Anna enjoying final weeks/reflecting on harsh realities

It’s now the second week in April, meaning our time in Cape Town is rapidly coming to a close.  As sad as I am to know we’re leaving so soon, our impending departure has provided motivation to go out and make the best of the time we have left.  For me this has meant leaving Mowbray to experience a little bit more of the areas around us.

Last weekend a group of us decided to take the train to Simon’s Town to see Seal Island.  Seal Island is essentially a small rocky island completely covered with seals.  It has been featured on Shark Week on the Discovery Channel and on the series Planet Earth, mainly because it also functions as a feeding ground for great white sharks.  When we first got to the dock, none of us really knew what to expect.  Soon we were ushered in to a tiny boat, really more of a life raft, and given rain coats.  We took off towards the island, spray in our faces, with the beautiful coastline and mountainsides disappearing behind us.  After about a fifteen minute boat ride, which really felt more like a rollercoaster, we were approaching Seal Island.  No more than two minutes after we arrived alongside the island, a twelve foot great white shark leapt out of the water no more than five feet away from us to attack a piece of seaweed it thought was a seal.  The entire experience was incredible.

The next day some of us decided to start off the morning at the Neighbourgoods Market in the Old Biscuit Mill not too far away.  The market is full of local traders, farmers and food vendors selling delicious and relatively cheap meals and goods.  It is definitely a bit of a sensory overload but the food is so fresh and delicious that I always leave stuffed.  After breakfast/lunch, Brenna, Leanne, Tom, and I went to a soccer tournament our friend Bongi’s teams were playing in.  The teams recently received a ton of slightly used cleats from Tom’s hometown, and I was awed to see their amazing foot skills on the field.  Unfortunately the difference in racial classification and economic status of the different soccer teams participating in the tournament was still glaringly obvious.  To some extent activities like soccer can provide somewhat of an equalizer, but there will always be teams with better equipment, more support, and more resources for transportation or even halftime orange slices.  Bongi’s dedication to coaching the teams is beyond inspiring, I just wish there was more I could do besides provide an audience and the occasional donation.

So the beat goes on.  Life in Cape Town continues to exist in two irreconcilable worlds for me – the incredible experiences we are privileged enough to be able to afford and enjoy, and the realities of poverty and marginalization we experience at our internships and inside of local communities.  

Anna on her activist project

Leanne, Brenna and I have spent the last few weeks at the Girl Child Movement in Rondebosch, creating a workshop focusing on menstruation and the environment as a part of our activist project.  The Girl Child Movement is an organization that brings school aged girls from the townships together to discuss issues they face as women around health, sexuality, sexism, substance abuse, and to just have a safe space of their own that encourages empowerment and self confidence.  If you want to know more about the issues we discussed in our workshop, read Leanne’s lovely blog post not too far below this one.

We held our workshop last weekend, which is the main reason I’m writing about the GCM now.  Facilitation is always an experience, and we didn’t really know what to expect with this day, but overall it was positive.  The girls were divided into primary school and high school groups, and were attending another workshop in the morning that we were all able to sit in on and observe, which made me feel more at ease.  At my internship I’ve seen a lot of the planning stages that go into creating workshops and implementing peer education programs, so getting to see what the actual product can look like was pretty interesting.

Soon enough it was time for our presentation, which was a bit more educational and informational as opposed to the morning’s brainstorming session, which was a bit difficult.  We tried to include a lot of energizing activities, but there were still some points where I could see the girls drifting off.  I could feel an intense disconnect during some parts of the workshop – since none of us come from their communities it was really difficult for us to address issues we think might affect their communities surrounding menstruation and environmental issues.  There were times when I thought to myself, we have no idea where these girls are coming from right now.  I have a hard time with this, because I feel like the best person to address a community on issues of discrimination or sexism or violence against women is a person from within that community.  I can’t even understand Xhosa for them, let alone speak it. 

The workshop picked up later, though, when we started discussing alternative options for sanitary products such as pads or tampons.  One of the alternatives we discussed is a menstrual cup, a small silicone cup that can be inserted like a tampon, and then washed and reused.  This was definitely a revolutionary idea for most of the girls, which I completely understand because I remember my own reaction when I first heard about this option.  However they seemed to open up to the idea and we were even able to give one away for one of the girls to try and take home to show her community.

                 

Overall, I’m not sure how much of an impact we made with our workshop.  I would like to think that the girls absorbed all of the information and are thinking of ways to bring it back to their communities.  Like most experiences I have here in Cape Town I think it probably affected me much more than it did them.  I’m glad we were able to see the GCM in action, and participate to some extent.  Listening to the girls of all ages talk about why they like being a part of the movement, and how it has made them feel more empowered was one of the most positive parts of the day.

