The Rainbow Nation, South Africa, became my humble abode for about a month and a half this summer as I studied abroad for the first time.

I knew about most of the issues that are currently being dealt with in South Africa but I didn’t understand it completely until I saw these things with my own eyes.

And that’s when culture shock took effect.

Poverty was one of the more difficult things to deal with while there. Many of the people begging for money are as young as six years old, walking the streets alone day and night.

One day while I was in Cape Town, I was walking with a large group when a man, who looked about the same age as me, 21, tapped me on the shoulder. “Please madam, I need money for food. I am starving. Please madam.” I didn’t even have a single coin on me, nothing. I told him that I was sorry, but I had no money. He walked shoulder to shoulder with me for about a block asking me over and over, until one of the locals in my group told him to leave me alone.

I am used to seeing people around the Twin Cities asking for money as you walk by, but I have never experienced a person following me for the next block begging for money. Most of the young people who beg for money are working for someone else. Their boss is usually somewhere close by watching them. Or if they are not working for someone, chances are high that the money would be used to purchase glue to sniff, which is a huge issue right now with young children on the streets.

We spent a day volunteering in a township with an organization called Prochorus.

We went to a small, one room, school house and worked with the toddlers. It was cold inside the school. The children were bundled in winter jackets, hats and gloves.

I’d worked at a day care in the past and my coworkers and I were constantly sanitizing toys and disinfecting other things throughout the room. While helping out at this little school house, I realized how sanitation is a larger concern in the United States than in South Africa.

I watched as the teacher’s aide changed the diaper of one of the little ones; she wiped and cleaned him up with a wash cloth and then, using that same wash cloth, washed his face and the rest of his body.

With the spread of disease already high throughout the townships, it surprised me how careless the aide was with cleaning the child.

On the first day of my class, “Understanding the HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” we were thrown into a situation that would help me understand how lucky we are in the United States to have good, clean hospitals.

Groups of us were sent to different public hospitals around Stellenbosch and Cape Town. I was sent to Tygerberg Hospital.

The outside resembled a large state prison; the inside resembled a hospital many of us probably never want to be treated at. As we walked through the dimly lit halls, we saw shattered windows, homeless people sitting in the hospital entrances, missing floor tiles, rusting walls, smoking in the door entrances, no toilet paper, no toilet seats, bird feces in the bathroom from the open window and gates that looked like a prison cell at either end of the children’s ward.

The waiting rooms for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were completely full.

This was a hospital that I could never imagine being treated at, and with the prevalence of so many different diseases, I figured that they would be just a bit more cautious of things at the hospitals and clinics.

While talking to two South Africans, and students of Stellenbosch University, I asked them if Stellenbosch has a lot of problems with drunk driving and DWI’s. The two of them broke out laughing and said that their cops have more serious things to worry about. Going from a country where drunk driving is a frequently talked about issue and is highly enforced to a country where people drink and drive without the fear of cops completely threw me for a loop.

Reverse-culture shock was what really put everything into perspective. As bad as some things were in South Africa, experiencing those things brought different issues to my attention and truly changed my life.

Even with those slight imperfections, South Africa truly was a fairy tale for me. When I arrived home, suddenly I was hit with responsibilities, boredom and left completely heartbroken.

I was thrown from a culture that is never in a hurry and goes by ‘South African time,’ to a culture that is always on the run and having somewhere to be.

The mountains had suddenly become only a memory. The ocean became something that I have to travel thousands of miles to, rather than a short drive. The nearly musical sound of the Afrikaans language was drowned away by the sound of Minnesotan and Wisconsin voices.

But the culture shock of returning home also reminded me of the quality of life I enjoy as an American. South Africa may have been my little piece of paradise for a month and a half, but there are some things that are different in the United States that many take for granted; such as clean public hospitals and sanitary schools.

To us, it’s a given to have those, but for many in South Africa, it’s rarely seen.

Mezera, a senior print journalism major and copy editor for The Spectator, can be reached at [email protected].