A pile of my journals

Thursday, June 18th

Apartheid Museum-

The 7 Fundamental Values of South Africa-
-Democracy
-Equality
-Reconciliation
-Diversity
-Responsibility
-Respect
-Freedom



It’s hard to argue with any of these particular ideas, but what do they really mean? Freedom from what? The devil is in the details here, I guess that’s why governments and justice systems around the world are so slow.

As the group enters the museum, we are given ID cards corresponding to one of the four racial categories utilized in the Population Registration Act of 1950. I am now a non-white, which means that I enter through the non-white door, and see the passbooks issued to other non-whites. Although the unspoken rule is that you’re supposed to be categorized in a way that will put you through the door of an experience most dissimilar from your own, you are not asked any questions your racial category is assigned by other people. The buzzwords “Social construction of race” are once again brought home.



The museum was powerful. Displays allowed you to make your trip as thorough as you wished, which turned out unfortunately for me because I was caught ¾ of the way through when it was time to go.

“Whenever I could, I accepted invitations to the homes of white liberals for the food they offered- until it stuck in my throat at the thought of how casually they could regard it, while at our house we wondered whether there would be porridge tomorrow”

* Ernes Cole, South African photo journalist in the 60’s.

Am I that white liberal? This is something that I think I will be asking myself for a long time.

After the museum, Jojo and Sunnyboy took our group on a tour of Soweto, the South West Township of Joberg. Some stats as I remember them-

About 46 million people live in South Africa.

3.5-4 million people live within the 8,010 Hectares of Soweto (20,000 Acres), this may or may not include the people living in houses, RDP (Reconstruction and Development Project) houses given on grant from the government, hostels built by the mining companies for squishing large numbers of males into small spaces, tin shacks with tin roofs held down by chunks of cement and drying squashes, and finally the people with none of these shelters that sleep wherever, in streets or bushes or ditches. Something like a census would entail huge amounts of labor if it wanted accurate information.

The people of Soweto have 1 University, the University of Joberg, which like many universities around the nation is a combination of the racially segregated universities of the past, so in a way it’s like 2 or 3 universities in one. I wonder if it’s similar to the way MSU is many colleges wrapped into one giant learning institution.

There are 120 primary schools.

There are 90 secondary schools.

If there were even only 3M people living in Soweto, that would be one secondary school for every 333,333 people. It doesn’t matter where you live, there are a lot of teenagers in 300,000 people, and the one secondary school that we saw looked like it should house 150 students, and like it probably housed 300, but that still sounds very short of the need of the community.

There is 1 hospital. This hospital has 11,000 employees. That’s over 300 people per employee.

Jojo, the owner of our transportation company has lived in Soweto for 30 years. He has heard of 1 white male moving into Soweto after marrying into a family there.

There is 1 house for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and his wife.

There is 1 house for Nelson Mandela and his current wife. It is under heavy security, although not under heavier security than any of the houses in the “Hollywood” part of Soweto. The electric fences, the barbed wire, the huge walls, the alarm systems, the private security forces, these must cost this nation so much money. If this money was combined with all of the expenditures on funerals, I am sure it would make up a staggering amount of all transactions in South Africa. If only I could research such a number in some way.

There is 1 house for Winnie Mandela, and her many many children and grandchildren.

There is 1 house, “The Mandela House”, which was once lived in by Nelson and Winnie and has now been turned into an irreverent tourist attraction.

In conclusion, Soweto shows both the disparity between the rich and the poor that characterizes South Africa, as well as the refuse of the Group Areas Act, and the “poverty tour” that shows the huge numbers of people living below the poverty line. How much of Soweto needs to be “fixed?” How many of the people living below the poverty line will stay there the rest of their lives? How many Sowetans would move somewhere else if it was really an option? What if they could move to Durban? What if they could move to the U.S.?





































