Today we visited Gulshan's mother's cousin and her daughter across town. She was a sweet old lady who is ill. After a dinner prepared by Gulshan's mother, as everything has been, we visited the neighbors in the corner house - Parents, son and wife, and granddaughter in one home and another daughter and her husband, with their three daughters next door. The family had been very close to Gulshan's since they moved in, so they are like family and call each other Auntie. I think her husband is the first introvert I have met in this family of social, outgoing people. Funny that he and I, two fairly quiet fellows, have married the two champion chatterboxes of an already loquacious family.
Some things I have noticed. The religion isn't heavy-handed but ever-present. People aren't critical or uptight, like you might expect with some very religious people in the States. Instead they've been very open and welcoming. Everyone smiles and hugs in greeting with an "As-salaam-mu-alaikum" and an "Alhamdullillah" and "Jazakallah". That's where Islam is - in the daily custom. The dress, the food and the speech. It's like I'm learning a new language. The words you use the most - "Hello", "I'm fine", "Thank you", "How nice".
I've heard people mention that Islam has not had an internal Reformation like Christianity. It seems like it would be fairly difficult to be critical of your own customs on such a fundamental level. Although the Western observer should take note that Hinduism, Buddhism, Conficianism, and Taoism had no bloody reformations either. That seems to be an exception, rather than a rule.
It's an interesting experience to speak with people who are at once so candid and forthright and also so sober. I'm getting a picture of South Africa that few other visitors have the opportunity to experience, There are some people who wonder if Gulshan and I will move here and others who commend her for pursuing opportunities abroad. And in a country still adjusting to the end of apartheid, race is a common topic. People here are much more comfortable talking about race and how it impacts their lives (and it does) than you find in America. I imagine it's a consequence of race being such a prescient public policy for so long that it's become a matter of fact, whereas we have a tendency to try and sweep it under the rug and pretend like race doesn't exist. I think it's a healthier approach that they have developed here.
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