First impressions and SA's culture of mistrust

“Hiya, do you mind just looking after my handbag?” the stranger, a pretty twenty-something woman in a bikini asked us as we lay on the beach in Long Bay, Auckland. “No problem,” I replied, looking around to see if there was a camera filming this for some Leon Schuster film. I looked at Marion in surprise next to me as the stranger plonked her handsome leather handbag down next to our towels, cried “thank you!” and scampered down to the sea.

Eyeing the trendy handbag, I thought: bomb? Joke? Some post-grad psychology student testing different people’s mistrustful responses for her thesis … where is that camera or the grinning TV crew?

“The handbag looks suspiciously smart for a beach,” I muttered to Marion. Half an hour later the bikini girl came running back, cried another thank you and was off with her handbag. It was for real. Being a South African and having grown up in a culture of mistrust (as have most people in a number of countries I would add), under no circumstances, in any country I have been to or would go to would I, or surely you, leave valuables with a stranger on a beach while going for a swim. This is only one example of many incidents of deep trust that I have witnessed here on the Silver Fern Islands. Often on the streets in Auckland in the growing summer people leave their car doors open (not just the windows down) and unwatched while their vehicles cool off. I had to stop thinking that open car door thing was just a prank and stopped furtively looking around for the hidden camera or someone watching with binoculars.

Kiwi-land is a different world to all the countries I have been to or lived in. There is an enormous amount of trust and openness among people here. Early this morning I went for one of my long, meditative walks and saw schoolchildren blithely walking on their own to school or bus stops. Ten-year-olds happily said hello to me, without a shadow of fear for walking past a strange adult on a solitary street. I find it sad that I still have a twinge of discomfort when an anonymous child on her own cheerily greets me, but that’s my conditioning, coming out of a SA culture of mistrust. On saying hello back, I find myself thinking, oh dear, what has she been taught about paedophiles?

But it’s also amazing how we can use a few isolated incidents to form a lasting impression about countries, persons and so forth. In China, in Shaoxing, long before I could speak any reasonable Mandarin, Marion once could hardly walk because of some painful infection she had in her foot. The college we worked at was closed and we could not contact any of our translators to take her to hospital. An anonymous university student who could speak English saw our plight and politely asked how he may help. We didn’t know where a hospital was or how to find one and I was desperately scratching through a dictionary to show a taxi driver the Mandarin characters for “hospital”. The university student took over the whole project, escorted us to a hospital, got us an appointment with a doctor, did all the translating, and Marion’s foot was treated and back to normal within days. After we saw the doctor, we thanked the lad and he grinned and sauntered off after hailing another taxi and giving the cabbie our home address.

From this one story, the first impression one forms of China is that it is chockablock with friendly, trustworthy, helpful people. And that, from my five years experience there, does have its truth.

In South Africa I once decided to move down to Fish Hoek from Johannesburg to run my business and was going to stay with my mother in her flat initially. I drove to Cape Town in one day with my car loaded with stuff I needed immediately like my computer and fax machine while I waited for the furniture removal truck to arrive. Having left Jozi at about 3am with about four hours sleep I arrived in Fish Hoek at about 8pm, exhausted. Regular shots of caffeine got me through the last two hours of driving. I struggled to get all my things up the four flights of stairs to the flat and eventually sat downstairs, outside, pooped. Again, an anonymous man stopped and asked if I was okay. “Please help,” I moaned. “I am absolutely buggered and just need to finish offloading my car. I will pay you.” He happily helped and soon the job was done. “Please let me pay you,” I said with a huge smile, looking forward to putting my feet up in the lounge and savouring my mother’s dinner. “Really, no problem, only too glad to help, God bless,” he replied, doing a boy’s scout salute. I returned the salute with a heartfelt thank you.

From this single anecdote, the immediate impression one forms of South Africa is that it is chockablock with friendly, trustworthy, helpful people. And that, from my forty years experience of living there, does have its truth.

But Marion or I are still not about to trust a handbag or other valuable to a complete stranger on a beach or elsewhere. Well, would you?