It’s now been over a year since I arrived in South Africa (September 21 will mark 1 year as an official Peace Corps Volunteer). I’ve been going through many transitions all at once. The main project that consumes my time at the moment is my library and literacy campaign. I’ve also found myself reading and writing a lot more recently. The cold winter is slowly warming to spring. Some changes are welcome, some are dreaded, but all seem to become more manageable when taken in the context of a bigger picture. Every change, no matter the size, is the turning of a page. Though the good ones may seem small and insignificant, they help move us forward bit by bit. Though the bad ones seem insurmountable, they too will be buried behind chapters with time.
The Family Book
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| July Holiday |
My family and Kana came to visit for two weeks. We went to Zambia to see Victoria Falls and then traveled back to South Africa to see Kruger, my village, and a few other places along the way. It was an incredible time, though bittersweet at points.
When everyone arrived, we spent a day to allow them to get over jetlag and just hang out. We got dinner with a bunch of my volunteer friends in Pretoria one night. The next day we went to a mall and my parents insisted on getting me a new pair of shoes since the ones I was wearing had holes in them and had had their soles glued back on twice. We also saw Kung-Fu Panda, which was great (my second time seeing it…). Then we packed up and got on a plane to head to Victoria Falls.
Rainbows in the mistVictoria Falls was incredible and the place we stayed, the Royal Livingstone, was something out of a fairy tale. It’s basically the epitome of luxury within my life’s experience so far, and probably will remain so for quite a while. At check in, they walk you into a spacious lounge, seat you on a couch, give you fresh juice and a hand massage, while taking your particulars. You then get on a golf cart and are driven to your room/cottage, equipped with its own butler. Outside, giraffes and zebras are roaming around on the banks of the Zambezi River, in which hippos wallow. You can see the mist rising from the falls, which are only a 10 minute walk away. The meals are exquisite and the staff, incredibly warm. When you return to your room after dinner, you find the bed turned down for you, covered in rose petals, bathrobes and slippers laid out nicely, and soothing light classical music playing. After a year of battling cock-roaches, baking under a corrugated iron roof, and subsisting on pap and peanut butter, it was almost too much to completely soak in. The falls themselves were magnificent, with a spray that would leave you doused just walking by it. It was quite different than Niagara Falls, with its sheer breadth enough to leave you in awe. With Victoria Falls, it was hard to take in the whole falls at once. It is more reticent to disclose its full splendor. There is also a surprising lack of guardrails at hazardous locations. One evening we went on a sunset cruise up the Zambezi River. It was very relaxing and we got a chance to see some more hippos and elephants from our boat.
It's a baby!Soon though, the lazy days came to an end and we headed back to South Africa. We drove a little north of Pretoria and spent the night. The next day we headed to Magoebaskloof on our way to Kruger. Magoesbaskloof is a beautiful area, full of mountains and waterfalls. We did a short hike from our hotel to a waterfall and spent time just hanging out. The next day we headed into Kruger to Gomo Gomo Game Lodge. It is in the Timbavati Private Game Reserve which is part of the Greater Kruger, but technically not part of the national park. Every day at 5:30am we’d get a wake-up call. By 6:30am we were in our Land Rover with our ranger and tracker looking for wildlife. We’d come back at 10 and have breakfast before going for a nature walk where we’d learn about tracks, droppings, and flora. At 2pm we’d have lunch and then 3:30pm mount back up for an afternoon game drive. We’d be back by 7:30 and have dinner and be in bed by 9ish. During the night, we couldn’t go outside our rooms because there are no fences. One night, some lions walked through our camp. I don’t remember all the animals we saw but there were a lot. We saw all the big five: lion, leopard, elephant, water buffalo, and rhino. We also saw giraffes, zebras, hippos, crocodiles, a multitude of different antelope, eagles, cranes, chameleons, mongoose, bushbabies, baboons, monkeys, and more. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
GrrAfter Kruger, we drove up through the Blyde River Canyon and I got to share some of my favorite spots of South Africa with my family. We stayed in Graskop and I haggled with some street vendors to get two drums. One huge ornamental one that got sent home, and one djembe for me to play here. It was the last full day of the trip with Kana. The next day we drove to the airport and sent her off back to Japan. From there we continued on our way out west. The next day we went to Vryburg and got to do some major shopping for me. I still have tons of food I’m trying to finish. We then made our way up to Tsoe where I shared the people and places I’ve grown to love with my family. We even had time to make a small jaunt down to Perth to see Art. After a few days though, they had to head back and I had to prepare for getting back to work.
