Voyage of the genes, Feb 25th

I asked a question today that can be perceived as very stupid and naïve and yet not so stupid and naïve at the same time… but I drew some conclusions from the discussions that followed that I am very “chaffed” (satisfied) with, and that I assume (haha) can be nothing but 100% true. We were having lunch with Sammy (worked and lived many years in Switzerland) and another Indian couple. We discussed how my wife was perceived in the Norwegian workplace and in Norway in general, and automatically how the stereotypical Norwegian and Swiss person is compared to a South African (Indian South African first and foremost). They are quiet, shy and “blond”! Another view was that all the Indians in India were much quieter than the South African Indians. So my question was thus: “… is that a general thing for Indians in South Africa, are they more loud, aggressive and outspoken”?

Dangerous topic when you’re sitting among the presumably aggressive ones… but once in a while you just have to take a chance, right? Anyway, the Norwegians and the Swiss (cold parts of Europe) were already labelled shy and quiet, and the Indians in India more so than the South African Indians. So I easily derived… the Indians her in SA are descendants of the Indians that was brought by the colonial Brit’s from India to SA to grow sugarcane (indentured laborours). That’s a fact, no question about that! None of the Indians were forced to go though. And that’s a very important point. They had a choice! The Brit’s offered them to grow sugarcane in SA for five years with pay. After the five years of duty they could go back home (shipped for free), or they could get their own piece of land, where they could grow their own stuff to mix their masalas.

For a lot of people change is a scary thing. Crossing borders and oceans to get to an unknown and unexplored country definitely so! For those people SA was never considered. But a lot of people lived a very hard life in India… imagine starving and having to feed the cow first?! That’s when some people got fed up and weighed the opportunity heavier than the “alternative”. So they took the plunge, and went! Thousands of Indians went in the 1860’s (will try to find an approximate number in the history books). Out of the Indian population, these were of course the crazy ones, the brave, the adventurous, the loud and the aggressive ones from the lot. They jumped off the ship in Port Natal (Now Etekwini, changed from Durban) on the South African Coast and started breeding more of the same kind. Mixing brave with aggressive and a dash of lunacy to let the strong genes carry the new generations. The shy and quiet ones stayed behind and carried on with the inbreeding and mixing shy with scared and careful. It’s a simple explanation, really!
And then the ultimate example of course to confirm this theory… my own (but probably washed out Viking genes). Pretty much at the same time, people emigrated from Scandinavia to the promise land in America. What was most probably left of the aggressive Viking gene, all went “over there”. Now they are shouting and bellowing over there, pillaging and bossing around with other countries and making everybody scared and hate them to cause jihad and other funny things.