Off To The Rural Area

Hey friends.  Thanks for all the birthday wishes I received-they were great!  Just quickly wanted to let you all know that I won't be able to update for about 10 or 11 days as I will be traveling to the rural area where there is no electricity or water readily available and basic things of that nature.  It'll be quite an experience, and I will be living with a family there for a short time.  So....

I will update as soon as I get back and I will tell you EVERYTHING!!  I'm so excited, but a little nervous.  

You'll hear from me in about 11 days!!

Funny Times :)

I've decided that my most recent posts have been quite emotional, although I have made an attempt to make sure that each of my entries has something happy at least at the end of it.  This post is strictly going to be about my weekend, and some of the funny things that I did with my family.  To start out, let me tell you about some of the things that I did that I never ever thought I would have had the chance to do in South Africa:

1)Watch "Anacondas 2" on Satellite TV with 4 little kids screaming, laughing, pretending to be snakes.

This might sound like something stupid that you guys may not really want to hear, but I decided I wanted to provide some laughter.  The fact that my host family has satellite TV is a sign that South Africa's economic conditions are improving slowly but surely-there is definitely an emerging Black middle class-even though some people might think TV is superficial and the scourge of many societies, this is honestly very much a positive thing for this country. 

2)Introducing my 5 year old host brother to "Lord of the Rings"-he LOVED it!

Once again, this was also on satellite TV

3)Talking to my host father about the concept of organic farming taking place in Minnesota, and bragging about how much I love the big MN

My host dad is one of the those people who wants to travel and see the world.  He's very much a part of the emerging Black middle class I was speaking of.  Him and I talked about how he wants to give his children the things that he didn't grow up with under apartheid.  Really cool guy

4)Seeing 3 Sangomas-traditional healers-performing a traditional dance and showing us how they heal

This actually didn't happen this weekend, but I think I forgot to mention it in my last entry.  They wear super cool long black and white beads in their hair and inhale a special kind of smoke that allows them to get in touch with their ancestors.  They used African style drums, small versions of tambourines attached to their ankles, and they did a great dance!

5)This is not an event that happened over the weekend, this is simply a random fact of the day:

Since tomorrow is my 21st birthday it seems fitting-Here in traditional Zulu culture on people's 21st birthday they slaughter a cow!!  And just to specify, not everyone does this, and I'm pretty sure it's only those of Zulu origin who keep in touch with traditional practices.  I don't eat cow, but I still think it's pretty interesting!

Hope this made you guys happy and made you chuckle a little!

Abhalali

The meaning of the title is the "shack dwellers movement."  I'm going to make this entry really short-for real this time.  I just wanted to say a quick few words about yesterday.  I got the opportunity to go to a place called Kennedy Road, a community of shacks where 7,000 people live under worse conditions than you can possibly imagine.  People die of disease, a baby was eaten to death by a rat a year ago there, there are 6 toilets for 7,000 people, and a major garbage dump full of feces and other refuse that the municipality in South Africa refuses to pick up.  

The government does not see these people as human beings, they don't care about the way these people live.  Seeing this place made me think about so many things.  When I asked what it was that we could do to help these people out, a comment was made that the best thing that we could do is spread knowledge that places like these do exist, and human beings live in them.  So I'm telling you about it now.  For those of you from ASAP and Amnesty International back at Gustavus who are reading this, now is the time for me to let you all know how important our work truly is.  It starts with compassion, knowledge, and then finally action.  I'm excited to come back next year and work with you guys again and I know you're doing amazing work while I'm away and I can't wait to hear about it.  Keep up the good work guys.  

To end this entry with a sense of hopefulness, after we toured the shack settlement, a group of singers who live in the community performed for us-they were songs of traditional South African origin, and they had a strong emotional and political message.  Hearing them almost brought tears to my eyes, knowing that this is how these people keep themselves together day after day under such deplorable conditions.  The power of music.  I'll leave you with a quote from the leader of "Abhalali" who we met last night:

"There can be no peace without justice, and no justice without peace.  Although South Africa has no war it is still not a peaceful country when human beings are living under conditions such as these."  This quote can be applied to the U.S. as well as many other places.  Bye for now.  

