Kasiemobi Udok-okoye, Empilweni

For my service learning presentation on Monday, I led the group in an activity in which identity “tiles” were placed all over the room and everyone was given a simple instruction: “Find the place where you belong.” Each tile had a different identity label written on it, including “Black,” “Coloured,” “Son,” “Woman,” “Queer,” “American,” “Nerd,” “Student,” “Scholar,” “Hip Hop,” “Artist,” and “Activist,” to name a few. I used this activity as a physical illustration of the struggle I’d had in South Africa to reconcile my different identities as a Nigerian American woman, among other things, with my experiences, and to determine where my focus and responsibilities as a student, an activist, and a citizen should lie in the global context.

Some of the thoughts I grappled with personally and that I presented to the group were:

• Can I claim any sense of belonging in South Africa?
• I often wondered what place a foreigner like me could claim in South African history and politics? As a woman who proudly identifies as African, was I really a foreigner?
• What place and what identity, if any, could I claim in this context?
• I alternatively felt that I was not African enough, not South African enough, not Nigerian enough, not “international”(-ly aware enough), etc, etc.
• Could I ever possibly learn enough to feel like I understood enough about South Africa to really “get it”, to really belong, whatever belonging means? The things I learnt about South African history made me wonder just how little I knew about my home in the U.S. too, and about my home and culture in Nigeria.
• In many places I went to in Cape Town, I was the only black person, or the only woman, or the only person my age, and in those moments suddenly that one aspect of me would become the one defining feature of my identity
• I worried that this constant grappling with identity and cultural allegiance was self-centered and egotistical, but I realized that the reason trying to find the answers to these questions had become so important for me here in South Africa was because it was not only me trying to find a place to claim and feel comfortable but also trying to determine where my duty and attention as an activist and a human is and should be..
• How can you decide which space or identity you belong to when there are so many different definitions of what it means to be African, or Black, or European, or artistic, or modern, or queer, or Muslim? In the time I spent at my placement at Empilweni, at cultural events, and in conversations with South Africans, I realized that they too were trying to figure out what these categories of belonging and identity really mean.

Lily, Emma, and Life Choices

Our time at Life Choices was a tremendous journey of growth and learning on a number of fronts. Whether we were gaining a better understanding of the South African education system by researching universities, achieving a new perspective on the quality of life for teenage Cape Townians through our sessions, or introspecting based on newly exposed strengths and weaknesses, we were always expanding our minds and hearts in some way.

A significant portion of our role in the Leaders' Quest program was to deliver to the grade 12s a dose of bad news with a spoonful of optimism - be it telling them that UCT was simply out of reach or giving them a solid figure on how much applying would cost, we had to be realistic and encouraging at the same time. Our balance between these two attitudes was often difficult to manage, and our tendency was often to lean toward optimism, as we wanted to be kind and for the sessions to be enjoyable. What we eventually learned from the incredible staff at Life Choices, however, was that the realistic part was the most important, because when the student is already in grade 12, we weren't doing them any favors by allowing them to maintain their rose-colored glasses. In the end, we learned from each other and developed a method to each session that ended with positivity but was infused with realistic goals. While we were certainly still working on this balance at the end of our time, we came to better understand the importance of delivering that bad news.

In order to become more comfortable being somewhat negative in the sessions, we reframed the way we thought about our jobs. Instead of thinking of ourselves as the bearers of bad news, we considered what we were really doing for our students. For example, instead of offering to do all of their research for them to help them decide where to apply, we began to encourage them to do their own research. Instead of letting them continue to hope for UCT and just telling them how to apply, we began motivating them to look into the real possibility of that dream and to take control of reality. What we were doing was not shirking our own responsibilities, but encouraging the learners to embrace their agency. By delivering the tough news, we encouraged them to take ownership of their futures. We moved from delivering resources to facilitating resourcefulness overall.

Emma compares her daily experiences in Cape Town and at Life Choices to a trip to Mzoli's. While she might have been going into Mzoli's with expectations, as a former vegan, nothing can prepare you for the plate to come. Nothing could have prepared her for the journey that has been her abroad experience, and like Mzoli's, it can take you days to recover from some days in Cape Town. In the end, of course, it's all worth it.

Lily came to think of her time at Life Choices in the same way that President Obama thinks about his time in office - not as a sprint, but as a relay. While the goal was always to get as much done in our time with the organization as possible, she found comfort in knowing that another student would arrive in the spring to take the baton.

Thanks so much for an incredible quarter. We wouldn't have preferred to have been on this journey with any other group of people.