It was wonderful to spend time with my family and Kana, and to share my life here with them. At the same time, I realized that the life I return to a year from now will have little resemblance to the one I left last year. The care and affection for the important people in my life will remain, but the details, the locations, and the terms of all relationships changes with time.
Pages of a Troubled Past
Before, during, and after the vacation, I was busy trying to put together the 3rd PCSA Cultural Panel for the Pre-Service Training of SA18. The Diversity Committee started this panel, which brings together speakers from different racial backgrounds to share their life experiences with the trainees and give them a better understanding of the often complex racial subtext on which our service takes place. Unfortunately I was unable to lock down a white speaker and logistics ended up being a nightmare, but it was well worth it to get to befriend three amazing South Africans and help them share their stories with the trainees. While changing names to preserve privacy, I’d like to share some of the highlights that these speakers shared with me.
Mma Mabatho was raised in the townships but spent her adult life in a rural community. She was the last child of her parents and her father, who had so wanted a son, decided to raise her as one. He taught her that she was responsible fully to herself and should never let anyone, man or woman make her think she was less than them. When she got beat up by a boy in school, her father didn’t get angry; he gave her boxing lessons so that next time, she walloped the punk. Living out in rural South Africa, she defied traditions, wearing pants and driving trucks while she was pregnant. Still, she forged her image as a leader, developing her community and pushing education. She is a testament to the individual that doesn’t just fight against the restrictions of society, but transcends them in a way that makes them seem non-existent to an onlooker. In a world still dominated by males and tainted with chauvinism, her and her father are archetypes of a bright future.
Yvonne is a young colored woman from KZN. When going through high school, she approached her principal saying she wanted to go to tertiary school. He looked at her in disbelief and tried to convince her to just get a job like everyone else. After struggling for a year in a university for which her high school had not prepared her, she begrudgingly took his advice, working five years before deciding, to hell with them all, she was going to educate herself. She went back to school, studying by day, working by night, and finished her bachelors. She took some time off from education to be a mother and get a job but is ready to go back for further education now. She is an incredibly driven woman, very well read, and well spoken. She eloquently lays out the great contradictions of the colored identity. Kept at arms distance by the white government, they now find themselves kept at arms distance by the black government because they were seen as trying to be white when it was fashionable and now trying to be black. It was hard to fit them into the Apartheid system because they were the evidence that Apartheid didn’t really work. It was illegal for whites and blacks to have sex but somehow these colored babies kept popping up. Yvonne was raised in a household where her parents rejected the label colored saying, we’re all black and we’re all in this together. She is passionate about developing the human potential of South Africa, even taking in kids from bad home situations and helping to raise and educate them.
Mr. Chandra was born in the late ‘40s and lived through the lifetime of Apartheid. Growing up in a small hut in an Indian township in Durban, he’d read by candlelight until his eyes hurt, seeing education as his only way out of the system. When he got his first bicycle, he was so excited he biked 5km to the beach for the first time. He didn’t have much time to enjoy the view of the Indian Ocean as a crowd of white boys gathered and started stoning him for daring to wander onto a white beach. Later, Mr. Chandra became a teacher and worked his way up the education system. One day for lunch, he and some colleagues went out for lunch at the SA equivalent of Wendy’s, called Wimpy’s. As they sat down at the counter, the manager approached them and said, “You can’t stay here. If you want to get food, go order at the pigeon hole outside. If you sit here, no one will come in here.” Indignant they all left eventually. In 1996, after the fall of Apartheid, Mr. Chandra went back to the same Wimpy’s and sat down. The very same manager was still there and came, this time with a smile on his face and ready to serve. Mr. Chandra asked if the manager remembered him, which he did not. He reminded him of the incident and the manager looked mortified and begged his forgiveness for participation in the system. What struck me was that Mr. Chandra did not harbor ill feelings towards those people that slighted him, he realized that they were also manipulated by the system and so could not be fully blamed. Now, Mr. Chandra is the principal of a school in an Afrikaans town that is now integrated. He is known and respected by all people there and is the go-to man if anyone has any problem with anything. Chatting after the panel he was saying how speaking about these things was interesting to him because he usually didn’t talk about the past. So much is buried inside that stirring it up can make one uncomfortable. Yet, he said, it was necessary to confront and make peace with the past if we are to turn the page and begin writing a future.