What A Weekend

Hey everyone.  This past weekend was absolutely insane, but as I'm sure you've all noticed, my blog entries have been fairly long, so I'm going to try and keep this one as short as possible.  Besides, I'm not quite sure how to describe everything that went on this weekend anyways.  First of all, on Friday we worked with a wonderful non-profit organization called the Cato Manor Youth Empowerment Project (Cato Manor is the name of the area that I'm currently living in).  These people do incredible things in bringing together South African youth who are experiencing difficulties in their lives.  You wouldn't believe some of the things that I saw and experienced.  

They took us around to the most impoverished area of Cato Manor; where many people have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and where people live literally in shacks made up of plastic garbage bags, and mud and rotten wood.  I wish the world you all could have seen it-no running water except for what's been provided by the government, very little electricity, a tiny gas stove hidden in the corner.  The particular home that I went into was the home of an elderly woman who was HIV positive, whose daughter died of AIDS back in July, and who was taking care of her 2 grandchildren- 1 of which also had HIV.  We helped her do her dishes and washed her clothes in buckets, and cleaned up her room, as she was often too sick to do these things herself.  

I can't begin to describe to you how grateful she was of all of us.  Her words, "the way you are, stay that way forever.  Bless you, bless you, bless you."  These words reverberated in my heart.  As we walked around the neighborhood we also saw children walking and running around without shoes on, walking through mud, and many of the children had large sores on their arms implying an advanced HIV infection.  We also got to go to an orphanage/day care and play with the children-how adorable they were.  A little girl named Lukala held my hand and wanted me to help her go down the slide as she was too shy to ask the other kids if she could have a turn.  I wish I had pictures but we're not allowed to take pictures of children without adult consent, and the parents obviously weren't around.  

I also had an experience that I'm not sure how to feel about.  There was a group of school children, who I'm not sure if they were orphans, street kids, or who exactly they were.  But as our group was having lunch we noticed that these kids were begging for food.  So we decided to give our leftovers to them.  At first I thought we were doing a good thing, but then as we were giving out our food, the children started fighting over the boxes of food and drinks.  These kids were obviously undernourished and maybe even possibly struggling to survive.  It was just another one of those moments where you begin to question human nature and the world around you.  Tears nearly came to my eyes when I saw what the aftermath of our actions was becoming.  Even though every child got something, they still were fighting over more.  We then talked to some youth in the area about issues such as drug abuse, child abuse and AIDS as many of them are faced with these things in their everyday lives within their environments-another very eye opening experience.  

After this experience on Friday, Saturday made me realize that despite all of the pain and strife in the world, there is another side to it all.  There is a glimmer of hope that I feel has the power to make people realize how small we all are-the beauty of South African nature.  We went on a very long hike in an area called Mzamba on the south coast of the country.  We walked along the most beautiful beach that you have ever seen-not a superficial tourist beach either, but a real South African beach with the ocean water as blue as the sky above us.  The beach reminded me of the beach I saw on the Gulf of Mexico when I was little.  Then we went inland and walked along the path where a portion of "Blood Diamond" was filmed!  One of our tour guides actually was in the movie and played one of the evil army lords with the AK47s.  He said the Leonardo DiCaprio was a good guy and a real gentlemen-it was pretty sweet.  We hiked up this huge mountain/hill, and you wouldn't believe the scene that I saw.  I turned to one of the students on the group and said that people go through their whole lives and never see anything like this.

I took several pictures this weekend, but as I said in one of my previous entries I'm having trouble uploading them and plus I haven't put all of them on my computer yet.  I'm going to try as hard as I can to put those on here but unfortunately I can't make any promises.  So much for my trying to make this short haha.  I still haven't reflected on this weekend enough to understand it all myself.  So I'm sure this is enough for all of you to take in for now.  

Oh, I almost forgot another experience that I had I'd like to share you all-this will be short I promise;

On Friday when we were standing outside waiting to be picked up from the Cato Manor Youth Empowerment facility, there was a group of street children playing outside who just became absolutely fascinated by us.  We watched them play for awhile and interacted with them for a bit.  Then when we got in our van they asked us if we had any plastic bottles that they could have to play with, as they have no toys of their own.  Me and a couple of others gave them our bottles and you should have seen how excited they were.  As our van drove away they all started chasing it and waving to us.  I thought I'd end the entry on an endearing note.  

