X. I Couldn't Be Happier: Kayamandi is following me

So last Friday, when I decided to do a blog, it was because of all the emotions and thoughts I was experiencing right after my tour of Stellenbosch and it's surrounding areas, townships, settlements and communities. Kayamandi was the one that stuck out the most to me. And I loved the fact that its name literally means pleasant home. And I was beyond impressed by the community spirit I observed while visiting there. I was so touched by this experience that I decided to name my blog after it. And I have thought about it extensively in the past few days.

Well today, again Kayamnandi made my day. And I'm excited, proud, and happy to report that it is going to be my home, my pleasant home, one day a week for the next eleven weeks! The fourth and last course of my program is Community Development. It is a service learning course, through which we read theory about development in the 21st century and have occasional lectures about development in South Africa, but for which we also spend one full day every week at a service site working with an NGO, writing weekly reflection journals on our experiences, and putting together a giant research project about our service learning site. We were each assigned to a site in or around Stellenbosch that Jacob (pronounced with a "ya" at the beginning not a "j") decided we were best suited to. He looked at each our our resumes and then interrogated us about things he thought were relevant. Of course, he asked me a lot of questions about Nicaragua and my experiences there, and I don't exactly remember - this was a long time ago - but apparently I must have blabbed about the kids. Because 1) I love them more than I can ever express and love to talk about them with any willing listener; and 2) I was assigned to an NGO in Kayamandi that works with little kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Yes, it is worthy of all those exclamation points and many more.) When I found that out, it literally made my day. I can hardly wait to begin!

Today, after our Development lecture very early this morning, we drove around in vans visiting all of the service sites so that when we discuss them in class with each other, we will have an understanding and be able to contextualize each other's sites. At first I was dreading the long weary day with a busy schedule, but once we got started, I was really glad we had the opportunity to do so. Not only would I have been very confused by some of the sites, but it was also really great to see lots of NGOs and the different approaches they are taking to combat various issues in and around Stellenbosch.

A few of them stood out, including one that provides services to HIV positive clients. The director of the program told us that a typical - not uncommon or 'difficult' - patient profile is a 22 year old HIV+ pregnant female with a small child, an abusive partner, a substance abuse problem, unemployed, and with no higher than Grade 9 education. Oooooof. I wouldn't even know where to begin. But this organization provides lots of services, such as counseling and testing, adherence counseling, support groups, and coordination with health services, social services and occupational services in the area. It is just mind blowing that people here manage to carry on despite such horrific circumstances.

Another NGO was an organization that works with kids of all ages, but especially teenagers in a township. Run through a local church, they provide character building programs, sports programs, occupational therapy, after school clubs, and sports to try to keep the young kids away from abusive situations, premature sexual relationships, alcohol, and drugs.

Yet another interesting one is called Pebbles Project and it operates on wine farms around Stellenbosch. Hundreds of people live on each wine farm. And for decades, these farm workers worked under inhumane conditions, and were paid by the farm owners in barrels of rotten wine. Although this is illegal in post-apartheid South Africa, it is still a problem. And as a result of the ridiculously low wages, difficult conditions, and this alcohol as payment situation, the Western Cape has the world's highest rate of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Pebbles Project helps parents, families, and kids overcome and recover from alcohol abuse. I didn't realize how serious a problem FAS and alcoholism were around here. It's such a tragedy. While shocking and horrifying, however, it was good to learn about it in the context of an NGO that is currently combatting the negative effects of alcohol abuse on Western Cape wine farms.

