Erica found a new hobby

Another incredible opportunity the group and I got to have while in Jo’burg was volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club of South Africa. Though I’ve heard about this organization back home, I had never truly looked into it. I regret not getting involved with it sooner, as I found it to have such an incredible mission. The BGCSA focuses specially on the out-of-school experience during the crucial, unsupervised hours, when vulnerable, at-risk youth are neither at home nor at school. The organization, which works to provide a safe, positive, and fun after school environment, centers on youth 6-18. This then leads to an environment where the older kids serve as role models for the younger ones. The group and I were lucky enough to meet the kids and get involved with the projects they were working on. There were many activities to choose to help with- soccer, painting, crafting, and dancing. While these all sparked an interest, I decided to help with gardening, and to my surprise, found myself a new hobby!

Erica discovering a new hobby at the Boys and Girls Club in Soweto

Though I’ve helped my mom with her garden and used to work on a garden at my summer camp, I haven’t been truly involved with it for a long time. However, when I was at the Boys and Girls club, I found that I truly enjoyed it and wanted to pursue it as a future hobby. It was so rewarding to see the transformation of the garden turn from a weeded patch of dirt to a beautiful sanctuary. As I planted a few rows of basil, I found that I enjoyed getting my hands dirty and seeing the new life entering the ground. Though I wouldn’t be there to see the long-term effects of the garden, I still felt proud about my work. This sort of struck me as a metaphor for my experience here in Cape Town- a time of growth and development, nurtured and cultivated by a challenging yet supportive environment. I know that by being here for only a short amount of time, it is difficult to see the immediate effects of my work or how this experience has impacted me. However, I know that this special time will always be apart of me and has ultimately planted a seed of curiosity. I plan to continue to tend to this, just as I intend to start a garden of my own once I am back home. Peace, love, and happy earth day! 

Aimee's intense educational encounters

It was a relief to finally arrive in Johannesburg after learning and reading about the significance of the city during the last couple of months. I was reading my non-fiction book Kaffir Boy when I got to the part where Mark Mathabane is about to embark on a journey to America with a tennis scholarship. As he was leaving his hometown of Alexandra I was arriving! He was getting a taste of my world and I was becoming a part of his. The book instantly became so real and made my experience in Johannesburg that much more meaningful. The autobiography I was reading was too shocking to be true until I realized these places and events were such a reality and a large part of recent history that still impacts people today.

It was strange to experience Easter so far from home but a few of us were able to visit a church in Soweto, called Regina Mundi, and even meet one of the church founders. The church was so beautiful and full of life. I knew I couldn’t experience Easter without visiting a faith community here in South Africa. 

                                                Aimee, Patrick and Marita meet one of the founders of Regina Mundi Church

Afterwards we went to the Hector Pieterson Museum near where the Soweto uprisings took place. Students at Bantu Education schools were being forced to have their courses taught in Afrikaans. Marches and protests included teenagers and police opened fire on crowds of students with no warning. Hector Pieterson was 13 years old when he was shot and an iconic image of Mbuyisa Makhubo holding him with his sister alongside him spread all over the world.

We then visited the Mandela Family Home followed by a nice lunch at Wandi’s. The walls were covered with messages from visitors who came from all over the world. We ate traditional African food and listened to people singing African songs. The rest of the day was spent at Freedom Square and the Rosebank Flee Market. I am definitely getting the hang of bargaining. It can actually be quite fun talking to the vendors and admiring the various pieces of art.

            

It was emotional difficult to reflect on the horrors of the tragedy of the Soweto Uprisings especially during a day that is usually supposed to be joyful. We were able to have discussions in our group, which is so essential to learning, growing, and supporting one another. Part of our discussion was about language and how it can be a form of oppression. Afrikaans was considered the language of oppression during apartheid. Some of us wondered if English could also be considered a language of oppression by many in South Africa for whom that was not their Mother Tongue. Spanish speakers in the United States don’t usually have classes in Spanish. I had never thought about language being a sensitive issue to someone. I thought about my experience teaching English at my internship. Not all of the students can understand English very well because it is not their first language. I have been reflecting on the complexity of languages and the different dialects and forms of even one language.

