Ten points if you know who the funny little man is without looking!; UCT loves Obama just as much as any other college campus. When I first got here, I was surprised to see his image plastered all over the campus' surrounding neighborhoods, including on the bottom of this garbage can
My dear fans! How dedicated of you to persist in checking this blog, even though I have recently been lax in updating it. Consider last week’s lack of entry not as a lull in the cyber-sense, but a swell in the amount of time and effort I have had to digest more and more of my African experience. My previous proclamation to learn through osmosis is no longer effective, not in life and not in the awesome African dance class I’ve started taking. I know what you’re thinking… Christina’s doing yet another activity, what else is new… but it’s an incredible way to learn about African culture, and as Mother Cape Town is not the friendliest and most welcoming of places, sometimes, you’ve got to get creative! I haven’t taken African dance since I was a tiny girl, but it only took one class with the ebullient but strict instructor to remember how fun, difficult, and liberating it is to throw yourself into something fully, mind, body, and soul. It’s my Cape Town experience in the nutshell exemplum of a studio, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and a barre.
As an Urban Studies major living in the crucible of Philadelphia, I often found myself holding my head and rubbing my temples as I confronted an inescapable lesson plan of my own creation. I would wake up; look over whatever dense and often depressing reading being discussed in class that day; walk out the door; get yelled at by an angry and rightfully-disillusioned West Philadelphian; feel guilty about my life’s privilege as I walked to class; participate in stimulating class discussion; feel grateful yet woefully responsible for the privilege I have been afforded; go to the after-school program; play with the kids who are at once adorable and exhausting; mentally tussle with the school system and neighborhood itself; go home; make myself dinner; and settle in with some more dense and disheartening reading. For me, it’s not an easy thing to escape, this thing called mindfulness. My studies are often unalienable from my surroundings, and because of it, I am constantly in examination. I can barely remember the time just before I entered college when inequality was an intriguing subject I could readily separate from my line of sight and confine to the theoretical boundaries of a book. Well, better to say I could barely remember; I recall all to clearly now what it’s like, what it means, to be blissful in ignorance. Coming to Africa has been a return to my roots. Not in the slavery, ancestral sense: In all honesty, I feel no visceral connection to this land or these people, and personally, I think that’s okay. My time here, in class, on the street, in my dorm, with my friends, reminds me of what first got me interested in social issues, in culture, in nations, and in human life.
The easy thing to do while I am studying abroad in South Africa would be to not think about what I am seeing and experiencing, to be a tourist. I see it happening around me far too much, and it reminds me of how far I’ve come personally, and how far I have to go. I could very well stick to the Americans with whom I feel comfortable, go out to bars every night, take lots of glamorous pictures of myself, not speak in class, or even listen, and take all my classes pass/fail. I could watch without looking, hear without listening. That’d be easy. But having chosen to be an Urban Studies major, I have chosen to constantly grapple with big questions, and it’s hard. While there are a million-and-one things to be considered and weighed and questioned and debated in South Africa, the thing I have found myself constantly evaluating is my position and role here. Race is no longer something I feel is an adequate way to “compartmentalize” someone, if you must. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been called everything from Coloured to Spanish to White, which I initially took a ludicrous assessment but since have probed with more mindfulness of the South African socio-economic-racial-historical complex. The most fair thing to say about me is that I’m 100% American, and to a whole lot of South Africans, that ain’t good. I hate that people automatically assess me in light of our presidents’ policies and our national history before even asking what I think about anything. Every time I hear some nasty comment, I’m tempted to strike back with some South African apartheid stereotype, to give them a taste of their own medicine. I’m sure they wouldn’t like it. But as a good diplomat, I don’t, and therefore am forced to turn my anguish inward, to be mulled over again and again. It’s not easy to ask oneself big questions, to think critically about yourself, who you are, and where you come from, to actually think about what one is hearing and seeing instead of taking it as a “South African moment” and letting it roll off the back, but I truly believe that the reward for my mental initiative will be great. (If anything, it provides you folks with lots of blog fodder with which to distract yourself, procrastinate, yada yada.)
