here we go again.
Ghana. The feelings I have about another journey that begins tomorrow do not resemble the shaky, excited nervous feelings that overcame me almost seven months ago on my way to Cape Town. Ghana feels more unreal, more intangible than Cape Town. I am not sure if it has anything to do with not having a best friend who has been to this country, like Morgan for South Africa, or if it has to do with my previous trip to this continent. I cannot fathom the heat, humidity and sweat that will greet me in Accra. I cannot fathom learning another language that does not at all resemble any language I have learned before. I cannot fathom how much soccer talk and paraphernalia will surround me in the city.
People tell me that I am so lucky, because I have “already done this.” But this experience is going to be nothing like the bustling, stylish, racist, cold city of Cape Town. If I wanted that, I would go back to Cape Town for a second semester. I want to break down the idea that the Western world has that Africa is just one lump under Europe and that every place within it is the same. I want to see this for myself.
It is also difficult to be leaving for this semester. Now that many of my friends are home from their abroad experiences, they continue life without me. I would love for home to freeze so I can gallivant around Africa without missing anything, but the drama will continue with or without me. It is not that I necessarily want to be there, but it is difficult coming home to a situation that has changed so much and still be in the past with a new journey embodying me so much that it is blocking my past life from coming in.
I thought that going abroad would fill a void in my life. Now, I know that this will not happen. It will add to my character, my life, my experience and my views of the world. But what void is there to fill? I don’t think I am missing anything, but I do always feel like a book with blank pages to fill, rather than a missing hole.
So, it is not that I am not horribly excited to see what this country has in store for me. I cannot imagine what it will be like, so it is even difficult to think about, to place myself there before I actually get there. Maybe I will have vivid dreams about it tonight enhanced by my malaria medication. We’ll see.
“Why think about that when all the golden land’s ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive to see?” Jack Kerouac, On the Road
home.
Many queues, flights, one night in London later, and I am in the land of Starbucks and obesity. I have been in the States for a mere few hours, and I can barely even handle being here. Call me cynical, but it is so difficult coming from such an exquisite, complicated country, where I made friends that became family to me to a place that I call home, but I have to get used to so many aspects of it after being away for five months.
I must admit, that it will be nice to walk around the street at night and not feel that I am going to be mugged, being able to check the weather and know that there will not be four seasons in one day, having people look at me differently because I am American, and of course, seeing my family and friends that I have missed dearly since I have been away.
But there are still things that have become accustomed to in South Africa that I must adjust to at home. I must get used to passing people on the right instead of the left, being on time for things, not spending money like it is monopoly money, not having new things to explore every day, not going to school with ivy covered walls that sits on a mountain that overlooks and entire city. I must get used to not hearing Molale’s whistle from metres away, hearing Brianna’s music from her laptop from my room, watching Weeds with Neo and Mavis, and drinking “blind wine” when I should be doing homework.
There is something about saying goodbye to friends when you cannot foresee seeing them again in the near future. I smiled at my friends, saying of course I will see them “in 2010 for the World Cup, of course” “You must come to the States and drink beer at a frat party.” And of course, being an optimist, I hope these happen.
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”- on the road
exhibition.
For the past semester, my other volunteer project other than working at the tuberculosis hospital, was volunteering at the Lawrence House. The Lawrence house is a group home for children who are refugees and without care of a parent or guardian. Most of the children who we worked with were from Congo and Rwanda.
At the Lawrence house with three other girls in my program, we ran a photography project with eight of the kids, between the ages of nine and 13. Every week, we would teach them something different about photography, and have a different project for them in taking photographs with our digital cameras. We would give them words such as “home,” “comfort,” “hiding places,” etc, for a starting point.
At the beginning, they took a lot of very “literal” photos, and photos of themselves and their friends. The idea of playing with a digital camera for the first time was just fun to them, but as the semester went on, we pushed them harder and harder to think more about what it is exactly they are taking photographs of.
This past Friday, we held an exhibition as a compilation of their work. Out of the hundreds of photos that each child took, they could pick about four to six to show off. The kids were quite sceptical about this so-called exhibition; they are very shy and did not want anyone else seeing their photos. We managed to convince them otherwise, i.e. we were going to hold it regardless, because we were excited to show their work off even if they were not.
We held the exhibition at the Scalibrini Centre, which is a centre for refugees in the city bowl of Cape Town. The centre is in an old warehouse type building, and the room we held the exhibition in looked like a real modern art museum. There were industrial pillars everywhere, everything was very blank and white. It was a perfect setting for the photos.
