South Africa

For anyone who cares, I have now added a bunch more entries to my blog, all in one giant post. These pieces were written as part of a large portfolio I had to put together as a requirement for the program I was on.

Most likely no one will ever read every chapter of this post. If you want to read the best stuff, let me recommend: Wednesday July 1st: The Pyramid; Sunday July 5th: Fireworks*; Sunday July 5th: Church*; Tuesday July 7th: Sickness; Thursday July 9th: Ikwezi; and Friday July 10th: Umlilo Means Fire.




Tuesday. June 30, 2009.

The World Cup

I woke up early this morning and went for a walk through downtown Durban. It was good to finally get a chance to spend time on my own, simply walking around wherever I wanted to go. From the hostel I walked downhill towards the city center. For part of the time I was walking right on the highway, which is a very common place to find pedestrians in South Africa—though it is less common to see someone of my complexion walking there. At one point I stood on a bridge overlooking the train tracks, and in the distance I could see the continuing construction on the new soccer stadium which is being built for the World Cup next year.

A lot is changing in South Africa in anticipation of 2010. In addition to new soccer stadiums and massive infrastructure investments, there is also a push to clean up the cities—to get rid of crime and other undesirable elements. This has meant hiring increases in the police force, the rounding-up and kicking out of child street urchins, and the proposed construction of a new shopping complex in place of the Warwick Triangle. The Triangle is a large fruit, vegetable, herbs, and everything else market, both open air and under cover, where mostly Africans come to buy and sell, many of them from out in the rural areas. For 99 years the market has been in existence, a providing a source of opportunity and income for otherwise underprivileged populations. I spoke with some carrot and cabbage merchants there today and they were none too pleased about this proposal to build a shiny new shopping center that will only benefit the wealthy. The merchants are organizing, and lawyers are volunteering to defend the Warwick Triangle in court.

Is South Africa ready to host the world cup? Will the Cup serve as the needed incentive to make important investments for the nation’s long-term well-being? Or will the Cup only serve to leverage power away from the already underprivileged as wealthy investors enhance their portfolios by investing in the new and glitzy face of South Africa?


Wednesday. July 1, 2009.

The Pyramid

When we first sat down in the meeting room of the BAT center, all the SIT students sat on one side of the circle and all the UKZN students sat on the other side. It wasn’t an intentional and certainly not a malicious thing: all groups of friends find it easier to stick with each other than branch out, and besides, the UKZN students had gotten there first and so naturally sat with each other in the absence of anybody else to sit with. But unintentional though it was, it was nonetheless a good illustration of how all people arrange themselves before they get to know each other. Over the course of the day we would have to get to know each other and break down any barriers there might be between us.

The games we played were fantastic. We introduced ourselves by telling everybody one reason why we like ourselves. We worked in teams to carry balloons around the space, we helped each other when we were blindfolded and accomplished tasks that were only possible through team work. The breakthrough for me came during the pyramid game. The game goes as follows.

There is a small wooden board with three holes on it. Stacked on top of the first hole are five wooden disks, arranged like a pyramid with the widest on bottom and the smallest on top. The goal is to move the entire pyramid onto the third hole, but the catch is that you can only move one disk at a time, and disks cannot be placed on top of disks that are smaller than themselves. If the game sounds easy, it isn’t. To make things harder, we had to solve the puzzle as a team, each person only getting one chance at a time to shift a disk.

Together our team had to race back and forth, trying to figure out how to move these disks the way we wanted them to go. The idea was to complete the exercise before the other team, but frankly I could have cared less about the other team: this pyramid needed to move and I was determined to see it happen. We all got so caught up in it, and every time we got a step closer all of us shouted in exhilaration. And once we had gotten the second largest piece onto the bottom piece in their new position, we knew the end was within our reach. Everyone’s eyes were fixed, breathless, on these wooden rings, until finally the pyramid stood there, successfully on the other side. When that moment came we all erupted, jumping and clapping hands and grabbing onto each other. And it was only afterward that I realized that while I had been so focused on moving the pyramid, a bond was silently forming between me and the rest of my team—because we were all equally focused on that pyramid. We were all so caught up in our collective goal that for a while we forgot ourselves, and by the time we came back to our senses we were already in each other’s arms.



