolutely FUMING right now!!!!!

They are words that I mean and words that were not well thought out, words that were fueled by absolutely shock and frustration and more shock. Words and frustration that felt the same as if someone had insulted one of my children. I had a reaction that got my blood boiling so hard and fast that I consciously had to keep myself in my chair and say, “Jessie…don’t say anything stupid.” I thought of my grandma Doerfler…I know what she would have done. She would have told that woman WHERE.TO.GO. As tempted as I was, I didn’t.

I made Miss an appointment to see the eye doctor because the poor woman can’t see 5 feet in front of her. She said she had glasses once but her brother “borrowed” them. Our appointment was at 9:30 but since I still have no idea how long it takes me to get places, we arrived about 20 minutes early. I filled out the paperwork for her and wrote myself down as next of kin. The optometrist rolled in at 9:26. I greeted her with a plain old “hi” but she barely acknowledged us sitting there. There were only two chairs in the waiting area…I was in one, Miss was in the other. She walks over with the clipboard, looks right at me and says, “Mercy Cnube?” First of all, Cnube is a common Zimbabwean surname and second, Mercy is a very common translation for a Zim first name. Did she really think I was Mercy Cnube? Of course not, but she was not about to acknowledge Miss sitting there.

(On a side note, months after Mercy/Miss started living with us, we realized her name was not Miss…it was Mercy. Merc for short. Because of all of our accents it all just got a little confusing. While Mercy is a beautiful name, Miss has become almost my affection name for her. She said she likes Miss…she likes Merc…no matter.)

She asked Miss a couple questions and she didn’t know that answers so she asked them again, only louder and more impatiently. Now, one thing I have learned about Miss is that when she’s nervous she gets an attitude. She was obviously uncomfortable and I knew that but having this creep in her face certainly wasn’t helping her answer the questions any better.

“Do you know what your prescription is?”

Lady, do you really think she knows what her prescription is???? Of course she doesn’t. She’s been without glasses for years. Just her chance to fling an insult…make her feel stupid. When Miss couldn’t answer her questions she rolled her eyes and led her to the back room. Miss told me that back there she kept saying to her, “Choose! Which one looks right? If you don’t tell me I’m going to give you the wrong glasses. Choose!” I asked Miss, “Weren’t you mad?” Miss said, “No. I know these kind of people. She doesn’t like black people.”

Miss is right.

The outright, blatantly obvious racism in South Africa is painfully hard to stomach. It’s the snide remarks, the condescending tone in which people speak, the blanket statements, “You don’t have to feed them much. All they need is bread and tea.” THEM? THEY? Are we talking about PEOPLE here? People with real feelings and thoughts and a million things to contribute? People who make your life ridiculously easy? People who, in very few other countries, would tolerate the way you treat them?

Miss often says, “Life is so hard, ma’am. Life is sooo hard.” Today it was right in my face. Today I saw the way this poor woman has been treated her entire life. So badly that she didn’t even really notice that this woman treated her like a meaningless piece of shit. I know Miss’s story – the parts that she feels comfortable telling me – and the fact that she has the strength to even keep going is a miracle.

You know what people tell me when I say, she’s had such a hard life. I feel so bad for her? I have heard all of the following multiple times (and without an ounce of shame in saying them):

“Just be careful. Once you offer them one thing they expect it all the time.”

“They all have a sob story. There are always family members dying, sick relatives, funerals to go to. Pretty soon she’ll ask you for money for a funeral.”

“Just make sure she knows exactly what you expect of her or she will take advantage of you.”

Well guess what? She is a woman who was forced to drop out of school – the school her parents could only afford to send her to for one term a year – when she was 16. She works her ass of and always has to support her two daughters (and they don’t even get to live with her). She has never asked us for one red cent. And you know what else? She loves Indian food…chicken Jalfrezi, in fact, but you probably don’t know that because you have always looked past her and everyone else like her working hard to make life easier for you. It is easier to group people together and make blanket statements than to really get to know someone. If you get to know them and realize they have interests and thoughts and feelings, it is much harder to justify treating them like they are any different than you.

Miss told me she likes to watch “the soapies” because they are like the fairytales. She imagines that someday the fairytale will happen to her and life won’t be so hard.

My life here is not hard. On paper, it is as good a life as I have ever dreamed of. The emotional part of life here takes it out of me every day. It kicks my ass. It challenges an already emotional me to figure out how to compartmentalize these feelings about the things I see and hear. Nothing will ever be the same for me after living here. I will never look at things the same way. My feelings will be deeper, the thoughts will be wider, my life will be richer…not because I have lived a privileged life, but because of the people I have met who never will.