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