The organization for which I'm going to work for is called Prochorus (click here if you're interested). When we met with the director this afternoon, we asked her what prochorus meant. And she told us. It's named for the biblical Prochorus, a man who was deaconized by the Apostles because they realized that 12 was not enough to minister to all of God's children and needed extra hands to help out. This small NGO of only 8 staff members runs several projects in Kayamandi as well as a few other communities in the area. Their main program is the Early Child Development program. Kayamandi parents must leave their children during the day to go search for work, or sometimes they just leave them. And so the kids are brought to these creches, kind of like nurseries or day cares or preschools. Except that in Kayamandi, many of these creches are simply dark shacks where the kids just sit in the dark and do nothing. They are not fed, they are not washed, there are no bathroom facilities, they are not taught. Many of the kids arrive in school at age 7 in need of occupational therapy because they have never encountered a pen or pencil and so have not developed any fine motor skills during their critical period.
So Prochorus trains people to work with the kids in the creches as well as refurbishes them. They also have playgroups for kids to be socialized and receive nutrition and other necessary tools to get a successful start on life. They have several other services, but the other one I will be working with besides the creches and the playgroups is the computer literacy training program.  So I'll be working with primary through high school aged kids in an after school program teaching them computer literacy so that they will be able to have improved employment opportunities. Basically, I'm looking forward to it so much! It'll give me a chance to be a human doing, not just a human being one day a week. Not to mention, playing with kids and being constantly reminded that there is way more to life/happiness than money and material wealth.


Also, just wanna say thank you to any of you who have borne with me thus far on my journey/experiences. I know I'm not a writer and I'm not clever/humorous when it comes to these things. And I know some of my posts in particular have been heavy. But I have to write these things down to help me process them. And I want to share them with you if you want to listen (read). But also, please remember that I want to hear from you, about your lives, about what's going on back in the States. Today I had to use Google Maps, and that was the first time I had used it since leaving home I guess because it was zoomed in on Kansas when I went to the page.  And I had another 'I'm really far away from home' moment when it zoomed out to the map of the world and put a little balloon marker on South Africa for my location. Also, if you have thoughts, impressions, advice, or reactions, send them to me too!

IX. Molo. Goeie dag. NdinguMarie. My naam is Marie.

I think I've already mentioned on this blog how surprised I am by the prevalence of Afrikaans I've encountered in and around Stellenbosch. It's everywhere. Signs on campus, in the grocery store, everywhere. It's everybody's automatic language of choice, despite the fact that the University requires undergrad students to take fifty percent of their classes in English. And the fact that Afrikaans - so I had been led to believe - carried with it a stigma of association by being the language of apartheid. It is spoken obviously by the white descendants of Afrikaners all over South Africa. But in the Western Cape, the province Stellenbosch is located in, it is also spoken by all the colored people (and no, that's not a politically incorrect term here; it's the official term that everyone uses all the time to refer to people who are multiracial; they had to explain that to all of us American kids who were scandalized by the use of the word). And many of them only speak Afrikaans.

One of the four courses I'm taking this quarter is "Culture, Language, and Identity" and yesterday, we had a guest professor, a linguistics prof at SU give us an overview of language politics and issues in SA and then also give us crash courses in isiXhosa and Afrikaans. It was great, she had us learn greetings, talk about the weather, talk about being sick, and introduce ourselves in both languages. It was super interesting and I'm impressed how much we learned via her 5th grade Spanish class style of teaching language. She literally had us sing the phrases and sentences to the tune of "London is burning" because she thought we'd all know it because we're American and America used to be a British colony...yeah. That's the first time anyone has ever assumed something about me based on my status as a citizen of a country that used to be a British colony...well over 200 years ago. It really made me think about the difference in experience with colonialism experienced in the US versus in Africa.

Anyway, it was really cool. And I love learning languages. But I've only had experiences with Romantic languages - French, Spanish, Latin. Afrikaans is a Germanic African language. And isiXhosa is a Bantu African language. The pronunciation and expression of both of these languages is about as far from English as it gets. On the walk home from class, two of my friends and I tried quizzing each other and speaking in the two languages, just greeting each other and introducing ourselves and talking about the weather. I'm pretty sure we sounded like we were calling horses when we tried practicing the Xhosas clicks, and that we sounded like we had bad colds and were excessively clearing our throats when we tried pronouncing any Afrikaans word. And my throat hurt from attempting Afrikaans. No joke. I also realized when we were about half way home that translated to Northwestern's campus, this would be the equivalent of a couple foreign students walking around campus saying to each other and butchering the pronunciation of "Hello. How are you? My name is ___." Then I decided we should just wait til we got back to our dorm and watch YouTube videos and practice there.