Saturday, June 20th

An exercise in mass movement of South African children- Gold Reef City, the amusement park across from the Apartheid Museum of Joberg. I think that Lisette put a huge amount of effort into this. She divided the 200 VVOCF kids into age groups by colored armbands, matching MSU students with their buddies. Some of the MSU students showed themselves to be very adept at quickly developing relationships with their buddies. Paul, Maggie, Ashik, and Jennifer have all put effort into learning some isiZulu words, having conversations with the kids, and in my mind focusing on the children when it’s the appropriate time to do so. From 10:00 AM until 5:00 PM we traveled basically in the age groups, including, in chronological order-

A train around the rather sizable Theme Park, the swinging ship, High-speed swings that I thought were going to break and send us flying out into space, a tilt-a-whirl, little mermaid style, a Giant Wheel merry-go-round, the ANACONDA! A big, orange, fast twisty ride, lunch at Wimpy, including two burgers for the two young men I’m eating with, pictures with costumed characters, and the magician, a Log Ride, which left all the participants very wet, kind of sketchy in a South African Winter, but these kids were invincible, dancing in the courtyard to HOUSE MUSIC, which you can hear bumping in cabs and clubs and shacks and malls and all over the place, (The popularity of House Music has been very interesting to me, as much as everyone here seems to love R&B, house music, this repetitive rhythmic subgenre of electronica that is House Music, is even more popular), more pictures on the disposable camera, to be developed and brought to Zonke Monday, hopefully.

Many of the children had been here before, and knew there way around, and in general acted pretty similarly to a group of similarly aged kids at a Six Flags in the U.S. I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe more wonderment because it was their first time. Don’t get me wrong, all the children still enjoyed themselves, but at the end of the day they were ready to go home.

So many people like to play the same&different game, or maybe I will get asked, “Is South Africa the same as overseas/U.S.?” I haven’t decided on a good answer to that question yet. You could go in the direction of the weather, or bust out the HIV/AIDS pandemic or perhaps the prevalence of crime. Usually I like to talk about how the neighboring countries of both SA and the US interact; the “promised land” effect of immigration resulting in xenophobic violence as well as legal infrastructure making it more difficult for “immigrants” to become citizens.



























Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Questions our group asked ourselves today-

“Is it a good idea or a bad idea to play soccer in sandals in the dark?”

“How would Nelson Mandela plaster a shower?”

“What is the isiZulu word for butt?”

“Are you telling me that ‘low risk groups’ are at a higher risk of HIV/AIDS than ‘high risk’ groups?”

This was all in a hard day’s work of volunteering at VVOCF.

This morning was our last official class where we discussed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission aimed at easing the transition into a world of non-apartheid, headed up by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The conversation got into restorative vs. retributive justice, some big concepts that will have to be debated further in our vans because we only had a little class time devoted to it. I resented this a little, until I decided that by nature of this class, and potentially many of my future classrooms, should always provoke enough questions to continue outside a class this short. We also had to cover a brief history of AIDS and its effect on South Africa specifically. This involved a lot of talk about “collective efficacy”, billed as the Invisible Cure to AIDS, as well as “concurrency in extended sexual relationships” and the different ways that can play itself out. I think about all the different forms of collective efficacy I have experienced or participated in; The First Presbyterian Church, BSA, MSU, VVOCF, the government? at this point I start thinking about community development. At Sherman Lake we talked about community a lot; the one of the first day activities was a Community Commitment, a contract of sorts among each individual cabin concerning behaviors and attitudes that were reached (usually) by consensus, after discussion. Then there was development at the level of each village of cabins, roughly grouped by age, which could then be included in the camp development as a whole. I have been privileged enough to experience leadership positions at each of these three levels, starting at the bottom and working upwards, and while I don’t know if I will ever have the chance to return to Kalamazoo and function of the level of the community in a metropolitan sense, many of the lessons can surely be applied.

On that note we hopped into the vans and sped across Joberg to Zonkizizwe. We arrived, and after the appropriate amount of time mulling about we were divided into- The Primer Group, The Finance Group, and the Garden Group. As a part of the garden group, we gathered the utensils we could and aimed to make our plot of land a little more accessible as a garden. This was made difficult by the earth; apparently for an indefinite amount of time this field had served as people’s dumping ground for trash. There were layers of it in the earth, toothbrushes, bottles, many plastic bags, gross things like diapers and bones, interesting things like porcelain buffalo, and dangerous things like lots and lots of broken glass. Sorting the trash from the organic waste from the rocks was difficult; here is an approximate list of our resources-

~5-16 people, 3 rakes, 2 shovels, 2 garbage bags, 1 pick, 1 wheelbarrow.

