It has been over three months since I last dispatched. A month of that was spent at home – I managed New York, Florida, Boston and the inauguration in that time. I returned to Cape Town on January 23 and picked up my exceptional skills visa, which lets me stay here until the end of 2011. I can’t envision that far ahead and imagine that I will move home sooner than that, but it does open up possibilities and make life easier for the interim. Three weeks after returning to Cape Town my sister Liza came to visit. We had an incredible time, relishing the beaches, spending time with my former students and just experiencing this fabulous country together.
So now it is back to reality and back to work. The start of 2009 has brought a new project, a short documentary film about young people’s experiences in and perspectives on the xenophobia crisis in May.
During the xenophobia crisis last May, one of the scenes that panned across television screens was of young people, some in school uniforms, picking up pangas, throwing bricks, looting shops and homes. I am working with an NGO Shikaya to create a short film about the experiences and perspectives of youth during the crisis. I will profile young refugees, perpetrators, people who stood up and did something different, and bystanders, who simply stood by, and try to understand and explore all sides. The film will be used in workshops with teachers who will in turn use it in the classroom. We plan to do some broader outreach as well. The goal is to get young people to reflect on the lives of other youth, their own actions in May and how they might act in similar situations, and also consider how they can be agents of positive change in their communities and active citizens in South Africa. It is a powerful thing, the potential here, and the idea of working on a film that will be used to affect change and engage young people in the world around them is exciting.
For now I remain on step one, finding those youth. I define youth as between 14 and 21 and began my search in Johannesburg a few weeks ago. A man who heads the Alexandra Civic Organization in Alexandra township where the violence started promised to take me in to meet some guys he knew who were involved in the violence. But to my frustration, he cancelled on me twice because he had several meetings for COPE, the new political party. Good for COPE, not so great for me. I was extremely frustrated, feeling a little like my entire trip to Joburg was all for naught, when I called Bishop Paul Verryn and made a plan to go to his church on a Wednesday evening. Bishop Verryn heads the Central Methodist Church. The church is very well known here and around the world for its massive effort to assist refugees and the poor. Currently around 1,000 refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe, but also across Africa and some South Africans, find shelter in the church where they also get some social support services including food, basic health care, counseling, advocacy and help finding jobs.
I had read a lot about the church by the time I walked in at 5:30 p.m. But there is no way to imagine this place by simply reading about it. It is dark, the stairs are lined with people lying down, sitting on steps, on landings, people everywhere. Men, women and children, many of whom made the journey here without their parents. There are people who have lost limbs, others limping or on crutches. Their lives and pasts are difficult to truly envision. Many have run away from something, many are here in search of a better life. Have they found it here in this country? In this church? One man approaches me and asks if I have any work for him -- I– sweeping, varnishing, electrical, anything.
I joined a line of people waiting to talk to the Bishop, and after 45 minutes the Bishop came by, asked if I was waiting for him, remembered that I was looking for youth and asked if I was staying for the service. When a Bishop asks if you are staying for the service, you say yes. So I stayed in line talking to Emanuel who was looking for a scholarship to college and then after an hour or so, went down to the service. The chapel was filling up and groups of men and women were dancing and singing in Shona, waiting for the service to start. As it did, the Bishop walked over to me and took me to meet the principal and vice principal of the church’s new school. These men had been teachers in Zimbabwe. A few months ago, noticing the large numbers of children at the church and the need, the Bishop and these men decided to start a school. We talked, made a plan for me to come to the school at 7:30 the next morning, and then enjoyed the service.
It was an unusually cold day for Joburg in February on the morning that I arrived at the school. Some students were wearing uniforms, donated or bought with donations; others were in whatever they had. I recognized some from the church service by the clothes that I saw them in the day before. The school is attached to an old church and is not very big. Classrooms are packed; some are divided and shared between grades. I passed through a room of about 75 third graders crowded around three long wooden tables with two teachers. A class of very young children was sitting in a hallway. As the vice principal walked me around, he would pause in a class and ask, “Raise your hand if you are from Zimbabwe.” “Raise your hand if you are from South Africa.” Mozambique? DRC? Swaziland? He would continue. Over 100 of these students are unaccompanied minors; they have come to South Africa alone. I talked to several of them.