Anna's extravaganza of new experiences

This past weekend was a much-needed extravaganza of new experiences.  As much as I love Cape Town, we've hit that part of the trip where I'm starting to fall into a routine.  Internship - class - activist project - weekend - repeat.  Honestly, I was starting to feel a bit restless.  Getting a glimpse into the subcultures existing right under my nose in this amazing city was just what I needed to spark things up a bit.

On Saturday we went to Sea Point to watch/participate in the Gay Pride Parade.  I've never been to a gay pride parade before, and after this experience I can't wait to find another.  There is such a spirit of love, and acceptance, and celebration in the air.  Celebration of identity, of standing up against discrimination and demanding to be heard.  The attitude was contagious - I don't think I stopped smiling the entire time I was there.

Saturday night we came back into town to go to a hip-hop dance show that Vernon's son was a part of.  The dancers were all relatively young, some more so than others, and so incredibly talented.  I was awed by their routines, but as I was listening to adolescent boys rapping about their lives in Mitchell's Plain, a large township in the area. I also felt the reality of what some of their lives might be like.  My internship has kept me fairly removed from some of the realities of South Africa in that I don't go into the townships every day, and see the extreme lack of basic services, and social problems that so much of the population lives with as a result of apartheid. 

 Sunday had me thinking even more about the realities of townships, as we met up with some of the people we met at the human rights weekend at a place called Mzoli's.  Mzoli's is an outdoor braai (barbeque) in Gugulethu, another township, where you choose and buy the meat you want and they cook it for you.  It essentially becomes a giant outdoor daylong party.  Like so many of the things we experience here, going Mzoli's has some complex implications as well.  It is largely known as a tourist spot now, and the conspicuousness of my white skin and accent were not lost on me.  I know some people in the area are probably resentful of the crowd at Mzoli's, and in some ways I was uncomfortable as well.  Isn't it nice for us to come in and experience township life for a few hours, before returning home to our gated houses.  I don't ever want to be perceived as making a novelty out of a cruel reality.  These moments of discomfort are a part of our awareness of the social situation in South Africa, and I'm sure there is some wisdom out there about how I am really growing from all of these situations, but they are also sad and challenging and hard, and that's something about being here I think I will never get used to.

Anna coming back to the idea that she's only a partially developed learner

Anna preparing to present as part of her group project

Last weekend our group got back on our giant tour bus and travelled about an hour outside of the city to participate in our Human Rights Training Weekend.  The weekend was held by an organization called Africa Unite, where two of us are interning, that focuses on issues of xenophobic violence in South Africa.  There were about twenty five South Africans in addition to the twenty three of us, so not only was this the first time I had really learned anything about refugee/migrant rights, but also the first time I’ve actually gotten to interact with a large group of South Africans outside of internships.  Although the workshops were informative, I felt the mixing of cultures was where the true spirit of the weekend lived for me.  There was this moment on the first morning, when we were all sitting around waiting to begin our first workshop, with no idea of what was to come.  Suddenly I heard a beautiful and powerful voice singing over the chatter of the group.  One of the South African women, Amanda, who we have met before at our various community dinners, had begun a song out of the blue.  Even more amazing was that almost immediately four or five other South Africans joined in, and before I knew it the noise of a restless room had been transformed into song and dance.  At the end everyone was settled, and we started the workshop.  This happened several times throughout the weekend, and at the end of the week we were singing along with everyone and learning dances ourselves.

 The mixing of cultures became apparent in other ways throughout the weekend as well.  In the beginning, we were divided up into countries, and told that we would need to present our plea for money from the UN at the end of the weekend.  At this point in my life, I’ve done enough group projects in school to have a basic idea of how these interactions play out.  Interacting within our countries, however, with people from such different backgrounds and cultures from me, made me start to question how much of what I think I know is based on how I’ve learned to interact with people who are like me.  Once again I’m coming back to the idea that I’m only a partially developed learner- that by only learning with mostly people from my race, and mostly my socioeconomic status, my skills are only half there.  I’m continuing to see how the ways white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism shape a society hurt everyone living within it.