Although I only got to see Lucky for a moment and I didn’t get to see Lishonondo, today was a good day for community within our MSU group. Christiana and Crystal and I were going over our repertoire of African American spirituals and working songs while we worked, because Tshodiso had a pick and I had a shovel. It’s interesting how many of our University students are only a generation or two away from a farming family, and while many people complained about the dust, many people also commented about how good it felt to do some physical labor that left you with something accomplished at the end of the day. Our group dynamics are amazingly malleable, with everyone bonding over volunteering one moment and cutting each other’s throats over FIFA tickets the next. One minute we’re discussing the power of grassroots organizations and their affect on OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children), and for the next hour we talk about soap operas or different uses of peanut butter or bad alcohol experiences. How intentional can I be about my conversations?













































































Tuesday, June 30, 2009

With nutrition such a central focus of this project, (sometimes it sounds like VVOCF is a dressed-up feeding program), I wonder about the porridge. I think it was pap, but with sugar instead of another gravy substance. I’m not a nutritionist, and I guess fruits and vegetables are expensive in bulk, but maybe there’s a way to make it happen.

Six kids went on the journey to the hospital today, only to find huge lines and the doctors on strike. I think that Jeanne was still able to get ARV’s for mFanacona, maybe if you already have a diagnosis and/or prescription there was a different process. I know that the government is not very good at taking care of its teachers or its doctors, but I can’t help feeling that these should be selfless professions. These strikes hurt the patients and children, not necessarily the government. And I still don’t have enough faith in capitalism to say that privatization of these services is the way to go.

As for me, I was on the English/Zulu games committee. This was pretty comical, four people who know maybe 15 Zulu words between them trying to put together flashcards and activities for the children. I think that when I begin to take a foreign language, I’m also going to learn how the English language is put together.

As it was, I led the “ink shedding” portion of the session, where each child begins a story, then passes it around the table after a couple of lines to be continued by the other children. While it was slow going, and in English, I think the kids enjoyed it and as always we ended up with some crazy stories, and perhaps a better understanding of the language. I’m learning about the diphthong of the English letter “I”. People pronounce my name eelah or eelee, never eelahy. Here, my name is three syllables, with three vowel sounds, but because I mash the last two so quickly I never thought about them before. This was brought into relief when the kids had trouble differentiating between “I” and “E” while going through the alphabet.

Some gifts were presented today; what a touchy subject! While on the one hand it’s polite to bring gifts, there is a HUGE danger of the relationships being built based on stuff. I wonder how many of the kids come to the center primarily to get things. I know the center is there to give support, food, and in this case gifts, but how do you determine who gets what? Defining need must be such a complex idea, I’ll have to ask Paul about it. I feel like his knowledge of VVOCF combined with his education in the field of Social Work would enable him to help me with this question.

Mike has mentioned a couple times the power of sports, the community made possible through a common activity, I think he took a class that talked about it, but here we got to witness it. Both the VVOCF children and the MSU kids were equipped with the knowledge of soccer rules, and the joy that the festivities brought to everyone involved, players and cheerleaders alike, was a wonderful thing. I’m not very good at soccer, but my pen pal Lucky is. The act of dribbling circles around me was a nice conversation starter, opening the door for a you-teach-me-and-I’ll-teach-you sort of interaction. I don’t expect to receive any gifts from these children, so for a healthy and balanced relationship there needs to be some kind of exchange, and the exchange of knowledge and skills doesn’t require any money, unless you go to a University.







Journal, July 1st



Today was a less spectacular arrival, with a tardy start like always, and only one of two children to greet us. Lizzette started portioning out leadership roles for the MSU students once we got there, going off of the skill sheets we submitted what seems like years ago, I’m impressed. I get to participate in Gymnastics with Natalie and Marybeth. Marybeth has made some jokes about not liking kids, but WOW! Her experience teaching little kids gymnastics showed, I participated as a child but I had forgotten basically all of the exercises until Marybeth began leading us through them. It felt really good to move my body, and it was really fun to get to know the children better although the skirts for some of them made the stretches awkward. Marybeth had age-appropriate stories and activities like building sandwiches as a part of the stretches, and had them interacting in the counting of the stretches, basically the children were amazingly engaged the whole time and even some of the staff gave it the old college try.

