It's an understanding and a way of life-an acronym used by South African locals and adopted by visitors.
"T.I.A. This is Africa."
Six weeks into my DukeEngage individual project on ecological photography and conservation education, I'm still working out the meaning of T.I.A.
In its primitive form, T.I.A is used to excuse the practical limitations of the region: water shortage, power shortage, Internet shortage, ATM cash shortage and body odor surplus.
Example 1: This column is being drafted on a handcrafted notepad from Hluhluwe, Zululand made from 100 percent post-consumer waste. No CTRL ALT F7. T.I.A.
Example 2: Tonight I watch "Blood Diamond." Tomorrow night I watch "Blood Diamond." T.I.A.
Example 3: The response, "It's not that disgusting," from a Zulu guide (educated in seven languages and able to identify antelope species from dung composition) when asked about the lethality of a mysterious insect bite. T.I.A.
On that note, T.I.A. can also be used for regionally specific animal-isms: Giganto moths in bathtubs, Vervet monkeys filching bananas from the kitchen, a formal induction with the advice: "Don't walk through town at night. You could be attacked by hippos."
And then there's the emotive use-a reminder of good fortune before a panorama of unfamiliar constellations, round red coastal sunsets, a family of rhino snuffling long grass by your open safari truck.
But with the territory come the politics and the past. With the territory comes a glaring sense of division. As the last region to dismantle apartheid, St. Lucia is a microcosm of post-apartheid tensions where "This is Africa" becomes a dismal excuse in the face of enduring prejudice.
We volunteers struggle to digest the warning that years of discrimination can remain unchanged by our few insistent words. But the idealism you pack with you overseas molds to the reality of "This is Africa." You discover quickly that nothing is simple in Africa-nothing is just black or just white.
Community project evolution in the local Zulu village of Khula is determined by a delicate relationship between volunteer and village leadership. All changes go through the Induna or "Prince" and/or through the community Pasteur. Plant a garden, fence a farm, build a daycare-but understand that your role as a volunteer is to assist and advise without overtaking.
Such an ethos of measured steps may be foreign to many in the Western world, where Africa still exists as a feral landscape in dire need. "You come with your laptop computers, your malaria medicine and your little bottles of hand sanitizer and think you can change the outcome, huh?" says Leonardo DiCaprio in "Blood Diamond." What he forgot to add was "your Western standards of progress, your intense need to transform."
And so the most difficult part of volunteering is the grim probability that you will never do enough over your brief stay. Your altruistic ambitions, your intense need to transform according to Western standards are complicated by the gray reality of T.I.A. But there is movement: a new crime prevention soccer club, a relationship with the local sustainable plant nursery and permission to clean-up an overgrown wetland.
In the meantime, you put away the khaki body armor and military-strength mosquito repellent and wonder to yourself what exactly "This" is.
Is "This" the tourist couple taking photos of themselves handing mush to orphans on plastic platters and recoiling from body contact? Is "This" the untarred roads and derelict townships, the pretentious glares and the abusive comments?
Is Africa the sentimental nonprofit commercial with the bloated orphans-the sweltering savannah with the malaria hot-spots, ramshackle huts and rampant HIV infection rates?
In fact, yes. Each of those preconceptions is a close reality.
But spend time in Africa and those "orphans" become Msizi, the ladies-man-wannabe-rapper, or Maleke, the sensible five-year-old with the high kick doing the American "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dance. The savannah is your 5 a.m. game drive, a UNESCO World Heritage Site housing five ecosystems and astounding biodiversity seen nowhere else in the world.
"This" is a place where primary school students pass up break time for HIV education, where Zulu staff members are entering university and working the night shift with the local police circuit.
So rife with complexity, so fraught with sentiments, my home for eight extraordinary weeks: This is Africa.
Janet Wu is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Friday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.