LOTS OF STUFF!!

Sanibonani once again!

I just finished the first weekend with my homestay family and they are so incredibly amazing!  I have a 5 year old little brother, a 10 year old little brother, and a 15 year old sister.  The words for brother and sister in Zulu are bhuti and sisi :)  The community we're living in is so communal, just the opposite of America.  Everyone lives right next to each other and the people walk through each other's yards, all the children know each other, and the dogs are free to roam around wherever they want.  I got a chance to play with a bunch of the little kids yesterday afternoon and on Saturday; they taught us how to play games, and we talked to them about America!  My little 5 year old brother is ADORABLE!  He always wants to hold my hand and wakes me up in the morning, and hates when I'm in my room doing reading for my seminars because he wants to play with me.  When I showed him the book I brought about Minneapolis he said he wanted to come back to America to visit me, and then when he gets a car he's going to drive to my house :)

Still however, I can't help but notice the fact that race is still what determines where you are in South African society.  There have been a few negative experiences in the neighborhood we're living in.  One of the girls in my program who is living next door to me has a little sister who is 7.  She mentioned that when she was walking down the road with the little girl a man turned and laughed at them, noticing the fact that there's a white young woman walking with a black little girl.  And then people always ask you what race you are if they can't tell, and when you let them know, they tell you to stay away from people of this race, or of that race.  It's quite sad.  

Also, being here has made me realize what an influence America has on the rest of the world.  Even all the way here in South Africa.  South Africa's economy is much greater than the rest of the continent and it has the possiblity of being able to lift the rest of Africa out of poverty (all though that obviously hasn't happened and I'll talk about that later when I learn more about it).  But unfortunately, it seems like all of the crappy parts of American culture is what's been globalized.  MTV is huge here amongst the neighborhood that I'm living in, and all that's played is Britney Speers and Fergie.  A little girl I saw was wearing her shirt half way up and was strutting around like Britney and I swear I wanted to cry.  

Additionally, what's been globalized as far as the economic condition of South Africa has been mechanized aspects of America.  Meaning the use of machines in agriculture, information and so forth.  This may sound great but for this country it's the opposite-this is adding to the severe unemployment crisis that is occurring in South Africa, which is also adding to the country's insane crime wave.  

Many of the children in the neighborhood, especially the boys, play quite violently.  They use toy guns that look INCREDIBLY real, and have games where you pretend to shoot one another.  I'm not sure if that's a product of all of the violent crime in the country, or of the media they're getting from America, or a combination of both.  Child abuse and corporal punishment against children is also widely accepted and often used by parents.  I walked to the store with my host sister and she told me that almost every single one of the homes have been broken into, and that a girl was raped and stabbed there last year.  It's something I need to study more.  

And then on Friday we took a walk around Durban with this AMAZING tour guide who was trying to show us the beauty of the world around us, and that although South Africa has a great deal of crime, the areas that are labeled as "dangerous" really aren't what they seem.  For example, we went to one of the areas that is considered the most dangerous part of Durban and we passed by some grafiti art that was spray painted on the brick wall.  He turned to us and asked us what we say in it; "grafiti," one of the students replied.  And he came back with, "you're looking, you're not seeing."  He showed us that the graphiti was trying to express something to the people who walked by it, that it meant more than simply "danger," and "fear." He showed us how beautiful it really was, and made us realize that we have to understand our surroundings and that we cannot allow ourselves to be indoctrinated in the culture of fear that people the powers that be try to present to us.  

Our tour started out in the mall, a very American mall I might add.  The mall where all of the wealthy whites shop and some of the middle class Blacks like my family, and middle class Indians.  He showed us how superficial these types of establishments are, and the contradictions between a rich looking place where people can buy worthless material goods, and the extreme poverty that exists in the country-another parallel to America.  I saw an add for Prada in the mall that said, "beauty comes from within...unless you're wearing Prada."  Another crappy aspect of American culture!  He showed us how dehumanizing society is to SO many people, and how we always have to label and categorize one another in an effort to understand them.  This made me want to cry, although it was everything I already knew.  It just made me so sorry to know that it is even more true in another country than it is in America.  America as we all know is very dehumanizing as well.  