Anna's making connections and asking questions

Since we've been here, I feel like I've had countless conversations with my housemates about how incredibly obvious the influences of poverty, racism, sexism, and just about any other ism you could imagine are in this country.  We have become accustomed to avoiding the people begging for money on the streets, ignoring the catcalls we receive and the sexist t-shirts we see, and struggling to understand the intense poverty we see in the townships and through our internships.  In the beginning, I felt that things must just be much worse here, and that we should learn from our experiences to deal with these problems on a lesser scale in the U.S..  The more I think about it, however, the less sure I am that things are just as bad back at home, we've just been sheltered from the poverty, or it has become so normalized that we are no longer shocked by what we see in our own country every day.  After all, when was the last time I traveled to a poor area to look at how the residents live, or joined one of their church services?  In the semester before I came here, I had my eyes opened to a number of issues that hide beneath the surface of our society.  Before a few months ago, I had never considered the possibility of institutionalized racism, or a rape culture, I might not have even realized that racism and sexism are still so present in our society.  If I could have gone my whole life without realizing the extent of these issues, what else is hiding below my line of vision that affects people in the U.S. every day?  The state of affairs in South Africa may be far from desirable, but I suspect they're not quite as foreign as we would like to believe.

Anna already building confidence, skills and knowledge

    Another week has gone by, and now internships have started!  I’m working at the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women, or WCNOVAW if you’re into long acronyms.  I was really nervous before we started, and the first day was pretty slow, but now things are picking up, and I am absolutely loving it.

                

The Network is gearing up to start the second year of their social mobilisation project, a series of workshops put on by trained members of various organizations in an effort to reach out to the community.  The main focus of the workshops is spreading the message that violence against women is never acceptable, because it has become such a widespread problem here that many do not even realize they are experiencing abuse- it is just considered a part of marriage.

                

My job is to conduct phone interviews with past participants and organizers, and assemble profiles of their experiences.  I’m very conscious of my accent, so I was nervous in the beginning that people would not be able to understand me over the phone, but the personal stories and experiences of those I’m interviewing are so alternately heart-wrenching and uplifting that I am left speechless.  One minute I will feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach- such as when my supervisor explained that there is a lot of success with female condoms in some areas, because the likelihood of being raped is so high that women wear them when they leave the house to at least avoid contracting HIV or another STD.  The next, however, someone I’m interviewing will tell me of how abused women in their community are becoming empowered, and creating their own community organizations around violence against women prevention.  In a society where many choose not to acknowledge such apparent violence, this provides a source of hope.

                

My time here is emotionally trying, but I can already feel myself building confidence, skills and knowledge for when I return to the U.S., and need to start to look for another internship, or a job.  I’m excited to learn as much as I can, and to be helpful to those I work with who are really doing the work I feel so passionately about.

Tom, Anna, & Brenna

Anna striving to balance the juxtapositions of beauty and hardship

It's hard to believe we've only been in Cape Town for ten days.  Orientation has flown by, but I feel like I've been here for months.  The city is absolutely amazing - Table Mountain provides the background to a hectic mix of people and minibus taxis that somehow still leave me with a sense of calm.

           

Not far from the beautiful sights of Cape Town, however, are constant reminders of the poverty and hardship so many of South Africa's people face.  There are red ribbons everywhere, reminding passersby of the high rates of HIV and AIDS that seem to impact almost everyone.  In the townships there are rows of informal housing, constructed from cheaply bought or discovered materials, lacking plumbing or electricity.  The formal housing still leaves much to be desired.  Sometimes it all seems to be too much to fix - even as we visit the sites of our internships, I can't help but think of the thousands who won't be known by any of them.  Meanwhile, I'm concerned with the inconvenience of not being able to walk around freely after dark, or our lack of internet connection.  Even being here and witnessing it all, I still feel somewhat sheltered within the bubble of our gated home in a relatively safe community.  At the end of the day, I get to come home to a house with food, clean water, and a toilet I can safely use throughout the night.

Internships start Monday, and I'm sure my perspective will change even more when we leave the tour bus behind.  Until then, I'll just have to figure out how to balance my experiences with the juxtapositions of beauty and hardship in Cape Town.

Anna's anticipation has overcome her concerns

I've definitely been having some difficulty writing this first blog entry, because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that in nine weeks I'm leaving to spend four months in South Africa.  Finally, after a few weeks of obsessing over details, looking at pictures from last year, and thinking about all of the awesome fun activities and experiences I'm going to have, I'm beyond excited.  I know it won't feel real until we step off the plane, or maybe even after, but anticipation has finally overcome my nerves and I can't wait to experience it all.  I'm still nervous about leaving my boyfriend, friends and family so far behind, and a little bit about the eighteen hour flight.. but I can't wait to bungee jump again, climb the mountains, get to know the people I'll be spending my time with, and have an amazing internship all on a completely different continent.  I know this trip will completely change my perspective on the world, I can't wait until we're actually there and this all becomes a reality.