Thursday. July 2, 2009.

Isaiah, the Master of Bation.

In presenting plans for what to do during our rural Life Skills camp, the idea that definitely stood out the most came from Isaiah—Isaiah, the one who conceals himself behind piercings, a hat and sunglasses; Isaiah, the one who doesn’t enjoy small talk so goes immediately into controversial debates with strangers. He is an odd fellow, that is for sure, but he is also charmingly off-beat. He has had a very difficult life, and for a person of his kind of troubled background to be doing this kind of work—giving his time and talents to helping underprivileged youths—is highly admirable. Nevertheless, his ideas often catch people off guard.

Isaiah’s idea was to teach masturbation to the high schoolers. How to do it, and why it is a good way of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. He proposed to do a condom demonstration, and he even offered to show how the sex act works using a model penis and vagina, which he happens to own. His proposal blind-sided just about everybody, and it sparked a passionate debate about why we could or couldn’t, and why we should or shouldn’t have a demonstration like the one he proposed. (The question that no one asked out loud during the debate but which I am sure many of us are still wondering, is why Isaiah happens to own anatomic models of human genitalia.)

Isaiah’s plan will undoubtedly never go quite the way he has envisioned, though he will surely take the chance to pull some kids aside during the camp and tell them about his “ABCD” plan (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condomize, and—Isaiah’s addition—“Do it yourself”).




Friday. July 3, 2009.

Lecture Reflection
Development and Education in SA, Blessing Karumbidza

Blessing is hilarious. Controversial and well spoken, I don’t think anyone in the classroom agreed with everything he said but we sure did learn a lot from him.

I learned from his comments on “ideology.” Everyone has a different ideology, and it is informed by where one has been, whom one has talked with, what books one has read, what one has watched, etc. I like this idea because it makes ideology a potentially flexible thing. Yes, I already have a particular ideology or Weltanschauung, but it is exciting to realize that with every person I talk with or every book I read or every country I visit, my view of the world can and will shift and expand. It makes me all the more eager to learn.

With this in mind, it is easier to understand and appreciate the concept of “exchange.” My view of the world, my ideology, expands every time I enter a new community, and so does the ideology of the people I meet when they come into contact with me. We are not the paternalistic givers, shouldering the “white man’s burden.” We can both give and take, exchange with each other.



Sunday. July 5, 2009.

Fireworks

Yesterday was a 4th of July like none other. In the afternoon we arrived at Amatikulu, the rural township where I’ll be staying for the next week. I am staying with a large family that lives in a series of houses at the top of a hill, looking out over the Indian Ocean. It is beautiful, and the family seems nice albeit quiet (largely due to the language barrier), but the real memory of my first night here has to do with some bad milk I had that morning.

My first night with a new family, and I was sick as a dog, squatting in the dark outhouse, leaning with my face in the hole, trying to eject whatever was offending my stomach so badly. Then I stumbled back towards the houses only to heave a few more times by the side of the dirt road. While this was going on it started to rain.

There were five brothers at the top of the hill, standing for cover beneath the ledge of a thatched roof, chatting calming in Zulu and for the most part ignoring me. I was puzzled at their indifference, but didn’t mind too terribly—when I’m sick I actually prefer to pretend I am invisible.

Up until this point my attempts to clear the system were mostly fruitless. It was not until I got back to the bedroom and spent some time lying on the mat on the ground that the real 4th of July fireworks got started—all into the bucket next to me. With great force I declared my independence from the milk I had for breakfast, the mutton I had for lunch, and the two bites of rice I had for dinner—and I felt much better afterward. I went to bed at 7:00 PM, grateful for my freedom, grateful to be alive and in South Africa.



