Time and time again—in fact, what began to feel like everyday—I found myself clutching a quart of Black Label beer in South Africa. My hands grew familiar with the large bottle, its dark tint, the way it was never completely chilled but always cold enough. I return now to this memorable image of my life in Cape Town not to express how much I drank, but to explore the role of alcohol in my social interactions while abroad. The subject is under-discussed: at best, it is mentioned as one of the “fun” benefits of study abroad (via those amusing drunken stories) and, at worst, it is relegated to an unspoken, bureaucratically ignored, side of the study abroad experience. This lack of critical thought about the way we consume and utilize alcohol while abroad compels me to offer a more honest account of my own experience.

But allow me to complete the original picture. A quart of Black Label in hand, after class or late into the night, surrounded by the welcoming faces that I would soon call friends: Ntimi, Makatta, Joseph, Gumbo, Amira all sipping from quarts themselves. I strove to “immerse” myself in South African culture in the most basic way possible—speaking with South Africans. The more I did so, the more I grew conscious of the cultural significance of alcohol to these people. Black Label was not simply used to alter one’s state. Its presence marked a space delineated from the official, formal working world, a space carved out for friends to joke, to muse, but, more fundamentally, to engage.

To abstain from drinking was to mark oneself outside or at least on the edge of this shared space. To share a beer, then, was to forge a communicative opening to recount the day’s details or an amusing anecdote from the weekend. From this pinhole aperture exploded the discursive possibility to comment on a politician’s gaffe, to discuss a stance on gay rights, to address the drug problems in the community, to explore personal aspirations. The bar in Cape Town did not represent some illegitimate entity or an underbelly of South African culture. It was the very locus of culture. That is to say, it was a dynamic place of “meaning-making,” a space in which conceptual universes were presented, explored, inverted and played with.

Thousands of miles from the community and customs I was used to, drinking a Black Label allowed me to participate in this process of cultural signification and enabled me to experience the world of my South African friends. Some of my most challenging and meaningful conversations occurred in this setting. Leisure time in South Africa does not exist outside the normal productivity of the day; moments like these are in themselves productive. They are implicated in the construction of cross-cultural understanding and, more significantly, the forging of relationships. And so, looking back at the past semester, which I hold as one of the most formative periods of my life, I smile. I can’t wait to crack open a bottle of Black Label with my friends in South Africa again.