Tekowa on dignity and identity

Today I'd like to talk about dignity. When we visited Treatment Action Campaign during the week of internship visits there was a man from another organization who talked to us about the sanitation issues in the informal settlements. He told us about the public bathrooms (essentially porta-potties) that people have to walk to to use the bathroom. He talked with us about the dangers of having to go to the bathroom in the night (the danger of being assaulted along the way, leaving your home unattended and open to theft, etc.). What he kept bringing all these issues back to is DIGNITY. In this particular case he was saying that living in such conditions robs people of their dignity. I think its very sobering to realize that dignity is a luxury for many and so often many of us take our own sense of dignity for granted. I think that dignity is at the core of any human rights work. At the end of the day, no matter what specific issue you're focused on, the goal is to ensure and protect people's dignity. I had a really hard time at an orphanage we visited, when the woman giving us the tour said that very recently a few people had stolen a fridge from the orphanage. She spoke about the thieves with such disgust, which I think anyone would, but what i felt she was failing to see is that the perpetrator is also a victim. No one steals from an orphanage for fun, or because that sounds like a good idea, but only because they've been pushed to a place of desperation. Most people want to live respectable lives, earning an honest living but when conditions push people to their limits, many must resort to such heinous crimes. I think its also important to realize that its not just immediate circumstances that push people to behave this way but also a history of psychological oppression. 

On another note, in my last blog post I wrote about my issues with identity. I definitely have some new thoughts on the issue. As I was sitting in Vincent's class relearning the history of South Africa and specifically the history of racial oppression (& apartheid) and in that moment I felt incredibly beautiful (not in an aesthetic way) for having been the result of love that overcame such barriers and obstacles. To me, that was an incredibly powerful moment when things sort of clicked for me. Instead of feeling conflicted about being from both sides of colonialism I felt so lucky to be the result of such a protested union that persevered.

Tekowa seeing herself in a profoundly new way