Creativity is something that is very important to me, so today when one of the staff members and I were charged with leading gymnastics after Marybeth had moved on to another activity, the gymnastics ended and the children wanted to play with the letters that we had been using as gymnastic mats. The staff person and I then proceeded to play a variation of twister that involved trying to spell out your name using your body, which for mFanacona resulted in some hilarious contortions, and a lot of laughs for everyone. I was very pleased with the initiative of the staff member I was working with, and I helped lead her through some troubleshooting. Specifically, when all the kids tried to do it at the same time it wasn’t working, and when I pointed this out, the staff member said, “Well, what do I do?” I didn’t want to tell them what to do, so I asked her to better define the problem, and then come up with some possible solutions. After this encouragement she worked out a system where only 4 or 5 kids tried to spell at the same time, and although we lost a bunch of the kids that weren’t engaged to other activities, the children that stayed had more fun and I congratulated the staff member afterwards because I thought she had done such a good job.

Singing on the other hand was even more chaos, I think the staff members were told that they were supposed to teach us some music, and we were supposed to teach them some music, a good way to build relationships. Ashley and I pulled out our repertoire of camp songs together, and led the children in some using a haphazard rote learning sequence, but mostly I learned from the children not only songs but chants and some simple dancing sequences as well. The children’s skill at some of these performing arts was brought up during a discussion about income generation and VVOCF dependency on MSU. I unfortunately was unable to participate because I was “paga”ing and doing the dishes, but it was important to set an example for the boys that, as the Zulu-English learning packet said, “Those who eat food must wash dishes”. I do wish that I could have a better understanding of the plan for VVOCF’s independence. Will MSU always support them financially? I know the study abroad group isn’t coming next year, I wonder what their plan for Winter Camp is? Do they have other large-scale events without MSU here? Why don’t they receive support from the South African Government when it appears that so many other groups in South Africa do? Is food the main draw for the youth here? If so, is that a bad thing, if that’s what the children need?



Friday, July 3rd,



I have a new home. Chilling in Zonke, on an inflatable mattress wearing layers over layers, I have a chance to breathe, prepare for the next session in my life, and reflect on the chaos that was the last six weeks.

Conversations over fruit salad preparation.

Ingredients-

Oranges. Lots of oranges, 50 apples, 45 bananas, 30 pears, 10 Papaya, 6 pineapple, 4 VVOCF staff, 3 MSU participants, 3 cases of strawberries



Over 150 people attended today’s event, some because they were students who were singing/dancing in performance, some because they were related, and some were there because there was food. While I’m not sure how the hot-box presentation was received, Nimosa asserted herself in my mind as a strong presence in the community; I’m excited to learn from her and assist her in any way possible.

Msebenzi sat with me for over half an hour reading the Zulu/English dictionary, it was awesome. If I do that every day, it might actually stick, and in six weeks maybe I’ll understand the Zulu that Paul does. He leaves pretty big shoes for the “white male” in Zonke to fill, I also have to learn how to cook and how to “vuma”, and basically dance it up in general. And his shoes are actually one size bigger than mine, despite his thin frame.

I don’t know if it’s because everyone here speaks more languages, or because some of the children have a rudimentary understanding of English, or perhaps the chaotic nature of Zonke existence necessitates creativity, but the poetry I have seen here has been a recurring source of wonder and inspiration. I want to write a poem about the vagaries of bursaries, mostly because I like the rhythm of the phrase, but also because post-secondary education is so difficult to access, I think it should be poetically noted.

I also keep thinking about the Ernes Cole quote that I wrote down from the Apartheid museum. On my first reading, I thought that his revulsion was being directed toward the white liberal. Is it that, or is it “the casualness with which he regarded (his meal)”?

Because I don’t want anyone that I interact with to have the sensation that he did, I think that on one hand I must strive for justice, racial justice in particular, and on the other I must keep thankfulness in the forefront of my mind. In regard to food, thankfulness often means a moment of silence I take with myself at each meal to say, in my mind, “Dear Lord in heaven, thank you for the life that went into this wonderful food that I am about to eat. May it nourish me that I may move healthily through the rest of my days”. It used to stop there, but when I felt the mantra beginning to lose it’s meaning, I tried to give thanks with a detail when I said it, sometimes I try to pass on the image of the food, sometimes I will close my eyes and smell, and sometimes I will sit down and take the first bite and as I taste, I focus that sensation along with my prayer. I think the next step for me is more extroverted, explicitly thanking those responsible for the meal I’m eating, which is easy to do on a small scale such as cooking in a room with Mike and Ashik, and also easy to blow it off and leave a waitress/waiter with an impersonal “thank you”, or “Yes, the food is fine”. I think that manners are one thing, and thankfulness in another.



















































































Saturday, July 04, 2009



A beautifully restful day. A calm breakfast, a visit from Sifiso with whom I played the first game of chess in a long time. Nomalonga, Fandile and Bruce came over and Bruce talked our ears off, but showed me his brother’s hair cutting place. I explored the center a little, checking out the chaos that will be at our disposal for the next six weeks. Bruce actually does know some things about computers.

