Monday January 3, 2011

It is hard to believe that we have already been in Cape Town five days. Part of me feels like we just got here, but looking back on all that we have done is no wonder the time has flown. Today was an extremely busy day beginning at 9:30 am with tours of 4 of the 6 sites that we will be volunteering at (St. Anne’s Home, St Joseph’s Home, Crossroads Health Clinic, and Nyanga Orphanage). We all enjoyed getting to see where we will spend the next couple of weeks and it definitely reminded us why we chose to come on this trip in the first place.

After the tours we headed to an outdoor market in Cape Town to do some souvenir shopping and got the chance to try our hand at bartering. The market contained countless stands with everything from World Cup jerseys to handcrafted Zimbabwean masks. Needless to say we could have spent all day there but our schedule only allotted us to be there for an hour, good thing many of us have lots of experience with power shopping...

Our next stop was the District 6 museum where we met with Linda Fortune the author of House on Tyne Street which was a book we read earlier in the semester. She told us about the history of Apartheid and the impact it had on District 6 and the people who lived there. Having grown up in District 6 herself she could recall with great detail what it was like to see the place she called home completely demolished because of the white supremacy. Linda showed us around the museum, which essentially was a memory box of what the neighborhood used to be. She told us about all the people who come to the museum and point to different pictures and places on maps recalling earlier years. (Pictured is Linda Fortune and our driver Sedick sitting on a bench that during apartheid was for whites only).

Linda took us to our final stop of the day, Oudekraal. Oudekraal today is a beach hidden down from the highway where families would save their money all year for the chance to vacation there during the holiday. Linda told us how her family used to go camping there when she was younger, staying in a cave made out of the boulders that surrounded the beach. She reminisced about her time there and explained to us about how after Apartheid her family and others were no longer welcome even though they had been coming there for years. Linda took us on a tour around the beach showing us inside some of the caves as well as some of the most amazing views we have seen since we got here.

The day ended with us arriving back to the house around 6:30 pm to a delicious meal of chicken, steamed veggies, and sweet potato curry. It goes without saying that we were all exhausted after such a long day and are looking forward to some much needed sleep before we begin volunteering at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

Mind the Connection

Mama Thope had just finished talking, and I could not grasp just how one could communicate the friendliness of townships, as such was the desire of hers to be done in the understanding of the people in her community. For starters, I didn't know they were friendly. Everything I had read pointed to the fact that I should actually be afraid for my life while visiting. And secondly, still and moving pictures in such circumstances tend to only capture the presence of poverty and suffering. What does friendliness even look like?

But walking the first 300 yards outside the secured gates of Mama Thope's home, we were surrounded by it. It's all you could see and feel. And it never ended. Street after street thereafter, a welcoming smile met you at your feet.

While smiles do not reveal a person's state of happiness, as Mama Thope noted in a comment about the challenges community members face, they do reveal the goodness of one's heart. And that to me is what had been lost in all the stories I had read about South Africa and its people. I had been taught to fear the socioeconomic gap rather than merely be mindful of it. And in that fear, the gap widened to where all connection was lost. I could no longer see what was in their hearts. Only what was in my wallet.

But walking the streets of Khayelitsha, a connection was restored and my perspective changed. I could see that their eyes were not on what was mine. I could see instead their eyes were just like mine.

So that is now what I seek through my eye and lens. To be mindful of the gap but to remember what we all share. There is a divide in the poverty and suffering but not in who we are.