           

Aimee sporting her new Boys and Girls Club shirt

Monday was Family Day so we spent the day at Soweto Boys and Girls Club working on projects and playing with the children. I helped to set up a soccer field, picked up trash, danced with the girls and kicked around the soccer ball for hours!  It was sad to leave knowing that we were only there for a day. The kids were truly amazing and I met some future soccer stars. On the way to the club we stopped at the World Cup finals stadium to take pictures.

           

Tuesday we went to the Sharpeville Memorial where people protested the pass laws enforced by government. It was powerful to step foot inside the police station and cells and visit the graves of 69 people who were killed. Many of them were also young teenagers. Something that resonates the most is how determined people of all ages were to fight for their rights and be involved. These horrific events massacres not have had to happen in the first place. During the evening we ate delicious Thai at Wanghai’s and saw a play called Curl Up and Dye. It will be hard to put into words what we all experienced that night and how impactful the play was. The actors and actresses answered questions at the end of the play and opened up to us about their personal experiences and connections with apartheid. They all had completely different backgrounds and some of them are still struggling with the effects apartheid had on their lives. Even though it was just a play, they had to embody characters that felt the benefits or the pains of divisions and racism in an apartheid society. I group of us talked for hours that night about other various issues that came up throughout the play.

           

Wednesday we took a tour of the Apartheid Museum that included a Nelson Mandela exhibit and a tour guide’s personal account of training to become a traditional healer. Hearing these stories is what usually stands out to me the most. I appreciated his culture and valuing his ancestors and traditions. He was willing to open up to us about his life and the importance of traditional healing in combination with modern medicine. Later in the afternoon we took a tour of Constitution Hill and the Old Johannesburg Prison. It was shocking to learn how differently whites and blacks were treated within the prison and also men and women. Conditions were often crowded and any personal comforts were taken away. The stormy weather fir right into the rather sullen atmosphere of the tour. Our tour guide continually asked us how we were feeling as we followed the footsteps of prisoners and read about what life was like. The Constitutional Court was a really cool place and we were able to sit the chairs of judges and representatives.

Two evenings of the week I went to the movies and saw Oz and Argo. I am beginning to realize that Marita’s class is challenging me to analyze things that I see in the media. It allows us to understand how engrained these messages and stereotypes are in society.

Overall, our time in Johannesburg was filled with intense educational encounters but also group bonding, lots of great food, and relaxation.  It was overwhelming at times but definitely a necessary experience that I won’t forget. It added so much to my experiential learning while in South Africa.

Carolyn enjoying her time at the Boys and Girls Club of Soweto

After returning from excursion, I have had a lot to reflect on during the past week. First and foremost, being in Johannesburg really made me appreciate Cape Town and I frequently found myself referring to Loch Road as “home.” I imagine I have felt this love for the city for a while, but being away really made me realize it. Don’t get me wrong, Johannesburg was great, but it wasn’t Cape Town. Although, there were a few things I wish I could have brought home with me, the main one being the Boys and Girls Club in SOWETO. 

Carolyn with her new friend at the Boys and Girls Club of Soweto

One of my very favorite days of excursion was spent with the children at the club, not only getting to play with and interact with them but also being able to help out with projects and chores. My intention was to work on the new flower garden but I realized very quickly that my gardening skills weren’t exactly up to par so I managed to find work picking up trash around the garden. This was actually a bigger project than I had initially anticipated and I had my work cut out for me; even after a few hours of picking up broken glass and candy wrappers it really didn’t seem like I had made much of a dent. This is something that really disappointed me because I knew it wasn’t the children at the club smashing beer bottles everywhere, so why should they have to deal with it? 

This is a pattern that I have seen a lot throughout my time in South Africa (whether in Jo’burg or Cape Town) and the amount of trash on the streets seems to strictly correlate with the socioeconomic status of the people living there. You never see as much garbage in Rondebosch or Greenpoint as you do in Khyelitsha or Gugulethu. And when I think about it, I’m not sure things are much different back home; whenever I take the train to New York City I notice a lot of garbage in the lower income areas. It makes me wonder why that is. Are there people picking it up in the suburbs? Are there fewer places to put garbage in the townships? Is there less of a concern due to bigger issues? I just don’t know; what I do know is that I see a lot of kids walking around with no shoes and a piece of glass in their foot is the last thing they need. It seems everything we do and all the struggles we witness seem to lead but to race and class, both in South Africa and the United States. Even with that emotional bump in my day, I still had a great time with the kids at the Boys and Girls Club and I really wish we were able to go back.

