Margaret J. Krauss, a senior in the Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh, is spending her summer traveling in South Africa for a radio documentary. She periodically will share her experiences with Post-Gazette readers.

Marc Schutzbank photos

Unlike Utah, fruits and vegetables are plentiful in Acornhoek.

Taxi driver Robert Ndlovu

Kids play in the main street in Utah, South Africa, but for them, getting a drink of water afterward can be problematic.
Click photos to see larger versions

UTAH, South Africa -- It is 5 a.m. The outside lights cast stark halogen auras over darkened cinderblock houses. Roosters have begun to crow in unison, and somewhere nearby, a goat sneezes.

I can hear the taxi before I see it. Its carriage rattles loudly as it negotiates the packed dirt surface of the road, sliding to a dusty halt in front of me. Robert Ndlovu rolls down his window and lowers the house music, its thumping bass fading as he beckons me on board. Today, we'll run the Hluvukani-Acornhoek route.

I live in Utah, one of several communities traversed by Ndlovu taxis. The place invites idealizing -- the stars only recently had to compete with electrical light; children are safe to play in the streets, their voices ringing through the air. Utah is a place where everyone greets everyone else.

But as Mr. Ndlovu's taxi drives through Utah without picking up any passengers headed for work, I recognize reality is much harsher.

As we pull into Acornhoek, the mini-bus taxi now packed to capacity, I am forced to wonder why people live in Utah. I compare Acornhoek's bustling roads lined with storefronts and a college to Utah's economic silence, the brisk new water main construction to Utah's empty taps.

Whether the engine that pumps the water is down or someone stole the copper pipes, the simple fact remains that there is no water in Utah. By my host mother's estimation, it has been seven weeks.

Until last year, when the provincial municipality installed public taps, community members traveled to a hand pump in the bush, several kilometers beyond the village. Now, when the engine is out, which it often is, the community reverts to a similar practice.

As early as 5 a.m., women make their way to the cattle dipping tank, trundling wheelbarrows filled with three large containers. A cracked pipe below the tank drips water, soaking into the ground when no one is there to catch it with a 10-gallon container. Each container takes 20 to 50 minutes to fill and, when full, weighs nearly 60 pounds. Depending on when they join the line, some women lose the whole day gathering water. Three containers last for two days.

"People tell me that their first thought when they wake up and their last thought before bed is, 'Do I have enough water?' " said Megan Barry, a team leader for the Student Movement for Real Change, a nongovernmental organization that supports community development and empowerment. "Because they have to worry about water, they have less time to spend on other things, like improving health care or building community."

Mr. Ndlovu's yell over the din of the jostling carriage brings me back inside his taxi.

In his 10 years as a driver, Robert has become the steward of his father's business. One of his innovations has been to offer a tourist shuttle across the South Africa-Mozambique border. He chews on the differences between the countries.

"Life is so much richer in Mozambique," he shouts. "There is water everywhere, so you can grow fruits and vegetables and crops." Robert keeps his left hand on the gear shift, his right hand splitting time between steering and rolling his window up before another car enveloped in a dust cloud passes.

As the sun blazes through the windshield, Mr. Ndlovu stares ahead at the road. The nose of his taxi points due west, according to the combination thermometer-clock-compass on the dashboard.

"What do I think about when I drive?" he laughs, looking over at me as he turns the wheel to avoid a cow.

"I think about how I can grow my business, how I can change things, how I can open more doors." He smiles and turns up the music.

"I am always opening my doors."

ON THE ROAD IN SOUTH AFRICA -- I had arrived in South Africa excited to talk with everyone I could, to ask questions about the growth of a nation that parallels my home. But during my scant month here, I have visited nearly every province, driving from Cape Town north along the Garden Route, through the country of Lesotho and into Johannesburg.

I read and talked about apartheid with school kids and pensioners, debated what role national unity must play in the future, went dancing with my peers in clubs where I was hilariously conspicuous, discovered a love for Appletizer (a bubbly apple juice), and saw a sheep slaughtered with a dull blade sharpened against a cinder block for a community celebration.

But any clear conclusions I had drawn from my experiences had since melted into a formless blob at the base of my skull. Nothing seemed positive anymore and nothing seemed negative, complexity upon complexity. I welcomed the six-hour car ride from Johannesburg to the Anchor House YMCA in Durban, a humming port town. It was a chance to let everything I had seen and heard seep into my skin.

We arrive in Durban on Tuesday morning. Standing tip-toe on the Indian Ocean at the far edge of the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), Durban is promoted by the tourism bureau as the "Gateway to the Exotic Kingdom of the Zulu," "Where Africa Meets the World." In a country where 0.7 percent of the population makes up 28 percent of the global population of those infected with HIV/AIDS, I wondered how the unofficial 40 percent unemployment rate fits into the mix.

As we drive to a traditional Zulu wedding through the brown and green hills of KZN that might have been the Pennsylvania Turnpike were it not for the zebra, we glimpse grazing cows next to the highway. I thought of Shaka Zulu, the chief and hero who unified fractious tribes to reject the encroachment of the Afrikanner settlers (Boer-trekkers) who, much like the early American settlers, made their way inland during the late 1890s from coastal settlements to stake their claim on the rich farming lands of the interior, ignoring and actively battling the presence of the Zulu people who already lived there. I wondered what Shaka Zulu would do about AIDS.

When we arrive, a little girl pelts up the dirt driveway after her aunts, cousins and sisters as they examine the offered blankets. Moving out of her way, I step up the embankment looking at the men drinking beer by the side of the house until I realize I am also staring accidentally at a group of people standing directly in front of me.

"Hello, sis!" one of them says kindly, greeting me courteously as "sister," and shaking my hand.

"Hello!" I reply, unsure of whether or not I should add "Tata," the polite way to greet a man in Xhosa; I am unsure of the proper title in Zulu.

After welcoming me to my first Zulu wedding, our host, Lindo, introduces me to his wife:

"Pam," he said fondly.

"No, no, I am Sandiswe," she said shaking her hand at me. "She is here now," she said to him, making it clear that in her village, she will use her Zulu name.

He nodded approvingly and changed his presentation, "Yes, this is my wife, Sandiswe."

A name, T.S. Eliot assures us, has an effable, ineffable importance that cannot be underestimated. By using her Zulu name, Sandiswe allowed me to hold on to her cultural apron string.

Her openness made me want to join the praise song the bride's family was singing to welcome the groom's family to their home. I was a white stranger at a ceremony for someone I didn't know personally. But it wasn't entirely my color (or lack thereof) that prompted the friendly exchange.

As I talked with her, I reveled in the normalcy of it -- not a conversation charged with a conflict between blacks and whites or the gentle condescension of an older person talking to a youth.

Standing relaxed in the late afternoon winter sun, still capable of warming, I felt perfectly at ease, somewhere between tradition and modernity, understanding and misunderstanding, history and the present. South African hospitality goes deeper than skin tone.