One thing I found super interesting was an "interview" the professor conducted with one of her students, a native isiXhosa speaker. Apparently, in the Western Cape, prospective employers must speak English and Afrikaans if they want to get jobs. This student was fluent in English, the language of her primary school and tertiary school, but was learning Afrikaans and wasn't yet fluent. When asked whether she would send her kids to a Xhosa school or an English school, she stated firmly that she would only send them to an English school because that is the language of the future and even if it meant her language would die, she wouldn't want to handicap her kids for the rest of their lives, but give them the opportunity to make better lives for themselves; and she saw English as the one necessary tool to achieve that.

Although South Africa has eleven official languages, not every region provides services in every language. Tertiary education is only formally taught in English (and Afrkaans at Stellenbosch University). Everyone is taught some level of English in primary school. And the other nine languages are localized to the area of predominance. Despite the fact that millions of people speak isiXhosa and are not comfortably proficient in English or Afrikaans in the Western Cape, health, legal, and educational resources are not readily available here. And translators are not provided, so nurses, other officers and civil servants often end up translating, which poses all sorts of ethical questions.

I don't know how I managed to turn a 5th grade Spanish class day into a serious analysis of language politics in South Africa. Maybe it was all the readings I skimmed in the library before class yesterday about linguistics and language politics and sociology? Maybe it's the fact that I'm a Northwestern student and can't get away from that? Maybe it's just because it's so fascinating and certainly a real-life issue South Africans face every day?

 In case you're wanting to test out your Afrikaans...

...or your isiXhosa

VIII. A Visit to a Public Health Clinic, Stereotypes, and Reverse Culture Shock

Tuesday morning bright and early, we got in vans and drove to a public health clinic in Macassar where we met our Public Health professor, Dr Stefanus Sneyman. All these Afrikaans names! Jacob and Jan Villem ...

Before you read any further, I have to warn you, the rest of this post is going to be graphic - but no photos because that would be extremely insensitive to the people I saw.

The economic disparity was shocking, the physical diseases we saw literally made people vomit, and the whole experience quite shaking. I'm sad to say it lived up to every single awful stereotype image I had in my head of what a poor healthcare clinic in Africa would look like. And was even worse. Every book I have read in my global health classes could not have even begun to prepare me for what I saw. Hundreds of people, babies, families, mentally ill patients, women in labor, malnourished children crowding the waiting room of the clinic waiting to be seen. Many of them won't be seen for days. Doctors here burn out very fast and move to other countries or into academia, so there is an extreme shortage of doctors and nurses too in this country.
There were posters everywhere advocating pap smears, mammograms, HIV testing, good hygiene, vaccinations, healthy nutrition...yet according to their records only 30% of their patients are literate.
The head nurse gave us a tour of the hospital. She clearly ruled the roost at this facility, even bossing around the doctor and psychiatrist we saw. 10% of the population has schizophrenia, either from genetic conditions or from crystal meth (called 'tik' here) abuse. Depression and other mental health conditions abound. Obviously. Yet for this hospital that serves tens of thousands of people, there is a psychiatrist who visits it once a week for 4 hours. The nurse barged in on a counseling session to tell something to the doctor. Patient files were spread everywhere and open for all of us to see. HIPPA obviously doesn't exist here. There is no room for privacy in an overcrowded hospital in a poor township in South Africa. Even privacy, something I've always taken for granted, even that is a luxury here. We saw the pharmacy, which seemed to be decently stocked, but mostly with ARVs and antibiotics for TB treatment. The waiting line for patients to pick up their prescriptions was 4-5 hours. I will never again complain for having to wait 20 minutes in line at CVS.