Bungee Jumping into Cape Town & Etafeni

The best metaphor for describing my experience studying abroad in Cape Town and volunteering at Etafeni is bungee jumping.  I chose this as my metaphor because nothing as exhilarating as bungee jumping can really capture everything that’s happened so far.  Also most of us have either bungee jumped or stood on the bridge and watched us jump, so I hope this metaphor is relatable for you all.

The metaphor has two levels to it.  First, I’m going to talk about experience of studying abroad in Cape Town in general.  Second, I’m going to delve into specific concepts I’ve dealt with at Etafeni.

Here’s an overview of the bungee process (which I’ll soon describe more in detail).

-Ledge

-Initial Free Fall

-Rest & Rebound, followed by a duration of gradually decreasing oscillation

-Finally the Ascent back to the bridge

The first part is the ledge.  This is the part where the anxiety really starts building up as I look over the ledge and see what exactly I’m getting myself into.  My friends are cheering my name just like the way my family and friends are saying their goodbyes and wishing me good luck.  In other words, reality has hit me on the plane ride over and I have come to the realization that I am leaving the States for the first time ever.  The uncontrollable feeling of excitement and anxiety I got from looking out the plane window is not that different from that feeling I get from looking over the ledge.

The second part is the free fall, or the 5 unforgettable seconds where everything just rushes to my head.  My heart is pumping adrenaline throughout my body and all I feel is fear.  Despite being surrounded by the beautiful natural landscape, all I can think about is whether I’m going to be alive in the next few minutes.  Being in a new country and cultural context, I bombard myself with all types of questions, trivial or serious: from “How do I get around in this unfamiliar city?” to “How do I feel about being the only Asian American in a 20 mile radius and how is that causing me to be more conscious of my race?” or “from How will group dynamics play out?” to “What were those metal shacks I drove by and do people really live in them?”

The rest and rebound phase is the period of oscillation and the end of adjustment.  After that first bounce, I realize my time bungeeing is almost up.  This was the same feeling I had when we reached the midpoint of this program.  As a result, I began trying to make the most out of it by cramming in as many goals and activities as I can: bungee jumping, exploring a safari on a ATV (without knowing how to drive…), or even teaching as many computer lessons as I can to the Income Generation Project women.  While bungeeing, there is also this beautiful natural silence that surrounds you.  Being here in Cape Town has given me a space to reflect on my privilege and power, something that I would not normally do back at home when I’m too ingrained in my usual routine.

Finally is the ascent phase when Marshall descends like a heavenly host and slowly brings me back up.  I look around and begin wishing I could relive the whole experience all over again.  Needless to say, this is word for word how I feel about studying abroad in Cape Town.  And of course, how can I describe to my family and friends what the experience was like?  Watching the live video of me diving from the bridge does not capture the full extent of the experience just as looking at my Facebook photos does not give a holistic image of my experience here.

So now I would like to talk more about understanding bungee jumping as a metaphor for understanding some service learning concepts I’ve dealt with.

The first concept is border crossing.  Every time I visit Etafeni, I feel like I’m tied to a bungee cord.  I am able to delve into the Nyanga community which is a socially constructed space I would not normally operate within due to socio-economic differences.  The cord allows me to interact with the Other.  However, it also acts as a force that pulls me back.  This refers to the ingrained mindset we all have which reinforces spacial divides based on race, class, gender, etc.  No matter how warm and welcome I feel at Etafeni, there is an invisible force that makes me associate Obz with my real home.  A radical solution would be to cut the cord.  If I’m being honest with myself, I would have say that I have not been able to do this, but some people have begun doing this by hanging out with the people they have met at their placements outside of the placement like Nika and the Fit for Life, Fit for Work students at Mizoli’s.

The second concept is reciprocity.  In order for you to oscillate, you have to pull on the cord and the cord has to pull on you.  Similarly, if service is to be a rewarding experience, there must be a mutual exchange present.  I taught some of the women from the Income Generation project computer literacy, and in return, they showed me their art of beading and sewing.  Through this bidirectional flow of knowledge, we are able to establish trust and repertoire with one another - which are critical to the success of any project.

*The third concept is swapping roles.  When you bungee jump, you are told to jump off the bridge in a swan diving form.  Basically, you’re upside down for part of the time, but then when you swing up, you’re right side up again.  It’s this whole process of you going from right side up to upside down until the cord finally stops swinging and you just hanging there upside down.  This was precisely how I felt at Etafeni with regards to my power.  There were times when I felt my status as the oppressor very clearly, such as whenever I interviewed creche principals and they would surrender their chair and desk to me while they sat on a child’s chair.  But then there were also times when I was thrown to the bottom of the power relation, such as when I was building vegetable gardens in someone’s backyard and pedestrians would just stare at me while I sat on the ground covered in dirt and sweat, struggling to saw in half a plank of wood.  In the end, I was left hanging upside down.  I gained critical insight into the way power relations operate in every little interaction we have with people.  Breaking down these power imbalances is not an easy step, but realizing that they exist in the first place, I believe, is the first step.