The kids ended up being very excited to have their work on display, even though they had their friends come in a separate van later on because they did not want their friends at the Lawrence House seeing their work. But they told us that they were happy we held the exhibition regardless of their scepticism. We also had all of our friends on our program come to see their work.
I was so pleased that everybody was so impressed. At first, I did not think that we would have any photos but photos of the kids pretending to be rappers, but as the semester went on, the kids really began to see the world in the eyes of a photographer. They played with light, with settings, with abstract ideas. They really produced art. The project and exhibition empowered them. To create something to share with others, and to be truly proud of it, is something that is difficult to have when they live with so many other children, and are dealing with a lot more than anyone should, rather anyone as young as they are.
Keep a look out for postcards and or calendars of some of the photos that I will be selling when I return to the States to raise money for the Lawrence House! Details to come…
Babu’s “Hiding Places” photo
finals.
Today, I finished my academic life in Cape Town. Finals were more stressful at University of Cape Town without a doubt. At this “administratively challenging” school, in my first final, I folded over the corner of the paper in the wrong manor after I finished the exam, at my second exam, I went to the wrong room at first and ran to the correct room with one minute to spare. A student is not allowed to leave if he or she finishes the exam in the last 20 minutes of the time alotted, and there is an excessive amount of papers needed for signing, student numbers etc. Taking the test has been the easiest part.
University of Cape Town is a breathtaking academic environment. I am going to miss going to school on a Mountain, with ivy covered walls, fountains, the Rhodes memorial just a short hike away, with a view of the entire city at the shoreline. Not to mention, the school has the best muffins anyone will ever have. It almost takes away from the fact that it is very difficult to learn how to turn in a paper, pick up a graded paper, and conduct spellcheck with British spelling.
So now that I am finished at UCT, I have one week left to live it up in Cape Town, and boy, am I going to live it up.
university of cape town.
power to women.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7072818.stm
I came across this article in the BBC news, which says that South Africa has one of the highest rape statistics in the world. This is not new news, I have been reminded of it quite a lot here, from dance shows to lectures to student orientation.
In my critical psychology class, we discussed the idea of male violence and Rape in counties like South Africa. South Africa is so distraught, with such a huge disparity between rich and poor, men and women. Men are constructed to be tough, vicious leaders.
The unemployment rates for women are so much higher than male unemployment, giving men an enormous amount of economic power over women.
South Africa needs to not only work on the deconstructing the racial hierarchies left over from quite a long history of it, but needs to work on the disparity of men and women and male sexual and economic power over women to end this horrific problem that has not been given nearly enough attention.
rafting to namibia
This past week at University of Cape Town was “study week,” a week allotted to all students after classes end to study for finals. Naturally, we figured we would get a lot more studying done rafting and camping on the Orange River, the river that divides South Africa from Namibia.
At 5:30am on Saturday, Pine, the owner of the guide company picked us up in his “bucky.” Taylor and I sat in the enclosed trunk of the car, don’t worry there were windows. It resembled a cell, den, whatever twist one might want to put on this hot, sweaty space that we rode in for eight hours both ways.
In between naps, every time I awoke on the ride was a different scenery. From wine country, to farm areas, the colours started getting more and more scarce, desert-mountains appeared slowly, and people became more and more scarce.
We arrived at the base camp to explore the orange river, sit in the sun and swim for hours before a camp fire and delicious braai. After the first night of sleeping under the breathtaking African stars, we were headed on our rafting trip down the river.
Our two leaders, John and Mark securely attached everything to the rafts, and we were off, paddling right and left down the river.
The landscape around the Orange River is so fascinating. Every different scene looks like the cover of National Geographic. The river is clear, mostly calm, with fish jumping and so many different types of birds that our leaders pointed out along the way. In the river, different rock formations with heart-shaped holes and waves imprinted in them. Next to the river, is green, lush vegetation, from tall reeds, to trees to flowers. But just beyond the green is brown, rocky desert mountains. You can almost see the lines when it changes from water, to green, to brown.
The second two days of the trip, I paddled in the back, the back paddler is the person who steers, lots of man power. I am so ripped now, gosh. I succeeded in this situation for the most part. Once, I drove Laura and I into some thorny trees, and managed to get stuck over a couple of rocks. Never fell out though, and gosh my muscles are ripped.