In the hospital I saw a man lying in a bed literally shaking violently in pain because he had something wrong with his abdomen but there was no radiology or diagnostic laboratory equipment in the hospital to find out what was wrong with him. So he was literally shaking from head to foot in pain. I've never seen anything like it.
I saw malnourished babies and mothers.
A mother lying on a hospital bed in the waiting room because the hospital was too crowded, but she was in labor.

I went with a couple other people with a home-based carer to a few homes she visits. There was an old diabetic woman with a sore on her foot so she had had one of her toes amputated and needed the dressing changed. The surgery had been in August, and the wound was still gaping open and her foot was black and I did not even recognize it is a foot with toes. It was just black goo at the end of her foot. It was horrifying. The nurse had to be careful not to knock the remaining toes off. She cleaned it with that stuff you put on horses' feet when they get holes in their hoof pads. The whole foot needs to be amputated or she will die. But she is refusing amputation because then she won't be able to walk. So she will die soon. It smelled and looked so awful. I didn't know how to react. I was paralyzed. We asked her if it hurt - she said no. I asked her if she was able to get around at all - she said "I can walk. I can do anything I want." No wonder she doesn't want to get it amputated. Old people are so stubborn. And no material circumstances or disease will change that. If she loses her foot, she loses her independence, her life. The home-based carer has tried to take her to the clinic hospital several times, but the old lady has freaked out and run away - on her rotting foot - every time.
I went with the nurse to visit another man, a 33-year old stroke patient paralyzed from the waist down. He was lying outside a house underneath a rotting wooden board propped up against the wall but the board only covered the upper half of his body and it had rained yesterday morning so he was soaked. The house is his brother's, but his brother won't let him in because he used to be a gangster. And he has no ID so he cannot go to a shelter or receive care at the clinic. So he is going to die out there. The nurse just took us there to show us. I think she thought we could help him. There is nothing to do. She wouldn't let us talk to him either, so it just made me think we were making him into a spectacle. I couldn't even see his head, so I don't know if he was conscious or knew we were there. But still, it just was awful. I know the nurse was just trying to help him in some way. She was so compassionate and clearly struggles with her patients who are her neighbors and fellow community-members. But she can't do anything for them beyond the resources the clinic gives her in her small bag.
I went in another home where a man - another stroke victim - was lying in his bed, completely paralyzed on one side of his body. He can neither speak nor hear. So he uses one hand to make gestures and communicate and he reads lips. I'm sure there are no bed turning services and his tiny home - I can't call it a house - it was a lean-to shack behind some other houses - smelled like urine. It smelled about ten times worse than the worst day I've ever smelled working at the dog shelter. It was awful. I wanted to cry, but all I could do was smile because how would that make him feel if I cried. It made me feel sick and horrible. And so intrusive.

Sorry, I know this is intense, but I needed to be honest. It was a lot to handle. I don't even know what to do or say. I'm just confused.

In the evening, we visited a private hospital. When I went through the revolving door of that building I literally felt as if that revolving door spun me from Africa to America. Outside the door was the world of the public clinic - smelly, dirty, starving, disease-burdened, illiterate,  impoverished. On the other side was the shiny, American hospital smelling world of a not super fancy but moderate first world hospital. That was the biggest culture shock I felt so far. Like that hospital looks almost as nice as the place where I spent a good portion of my time during the last few weeks I was in the States. Yet I literally became weak-kneed and wanted to scream and cry and suffocate when I was in there. I don't even know. We toured this hospital too, and of course it was impossible to not compare. Not to think of the man lying next to the house a few miles away. Just a few miles. But as far as this country works, this hospital might as well be on Mars... or in America... as far as he's concerned.

VII. What ever happened to the "study" in Study Abroad? But college here too is really just about sports.

Ew. Study? But I'm in South Africa! I don't want to study. Well at 11 on Monday morning, I had to show up in my first class on this side of the world: Politics and Economic Perspectives in South Africa. We had several hundred pages of reading due, but don't worry. I skimmed it all. :)
My professor is fantastic! A two hour history lecture went by without me even looking at the clock once! It was a quick summary of South African history in a nutshell to prepare us for everything else in the course. I think it is going to be a great course.