*I didn’t get to this part in the presentation.

Overall, I think bungee jumping is a powerful metaphor for my experiences here in Cape Town and at Etafeni.  The same way we temporarily dive off a bridge into a serene abyss, we dive into South Africa and our respective placements with excitement and wonder.

"Let it Be": Exploring My Experience as a MOSAIC Piece

"Let it Be": Exploring My Experience as a MOSAIC Piece in Cape Town

By Bridget Morrison

For my final presentation, I chose to frame my time here in Cape Town as a mosaic piece for two reasons. First, I wanted to highlight the centrality of working at MOSAIC to my Cape Town experience and how I believe that the work that they do is truly beautiful and artful. Second, I wanted to use this space to better negotiate what my role has been in the organization and how I have chosen to cope with that role. In order to share these thoughts with my peers here (who I greatly admire and adore!) I framed my final presentation as a lens into the following questions: what is this ‘bigger picture’ of MOSAIC and what exactly has my piece looked like? 

To answer these questions, I described how MOSAIC combats the pervasive, horrific issues of gender-based and domestic violence. As the most esteemed organization that addresses these issues in all of South Africa, MOSAIC’s success lies in its multi-pronged attack on domestic and gender-based violence through its various, interconnected subdivisions of social services, court support, social enterprise training, sexual and reproductive health rights program, and MenCare+. I then demonstrated the enormity of the problem of domestic violence in South Africa by providing various statistics:

I shared, moreover, how I always framed this statistic within the context of having 3 other women in my family who mean the world to me– to me, this stat reads “your mother, your older sister, your twin sister, you.” Furthermore, as one of the lucky 3 out of 4 women who have not endured abuse in South Africa, I believe it is important to note that I have still not felt entirely comfortable here with respect to my gender and was frequently disturbed by the way I was treated as a woman when walking around this city.

            I then discussed what exactly my role was at MOSAIC and the tensions I felt as a Monitoring and Evaluations intern. I really struggled to grapple with being at once so far removed from the realities of the horrors affecting South African women and bombarded with them.  Witnessing the true beauty of what MOSAIC was doing when talking to clients on the phone and hearing really powerful feedback, however, helped me to negotiate my role in the organization: my plugging in data was critical for companies to continue to fund these projects that are providing real people with remarkable, life-saving services. Other strategies I employed were humor and singing. My hilarious relationship and encounters with my supervisor, Arnelle, and my newfound alter ego “Prudence,” for example, greatly helped me situate my place in the organization and to better mentally cope with the information I was reading about the atrocities of gender-based violence in South Africa.

          I then chose to sing to you all, and, notwithstanding nerves, nausea, shaking, sweating, and a humiliating confession to all of the above, I am so pleased that I decided to do so. First, singing enabled me to share how deeply I have valued the concept of vulnerability here as a way to better connect with people. Second, specifically singing “Let It Be” was very important to me because it enabled me to share my Talisman audition song with you all and spread a key lesson I have learned here in Cape Town: even amidst the taxing daily grind of working at MOSAIC, one can only seek to be the very best mosaic piece one can be, and must just let the rest be. Technologically inept Bridge/Prudence can't quite figure out how to attach the garage band file I made to this blog, but I shall send it along via email. Check it out if you're interested! 

            Thank you for letting me share my singing with you all during the presentations and for engaging in this crazy beautiful, confusing, troubling, and remarkable city with me all quarter. 

Daniel Knapp: Cape Town Broke My Jenga Tower

Cape Town Broke My Tower

Daniel Knapp

Because I decided to use Jenga for my presentation, I employed the help of some friends. What better way to demonstrate than through interaction. They played Jenga off my board, many of which had been colored to represent different aspects of my identity and the experiences I've had here relating to those different aspects.

And thus introduces my metaphor: … I’m a jenga tower. Or at least I think I am.

You see, I came to Cape Town put together. By no means do I have my life all figured out, but I felt mature, confident and ready for the experience. I  felt like the solid structure at the start of this Jenga game. But now we’ll begin to break it down. This is the point where my friends began playing the game.