Books for a Brighter Future
Back in my village, I’ve been busy at work preparing for 1000 books to arrive at my school. I apologize to all those who generously donated that I have not yet sent out the thank you letters I should have sent out long ago. The books will be arriving in two weeks. In the meantime I’ve been busy preparing for their arrival. Our library committee is revving up. We’ve recruited to student librarians and I’ve got about 6 teachers behind me. We’ve begun cleaning out the shelves and sorting through the books we currently have. I’ve set up Koha Integrated Library Software on a computer (www.koha.org) and been setting it up to catalog all our books so we can register library members and run circulation with the computer. This past week, I went to the tribal meeting to speak about the library and recruit community volunteers to be librarians. Before the meeting began, I met two young villagers on the Youth Council. They both are bright young people who want to build up more skills but don’t have a job. They both signed up to help and then helped me during the meeting to explain exactly what a library is and how it can be useful to the village. When I got up to speak, I gave my presentation in seTswana. After a few sentences, an old cantankerous man stood up, ignored the chairperson and began railing about how he couldn’t understand what I was saying and that I should have brought an interpreter. To my immense relief, villagers all around started yelling at him saying to shut up and sit down because they could hear me just fine. Deflated, he sat down and I continued after the crowd said they understood me perfectly and wanted me to continue. At the end of the presentation, I sat down and the crowd applauded. A couple of people asked me questions about what kinds of books they could find and what they could do. One of my newly recruited assistants stood up and added some further information.
The next day, my friend George, another old villager, came to me and said he was so sorry that other man had harassed me and that they all understood me perfectly and appreciated what I was doing. Then on Friday as I was sorting through old books and writing up instructions, an older man came to the library and asked to see me. He was interested in finding some books on agriculture, particularly about pigs. Since the library is not nearly set up yet, I guided him through the piles and hastily created a circulation log and explained the lending rules. He was very excited to see borrow the books and also wanted to sign up to help with the organization of the library. In a village where reading just isn’t done, seeing an older man excited to have some books in his hands fills me with confidence as I prepare myself for some grueling weeks of cataloging and book sorting. Of course, it will be a long and tiring journey to making a library that is not only functional but also utilized but page by page, we are going to get there.
Keeping the Narrative Alive
I’ve been thinking deeply about what the meaning of change is and what is the point of struggling and suffering. My own, comparatively petty, struggles aside, I look around me every day: seeing teenagers that can’t write their own names, seeing girls having babies in middle school so they can get a government check, seeing an endless line of funerals, seeing the few kids that have dreams find them strangled in a bureaucracy that doesn’t care about anything except its own politics. I ask myself, what can I possibly offer them? Society has already written their story for them. Am I making it worse to even try to give them a glimpse of something better if they may never escape this poverty? No. The thought itself is dangerously akin to the patronizing talk that built up Apartheid and the Bantu Education system in the first place. I am not here imposing “development” on anyone. I am here to help people realize they have choices. If they are willing to make some tough choices, they can take their lives in their own hands and reclaim their future. The choice is still theirs as it always has been. I am here to help them realize that they still have a choice and help them find all the information they need to make the choice they want to make. My thoughts go back to a prayer I remember from my childhood, “Lord, give me the courage to change what should be changed, the grace to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Theistic beliefs aside, striving for such courage, grace, and wisdom is key to any type of development work, whether it be civil development or personal development. When thinking of the dire situation some of my kids here are faced with, I think of Michael K from Coetzee’s book “The Life and Times of Michael K.” Whatever struggles we face, if at the end we can feel free and in control of our life. The end of that book, after so much despair and suffering, is to me, one of the most uplifting passages I’ve ever read. So this quote probably won’t make sense if you haven’t read the book and if you haven’t you may not want to read this, as it is the end of the book but I feel it is fitting to end on a final page:
“And if the old man climbed out of the cart and stretched himself (things were gathering pace now) and looked at where the pump had been that the soldiers had blown up so that nothing should be left standing, and complained, saying, 'What are we going to do about water?,' he, Michael K, would produce a teaspoon from his pocket, a teaspoon and a long roll of string. He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth, and when he brought it up, there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.” – Closing of “The Life and Times of Michael K” by J.M. Coetzee
Sunset over the Zambezi
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