The most adrenaline provoking moment was when Taylor and I went through a rapid called “entry exam.” We hit a rock from the side and were stuck. All of the sudden water filled our boat completely, almost taking all the supplies out and through the rapid. We were told to sit still if we hit a rock, because otherwise we would flip the boat, fall out, and potentially get stuck under a rock, which would clearly not be a good plan. John came and tied the boat to a rock on the side so we managed to get some of the water out and step out of the boat. We were saved with our hearts pumping. We walked up the side of the river with the boat so we could ride through the rapid without hitting a rock.
We also went through rapids in what were called “nappy runs.” A nappy run is when we put our life vests over our legs, to look like a nappy (diaper), and ride down a rapid sans boat in “cocktail position,” feet up, hands out, head up. It took us a while to get out into the water for fear of hitting a rock and drowning, but once we pushed ourselves, it was completely worth it. We also did a cliff jump into the water, which was also quite a thrill.
At night, the boys cooked delicious meals for us over the fire, we told awful ghost stories, drank boxed wine, peed in the woods, and slept under the stars. We came back with many layers of dirt, almost dreaded hair, sunburns and bug bites, all the best parts of coming back from a camping trip, gotta feel accomplished am I right?
uct…american state school.
Yesterday was the infamous University of Cape Town Beach Braai. When searched for on YouTube, you receive a video result of scantily clad girl shakin’ it. Everyone says that it is the biggest UCT event of the year, and I could simply not miss it.
We drove almost an hour outside Cape Town to Silverstroom beach, because apparently UCT has been kicked off all other closer beaches because of happenings at previous beach braais. Our minibus pulled into the parking lot of the beach, and there were tons of cars set up, tailgating the beach braai. People running around with handles of Jack Daniels, urinating on the side of the road. It was soooo college.
In the beach braai, there were many grills set up with many many kgs of meat cooking, and many different DJs playing hip hop with people dancing around. On the beach, there were the stereotypical beach sports, volleyball soccer. And stereotypical college girls in bikinis and muscular men trying to win the girls attention.
We lounged in the sun, drank spiked juice, and hung out with our friends, so college, so great.
green dolphin.
There is something about sipping on a glass of wine in front of a live jazz band on a Friday night.
There is something about the guitar player, with brown sneakers and a wrinkled untucked shirt, biting his bottom lip, all about the music.
Something about it when the melody ceases to play and the drum is alone, silence and the drummer.
Something about when the singer pauses, waiting to jump on the next verse, closing her eyes, counting with her lips and thinking about the thousands of combinations of magical melodies she can concoct next.
Cape Town on the first real summer’s night, wine, and jazz, quite a composition of an evening I would say.
rabinowitz, cohen, goldstein, cohen.
Familiar names crowded the Jewish Museum of Cape Town, Cohen, Rabinowitz etc etc, they really bring me back home to Jewton, MA. Anyways, previous to my visit to the Jewish museum was quite informative. I knew about the large Jewish population, mostly in JoBerg, but I had not realised how long the Jewish people have been in South Africa, since the 1800s! Got some great fun facts, like the founders of De Beers diamond company are Jewish (not such a great reputation…hmmm)
In the next building is the Holocaust memorial and museum. It was also quite informative, but a little bit dry. I say this after having visited the museums in Washington, D.C. and in Israel, which were two of the most emotion provoking experiences of history that I have ever had. The one in South Africa was informative, especially putting the Holocaust into a South African context, which I appreciated and did not know a lot about.
But there is something about the two museums in Washington and Israel that have the real artefacts, the piles of shoes and spectacles, that make genocide real, and this museum had many photographs and no real artefacts, which made it more like a living text book than a real piece of history.
Another difference that I noticed is that in the Israeli Holocaust museum, every exhibit refers to the Jewish people as “us.” It makes it more real and more personal, but in South Africa, there are just too many types of people to say that, the Jews are “they” at the holocaust museum, making the whole experience a little bit less personal.
Putting the Holocaust in the context of South Africa and apartheid that occurred during this lifetime is discouraging. Not only did the Nationalist government side with Hitler, and denied many Jews the freedom to live in South Africa, but this blatant killing and torture, human rights offences occurred in this country in my lifetime and is still occurring everywhere. The words “torture,” “mass killing,” “inferior race,” “ghettos,” come up too many times to count in this museum and in this country everywhere. I just need to keep remembering the words “freedom fighter,” “liberation,” “survivor,” also do come up, giving hope in people.