Ramya and Lisette started planning the next phase of VVOCF. It was nice to be there. Maybe I will be able to make some of my teacher education training useful.









Thursday July 9, 2009



Highlights:

Watching Ramya walk Boycano out the gate after the story of his unsuccessful fund-raising.

Achieving the status of “The Father of Connect Four”- tournament parallels to HIV-related concurrency habits.

Learning about cell-phones from teenage boys who don’t have cell phones, and yet are able to navigate MTN and CellC with amazing dexterity.

Turning in a letter at Zonke Secondary asking for the donation of temporary school containers myself.

Learning dirty my first dirty word in isiZulu- Isende maybe?

Tahbo- The Africcans-speaking runner, who knows how to connect to little kids, helping me do home improvements on Nomosa’s shack, doing laundry, “Good boy like a girl”, and putting up wiper boards together.

Pumzile=Mahvela?- the flirty young intern who loves attention, and although she wants to dedicate her life to VVOCF, has recently lost the respect of and for the older kids at the center.

Phinidile- Nomsa’s sister, the next most dedicated staff member in my current eyes, who has the wherewithal to hold the attention of any group of kids here, the tenacity to make it through the home visit files, and a young daughter Lucy in KZN that she’s going to visit this weekend for the first time in two years.

Nomsa- The staff member with whom I’ve exchanged perhaps five words and a hankerchief.

Today I started reading through more of the files I found on the center’s computer. I started tearing up as I read through some of the child’s files on there. Ironically I had just read some contracts about how confidential the information was, but these “cases” are kids that I work with each day, stories that are repeated all around me each day in pieces, that I finally put together into bigger chunks of The Puzzle as I swam through the craziness that is The Computer.

Chapped hands from my morning wash routine in the cold; Ramya tends to cook dinner, I try to do dishes in the morning before folks wake up, lunch is a giant communal activity led by Vina and MamaMazuko, and I try to help with those dishes too but it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle.

How entrenched in these kids lives am I going to be?

WHAT ARE MY GOALS FOR MY TIME HERE?

Goals are going to be necessary if I want to evaluate this time in my life in any sensible way. This in a little scary, because Lizzy said she didn’t have very clear goals until she had been here for 4 weeks. That would leave me with a week and a half to complete whatever goals I set. One week of my stay is already gone.

I wonder who I am being held accountable by right now, Lizzy? Ramya? Nomosa? Jeanne? Dad? Mom? Eli? God?

There are two more Bahai pamphlets around, I should look into who’s they are and how they arrived where they are.



10:30- A rare moment of quietude is broken by two semi-distant gunshots echoing around the walls of the shacks.



Friday July 10th- July 15th

An e-mail to Dad.

I don’t know if you can find pictures of Zonkizizwe online, it’s a township outside of Joberg, which used to mean black shantytown, and while the Re Development Project has built quite a few houses, if a family applies and is granted an RDP house, urbanization is such a trend that as soon as they leave their shack there is another family trying to move into it. The center is located in Zone 6, in the middle of a 300X300 square-yard field. There’s a 6 foot wire fence (everyone has a fence) staking out our claim to about There are three mobile-home size buildings, and the outhouse/showerhouse. The director of the program, Nomusa, lives in one with her baby Msebenzie and the main kitchen. One building is mostly empty, with some books and materials owned by the center. The last building is divided into two big rooms, one of which houses the majority of the center’s stuff, donations, school supplies for the kids, and The Computer. The other room is the Intern Room. When you open the door, open the steel gate inside the door, and look around, on one side there’s some shelves, a fridge and a toaster oven with a range on top. Our suitcases line the opposite wall, and to the right is the futon that Ramya and Lisette sleep on, with my air mattress deflated underneath.

Zonke is small enough that you can walk most anywhere, it’s even possible to walk to Zone 1 (from Zone 6, where we are) and back in one day if you wanted to, except the rule is you have to be home before dark, which is around 5 o’clock. I haven’t yet figured out who exactly it is that keeps the world inside at such an early curfew. On the weekends, Friday and Saturday, it’s very clearly the wandering drunkards who buy the very cheap beer at the tuck shops (less than $1 for 750ml), and I know that some of the older boys safely defy this curfew, depending on their connections in the community to older men, but for all my purposes it does not look like I will be pushing that curfew. I stick out like a very sore white thumb here, some people have come up to me asking to shake my hand because they’ve never touched a “lunga” (means white, and also the English language), person before.