After class I went to the student center, which was mobbed and had a DJ and was basically like a show going on. What?! Norris never has that kind of crowd. But Norris isn't exactly like a mall with a salon and spa and phone store and movie theater and candy shop and tons of kiosks and an antelope burger joint and lots of sandwich shops and banks either. And Northwestern isn't exactly home to the best college rugby team either. Monday was the championship game for NCAA basketball back in the States. But here in Stellenbosch, Monday was the championship game for college rugby. It was a huge deal! The Stellenbosch Maties, undefeated all season were matched up against the Pretoria Tuks. Being great supportive Maties fans, we all bought our R20 student tickets ($2.22) and went to the game. We got there two hours early since we were a tiny bit overexcited, but the stadium was already filling up as it drew closer to kickoff (I am not sure that's what it's called), I could feel the excitement mounting in the stands. It was also a gorgeous sunset just behind the stadium. Ryan Field needs a mountain behind it I decided.

There were school boys - yes, South African kids have to wear uniforms and the ones that go to private schools wear these fancy red uniforms with dorky shorts and jackets and long socks and look like they walked out of a different century. But they were handing out these giant pink cardboard posters that said something in Afrikaans on them on the front. We assumed they were for us to sit on, so we all sat on them. But then we realized that they also had something taped to the back. The Varsity Cup was speaking out against abuse against women and wanted all the fans in the student section to form a giant pink wall with the posters during the singing of the South African national anthem and every time...some rubgy rules I did not understand. I got even more excited and couldn't wait to participate and show my support for women in a country where gender violence is higher than it is anywhere else in the world and where women's rights are abused as a norm.

 

Some things just don't change no matter where you are...

...Such as the flag spread out on a field during the national anthem being sung at a sports event.

The complexity of the rules and the physicality of the sports...

...is not one of those things that doesn't change.

I am sad to report that the Maties lost the game. It would be more accurate to say that they were brutally pummeled and crushed at a whopping score of 45-5. All I know is that the Tuks managed to have a guy leap under the goalposts a lot more times than the Maties. I can now tell you that rugby games are comprised of two 40 minute halves. There is a thing called a ruck where the two teams get into a pyramid formation and have momentary amnesia and think they are all on the wrestling team and then recover from their amnesia and one of them grabs the ball, a sad-looking deflated version of an American football, and throws it. I also observed that the ball is always passed backwards in rugby - you can't throw it forward. I also observed a few people get injured, and one guy was unable to move and was taken off the field in a stretcher; I'm pretty sure he broke his leg. All in all it was a sad evening for the Maties. But I have now experienced college rugby in the most avid rugby-playing nation in the world. And it wasn't just any ordinary rugby game, but their varsity national championship game. Oh, in case you were wondering, Prof and Pokkel both came out and entertained the crowd. It was great. I considered checking out when mascot try-outs were...

VI. Hiking Stellenbosch Mountain

At the "top" of Stellenbosch Mountain (still in the b&w phase)

Sunday had the most gorgeous weather ever. Perfectly blue skies. Perfect temperature. And almost no wind. Random factoid for you: did you know that Cape Town is one of the world's three windiest cities? Along with Wellington, New Zealand and yep, you guessed it, Chicago, USA. (I'm surprised that Maple Hill, Kansas was not on this list...)
So, what do you do when there is perfect weather in South Africa and it is your first free day since arriving on the continent? You go on a hike. Up Stellenbosch Mountain. Or at least up part of it. You think you're at the top when you climb up a big ridge that you can't see anything beyond. But then you finally get there and realize you're only 1/3 the way to the top. It's ok, next time! I went with about 6 people and we had a great time. Saw some spiders but no snakes, which was a good thing. Although as I am typing right now, I am staring down a scary looking spider on my ceiling. Africa doesn't have poisonous spiders, right?
At the end of our hike, it turned into a legit rock climbing experience, and we all had to use our hands and feet to climb up. Note how high up we are! And yes we started all the way down there in the town.