Sunday. July 5, 2009.

Church

The family we stay with is Catholic, and on Sunday we went to church with them.

There are no cathedrals in Amatikulu. In fact there isn’t even a catholic “church” as such. On Sunday the church-goers walk along dusty paths between the trees and the rolling purple-white fields of sugar cane until we meet in one of the barren classrooms of the local primary school. There is a priest who visits the small parish, but he only visits the congregation once every so many weeks. Otherwise the members of the church—by which I mean mostly the same family I am staying with plus a few of their neighbors—are left to themselves. They cover the desk in front with a white linen, and light a simple candle as their one ornamentation. They squeeze into the learners’ desks and sit on the benches to pray, to read scripture, and to sing hymns.


And, oh, the singing...with the voices of the elderly matriarchs, the one grandfather, my two brothers, and the children all blending, reverberating slowly around our small concrete classroom, the music sounds like it comes from the center of the world. Old, deep, African singing...it starts with one voice, usually a woman, and after the first phrase everyone comes in slowly in harmony. The elders and the children and everyone in between all sing together. There are no written words or musical notes, the songs are simply passed down from generation to generation. They sing with ancient, full voices. Their melodies are the color of wisdom.


Monday. July 6,2009.

Optimism about the Life Orientation Camp

The Life Orientation Camp is going to be a great success. The learners who came on Monday (about forty of them) are all exceptional. Every one of them seems engaged and excited to be there. Some of them are shyer than others, of course, but I haven’t spotted any true duds among the whole group. There is no one who seems cynical or “too cool for school.” Everyone is happy to be present.

The learners attending the camp are all from grade 10 or 11. We meet at a beautiful outdoor community center just near the ocean. Monday was the first day of the camp, and on that day the job of leader and master of ceremonies fell onto my shoulders. We had everyone introduce themselves and tell each other why they liked themselves. We played some ice-breaker games, and in the second part of the day we did some fun and colorful team-building exercises. (Balloons and flags are simple things, but I think just by adding color to an activity they help to open up the senses and the mind.) I led a discussion with all the campers about respect, team work, and trust. And the talk wasn’t just fluffy “roses and ponies” feel-good stuff: the learners took the topic seriously, and really contributed their thoughts. They are a bright group, and we have a good week ahead of us.



Tuesday. July 7. 2009.

Sickness

Saturday I arrived at the rural homestay in a sick condition. That was the night of fireworks. The next day I went to church and napped a little in the afternoon, and I felt like I was recovering. Monday was the first day of the camp, which verged on becoming the Chase Kimball Show, since I was in charge of MC’ing the whole day, explaining some of the activities, and guiding the afternoon discussion. I was super high energy the entire morning, which was fun and exhilarating, but in the afternoon I realized how wiped out I was. That night I started feeling sick again—not quite vomitrociously sick, but bubbly and uncomfortable sick. I didn’t touch my dinner and went to bed early, around 7:30 PM. The next morning I felt better, but tried to take it easy. By lunch time I felt like I had an appetite again, and ate the semp and beans that was served at camp. Boy was that a mistake.

I was still feeling fine until night began to fall, and I noticed increased pressure and bloating in my gut. It got to be somewhat painful. Before dinner I joined the family for a brief “family home evening,” where everyone came together to sing some songs, pray, and have a scripture reading, but by the end I could hardly move because the pressure was so extreme. I hobbled over to my bed, but the pressure showed no signs of subsiding. Gas wasn’t coming out from either end of me, so the pressure just kept building. I was writhing in my bed and after a while started thinking morbid thoughts, like what would happen if the pressure built up so much that my stomach just exploded...it would happen all in an instant and who knows what kind of damage it would do to the rest of my organs...I could be dead out here in this rural middle-of-nowhere before they ever got me to a hospital. (In retrospect I am sure my body was nowhere remotely close to this kind of danger.)