I have been learning a lot of isiZulu, the main language spoken here. I have two little dictionaries that the little children sit down and read with me, then there are a couple staff members who keep trying to teach my complex phrases and oblique words, and then there’s the simple fact that most conversation outside the center happens in isiZulu. I’m slowly building my vocabulary beyond simple greetings and directions for children, and while it’s been very difficult and sometimes amazingly frustrating, I really love learning a new language.

The center has a washing machine, (a huge blessing because the dust here is omnipresent), and today was laundry day. After washing my clothes, I was hanging them on the fence to dry, and a three small children who had been stick-fighting in the field walked over. I proceeded to have a fifteen minute conversation with the girl of 5 or 6, her speaking isiZulu and me speaking English, and neither of us understanding a word of what the other said. It was a beautiful moment.

There are rumors of an dial-up internet box somewhere near the taxi rank, hopefully one of the older youth will show me where, perhaps in return for a kota, the snack/meal sold at many of the tuck shops constituted of thick slices of bread with fries and Vienna sausage and vinegar in the middle. This would let me continue to blog, which I would love for anyone interested to read. You mentioned some people at church specifically; this morning we were woken up by a church service in the field outside our house. The praise band and choir sounded more like they were actually in our house, but 6 hours later when the service finished (not exaggerating) I went and spoke with Daniel, the pastor, about playing some music, and he was very friendly and approachable, and might help me acquire a ‘cello to practice on. Celloes are very difficult to come by in South Africa.

I’ll be able to tell you more about typical activities after the next week of typical Zonke, but the kids have tons of camp-like games and songs, and tons of dances. At Agape there was hip hop music and hip-hop dance, and while there is a little here, they love traditional African dances. The Zulu people are amazing dancers, hopefully I’ll be able to post or bring home some footage of these little tikes like mFanacona who barely reach my waist doing these wonderful dances while everyone in the circle claps and sings.

Technology in the US sense here is unaffordable to most of the people. Adults might have cell phones, but computers are a rarity. Both the library and the school had monitors and computers stolen before MSU got here, and while the center has a desktop, because we don’t have a registered address yet we can’t get internet.
This fact combined with the fact that there are no other networking potentials for the XO laptop as of yet, mean that I don’t know how to make the computer available to one student at a time yet, because all 70 of them want to use it. So, thus far, it has been underutilized at the center, but that will hopefully change soon. Maybe some sort of check-out program, we’ll see.

Neeharika has been in India for a couple weeks now, she has been volunteering through an organization called Janaagraha, but taking field trips to Andhra Pradesh, where her old school is, and Hampi, this city of ruins in the next state. I get the impression that living with her family there is not everything she could have dreamed of, but she has one aunt and uncle in particular that she can relate to. To make the world seem a little smaller, here are some connections realized today in our very small room. Neeharika speaks Telugu, the same language as Ramya, one of the other interns staying here, who also has half her family in Canton and half in India. The other intern staying here, Lisette, has a brother Sam’s age who just got back from the Hiawatha boy scout camp I used to go.

The big question is “Has the MSU effort to help enable these children been effective?” VVOCF has been sputtering along for roughly three years, and Jeanne fears that the center has developed a dependency on MSU interns and $ in an unhealthy way. This has put me on the sidelines of the analysis that the situation here is undergoing. Nimosa, the live-in co-founder of this whole project has a hot and then cold relationship with the interns. Being HIV positive herself, she has a huge passion for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, or OVC’s as the books like to say. This meant feeding and nurturing kids, but because the need for food and social workers is so great here, the program sort of ballooned from ten people in Nimosa’s mother’s kitchen to the 140 people at the MSU Winter Camp last week. The catch is that today at the center, after the MSU kids left, albeit a lot of kids went visiting family/friends because it’s vacation, but still there were only 14 kids that showed up. We had made big plans and preparations, including a lot of food, so it was pretty confusing for this to happen. Sometimes I feel like the helper/IT guy running around fixing buildings and computers, sometimes I feel like I’m here as a short-term social worker, sometimes I feel like I’m volunteering at a Salvation Army station that just happens to be all in other languages.