V. A History Visit to Cape Town: Expectations, Realities, and Tourists.

Saturday, we went to Cape Town for the day. Despite a late night, slow-paced three course meal at one of South Africa's top ten restaurants - Jordan Restaurant at the Jordan wine farm outside Stellenbosch - we all boarded buses at 7am. I think everyone is finally adjusting to the time difference and recovering from jetlag. I hope so, anyway!

Informal Settlement outside Cape Town.

We drove past miles - literally miles - of informal settlements on the outskirts of Cape Town. 2 million people live in these shacks - similar to the ones I had seen on Friday. They are right next to the busy freeway and on the other side of the freeway is the airport. I don't really know how to respond to it. It is sickening and saddening and frightening. Again, I noticed satellite TV dishes on the tops of most shacks though, which I found surprising.  



We arrived in Cape Town, it was blanketed in a thick fog, cool and misting, despite a 75 and sunny weather forecast for the day. Cape Town is beautiful and unique, nested in between the Atlantic Ocean and Table Mountain. And I could see why it is often referred to as the European City of Africa. The downtown area looks quite westernized...could have been in the US or Europe. Tall bank buildings, big billboards, construction sites, the University of Cape Town... The port was quite a bustling area, lots of massive ships and barges. We met up with the Northwestern journalism kids doing their residencies here in South Africa for the ferry ride over and tour of Robben Island. 

 

The desolate landscape of Robben Island.

The ferry ride was fortunately indoors considering the conditions and took about thirty minutes, because the Island is actually several miles off the coast of Cape Town. The Island is also a lot bigger than I had imagined. I think I was picturing a hybrid of the Statue of Liberty Island, Ellis Island, and Alcatraz. It was quite a desolate place, especially the landscaping. We had to board buses and be driven around the island since it's so big. I'm kind of sad to say this, but I found the experience a bit underwhelming. I have been trying to figure out why and I think it's because the experience was so commercialized and touristy, and we were riding around in a huge tour bus for most of the experience. But a few things stuck out - there is a town on the island. And it is inhabited by former prisoners and their families and - get this - former prison guards and their families. Can you imagine living with your former prison guard? For a next door neighbor? Hanging out with him at the bar in the evenings? Sitting next to him in church on Sunday mornings? Post-Apartheid South Africa is a confusing place. And one where forgiveness is a must. Unfortunately not everyone has found it. But these residents of Robben Island clearly have. 

Happy Side Note: FIRST AFRICAN WILDLIFE SIGHTING. A Springbok!!!

We saw the limestone quarry where Nelson Mandela and the majority of post-Apartheid leaders and politicians of South Africa held their meetings while working under the brutal sun, which in combination with the limestone dust has wrecked their eye sight and permanently clogged their tear ducts. I don't know why this stuck me so hard, but I had a heavy heart when I thought about the lives they have lived, the pain and sorrows they have endured, and the atrocities and emotions they must have experienced not only during their Robben Island years but for the rest of their lives - and how they cannot even shed tears. Even tears are a gift. Don't take them for granted. 

Nelson Mandela's Cell

We went on a foot tour of the maximum security prison, and our tour guide was a former political prisoner on the island. He shared with us his story and he explained to us that working on the island as a tour guide for the past several years is part of his healing process, and has helped him piece back together his sanity and peace of mind. When asked what memories or moments stood out from his years on the Island as a prisoner, he said "we had fun." Yet again, another example of a brave hero searching for the good in the horrors of Robben Island. He talked about the friends, the reunions they have had since, how he was able to effectively receive a great education in political science while in prison, how the men loved playing soccer, and how every December, when summer came and it was hot, they would celebrate and sing Christmas songs. Odd to think of a hot December and Christmas songs while playing soccer in the hot summer sun (...oh wait, yet another Nicaragua flashback for me. They just keep happening!) 

