Adapting to the Scorching Heat of South African Summers

We hear that almost 100 times a day. "It's very hot!" may sound like a boring conversation topic, but when it's actually this hot every day, there's really not much else worth saying.

At 24 degrees south of the equator, the tropical climate is really starting to heat up around here in South Africa. As we hear reports of snow back home in the Northern Hemisphere, we're trying to survive blistering days of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It's amazing what a difference another 10 latitudinal degrees from the equator can make.

And as we were here in South Africa through the Christmas season, the time where everyone hopes for snow, the hot days here seem just that much hotter. South Africa's summer is supposed to be over by March, but according to everyone around here, we don't have much hope for cooler temperatures until around May or June... just in time for things to start heating up again back there in the United States.

In general, cross-cultural adaptation can be a topsy-turvy situation. So many of the common social rules we've grown to understand and apply are turned around and upside down. We have to develop a new understanding and a new way of life (if we want to be successful, that is).

But few things have the immediate effect on our consciousness the way that reversing the seasons and total climate change have had. I imagine if the climate was more mild, then maybe it wouldn't stand out so much. But there's nothing mild about the heat here.

When we first arrived in our village at our new home, I thought that for some odd reason the previous owners of our house had decided to cover half the yard with concrete. Odd as it was, it didn't seem to be much of a surprise after we got used to most yards being entirely dust, with grass existing only outside the yard. I told some other volunteers about the concrete covering our yard and they hypothesized that it acted as a sort of "fire barrier" to prevent the frequent wildfires from spreading to individual homes. That seemed plausible enough.

But it was all wrong. Our yard's not covered in concrete, but in baked sand and clay. No person intentionally did that, it's just the natural result of the ridiculously hot sun here. I wouldn't have been so surprised if the ground was simply sandy (like all the roads are), but I never expected that a bit of rain mixed with the soil the day before a typical scorcher would've created its own kiln and baked the surface nearly as hard as concrete. When I decided to plant some herbs around our house, I had to use a pickaxe to get through the top layer. Thankfully, the earth was much softer underneath or I think it would've been an impossible endeavor.

The oppressive heat around here isn't merely a physical discomfort - it greatly affects the way people think and live. During the heat of the day, almost no one is moving anywhere, even on the main roads. And we live in a fairly large village, housing at least a few thousand people.

If you look closely into the shade of any large tree or of a house, you can see everyone sitting, or more often laying, in a quiet stupor, not stirring at all. Only a few brave kids (and recently arrived Peace Corps volunteers) are foolish enough to leave the safety of the shade during the middle of the day.

You may think that everyone would stay in their houses during the heat, where they could have an electric fan to cool them down, but you'd be wrong. The homes here are almost always built of concrete brick walls with tin or zinc corrugated roofs. This acts as a sort of greenhouse, with all the heat coming into the house, but rarely leaving.

An indoor thermometer we have has frequently recorded the temperature inside at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, even until 6pm and later. It's generally too hot inside the house to continue sleeping after 7am. Not that anyone (but us) ever tries to sleep that late. Everyone wakes up around 4am or 5am and begins taking care of any household chores during the time of day (early morning) when it's still bearable to do so.

Around 10am (and sometimes 9am), people start finding the biggest tree to sit under, or lacking a tree, the whole family squeezes into the couple feet of shade on one side of their house. From about that time until at least 2pm and sometimes as late as 4pm, people just sit and wait for the heat to relax its overwhelming pressure. There's almost nothing to do. I've never seen a person reading and any physical activity would quickly become unbearable even in the shade.

If my wife and I happen to be out during this time of day, we hear shouts of "ku hisa ngopfu!" and sometimes receive some pretty incredulous looks from people wondering what might be passing through our minds to cause us to be moving around under such extreme conditions.

Well, as I said, my wife and I do sometimes move around during this time of day. Like almost any other American, we get restless when we're unable to stay inside (and that's definitely not an option - unless we've been wanting to sit in a sauna) or find something else useful to do. And until the rains about halfway into summer, none of the trees in our yard provided any shade at all. So, we'd sometimes roam around, trying to occupy ourselves while we also waited for the heat to dissipate.

Now, we've given up on all that. The villagers definitely have the right idea - find shade, wherever you can, and just wait it out. At least we have books to read. But when you're sweating even in the shade outside, books sometimes lose their enjoyment.

So, we're slowly adapting to the South African pace of life. We're learning to wait when there's simply nothing we can do to alleviate an uncomfortable situation. Waiting isn't something that comes easy to us Americans, but we really don't have much of a choice.

At least it's a skill that applies to much more than just the heat here in South Africa. With a culture of waiting on the impenetrable heat comes a culture that's content to wait on everything and one where individuals don't mind making people wait on them, with or without reason or notification. And so we're adjusting in more ways than one, with the difference in climate helping to affect a difference in our understanding.

One aspect of the heat that I might've never guessed at if I hadn't experienced it first-hand is the way the oppressive heat affects the mind as well as the body. It seems that it actually slows down a person's ability to think and process thoughts.

The heat doesn't just take away a person's desire to be active, it even slows their ability to be mentally active. I know because it happens to us, most days from around noon to 2pm. ...Thus the frequent difficulty of using our time in the shade to read or as brainstorming sessions. The only weather in our brains is a heat wave - a mentally crippling one.

But as the day cools down and we regain our mental faculties it's easier to appreciate them. We may have to give up several hours of each day to the heat, but we're slowly gaining a quiet patience that I think must be the foundation of the often remarkable resilience of South Africans.

The history here is a really dirty thing. Though some with an unyielding Western perspective might argue that South Africa is effectively non-functioning, it's actually remarkable how well they're currently functioning in spite of their dirty past. The past atrocities committed against the black majority here are incredible to say the least - horrible is a huge understatement.

Every aspect of the government, education, even where people lived, was legislated so as to prevent black South Africans from succeeding and getting ahead. We're currently living in a former "Homelands" area of South Africa, akin to the "reservations" for Native Americans in the United States.

Though 90% of the population of South Africa is comprised of black South Africans, the former ruling minority chose a scant 10% of the land, specifically selecting the most arid and inhospitable areas, on which to contain and overcrowd the black majority and force them to try to eke out a living. Believe it or not, there are many areas of South Africa where the heat is much more frequently balanced by rain or altitude. But the "Homelands Act" forced the majority of South Africans to quietly persist in the dryness and the heat.

Thankfully, something positive might've even come of that. The people here are used to sitting in the shade, making do with what they can, and quietly waiting out the uncomfortable times. It's that quiet patience and enduring resilience that I mentioned. When South Africa finally had the opportunity to right the wrongs of its past, it happened with almost no violence against the former oppressors. Instead, there was reconciliation. It's by no means total and complete, it's certainly a long process and it's not even been 15 years yet, but reconciliation and not revenge is the choice that was made.

Even today, we work with adults who when they were still children, they were beaten by the police dozens of times. But I've yet to meet any who harbor direct desire for vengeance against their former oppressors. They say the system has gone, its time has passed, and now it's time to work forward again. Just like they know how to wait out the most oppressive hours of the hot days, they waited out their dirty political past. And when the oppressive sun relents, it's time to work again.

So, regardless of how hot it is here or how seemingly good hours of the day become useless as a result of it, there's something we can learn through it. If we're able to pick up some of that quiet patience and enduring resilience that our neighboring South Africans have, it'll be worth it.