"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.