Takudzwa is 16. Both of his parents died in 1997 and 1998. He came to Joburg in August after walking through the forest for a week and slipping by gangs who prey on foreigners near the border. He came from the border at Messina to Joburg by hiding on a train. “What goes around comes around,” he says of the xenophobia in South Africa. “We will show them we are good. Now it’s our turn. We are people, we eat, they eat.” Takudwzwa loves school and wants to be a lawyer. In the mean time, for fun he goes to Johannesburg Park to play chess and soccer. Sometimes the police stop him to ask for papers, sometimes people call out to him, “Move out Makwerekwere,” a slang word for foreigners, especially illegal immigrants. He is happy because he is learning and with this education he believes he can help Zimbabwe. “What they are doing is not democracy or freedom. I will bring democracy, there will be freedom,” he says. But when I ask what is the best part of being in South Africa, he starts, “The best part of being in South Africa…” Then he smiles, pauses, is silent, laughs, and has no answer.
His classmate Wellington, a head boy at the school, came here after seeing his father tortured by members of Zanu-PF (Mugabe’s party) after being accused of being a supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). His father died a few days later and Wellington fled south, through the waist deep water and crocodiles of the Limpopo River. “I expected to live better than in Zimbabwe because now everything there is expensive,” he says. “I thought life would be good. Its not so good for me for the moment, there are challenges. If you are walking in the street or in a shop, people are rude and it embarrasses me, they say, ‘you are a foreigner.’ But I am an African and you are an African.”
I interviewed about eight students in total, boys and girls. The last was Nkosinathi. At 14 he has lost both parents and his two older sisters. His favorite author is Shakespeare. After his family died, he stayed with relatives, but they didn’t send him to school after grade 5 and wanted him to work in the yard and the house. “One day my aunt hit me,” he says. “I had a bike and I sold it and boarded a train to Beitbridge [a town on the border with a major border post] and then got a taxi to Johannesburg. I’d heard of a school in Joburg.” It was this school. This crowded cold place, warmed by the sounds of learning, which holds the futures and hopes of Nkosinathi and over 300 others.
Tomorrow I am going to visit a school just outside Worcester, about an hour north of Cape Town, where a teacher is doing an anti-xenophobia project with his students. Several Somali shopkeepers here were forced out, their shops looted and some burned and destroyed. One of these shops is directly outside the school’s gate. Thursday, I’ll return to Masiphumelele, a township known for its effort to assist foreigners after the attacks. A couple days after foreigners there were attacked, residents publicly apologized and asked them to return. People went door to door to collect stolen goods and return them to their owners. However, Masiphumelele is not a panacea, there were attacks and since May there have been incidents of violence against foreigners who have returned.
This step in filmmaking is exciting and can be quite frustrating as well. In the next few weeks, I will continue to talk to anyone who will talk to me about these issues and ask as many people as I can if they have suggestions of young refugees, perpetrators, resistors and bystanders who I can meet. Soon enough, I will have found my youth and be ready to pick up a camera and share their stories.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Friday, November 28, 2008
Dispatch: Thanksgiving Eve
Why is it that sadness is what propels me to write? I have not dispatched since Obama’s win and today, on what is now a sad day, I decide to share. Perhaps it is because I have just finished writing an article and had to think so carefully as I wrote that, that now I can simply be guided by emotion.
