It?s surreal to already be back in College Station surrounded by familiarity when just last week I was still in Cape Town experiencing something new every hour. Since coming home, my mind keeps returning to the concept of ubuntu, or ?I am because you/we are.? It is a concept that was first introduced to us by Tebogo Molapisane in a discussion about African business practices. The concept of ubuntu seems to permeate every aspect of South African culture, from business to social. During our trip to Khayelitsha, a township just outside of Cape Town, we spoke with Siya Daweti, who talked about how dedicated everybody is to improving their community. For instance, we met with a coffeeshop owner who had learned how to brew coffee in London and had the opportunity to take that knowledge and leave the township to create a better life. Despite that, he returned to the township because he wanted to use his knowledge to better the township, rather than just up and leaving. This feels very different to the culture of America, where the betterment of the individual is often prioritized above that of the community. However, I do feel like A&M has created a culture that evokes ubuntu, in that camaraderie, service, and giving back are all emphasized.
To tie back to my first blog post and initial thoughts, I have since realized exactly how detrimental loadshedding (scheduled regional power outages to reduce strain on power grid) has been, specifically to South African businesses. While it was an annoyance to our group since we couldn?t charge our phones or shower in the 2.5-hour loadshedding period, it could be fatal to a business. We spoke to the operations manager of a soda bottling plant, who talked about the struggles of scheduling workers and maintaining factory output when the power goes out for hours at a time. Specifically, the plant had 12-hour shifts and many workers had long commutes, so workers that were on the clock during a loadshedding outage could not just be sent home and the machines couldn?t run. During a meeting with Allan Gray, we also learned that South Africa has been experiencing higher frequencies of loadshedding more recently, so companies may not even have generators to supply power during the outages.