Below I've written some comments and thoughts on the two articles published in Estonian newspapers about my stay in South Africa.

First of all, when reading the text (this applies especially to the first article, the shorter one) I had a strange feeling as if the descriptions were not my experiences at all but of some stranger's, even though the facts were correct. Although I could of course recognize my story there, I think that the very act of putting something in words and writing it down, especially in the style required by a newspaper, strips the story of all emotion, leaving only a cold, official and impersonal text (by no means am I blaming the journalists here, they did the best they could). Therefore I started wondering how accurately it is possible to convey my impressions at all without distorting them and I came to the conclusion that in this case, it is very difficult because of many factors, even if I myself would hve written the text. There is always a huge gap between the actual experiences and their description, particularly in this case, as different cultures and languages are involved and especially considering that there were so many steps in between – first, me telling about my impressions to the journalists in Estonian, then the journalists writing the stories according to their perception and understanding and finally the editor making some changes. Therefore I think the articles might be strange to read for my South African friends because of the perspective of the articles, since they are targeted to European readers who don't know much about South Africa. This is reflected by the questions I was asked during the interviews and also in my answers I had to consider the readers and their little knowledge about the subject. Therefore, in my answers I've said things which are perhaps so natural to the people in Khayelitsha that they don't even think about these in their everyday lives and which became natural to me as well, but when I think about the people in Estonia who haven't been to South Africa, I have to emphasize certain things (like cows and goats walking on the streets!). Another reason for emphasizing the contrasts comes from our tendency to compare things, in fact, these articles are largely based on comparison - the question of differences and similarities between countries and cultures seem to be the most intriguing to the majority of people.

Another point which I would like to consider, has to do with the language. During my stay in South Africa I spoke only English, since I did not meet any Estonians there. As a result, when I first met my family at the airport, it was strange for me to hear my mother tongue again and my first sentences were not so smooth (it took me only about an hour to get used to it again, though). During my stay in South Africa I got used to thinking and speaking about my experiences in English. When at home, I had to describe everything in Estonian and at once I felt that the experiences are not the same any more and while telling people my impressions and trying to do it as accurately as possible, there was something lost in between, something indescribable, yet extremely important which I could not restore and it felt as if the experiences I was speaking about became further distanced from the original ones and as if it was not really me who had had them, but someone else whose experiences I had heard and was now relating to others. One reason is definitely the absence of equivalent terms to describe things - for example, in the Estonian language there are no proper words for 'township' or 'shack' and also in my opinion it lacks an accurate, neutral and politically correct word for 'black people'. The reason why these terms are missing from our language has to do with the lack of contact with the cultures involving the mentioned people and phenomena. Therefore I had to find other similar words or in some cases give longer explanations in order to convey a more precise meaning.

Publishing an article is actually only the last step in a sequence of steps and at each step, something is lost or distorted a bit. First, there are the thoughts and impressions in your head, the things you have actually experienced and which are in your mind more like images, something which cannot really be expressed in words and thus can be separated from any language. Then, the next step involves putting your experiences into words in order to communicate them to other people, which obviously requires language. Thus, speaking about my experiences in English is only one step from the original experiences in my mind. Now comes the next step, already the 3rd step from the original source - speaking about the experiences in Estonian, involving the problems that I already described above. Then, in the case of the articles, there comes the 4th step, a huge leap from the original experiences, because it involves another person, the journalist. (S)he listens to my story and puts down his/her vision of it. No wonder that by reading the outcome, I feel like there is such a huge gap between the actual experiences and the words I read from the newspaper. Yet, considering all that, I have to say that at least the second article managed to communicate my experiences quite well.

In addition to the differences between languages and subsequent difficulties in communicating information from one language to another, there is another important factor which influences the perception of impressions, and that is culture. People perceive and judge things according to their own set of values, stereotypes and prejudices, which are usually established and inflexible. Therefore, it might often happen that people do not understand descriptions of things too unfamiliar to them and beyond their own culture, or they do not understand something just because they do not agree with it or cannot even accept it and hence sometimes do not even want to know. This is a topic I've given a lot of thought, as I experienced some frustration at times when I tried to explain some things at home and realized that people do not really understand.