Sipho’s father has died. Last week. I found out early today. I was with two of my old students, giving a tour of Nyanga to a couple people from the UK. As we walked around Oscar Mpetha HS, we ran into Anele’s homeroom teacher. She leaned out the door and said, “Mpaku, Anele, you know his father died.” Last week, she said. She apologized for sharing bad news, I ran to my car to call Anele, Siya, their cousin Sandiswa who had been my sole connection to the Mpaku family last May. I finally reached Anele a couple hours ago. He is stoic and I am often told that Xhosa men don’t cry. But his father died. One piece of a fragile support system that is taking care of these boys. He didn’t live with them, he didn’t bring them food consistently, but he was their father. I only saw him a few times in 2005 and we never formally met, but long conversations with Sipho and visits to an empty fridge at his brother’s house this year affirmed my feelings for the man who told Sipho’s cousin, “He wouldn’t have died if Molly had been here.” But he was, in the end, their father.
A few weeks ago Anele faced another difficulty. It turns out that the District department of education translated The Sunday Times article about Testing Hope into Xhosa and put it on the district wide grade 10 Xhosa exam as a comprehension exercise. When Anele sat down to take the exam, he was confronted with his brother’s story. What makes it worse was that 7 of the 10 questions were about Sipho. One asked about their parents’ divorce. Number 6 asked if Sipho was a role model or set a good example for Anele. Number 7 asked why you thought Anele failed grade 10 twice before. I can only imagine what it must have felt like for Anele sitting in that classroom, reading over this test. He went to the teacher and asked her, “What is this?” She had not reviewed the exam in advance and her only answer was, “I don’t know.” I heard from another teacher usually the school picks up the exams from the district and gets them to teachers a day in advance to look over, but for some reason the school didn’t pick up the exams early enough this time. I don’t know if that is necessarily true. Either way, if you give a class an exam, I would think a teacher would take 5 minutes to skim it over quickly. Or at least say to the boy, stop writing, I will figure this out. Something?
On one level, I am pleased that the district office is including stories about the township so that students can read of their own experiences in an exam. I just wish someone – a teacher, a district curriculum advisor, anyone, would have thought twice before sticking that paper in front of Anele. The week after, he told me people were still coming up to him. Classmates who said that they wrote that he was doing drugs. (And just to think of how many classmates, there are 11 grade 10 classes at the school this year.) Neighbors who heard from their children about Sipho and his family and were asking more questions.
I am lucky enough to know people who know people and my friend Dylan called the head of curriculum in the district office. The man felt terrible that Anele had to go through such a thing and mentioned that he wanted to at least call him and apologize. I want to make sure, also, that this doesn’t affect his grade. Nothing has happened yet on the department’s end. And for Anele, something worse has overwhelmed this incident all together.
The funeral will be in Transkei on Saturday, not Cape Town. Anele said I should come to visit them when they get back, so I’ll see them next week. When these things occur, they inevitably bring back memories of other people and today I miss Sipho more than I have in a long time. Sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t had to leave in early 2006. I know he is not my responsibility, but I do wonder, especially now that I am back. Is it a small piece of guilt that I left or confusion that I am back, now for a year, possibly staying for another one, and yet I couldn’t stay when he needed me. We cannot use logic to explain these things, nor can we think that our single presence or power will determine whether one lives or dies, and yet I do know that my presence here does mean a lot for many – including myself. I now wonder who is going to pay for school clothes next year and groceries next week and whether their mother will move back into their house.
There is much more than sadness here lately though. New ideas, new opportunities, new change.
The summer after my first year of college, I interned at the White House. This summer, my students Amanda and Noluyanda both have internships. Amanda is working at Shikaya, a human rights and democracy education organization that works with teachers to develop young people who are responsible, critical thinking, and active democratic citizens. Noluyanda is working for the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women. (A thank you to Bulelwa and Dylan for helping with internship opportunities.) Yesterday she went to a meeting with the MEC of Social Development for the province. Both girls are being paid through a generous donation from Eileen and Larry Kugler, who came to South Africa in July, and my friend Tom’s mother, who visited from the UK in October.