Like Jenga, my tower is built of many blocks, all of which compose different aspects of my identity. During my time here in Cape Town, I’ve come face-to-face with parts of my identity. I’ve had to challenge aspects of privilege, guilt, fear, and self-doubt. When my friends and family back home asked me how my experience was, I always said amazing, but difficult.

It felt like I was constantly having parts of myself pulled from out of my tower only to be reshuffled and stacked back on. I never lost these parts of my identity, they were merely restructured. Nonetheless, I felt like this constant reconstruction was making that original, solid structure, fragile. So let’s look at some of these parts. Some components will be deep, others superficial. So let’s ease in:

 Firstly, I’m a U.S. citizen. Based on my previous travel experiences I knew that I would feel a sense of foreignness but did not know the extent of it here in South Africa.

I’m an East Coaster. This may not seem that important but for those who don’t know the stereotype, East Coasters are known for being assertive and often impatient. That last part as been challenged here, especially, as I’ve had to adjust to Cape Town’s laid back culture and to “Africa Time.”

Next, I’m a male. There is evident gender equality issues still present in South Africa and, while some of my friends are catcalled on the street, I am reminded of this part of my identity. On the flip side, the first week Zack and I were at Mothers Unite, many of the facilitators voiced their excitement that they had boy volunteers. It seems that the children, especially many of the boys, could show more interest now that they had male figures in their lives. I made it a point to myself to be conscious of my actions at Mothers Unite, especially while the kids were there: there were eyes watching and I felt a responsibility to be a positive role model as a male figure.

Next, is perhaps the most difficult part of my identity that I constantly have to contend with here. I identify as LGBTQ. I am lucky that I have a supportive group and staff, but it is difficult facing a both subtle and outward forms of discrimination and to oftentimes feel the need to hide this part of my identity.

One of the most powerful parts of my time here was feeling comfortable enough to open up to Gerry and share this part of me with her. To be honest, I had decided not to be out before coming to Cape Town. I am shocked that not only was I able to share my identity with someone in Cape Town, but that person would be at my service placement in the middle of Lavender Hill. I am truly grateful for the love and support she has shown me.  

I’m a student. This aspect was especially present at Mothers Unite, as they are now putting a large emphasis on literacy. I spent many hours sitting with students who couldn’t read. Sounding out syllables and working our way through words. After working with Byron, a 9-year old who could not read, I was demoralized seeing that even after a few one-on-one sessions, he still could not sound out words. However, as Bryon ran up to me each day asking to go to the library, (and even coming on a Friday), I realized the impact may not be tangible, but the most important thing is that he is excited to read. Mothers Unite has really demonstrated to me how important it is to make each student feel special, to feel worth something. And I honestly believe each one is.

Next, I’m Jewish. I was worried about coming into a country composed of predominantly Christians and Muslims. I was pleased to find that, at Mothers Unite, especially, I never once felt pressured. I enjoyed our pre-meal prayers and found many shared values that the organization passes on to the children.

I’m white. This probably comes as no surprise, but I was a bit nervous arriving in a country where the wounds of such an oppressive, racialized system are still fresh. I was present of the privilege I may have here. This aspect is almost inescapable and I note it every day, regardless of where I am. I feel weird when I’m surrounded by an almost exclusively white crowd at a Kirstenbosch concert and then feel bad about feeling good when I see diversity at Mzolis. It’s a continual tug-of-war. The only exception I felt was with the kids at Mothers Unite, who, aside from ogling my hair (and picking at my leg hair), made me see humanness before skin color.

So each of these aspects of my identity were pulled out of my tower and I was forced to examine and come face-to-face with it. Then it was replaced and I was left questioning who I was, this structure felt different than before.

At some point, the structure breaks (which we saw earlier) and the tower falls. This might seem negative but I have learned to draw a huge positive from this experience. When the tower falls, I still have those same building blocks to start back up. It is up to me and my support network to help reconfigure the new tower and see how it might function.

Luckily, I’ve had one of the best support networks I could have ever asked for in the facilitators at Mothers Unite. I honestly can’t believe how close I’ve felt to each of the facilitators: Gerry, Carol, Mac, Margie, Brigid, Una, Julie, Gloria, Avril, Mali, Riccardo, and volunteers Dominic and Jocelyne. Sure, in conversations with them, they pulled out pieces and helped me come face-to-face with these different aspects of my identity, and then they were there to help rebuild when my tower fell.

So while I may have entered this program as a seemingly solid Jenga fortress, I’ve embraced that even though it’s difficult and uncomfortable, it’s good to pull out different portions of myself for introspection and debate. It’s good to wobble and to fall because the rebuilding process sheds light on some of the tucked away parts of that identity. I cannot imagine a better experience, better place, and better group to have done this with.