Living Within the Divide

I have been given the gift of a glimpse of the South African reality. Of course I can only glean it to the degree that any of us can understand culture, complexity, nuances and foreign land. I am, however, not visiting, I am not watching some politicized, propogandized version of South Africa, I am here, living, learning, growning, listening to the voices of its children. I am sitting within narrative, listening, understanding what I can.

I've just returned from two weeks of living in the Black Town Ship of Khayelitsha, in a small place called Harrare. When we would tell Cape Tonians, (mostly non-Black) that we were soon moving to live in Khayelitsha, their faces would fill with incedulous horror. The Black Town Ships are only a few miles outside of Cape Town but they are purposely eons away, the dividing line between included and discluded, have and have not, access and non, the savagery of poverty and deeply imbedded racism. Coming over the N2 (the freeway) I felt sick to my stomach as we passed into sanatized and europeanized Cape Town, I felt the tug of my family left behind.

This morning I cried, I cried leaving my Khayelitsha family, who treated me exactly as their own daughter. My Khayelitsha family are all community activists and advocates and I was fortunate to work side by side with them, learning a bit about their community as I did. Even as I write these words are difficult to speak. I will not return the same person as I left, though I am still here and it is still unclear how I have changed.

The Truth and Reconcilation Commissioners (YES, we attended at special two week session just for us at the University of Cape Town and THREE Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners graced us with their presence, knowledge and enlightenment) seemed to agree there is a large degree of importance on narrative. Individuals have their narrative, families have their narrative, communities have narratives and whole countries, have narratives, stories that are true, if not factually, then emotionally, or polticially. How we tell these narratives, how we relate to these narratives, how we live these narratives says so much.

South Africa has a narrative and by climbing her mountains, scrambling over the rocks of her shores, exploring her caves, engaging with her intellectuals, I'm coming to know her and she is strangely, intoxicatingly, profoundly beautiful and is ever changing.

Scored some pics, let's just send a shout out to my SA sidekick and homegirl CECILIA SAENZ for the photo love!!! Photos are of a little preview of all of my adventures here, searching for 3500 year old cave paintings of the Saans people ( I am in the cradle of civilations after all), some views of Cape Town, some pics from my Safari, the Language Monument and some other goodies. Hope you enjoy, more to come!

Living South Africa

So I have no pictures, boo! I somehow lost my charger and cannot upload or take photos. I'm hoping to change that, but in the meantime, no photo ops. However, I can say, politics is on the tips of the tongues of everyone I meet. It hangs in the silences between sentences, it is on the streets, in the water, in the mist that hangs over Table Mountain (which I climbed,35oo feet, thank you very much) it is South Africa. I see a population disillusioned. So much hope was stirred with the ending of Apartheid, Black hope. But as with all transitions, true change has to start on the street. People have to feel it at the deepest levels of their existence. That has yet to happen. Their has been idealogical change. South Africa is a Democracy. But it is also still a heavily racist and stratified society, bound by the history of aprtheid. The change has yet to hit the everyman. We are awaiting the redistribution of wealth, the educational promises-, the paradise that was post Aparthied South Africa. South Africa is beautiful, colorful, full of diversity and promise, but is not paradise in the least. However the hope lies in the fact that they have opened their history (the Truth and Reconcillation Committee), admitted their wrongdoings and are moving towards a more just society. More than America can say. It is much like Israel Palestine, a people subjugated and oppressed in their own land. Change, however, takes time, takes sometimes more than the people can bear at the moment. In the last we have wrestled with the questions, what is truth, what is reconcilation, can they be obtained? All I know is that they have tried and so much is communicated in the tyring. I am Happy that South Africa has tried.

Africa is EVERYTHING!