We passed by the barbed wire fencing and the alarms installed everywhere-the things that are supposed to protect us from the supposed criminals.  We walked passed a homeless man on the street and waved to him and he smiled back at us.  Once again, a lot of parallels between South Africa and America.  I'm thinking about doing a program here where I go to a prison and talk with criminals-it's a non-profit that tries to bring together criminals with victims so that closure and understanding can be brought.  South Africa has a 43% unemployment rate and a great deal of crime that comes along with it.  But I've learned that we have to understand each other.  And although I'm not sure if I agree with everything the tour guide said, I learned so much that I wouldn't have if I had not come on this trip.  He made me think about the world around us.  

I think this is enough for you all to absorb right now.  I'm going to try to upload some more pictures when I get the chance, loading pictures is really hard on this network so I have trouble doing it.  But I will update again very soon.  This is my favorite blog entry so far!  Love you all, and you will hear from me again very soon!

Hilarious & Wonderful!

Hey everyone.  I feel like in my last few entries I was pretty negative.  I failed to share some of the positives of different cultures here in South Africa.  I move in with my first home stay family tomorrow!  I'm so nervous, but I'm excited at the same time.  South Africa has 11 different national languages, and today during my Zulu language seminar we also learned about traditional Zulu culture as our families are Zulu.  There are some wonderful things about this culture that I learned today.  Some things that even, despite international perception, lead me to believe that Zulu women here actually have it better than women in America.  

It is quite common for men to yell out comments to a woman, that American men say in a very sexual way and is honestly quite disgusting.  Here in South Africa, although rape is very high just as it is in America, the men typically mean nothing sexual or dirty by the comments. Zulu men are taught to respect and appreciate a woman's beauty and to let her know so.  Additionally, South Africa is not NEARLY as obsessed with the female body as America is.  It's quite common to see postcards here of bare breasted women and men don't drool over it...it's perfectly normal to see things like that here.  

Things here are also quite communal here as opposed to being so individual and self-centered in America.  This brings a smile to my face, but also gets a little uncomfortable for me as I've been indoctrinated to the American idea of having that "personal bubble."  It's perfectly normal here for complete strangers to get right into your face and begin talking to you, and you're rude if you give the typical American response of backing away.  

When someone dies in the family, family members and friends move on much more quickly, because the entire neighborhood is there to support the person.  There is no concept of therapy or counseling, which is hard for me to believe as I am a psychology major, to help people move on from trauma, because the Zulu culture is so communal and helpful to each other.  Oh America and our individualistic ideals...how sad you make me.  

Just as a few other tidbits that I learned today, no hats can be worn inside houses, you NEVER address adults by their first names-only as mama and baba, eye contact when talking to someone is actually considered disrespectful-the exact opposite of America!!  AMAZING!!  I am loving learning this stuff right now!  Cousins are actually considered your brothers and sisters, family is SO important here...another thing that America lacks.  

That's it for now!  Update again when I can, and wish me luck for my 1 month home stay tomorrow (so scared!!!).  I have a 14, 10, and 5 year old host sisters and brother which I'm so excited for!  And I have both parents, which many of the other students only have a mom.  Interesting.  

Crazy Stuff

Today when we drove through the rural area of KwaZulu Natal, we saw miles of rundown shacks where people live.  We were able to make one woman happy however by buying some beautiful woven baskets from her.  This was a woman living in poverty whose only way of making a living was through selling these baskets.  She told us this was the best she had ever had.  Wow.  That's about all that I have for now.  I will update more soon after I have more of a chance to take longer on the internet.  I'm coming up to my 1^st home stay now (a tish bit nervous for that) and I'm not sure how often I will have access.  But everyone let me know how you're doing and I miss each and every one of you!!  Enjoy the pictures.  Oh and as an update on whether or not I will be going to Uganda and Rwanda this summer after I get back home from this trip, that is all dependent on the scholarships that I can get which won't be reviewed until sometime after March 15^th.  So I will let everyone know whether or not you should continue to keep up with my blog after the semester as soon as I know.  Enjoy my pictures-sorry some of them are a bit graphic.   

