Savitri on perspective

It is funny how perspective changes with context.

Halfway through the semester I started feeling really comfortable taking the train. I would sometimes prefer it to the minibus because the station was close and for the same price I might get a seat that was not cramped or rickety. In addition, I got to pass by this building with cool graffiti on its side. It became something that I got used to seeing. Then, near the end of the semester I noticed that the graffiti was not there anymore; someone had painted over it.

This reminded me of District 6 and what we’d learned way back in the beginning of the semester about forced removal of people from their homes. At the District 6 museum, Joe Schaffers showed us a photograph of a street before and after these forced removals. The “before” photograph showed life: people walking up and down the street, talking and carrying parcels. There were buildings and laundry hanging and it really looked like a neighborhood. The “after” photograph showed tall weeds and grass surrounding a single building in the distance, everything that was had been demolished and cleared. I wondered at how easy it was for someone to paint over the graffiti and how easy it was for someone to clear a district. How much of our lives have been trimmed and manipulated? Textbooks, for sure, are neatly stitched and designed to cover up certain things and illuminate others. Our opinions, even, are never truly objective if we want it to be.

  

Richmond Street in District 6 before and after the Group Areas Act declare this a "White Only Area"

Another funny incident on the train: I ran into a friend from the Human Rights Weekend and I noticed that he was wearing a beaded bracelet. The bracelet looked like one I had also gotten from Sonke Gender Justice Network that was part of a pair: its beads are orange and green and one part spells “I have tested” and the other spells “I know”. It is supposed to raise awareness for HIV testing and address the stigma surrounding AIDS, the message meanly simply that the person wearing the bracelet has taken the initiative to be proactive in their health and has gotten tested for HIV. I asked him if he got the bracelet from the Sonke organization and he said that he did not, a friend gave it to him.

He then started talking about how much he loved it and how beautiful the message “I know” was. He did not have the other bracelet of the pair. I was intrigued listening to his interpretation of the bracelet as something deep and profound, as a message meaning something along the lines of “I know who I am”. The beauty, he said, was that it was up to you to determine what it is you or I “know” and I had to smile at that because it is a beautiful message. I did not see the need to correct him because his interpretation seemed just as legitimate as mine was. It may not have been the intended message, but that hardly matters when you go about your daily life: you see things as you want to them.

We keep talking about how important it is to share our stories and listen to other people’s stories, and how critical it is that we not silence each other and especially not people who have been chronically silenced. But I think sometimes that we do not always know we are silencing. And does knowing a thing’s past make it any less beautiful?