I have kept myself busy with continued Testing Hope outreach and some freelance writing. I had a great trip to Pretoria to do some work with the U.S. Embassy. We had workshops and screenings for 40 teachers in Pretoria and then went to Nelspruit, the capital of Mpumalanga province, and ended up with 95 teachers on a Saturday. 95 was a bit overwhelming, but it was really exciting to see that much energy and conversation and activity stimulated because of my work.
I will probably be in South Africa another year. I am letting this journey and this time abroad run its natural course and seeing where it will take me. Now I am fundraising and doing some pre-production for a new documentary and outreach program on students’ experiences in the xenophobia crisis in May. This time I am not going it alone, but partnering with Shikaya who will run an extensive outreach campaign. which will include a study guide and workshops for teachers on how to use the film in the classroom. As a filmmaker you are not always sure your work will be seen, much less have an impact and it is exciting to start a project knowing the potential for both.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Sipho’s father has died. Last week. I found out early today. I was with two of my old students, giving a tour of Nyanga to a couple people from the UK. As we walked around Oscar Mpetha HS, we ran into Anele’s homeroom teacher. She leaned out the door and said, “Mpaku, Anele, you know his father died.” Last week, she said. She apologized for sharing bad news, I ran to my car to call Anele, Siya, their cousin Sandiswa who had been my sole connection to the Mpaku family last May. I finally reached Anele a couple hours ago. He is stoic and I am often told that Xhosa men don’t cry. But his father died. One piece of a fragile support system that is taking care of these boys. He didn’t live with them, he didn’t bring them food consistently, but he was their father. I only saw him a few times in 2005 and we never formally met, but long conversations with Sipho and visits to an empty fridge at his brother’s house this year affirmed my feelings for the man who told Sipho’s cousin, “He wouldn’t have died if Molly had been here.” But he was, in the end, their father.
A few weeks ago Anele faced another difficulty. It turns out that the District department of education translated The Sunday Times article about Testing Hope into Xhosa and put it on the district wide grade 10 Xhosa exam as a comprehension exercise. When Anele sat down to take the exam, he was confronted with his brother’s story. What makes it worse was that 7 of the 10 questions were about Sipho. One asked about their parents’ divorce. Number 6 asked if Sipho was a role model or set a good example for Anele. Number 7 asked why you thought Anele failed grade 10 twice before. I can only imagine what it must have felt like for Anele sitting in that classroom, reading over this test. He went to the teacher and asked her, “What is this?” She had not reviewed the exam in advance and her only answer was, “I don’t know.” I heard from another teacher usually the school picks up the exams from the district and gets them to teachers a day in advance to look over, but for some reason the school didn’t pick up the exams early enough this time. I don’t know if that is necessarily true. Either way, if you give a class an exam, I would think a teacher would take 5 minutes to skim it over quickly. Or at least say to the boy, stop writing, I will figure this out. Something?
On one level, I am pleased that the district office is including stories about the township so that students can read of their own experiences in an exam. I just wish someone – a teacher, a district curriculum advisor, anyone, would have thought twice before sticking that paper in front of Anele. The week after, he told me people were still coming up to him. Classmates who said that they wrote that he was doing drugs. (And just to think of how many classmates, there are 11 grade 10 classes at the school this year.) Neighbors who heard from their children about Sipho and his family and were asking more questions.
I am lucky enough to know people who know people and my friend Dylan called the head of curriculum in the district office. The man felt terrible that Anele had to go through such a thing and mentioned that he wanted to at least call him and apologize. I want to make sure, also, that this doesn’t affect his grade. Nothing has happened yet on the department’s end. And for Anele, something worse has overwhelmed this incident all together.
The funeral will be in Transkei on Saturday, not Cape Town. Anele said I should come to visit them when they get back, so I’ll see them next week. When these things occur, they inevitably bring back memories of other people and today I miss Sipho more than I have in a long time. Sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t had to leave in early 2006. I know he is not my responsibility, but I do wonder, especially now that I am back. Is it a small piece of guilt that I left or confusion that I am back, now for a year, possibly staying for another one, and yet I couldn’t stay when he needed me. We cannot use logic to explain these things, nor can we think that our single presence or power will determine whether one lives or dies, and yet I do know that my presence here does mean a lot for many – including myself. I now wonder who is going to pay for school clothes next year and groceries next week and whether their mother will move back into their house.