As far as when I fly back on August 15th, I think I can catch the Michigan Flyer back to Bus 1 which will take me right to my house in Lansing, where I can move in the things I have, and assess what further things I need, as well as perhaps scout out the situation for my extra curriculars. Right now I’m thinking some private lessons, and because I’m so close to the Refugee development center, and because I’ve interacted with so many refugees and children and orphans of refugees here, I really think I would like to get involved there too. I have to make very tough choices though, because I’m walking the line at the school of music; I have to do be on my game at the school of music. SO; it kind of looks like I will have to choose between FRS and the RDC. These are things I’m sure I’ll have to figure out once I get back to MSU, as well as how I might get to the UP to see all of you before classes start September 2nd or 3rd. Then I can hear about Sam’s Pres. Point and swimming experiences, and share the story of when I tried to pass the lifeguarding examination at Sherman Lake (I still had a lot of training to do). That’s so cool that Becky got to see Stonehenge in person! I take it that Becky meant the Bender family travels well relative to some other families, either way, I would love to travel with everyone again.

I hope Katie felt like a queen while on her study abroad trip. South Africa is large enough and influenced by international pop culture enough for women to receive the “anorexic is cool” vibe from their peers and the “proper double chin means you’re well cared for” pressure from the older generation/older dating/whoever crowd, that also similar to the US has the issue of infestations of junk carbs and other hollow foodstuffs that can leave a person looking large and well fed, but their body craving essential nutrients like green. I’ve made a couple of personal connections here in Zonke myself, among them one of the kids older brothers who owns a hair salon down the road, and a pastor/musician from Nigeria named David who I’ve played a little music with. Here’s an ACT comparison: The US is to South Africa as South Africa is to Nigeria and much of the rest of Africa. Sbay found $50,000 Mozambiquan dollars on the road two days ago, which apparently works out to under $5US. This has resulted in lots of refugee flight into the country, which has resulted in sometimes violent, sometimes political xenophobia against “outsider” Africans. There are many multi-generational homes here too, but there is a gap between the “grannies” and the “youth”; this place has lost a whole generation to AIDS. The center is part of filling in the gap, but while sometimes it appears that the kids get along fine, other times it feels like the gap is so huge that these kids are already lost and being steered further into the worst possible direction.

I hope mom’s travels downstate for her ZA are going well, the more I speak with my peers over the trip the more I appreciate the lifelong learning that both my parents have undergone. I also just realized that mom and I will be downstate together for almost a week! I can’t wait to see you all; I hope I get to see Becky before she heads out to school. This e-mail was written over the period of a week, starting before we briefly spoke, and finishing right before I sent it. A million more things have happened at the center; the relationships with the director Nimosa, the staff, the interns, and the kids have all been developing in exciting ways. I’m still spending most of my time listening, and learning, and only rarely putting in my two cents in a slower, second-language-speaker-accessible English/isiLungu.






Thursday, July 16, 2009

How are transactional relationships a reflection of patriarchy?

Is the US different from South Africa?

Nomusa- “I don’t like that bisexual thing”

Are whistles and come-ons compliments?

How do you challenge hate?

How do you know if someone is mocking you?

Confrontation- get some. I wish I had a South African Luke.

Treatment Action Campaign- buses called with a U.S. accent

Sprite stadium will host the first game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

SA still remembers mass action. The songs, the loudspeakers, toyi toyi, losing children in large crowds. Large crowds of people unifying around a common greater good.

TAC provided the witty bus driver, water/food, police escort for the march.

Guys being assholes- objectification of women, disrespect for elders, gay-hating.

Kotha hunt-

Jonathan holding me accountable to bible readings. ?





Rice w/lentils-

Diced onions&carrots, garlic cloves, chilies,

Add spices- tamric? Chili powder, pimpernel?

Add lentils, they take longer than rice

Wait for the smell to chill out- prevent “harsh” spice

Add rice and water

Add salt





Naeya=ghee?

Onions, Cabbage,







Friday, July 17, 2009



Early mornings continue, Neeharika’s phone is flat

Pipes aren’t frozen today, that’s nice.

But- 8:00 power goes out, it will remain out until 5:00.

At MSU, you might see flyers advertising the miraculous feats possible with the power that the world would save if everyone turned out their lights for one hour a day, or maybe for a whole day. Here it just happens.