Encircled by this cloud of darkness I stumbled slowly and painfully down the hillside to the outhouse, hoping there to find some relief, but relief did not come. And so I journeyed back up the hill, but by now I could hardly move. With every step the pressure would seize me and I would stop. At some point that night I actually swore. “Damn.” It didn’t really do anything, but I felt like I was releasing pressure somehow. Once near the top of the hill I finally looked up from my stooped position, and there were five or so family members, all of them staring at me anxiously. Charles, who laughs at everything, started laughing at me. “Oh hi guys,” I said, “glad you could make it out to the show.” I took a few more steps towards my bedroom, then halted. Everyone leaned in, worried I was about to fall over. Everyone was silent. And then I let out a modest, but life-saving, fart. –and the crowd went wild. Everyone burst out laughing. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! And goodnight!” I swung the door open and keeled over into bed.

Eventually the pressure did go down, and just as I started feeling better Langa, S’du, and Shola came to check in on me. Their smiling, laughing faces were the real medicine I needed (along with some antacid tablets). The worst was over, and quickly fell asleep. Thankfully it would be the last night of sickness for me in the rural area.


Wednesday. July 8, 2009.

Exchange

On this night, my first real night of feeling healthy, Charles and I took our brothers to Evan and Randy’s home to make s’mores with all the rest of our Zulu friends. Ashley and Katie came by to take us all there. We hitched a ride with them on the back of “BIG’s” truck (BIG is the local DJ, and a member of Katie and Ashley’s family). Riding in the open air over a dirt road, with the stars brilliantly above us and the wind wrapping around me, I was in heaven. I was finally healthy and full of energy. When we arrived plenty of people were there already with the fire going. I set about finding some sticks for my brothers Bongani and Siphamandla to use to roast their marshmallows. Everybody loved them! They were an instant hit, and it felt good, after receiving so much from this community, to be able to show them something of ours that they would really enjoy: a classic American treat! We ate and we laughed, I learned the names of some of the stars, and I even learned a traditional Zulu dance. It involves a lot of foot stomping and chanting the words, “Open the door and eat the goat,” in Zulu. It was cultural exchange at its most exciting and tastiest level.



Thursday. July 9, 2009.

Ikwezi

Sometimes I feel at a loss for what to talk about with my host brother, Bongani. It was odd enough for me to be so sick at the beginning of the week, and from that we hardly started our relationship off on normal footing. And we are both quieter people. But I have noticed that no one here minds just taking time to look out over the natural world, and with Bongani I think we have shared some good times together simply in silence taking in the ocean, or considering the night stars.

One afternoon the four of us—Siphamandla, Bongani, Charles, and I—went to the beach and spent who-knows-how-long simply looking out over the water, watching the waves roll in and glide back again, creating new ripples across the water’s surface.

One night I was talking with Bongani about the stars and I learned that the morning star, which I have always noticed, has its own special name in Zulu. It is called “ikwezi.” At least this time of year, ikwezi always shows up just above and to the left of the sun as it is rising, and it is the last star to disappear into the morning light. I like that it has a name. I will never forget that name, nor that star, for it is my favorite of all the stars in this hemisphere.


Friday. July 10, 2009.

Life Orientation Camp Reflection

The Life Orientation Camp is now over, and I feel very pleased with it. Between SIT, UKZN, and the learners here in this area who attended the camp, I think we created something very special. We came away having achieved the goals we sought: we made new friendships, we had fun, we learned about each other’s cultures, we gave the learners a sense of optimism and drive for their future and provided them with some basic tools to channel that drive, and we got people thinking about how to be a good person—about how to work hard and with others.

This was the basic program as it happened: On Day One (the day my team led) we focused on get-to-know you games and team-building exercises. One highlight for me was a quick game about status in which everyone received a card from a deck and had to hold it face-out on their forehead. Then people walked around and greeted each other according to their “status”—people showed deep respect to “kings” and “queens” and “aces”, contempt and loathing to “twos” and “threes”, and indifference to the people in the middle. The catch is that no one knew what their own card was, but had to guess it based on how others treated them. The game is a very simple exercise, but it goes a long way towards getting people to think about status, and why people treat each other the way they do. A good conversation followed the game.