There is much more than sadness here lately though. New ideas, new opportunities, new change.
The summer after my first year of college, I interned at the White House. This summer, my students Amanda and Noluyanda both have internships. Amanda is working at Shikaya, a human rights and democracy education organization that works with teachers to develop young people who are responsible, critical thinking, and active democratic citizens. Noluyanda is working for the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women. (A thank you to Bulelwa and Dylan for helping with internship opportunities.) Yesterday she went to a meeting with the MEC of Social Development for the province. Both girls are being paid through a generous donation from Eileen and Larry Kugler, who came to South Africa in July, and my friend Tom’s mother, who visited from the UK in October.
I have kept myself busy with continued Testing Hope outreach and some freelance writing. I had a great trip to Pretoria to do some work with the U.S. Embassy. We had workshops and screenings for 40 teachers in Pretoria and then went to Nelspruit, the capital of Mpumalanga province, and ended up with 95 teachers on a Saturday. 95 was a bit overwhelming, but it was really exciting to see that much energy and conversation and activity stimulated because of my work.
I will probably be in South Africa another year. I am letting this journey and this time abroad run its natural course and seeing where it will take me. Now I am fundraising and doing some pre-production for a new documentary and outreach program on students’ experiences in the xenophobia crisis in May. This time I am not going it alone, but partnering with Shikaya who will run an extensive outreach campaign. which will include a study guide and workshops for teachers on how to use the film in the classroom. As a filmmaker you are not always sure your work will be seen, much less have an impact and it is exciting to start a project knowing the potential for both.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Dispatch: South Africa for Obama
Well it has been a while since my last dispatch and there is certainly much to write about -- apparently causing controversy in the district department of education, upsetting a few Afrikaans women in Pretoria who think SA needs to move past apartheid already, and having an article about the film turn up on a grade 10 isiXhosa exam -- something that was actually not to be celebrated, but caused Sipho's brother much pain. But those are for thinking about later in the week. Today is Obama day. I am wearing my pins -- it is as close as I can get to participating today and a moment here where I actually feel like announcing that I am American. I must say I am impressed with and jealous of so many of you who are so active this election season -- my dear cousin Rachel in Florida who hopped on a plane from San Francisco a month ago for an adventure she could not imagine; my lawyer friends Brooke and Alex who are spending a few days in St. Louis doing voter protection work, Thea who has spent plenty weekend hours in the NYC office, and too many more of you to count and that I don't know about. I must say it has been difficult to experience this moment from afar.
But I want to tell you taht South Africa loves Obama. This morning on the radio, the DJ said, "Well today is Obama day." It is not just election day in the U.S., it is Obama day. The elections have been on the news, in political cartoons and mixed in conversations here for the past several weeks, this morning SABC did a show on how the new president, no matter who it is, will handle relations with Africa. But one of my favorite things about living here is that the newspapers post their headlines so as you drive down the street you can see what's in the news. Today, all the papers have one Obama headline -- and I must say, I am not too sure how my grad school professors would feel about this because these papers are not really maintaining objectivity as they go. "Yes Obama Can," is my favorite of the day. I have yet to see a posting about McCain, although he is featured in the articles. But it is pretty clear where this country stands -- well, most people.
I wanted to share a few of these with you, so attached are photos of my favorite headlines as well as a few political cartoons -- one from Friday of McCain and Palin and one from today which says in Afrikaans "Here comes Obama."
Think of me as you watch the returns, I'll be up tomorrow morning at 2 a.m. watching the returns on CNN thanks to my friends Louise and Simon who have a gorgeous 3 and a half week old daughter and cable.
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