Allie loved excursion but happy to be back in Cape Town

Last week, we finally embarked on something we’ve been hearing about since before we left Connecticut- excursion! We spent the first half in Johannesburg, and we managed to fit a lot of activities into just four days. We visited a bunch of museums, toured a number of historical sites and saw the play “Curl Up and Dye”. As enriching as all these activities were, my favorite part of Joburg was definitely our day at the Boys and Girls Club of Soweto. We arrived in the morning and split up into small groups to work on a number of different projects; some people were clearing out a soccer field, some were gardening, and some were building a mosaic table. I was supposed to be on food duty, but since there were literally too many cooks in the kitchen I ended up just playing with the kids around the club. It was so much fun- they were so sweet, and they were thrilled to hang out with us. They even put on a dance performance for us at the end of the day, which was fantastic. It was so great to have a chance to get to know the kids, and I know we were all sad to leave at the end of the day.

            

For the second part of our trip, we got back on the bus for the long drive from Joburg to Kruger National Park. Personally, I’ve been looking forward to this since the beginning of the trip; I’ve been watching Discovery Channel specials on African wildlife for my whole life, and now I finally got the chance to go on a real safari! It was even more than I could have hoped for. Minutes after driving into the Park our bus was surrounded by a herd of elephants, and over the next two days we saw even more elephants, giraffes, antelope, warthogs, rhino, and even a few lions. It was absolutely incredible, and I hope I make it back to Kruger some day.

            

As much fun as we had in Kruger, I was relieved to return to Cape Town. Even though we were only gone for a week, I found myself missing everything about our lives in Cape Town. I missed the familiar rhythm of life at Loch Road; I missed the colorful people and places around the city; I even missed always being able to see the mountain- the horizon looked so empty without it! So even though I learned a lot about South Africa’s history and nature over the course of the past week, I think the most significant thing I’ll take away from excursion is how much I love my life here in Cape Town, and how hard it is going to be to leave.

Ainsley on a wonderful excursion and coming "home"

Like most of our activities on this trip, excursion to Johannesburg was not what I was expecting. When looking at our schedule there was a lot of time spent in museums and learning about South African history. And while we learned a lot and saw a new history of specific events, the best part of the trip was not found in the knowledge I gained. Like I’ve experienced in Cape Town, it was the people we encountered that made the trip what it was. The passion they had for their jobs or just the unfamiliar lifestyles we found gave us just as much education as any of the museums. 

One day we spent our time at the Boys andGirls Club of Soweto. As we volunteered in different projects at the club we got to know the kids and the director, Casey Bridges. We only spent a few hours there but it was easy to see how important Casey’s work was to him and how much the children needed and appreciated what was provided for them. 

Ainsley (front left) working and playing at Boys and Girls Club in Soweto

The following night we went to a South African play, "Curl Up and Dye". While the play was entertaining getting to speak with the actors and playwright afterwards was so much more interesting. They shared their experiences growing up during apartheid and how they see South Africa today. But it was clear that in letting us into their pasts they were also explaining their stories to each other for the first time. Through their experiences we got a glimpse into the childhoods of girls classified black but with very different families, classified colored and classified white. 

Finally, on Wednesday we visited the apartheid museum and while I loved the exhibits and displays our tour guide interested me most. He was in the middle of training to be a traditional healer; a calling he had felt his whole life. I loved hearing about his culture and I think it is so important for us to learn about it since what we don’t understand we often judge. But his culture is a significant part of South Africa and it’s so important that we expose ourselves to as much of it as possible and be open minded. Along with his lesson on traditional healing, he also opened up to us about his HIV+ status and how he views ARV treatment working in conjunction with healing; working together or how they assist in different aspects.

           

My most significant realization though, was how despite the friendliness we saw in Jo’burg and the education we received, I really missed Cape Town. I missed searching the skyline for Table Mountain to find where I am in the city. I missed the constant sound of Xhosa being spoken around me. But mostly I missed my home, the place we had grown comfortable and where we knew what to expect. But now I have to acknowledge that we have to leave this place again so soon.