South Africa

If you want to be able to go through your day to day life and decrease the chances of you getting beat up, robbed, anything related that's sketch, be super friendly with everyone. Say hello to everyone that you see, especially the people that look tough. Because if you kind of have that presence of like, you don't really care if they look tough, you're still going to say hi and be their friend. They'll respect that, appreciate that. And they themselves won't do anything to hurt you that at least the chances decreases a whole lot. I it was a huge help for me. I actually became really good friends with someone that was like in a gang. And he was able to help us out whenever we felt scared, sketched in a certain area, we're like, we should probably dip use a driver. So he would just pick us up, drive us to where we needed to huge help. So please do that.

Number one thing you guys got to know about this place is it is normal to pee in public, like on the side of the road, even poop sometimes if you're really desperate. So don't be shocked if you see a lot of private parts. That's just how life is over there. You just pee whenever you want to. So embrace it. Come to a point where you'll eventually do it too. Tons of people did it. I know I did it. I was weird at first. I refused to do it like the first two months. I was like, nah, there's no way I'm just going to go pee in public, but I did it. So just kind of embrace that. No, it's a normal thing to do. If you think it's weird, that's fine. Eventually you won't think it's weird at all.

In the townships, culturally, they are very friendly. They're very nice. But at the same time, there's going to be that small percent that aren't going to love you too much if you're white. So be careful of that. But I mean, it's just part of it. You just got to ignore it and be happy. But culturally, they love it when you're very respectful towards the father of the house. They're very consistent when it comes to the male being the dominant chooser and choice maker of the family. So pay lots of respect to any old people and any men and fathers that you meet.

When you meet someone young, you need to shake their hand, but you don't shake it normally. You shake their hand and you snap by touching thumbs and grabbing your fingers and they hit your palm. And you do that to all young people whenever you meet them.

One culture tip, but this comes from Zulu, but all the people in any language use it, is when you first greet someone and say, hello, then they always ask also, how are you doing? And they will do this because they feel you shouldn't ask something else or start into any other part of the conversation without first saying, how are you doing? And you care about the other person. So they do this in English, though, as well. And even in email or writing, they will say, hi, I hope you're doing well. If they can't find out and ask you, then they say it as, I hope you're having a good day. I hope you're doing well. I hope you're having a good week. And then they will ask you something.

In South Africa alone, they have 11 official languages and like 25 bajillion other non-official languages and cultures. You will encounter different people of different cultures, different backgrounds, different ethnicities. With the culture, you want to always be respectful to the older generation, but for the most part, they're pretty laid back about everything and you'll really love them.