Oh The World

Some rough things are going on here too.  Crime is unbelievably rampant-we can't wear 
purses or carry around backpacks in the city we're staying in.  HIV/AIDS testing clinics 
are everywhere, even on the streets around the markets.  And a new thing that I'm really 
upset about actually, is the race issue.  Apartheid ended barely 10 years ago, and race 
is the biggest thing here.  People aren't all that friendly in the city and everyone is 
angry at each other.  It doesn't matter what country you're from, it's all about the 
shade of your skin that often determines how you're treated.  So sad and makes me so 
unhappy.  The midwest is kind of a bubble in that sense.  Race doesn't seem to be as big 
of a deal where we come from.  Unemployment rate is remarkably high, which is what leads 
to much of the crime.  In many other developing countries people starve to death, here in 
South Africa (although South Africa is in many ways developed, it's still extremely poor) 
people take what they need without caring about who they're taking things from.  We have 
to be extremely careful around here.

We saw the Apartheid Museum-just like another Holocaust museum basically.  It's so 
unbelivable that no one knows about Apartheid back in America, and how it destroyed so 
much of this country-people starved, lived in extreme poverty, gangs developed in the 
rural areas, children killed...while in the developed city in Johannesburg, whites lived 
lives of luxury.  We toured Soweto where there was a huge student protest where the South 
Africans protested the Afrikaans language being taught to them by force by the white 
government.  We saw bullet holes in the church in Soweto as well where white police used 
to wait outside We visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum in Soweto, Hector 
Pieterson was a 13 year old boy who didn't even take full part in the protest, and was 
basically just a passerby, who was shot and killed by white police.  There's a pretty 
graphic picture that I took with a man holding Hector's dead body and Hector's sister 
running alongside.

There are SO many parallels between South Africa and the U.S. with what happened in the 
South during the 60s, which is actually becoming something very useful for me to realize 
as it will hopefully help me to figure out ways on how to improve the United States.  I 
didn't think that I would be stretching many boundaries being in South Africa which is 
why I was so upset when the other program filled, but I was wrong.  I'm hoping that this 
program will be even better because we're learning more about peace and conflict which 
wouldn't be the case on the Uganda program.

On the upside however South Africa really is a beautiful country.  And in Soweto people were extremely friendly, and it's the same in the rural areas as far as I can tell.  On our tour through Durban yesterday we came across 2 sand artists on the beach, which is there only source of income.  It was incredible!  So much talent and beauty in what they do.  "Art is our life," he said.  He also mentioned how tourists from Europe and the U.S. are the ones who leave them coins because the South Africans either don't have the money, or else they're just used to unemployment and people doing things like this for money.  We drove through KwaZulu Natal and saw a woman who was weaving baskets; an extremely poor woman whose only source of income was the baskets she sold.  You should have seen the happiness and joy on her face when our group bought a bunch of baskets from her.  She said that was the best day she had ever had.  We even got to watch her weave them.  I'll update more soon.  I miss everyone.

SANIBONANI!!

That means "hi" in Zulu just so that you know what I'm saying.  I'm sorry this is the first time I've updated, I haven't had internet access for a really long time.  But you wouldn't believe all of the amazing things that I've seen already.  A few days ago we took a tour of the apartheid museum and the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum.  Hector Pieterson was a young 13 year old South African boy who was shot and killed by police during the 1976 Soweto protests here in S.A. when black students were forced by the white government to learn the language of Afrikaans.  Afrikaans was used by the whites to control the blacks under the evil Apartheid system. 

Seeing these 2 exhibits makes me understand once again why the work of social justice and human rights is so important, as sometimes it's hard for people to see when change seems so slow and there are so many problems in the world to work on.  When we toured Soweto (the town where the young students protested) we saw so much life in the city.  Change is possible!!  A city where people could barely walk down the streets for 30 minutes without hearing a gunshot, is now becoming more and more peaceful as the South African government has acknowledged what Apartheid did to so many people of the country.  We toured Nelson Mandella's old home which is in Soweto, and saw where Desmond Tutu lives as well.  However there is still much work left to be done here; South Africa is still rampant with crime and poverty, despite how developed the country is as a whole.