Day Two was sports day, and while I wasn’t feeling too healthy that day I still had a lovely time watching everyone fool around with soccer and rugby. The highlight was standing beneath the lodge while everyone else was upstairs doing aerobics: with every step the floorboards dipped down by inches...I’m sure that one day took at least 10 years off the life of the structure!

Day Three was leadership day. We played fun games of all sorts and managed to tie them into leadership eventually in our discussions. In one small group conversation we had to discuss questions like what it means to be a good leader, and who are some examples of good leaders. My group came up with some standard examples, like Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, and Hector Peterson (who was not a leader per se but nonetheless became an important icon of the Soweto uprising), and there was another person I hadn’t heard of before named Zola. Apparently Zola used to be a gangster, and then he changed his life around and now hosts a television show where he helps people in desperate circumstances get assistance. On Thursday I actually watched an episode where Zola helps a homeless woman who is pregnant and can’t take care of the child get the assistance she needs, including temporary housing and foster care services. The show is structured almost exactly like “Pimp My Ride” except replacing old SUV’s with the sick and destitute.

Day Four was “controversy” day, where we discussed and debated a range of relevant issues, from the effect of the media on the youth to the spread of HIV/AIDS to gender equality to the debate about whether Zulu traditions were outmoded. It was exciting to see learners voice their opinions. We would set up a forum for debate where each team was assigned a side of an argument and had to argue for that side as best they could. Everyone was actively engaged. The highlight—and this may be the highlight of my entire week at the camp—was watching my team argue why it was better to live in a rural area than an urban area. By the time this debate topic came up they had already been debating for a while, and you could see how it had brought the team closer together. They are all physically connected to each other—some were kneeling on the grass and some were standing, leaning on each other. One boy had his arms resting on the shoulders of the boy in front of him. They were connected and unified. As it happened they were also all wearing colorful t-shirts, and the afternoon sun was hitting them from the side, illuminating the edges of their faces. They were all smiling and full of energy, determined to beat the other team by proving how good it was to live in the rural area. We live independently. We can take care of ourselves and hardly have to buy things from others. We raise our own food and drink water from the stream. Our home is beautiful, a tapestry of green trees and purple-white sugar cane and a bright blue Indian Ocean. I looked into their faces, and I could tell they meant it. They were proud of where they came from.

Day Five incorporated the matric students, and together we had them do more team building exercises and in the second half of the day gave them training in study skills and career planning. As far as I could tell, everyone had a great time. People got a lot out of our structured activities, and also from our informal time together. Throughout the week my favorite part of each day was often during lunch when I could sit with the learners and talk about their lives or about mine, and build friendships. To my delight I discovered that the grade 10’s were right in the middle of reading Romeo and Juliet in school. Just last year I took part in a production of R&J, playing the part of Friar Lawrence. I love Shakespeare, and I love talking about his works. What a dream it was to sit down with these young students in middle-of-nowhere Zulu-speaking rural Africa and debate with them about whether or not Romeo and Juliet were right to go behind their families’ backs to get married, and whether it was the Friar’s place to get involved with the deception. The students will finish the play after the break, and no one I spoke with knows how it ends... I wish I could heat their reflections once they get to the conclusion.

At the end of the camp, the campers left with newfound energy and enthusiasm, a vision for their future, and skills with which to get there. And along the way we made many friendships. The camp was a success.



Friday. July 10, 2009.