While I thoroughly disagree with a lot of what I’m hearing about the United States in random comments, in class, wherever, I do have to say that being in Africa and studying the history of its nations’ struggles for liberation is extremely enlightening, especially in considering the state of political discourse in my own country. Let’s just say that studying the liberation struggles of South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe (the history of which from 1980 you should look into, if you haven’t already, fascinating and tragic, tragic stuff) has an interesting effect when on me when I’ve then turned to read the New York Times and catch up on the latest election news. It leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, because, in my opinion, it’s kind of immature. I’ve kind of buried the lead, here, but on Monday, I had the absolute honor of attending a debate on UCT’s campus featuring some of Africa’s most important and consequential freedom fighters, including… get ready for it… Archibishop Desmond Tutu. Already having been sick for the entirety of the previous week and thus missing a week of classes (it sucked.), I decided to ditch class again to make sure I got a good seat, and ended up sitting in the middle of the front row, about five feet away from the bravest people I will ever encounter in my life. The lecture was an offshoot of the book Speak Truth to Power, a compilation of interviews with the world’s most courageous human rights defenders done by Kerry Kennedy. (American. Yes, our Kennedy family. It did take me a while to figure out that she was one of them, over here in Africa doing something wonderful; I thought for a second that South Africa might have its own Kennedys.) The debate was more of a series of speakers who told their stories in order to articulate to us, the young people, the importance of not taking for granted the freedoms we have, and to exhort young South Africans to remember and honor what was so tirelessly fought for in their country. (Funny—I’d say about a 1/3 of the people in the room were Americans, from my program.) These men had been jailed, exiled, beaten, tortured for what they believed in, an Africa in which black Africans would finally realize their potential, when the last would finally be first.
I cannot possibly do justice to these men’s messages and stories by recounting them here, so I won’t try. It was not so much their rhetoric that moved me as did the power of their spirits, which seemed to surge through the lecture hall. I could not help but stare at one man, a Kenyan named Koegi who discussed the ethno-political tensions now surging through his country, as well as his countless near-death experiences. (Well, not countless… Kennedy compelled the crowd to laughter when she explained that he had the highest number in Amnesty International history of near-death alerts.) My real fascination, however, was with the wisdom and bravery that was etched in lines on his face, that had literally created a film over his eyes. There is nothing that this man has not seen, but in the face of peril, he has exhibited superhuman courage for something that is larger than himself. In varying ways, in the stature of the men seated beside him, from the paunchy, white, defiant rebel to the white-tufted grandpapa of Archibishop Tutu himself, communicated the strongest political message I’ve ever heard, simply because through resilience of spirit and immutable hope, they were there that day to tell us their stories in a nation that’s quite a few steps closer to the one of their dreams.
The overall message of the day, one of moral and intellectual strength, and willingness to rise above smallness and pettiness with faith in what is best about mankind, one of hope as a constant driving force, was a most compelling political statement. These men were undoubtedly among the strongest and most influential the world has ever known, yet it is their character that arms them, and the integrity of their beliefs that makes them so strong. As I walked out of the hall, however, I couldn’t help but wonder how this kind of message would have been received had it been delivered from the mouth of an American politician in my own country. Immediately I thought of how “spin” (or a “lack thereof”) would destroy this message, characterize it as weak and implausible, dangerous, even. “What would the pundits say?” I thought. Again, the bad taste crept up my throat. How small-minded people can be. I then stopped myself and shut down my American lens. I didn’t want to dilute the power of the message I’d just heard. I was successful; I heard the message again with stirring clarity today as I toured Robben Island, the island on which thousands of political prisoners were kept by the apartheid government. Again, the uncomfortable juxtaposition of Africa's inherent beauty and imposed ugly history came crashing down like the waves against this gorgeous paradise-prison, but what was outstanding was the island's present existence as a testament to the strength of the human spirit.
While I think that messy, disorganized African politics, at its roots, is an expression of that which is most important in this world, and a conscious effort to right what is wrong, I am therefore disappointed to hear from South Africans that they’re much more interested in American politics, because in this world, it’s what matters. One of the most important things I’m learning here is that life should not be about the small, but about the large, and the pettiness of American political discourse, which is basically built in to our system, is what often dominates. I refuse to think that hope is a sign of the weak, because being here reminds me, as it should everyone, that it is the only thing that the truly strong have in common.
Sitting in my room, re-reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (a book I tackled as an idealistic freshman and which I credit for having put me on the path to URBS), contending with each bit of class material I study, I am forced to remember that what lies outside my window, this present-day Africa, is a direct result of the ideas that I am studying, the persistence of people who, at one point, were just like me, doing exactly as I am. Being here makes me want to study. We all know I was already a nerd before I got here, but engrossing myself in these revolutionary and truly important thoughts, challenging my life and the liberties that were also hard-won in the States, thinking about what exactly is the reality of my time here, in this so-similar yet so-dissimilar context, is something of which I cannot get enough. It’s at this point that I’m glad that I have the mind that never slows down and worries too much, because it only makes for a mind that understands more, and understands more about what’s really important.
*Obviously, my overly cerebral and emotional response to being in the presence of true courage didn’t stop me from being an exploitative tourist and getting a picture with Desmond Tutu. Isn’t he adorable!!??
I miss you all! Thank you for your continued love and support… and missives. I love mail, so keep the digital communication coming!
Hleka (had my first Xhosa tests, and it was no joke),
Christina
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