I wonder if people use more or less electricity when power is intermittent.

I had combat corduroy stuck in my head all day, Sunsets and Goodbyes, a pretty twisted tune.

The morning was all donations, and since I had nothing to contribute, I ended up on grounds with Thabo, which after the initial pull was actually pretty freeing. Despite the small size of this place, I imagine that a team of three or four people could spend 2 or 3 hours a morning cleaning up the glass/trash/plastic on the grounds.

This afternoon, after a small number of kids trickled in late, I ended up with Pumzile, Qapo, mSebenzi, mFanacona, and Ernest. After pulling out a few Sherman Lake games out of my sleeve, a simple get-to-know-you game led into these four little rock stars sharing their life stories with each other, how their parents had all died and they had moved across town to places they didn’t like as much because their parents weren’t there and no place would ever be home again. Except they stopped before the last line, but that’s where this story often goes, if you talk to some of the older kids at the center, you can see it.

Nonhlanhla got her CV with the same rush that Emily did, it’s as if there’s some really sweet job that recently opened up, or maybe it’s just that this step of the job search has been denied to them so long that they’re excited to take the initiative.

Jonathan made his first recording that he was really excited about, sometimes I think he’s being real, other times, especially when other people that he wants to be liked by are around, he fluffs up and goes all cool and machismo.

Lucky and a relatively distant Florence paid the interns a visit after hours, while another amazing Indian dish was created with the silly little stove.

Falling asleep to Johnny Cash.





Saturday, July 18th

Today I ran to a nearby community across a giant trash field. I made sure to stick to the big dirt path so as not to get lost, and while I was a little freaked out by the rotting corpse of a German Shepherd along the path, I continued along. The sun brought the world to the perfect temperature with a light breeze for occasional cooling. When I arrived at the next township, a small crowd gathered to see the white person. I was greeted politely by a group of children who came running out of these two houses. They asked me where I was going, and when I said Zonkizizwe they pointed me in the right direction after offering a glass of water. I politely declined and came back home, and feeling like I could have run for eternity.



Jonathan “passed Grade 12” in Zambia at the age of 15. He is 17 now, what has he been doing for 2 years? What happened to his parents? He said his mom was from Tanzania and his dad from the US, and that he talks to his dad every once in a while from somewhere pretty far away but still probably within South Africa. He has never mentioned his mom.





Saturday July 25, 2009

My quote of the week.

I think I’m saying, “What do you want?”

Really I am saying, “When do you want to die?”

Ufanini vs. Ufunani

This week was testing week.







Sunday, July 26, 2009







Zonke Place of Peace

Many nations united by repression

to limit your knowledge is

to chain you

your family

invisibly

g’luck

Lucky



One teacher in primary called him Lucky-

Portuguese name- Pito

Zulu name, given my mother- brother=Buthi

Pilato- brother

Friends- Miyo- the soccer player

Kyoko/Christiana- Marcus





What am I doing here that will be lasting?

Ramya is leaving, she made a difference.

I am a Teacher. iteshela.

another witticism-

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.

Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.

Teach a woman to fish, (insert long, feministic success story here)

she takes out a micro-loan so she can teach her children to fish also, while she develops longitudinal cross-platform uses for different types of fish, eventually joining the Committee for Sustainable Fishing and developing a plan for population control that will allow the community to interact with the ecosystem in a long-term symbiotic manner.



The moral of the story is-

I want to develop the staff in such a way that they can reproduce Ramya’s work without her here.

How do I do that?

I need to understand Nomusa/Christina/C.S. Buthelezi’s situation better. Never resent any help that you do, you are and have been on call 24/7 since you started living in a room for free.

How do CV’s interact with this situation?

I’ve made CV’s for most of the young staff, would Nomusa approve? Is she worried about losing staff? Should she be interacting with the kids more? Does she want to? Could Phindile replace some of her other legwork?



How much have I been waiting for Ramya to leave?

I feel self-conscious about cooking with her around, I wish I could have been more helpful when she was cooking instead of playing music. When she gets stressed out I get stressed out. Why am I sensitive to some people and not others? Empathy.







Leadership-

Taking charge? To do lists- started by Ramya, continued by staff.

What else? Initiative, working on advancing the center on your own

Focus on the children- How can we best help these kids?





“Drinkin’ that Zulu drink!”





It's too bad I couldn't have posted these in real-time during my trip, but here they are just the same.