-Rukiya

Sun Rises Over Africa

I watched the sun rise over Dakar and set in Cape Town. I am in Africa!!! Cape Town's beauty is unimaginable, its complexity unspeakable. Shocking as it may sound I have gone almost silent. From the airport I passed acres of shanty shacks held together by little more than tin cans (literally) and ascended through the city to gated colonial homes and trendy shops. Immediately I felt the weight, the anger, the shame of Apartheid oppression and its not even my home. What does post South Africa look like? I don't think I can say yet. I see the segregation and tentative relationships across cultural lines and it reminds me of 60's era U.S. I also see beauty, and this strange sense of accomplishment and hope, a newness, a sense of rebirth. However, I can't truly say what it is that I am seeing. I have not been inside this place long enough to see if these initial perspectives are accurate, if they are my own American lens. It could be that there may be much I can't see because of where I come from. Hence the silence, I will see what I can. I can say with definite certainty that I am have an experience unlike that of my group. What I feel here is heavy, pulling, speaking to me so that I cannot yet speak.

These first few days of this learning experience have been about framing the history of colonialism, South Africa and Apartheid. We have already perused downtown, traveled by Kombi (a van like Taxi run by Black South Africans) all the way to the Black Townships and visited the water side tourist spots. This initial part of the journey is the "White South African" experience. We are living in a beautiful bed and breakfast in a pristine White neighborhood, guarded by gates, alarms and patrolmen. Soon we will go to live with our families in the Black Town Ships and experience another South Africa all together.

Black or White, South Africa is fecund and vital. Something has happened here, something is happening, something will happen. I could not be more grateful to be here.

LOVE!

Forgot the USB cord so no pics this time :-( But promise to post some from here on out.

Bon Voyage!!

The time is upon me and I'm strangely calm. Of course I've been running around, preparing, trying to read up to understand this phenomena called the Truth and Reconcillation comission but I am ridiculously unanxious. Okay that's not quite true, I do have to admit to quite a few travel anxiety dreams...I arrive and everything I've packed is totally wrong. I am, I think, ready for this. This trip coming together has been miracle upon miracle...I have no other way to describe it except that I'm loved and supported by an amazing community of brilliant people who inspire and propel me.

We had a party, so many people could not make it, but we had tons of fun with those who did and I definitely got a good send off. It's real, I'm going, stay tuned...next post, South Africa!

Cry Freedom

Watched Cry Freedom again yesterday. I had not seen it since I was a child and its relevance to my trip hit me right in the heart. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Cry Freedom is a true story about Bantu Stephen Biko (played by hot, hot Denzel Washington) who was a South African organizer and activist who espoused Black Consciousness as a method for combating apartheid. For his political activities he was tapped, followed, harassed, banned and finally murdered in police custody.

The brutality of such regimes astounds me. How can we, as human beings, dehumanize one another to the level of such ghastly cruelty? Does it happen when we become so dogmatic in our beliefs that we are blinded from seeing anothers very humanity? Where can we even begin to have respect for varying worldviews while prioritizing global COMMUNITY!! Will "scarcity", politics and economics always determine the quality of our relationships?

In the movie Stephen Biko is termed a terrorist, Nelson Mandela was also termed thusly, which makes me question, who are terrorists? Is this term relative? Nebulus? Is it another justifying quanitfier? Was MLK a terrorist? Were the founding fathers terrorists? Who will be our future terrorists?

The Miracle

So it was like three weeks until I was suppose to depart and I had no ticket, I was freaking out. My dream of a South African reality was slipping away. However, I did not let it go. I knew that this is my time to go and not going was not an option. I could not get dishearted and give up. It was then that my miracle ticket came through and I have my friends and family to thank!!! It's official, I'm going to South Africa!!! Still a bit of fundraising to do, but I have ticket in hand and nothing to stop me. It's all coming together. It's a challenge not being a traditional student, but this is my time and I could not be happier!

No Justice No Peace

One of the primary reasons I decided to embark on this particular journey is to delve deeper into self, history and social reality. For me South African history, socio-political reality and struggles, paralell, to some degree, those faced by African Americans. I have some fuzzy ideas about how this may be so, which I plan to further explore in Cape Town. I need to see what restorative justice looks like. How can I import this concept to the U.S.? Can it translate? Is it a universal ideal, or a geographically specific miracle??

I'm suppose to depart in three weeks and still scraping the dimes together, but God willing and the creek don't rise, it will come together, albeit last minute. Well, what's new for me? :-)