So, I guess the trip to Robben Island was not a total wash. But it certainly felt very touristy. Especially when we walked past Mandela's cell and it was basically a photo shoot with tourists fighting for the best photo perspective spot. He might be the greatest man alive. And I get that. But it seemed too commercialized to the extent that I found myself struggling to remind myself that this was real and real people lived there and were imprisoned there not that long ago. Maybe I wanted it to be a big emotional experience, and after Friday, it just couldn't live up to it? Maybe it was too much like a history class set for tourists to be able to be real and personal? I'm glad I went. But it wasn't what I expected. 

District 6

We had lunch at an Indian food place in District 6 in Cape Town and had a history lesson on our bus, but it was just our group and our friendly history teacher/guide, so it was a lot better. District 6 is an almost entirely deserted area that overlooks the rest of Cape Town and the ocean, but is empty and grassy now because it was one of the worst and biggest areas of forced removals when the separate areas legislation was enforced during apartheid. Now nobody knows what to do with it and who should move back into it. Once, one of the most cosmopolitan neighborhoods in the world, it has been reduced to mostly grassy fields, and in the edge of one of the biggest cities in the world, feels desolate and empty. I got some great photos from there...but realized when I got home that all the photos I took today were somehow on black and white setting, and I can't change them. Oh well. Maybe they're unintentionally artistic? (yeah, we'll go with that).

More of Cape Town:  

Victoria's Wharf on the Waterfront

Our program sent us on another 180 though right after this, because we literally drove down from District 6 to Victoria's Wharf, a massive - and I mean massive - shopping mall on the beach. It was filled with European and American stores, and prices were just as you'd expect in any massive tourist mall. It was kind of disappointing that they dropped us off there, but we only walked around it on the inside and then all went out and sat on the grass by the ocean to talk about the day and take pictures with the gorgeous views. The fact that my group didn't want to just hang out and shop til we dropped made me really happy. It was a nice day to end a day in Cape Town, soaking up the gorgeous sun of the southern tip of Africa while staring at the ocean. 

 

IV. A Tour of Stellenbosch: the City, the Winecountry, the Settlements & the Naming of this Blog

Stellenbosch downtown area reminds me way too much of Evanston downtown area. Last night I had a conversation - "Are we really in Africa?" with a few people in my program. The obvious answer is yes. The gut reaction answer is no. But I'm sure I'll be thinking about that for the next three months and beyond. These three months I'm sure will be great as far as challenging stereotypes and developing new ways of looking at things. Every time I picture a globe and where South Africa is on it, I realize how far away I am from home...and even the Northern Hemisphere. It's weird. Flying down the entire length of the continent of Africa was similarly weird. It would look on the map on the plane and realize "Oh, over Cameroon now." "Oh, over Democratic Republic of the Congo now." "Oh over Angola now." etc... 

Today we took a tour of Stellenbosch. We visited several townships or informal settlements around Stellenbosch - remnants of apartheid area that are still home to tens of thousands of people. The odd thing is too, these could be located across the highway, across the street, or across a tall barbed-wire, Great Dane and ADT-guarded fence from a golf club, gated-community with giant mansions, or BMW dealership. It's so weird to me how such extreme prosperity and such extreme poverty can coexist by each other side by side. Too close. Close to the point that it made me feel actually physically sick to my stomach just looking at the comparison. I'm not sure if comparisons are the right thing to do. But it was impossible not to. 

I don't like taking pictures of people's homes when they're in front of them, which many of these people were. Men loitering on the streets because they can't get jobs in town. So I didn't take too many pictures. We actually took a bus up to the top of Kayamandi settlement, just outside Stellenbosch, which is on a hillside and has THE BEST views in all of the city (to the point that someone built a random bed and breakfast in the middle of it advertising a "unique cultural experience" for tourists to see this marvelous view) and THE WORST smells in all of the city. Garbage. Sewage. Dirty water. Everywhere. The homes are packed so closely together that there are only main roads. Thousands of people live in these shacks. And whenever there is a fire - usually when someone tries to install electricity - firemen and trucks cannot reach the homes unless they are on the outermost edge, so all the homes in that area burn down. 