Umlilo Means Fire

I love learning languages. It is especially rewarding to learn a language like Zulu, because no one expects you to learn it, and if people hear you speaking just a little bit they get very excited. (Though my experience would be very different if I were black. For example a woman I met from Sierra Leone is studying in Durban. She is a black African, but because she can’t speak Zulu she gets ostracized. If you’re black and living in the province of KwaZulu-Natal you’re expected to know Zulu, and as a result this woman has no black friends here.) But for someone like me to speak a little Zulu is unexpected and exciting. One day while walking back home I talked with one of the neighboring families. To them I must have seemed like a small child, because all I could do was mimic the sounds they were making and try to write down the words they said so I could look them up later. I felt like a one-and-a-half year old again, but I believe picking up a language is a simple way to earn peoples’ affection.

Most of the members of my family do not speak English. My mama, whom I love for her big smile and laugh, doesn’t speak a word. Our most extensive conversation was the day I came home and she was busy burning some rubbish. “Umlilo!” I said, which means fire. I had just learned the word. She smiled and laughed. “Yebo, umlilo!” Then I quickly flipped through the flipbook I’ve been making for myself and put together this sentence: “Ubashani?” which means (more or less) “What are you burning?” “Epaypa!” She said, which is a cognate for “paper”. “Wonderful!” I said. And she smiled and laughed, and I smiled and laughed, and we both grew a little closer.


Sunday. July 12, 2009.

Scorpion

Our “safari” through the game park was relatively uneventful. We did see some rhinos, and some zebras, and a lot of buffalo, but nothing else special. Still I had a good time, and it was nice to drive around the beautiful scenery and reflect, and the animals I did see I have never seen before in the wild.

The most memorable animal I saw today was a scorpion. The little fellow was crawling on the logs in the fire pit as we held our debriefing session, and once he had crawled up one limb of a log and tried to turn around he discovered that the fire had grown, and there was now no way off the log except through fire. It was an odd experience, watching this beast which I had never seen before but instinctively feared from its menacing look and everything I had hear about it, trapped with nowhere to go. It was hard to think of the scorpion as anything but an enemy, so I watched him suffer there in captivity as the flames slowly rose to meet him with a kind of perverse indifference.

When the flames got too high he eventually fell from his branch and on to cold soil. (If only he had had the faith to jump down to safety in the first place—he would have been jumping into the unknown but would have suffered hardly at all compared to the flames and heat he had to endure). He crawled away from the fire, and while all of us jumped up and considered throwing him back into the fire, one level-headed Australian scooped up the injured scorpion in between a pair of Uno cards and tossed him back into the bush.


Sunday. July 12, 2009.

What did I learn?

In our very last debriefing, sitting around the nighttime fire, surrounded by the bush, we were asked a final question: What did you learn? Of course I learned many things, but out of all of them the response I gave that night by the fire distilled down into two points.

My mind has opened to the idea of civil society. I have known about NGO’s, and grassroots organizations for a long time, but I have never had as much firsthand experience, or constantly been exposed to so many people working in civil society as I have here in South Africa. Civil society is an integral part of the South African system—maybe more so than any other place I have travelled to—and without grassroots community work and political involvement the country simply would not be able to function. South Africa stands in sharp contrast to China, where I was studying immediately before I came to Africa. In China civil society is as nonexistent as democracy. In place of true political enfranchisement China engages its citizens by offering them the chance for prosperity. Economic growth and the bottom line are what’s important, and anything might be sacrificed in order to achieve it. But in South Africa things are different, and often the cause of equity takes precedence over the cause of efficiency. The question I am left with as I return to my own country is this: How can I speak convincingly to those with power (and money) on behalf of causes like education and other social goods? How can I help to build consensus around important issues, even when the issues don’t necessarily benefit a powerful man’s pocketbook?

The second lesson I have learned from this experience is more personal. Put simply, before this program I have had the idea that I would like to be an educator, and now that I have had my first formal experience studying education I have not been dissuaded. I still want to be an educator some day. This program has opened my eyes to many of the challenges that confront learners and educators, but I am not discouraged. Quite the contrary, my vision of becoming an educator has come into even greater clarity while being on this program.