Electricity is not common in these homes - I had that part of culture shock when we walked past a store that advertised "Electricity." In the US, wifi is pretty much assumed in most places. In Kayamandi, Electricity is a rare luxury. But everyone has cell phones. 

When we got to the top of the Kayamandi settlement, we got off the bus and walked down through it. It was quite an interesting experience, and we definitely stuck out like sore thumbs - although that is an extreme understatement. I felt very aware of my skin color, but moreso of just not belonging there. And almost ashamed of my group members who were taking pictures of the little kids. The kids themselves didn't seem to mind and were doing all sorts of crazy poses. But it just seemed like profile picture exploitation of poor African children. They didn't talk to the kids, ask them their names. Sure the kids were mostly speaking Xhosa and Zulu, but still, an effort would have been nice. I guess I've just gone on too many Sheil service trips so that that behavior really bothered me. It wasn't as though we were going to get to know these kids or even as though we were making a positive impact or doing something in solidarity to improve the world. We were just spectators making them into spectacles. And clearly upsetting their parents who were watching that happen quite dubiously. 

So, my blog title is Khayamnandi. I couldn't decide on whether or not I should make a South Africa blog. I've never blogged before. I'm not really sure what the purpose is. But I know there are some of you who might be interested in some/all of what I'm doing and thinking. And some of you (ehemm, Mom and Dad) played major roles in getting me here, so it's only fair you know what you supported. Anyway, back to Khayamnandi. So as I said Kayamandi was the settlement with the gorgeous views and the tiny packed together houses. But our guide, Kalvin told us that Kayamandi comes from the Xhosa word Khayamnandi for pleasant home. These people named their settlement a "pleasant home" because what looks like a no-hope situation to me is their home, their neighborhood, their community. 

6000 of the houses burned down three months ago in a fire - they have all been rebuilt by neighbors. Is there any other community in the world that could boast that? As we walked down the hilly streets, music was playing, people were hanging out together, laughing and talking, the kids were singing and laughing and playing and smiling. What looks like dire, even miserable conditions, really is so much more. Not to look at it through rose-colored glasses, but to maybe see more than the "poor starving children" and the sewage and the garbage and the shacks smaller than my bathroom at home. Not to look at it entirely from a spoiled American's perspective, but to try to see things from the perspective of a someone who lives there, who sees Kayamandi as a home, and not just a place to cover the basic necessity of "shelter" but a community and a pleasant home. 

We visited some other places too, including a settlement called Idas Valley, where we played with the kids on a big green field for about an hour. I don't speak Xhosa and they don't speak English, so at first I didn't have a clue what to do. But then I remembered the first day in Cusmapa this past December and how the little girls taught me hand clapping games and they seemed to be pretty universal. So I went out on a limb and gave it a try. Sure enough, about twenty seconds of hand motioning later, they were teaching me a hand clapping game. It was awesome and lasted a while, and I felt my heart start to melt and overflow with joy. Oh, this is why I'm here was the thought I had. I didn't feel out of place, stared at, treated rudely, or treated too nicely. I felt happy. I could see the kids genuinely having fun and wanting to play with me once they got over their initial shyness. One little girl apparently did speak English because after a while of hand clapping games and tag, she told me I needed an African braid in my hair and made me sit down on the ground while she braided my hair and three other girls fought for a seat on my lap. Eventually, and all too soon of course, it was time to depart. It was difficult telling the little girls I had to go and not being able to say 'I'll see you again' or 'I'll be back.' But I guess that is how life works. And we definitely touched each others' lives today - yet again, the kids probably having a much bigger impact on me than I could ever have on them. 

After leaving the kiddos, we went to a wine farm called Middelvlei out in the country - a very nice place and consequently a difficult transition after the morning's township tours. But the food was delicious and the staff exceptionally hospitable and the views of the mountains and wine farms stunning.