During the first few weeks of the
Cape Town program I did a lot of thinking, some structured through the service
learning course and some less formal personal reflection, about my reason for
being here as well as the goals I had for my time at Ikamva Youth. While I was
not able to fully articulate them at the time, I knew that my goals revolved
around two main ideas. Firstly, I wanted to grow (what this vague concept
meant) personally in some fashion. In addition, I wanted to leave having
contributed something to Ikamva – whether that be big or small, temporary or
lasting. Having somewhat vague goals and intentions going into the program was
actually helpful to me in some ways. For instance, when I had to face the
reality of having some pretty slow and boring days at the office I was still
able to think of ways that even those times could help me work towards my
objectives. This would not have been possible if I had very rigorous and
specific goals already set out from the start. Thus, while it is important to
have some idea of what you want to get out of a service learning experience, I
think its equally important to be flexible and adjust those expectations and
aspirations as the situations demand, especially when you are going into a
context where you understand very little about the environment you will be
operating in.
Along similar lines, my experience
at Ikamva has been different from previous students who have worked mostly out
of the organization’s national office in Cape Town. I ended up spending most of
my time at the Makhaza branch, which involved more personally interaction with
both staff and students, but on the flipside had less busy work to do. Starting
at Makhaza branch, I had absolutely no idea about what to expect. However, I
was blown away by the friendliness, funniness, and genuine way in which the
Makhaza staff met me. On the very first day, we spent a lot of time talking
about Facebook and Twitter styles and our favorite bars to go to. Having this
type of laid back and stress free office environment was certainly one of the
biggest assets that the Makhaza branch possesses.
Reflecting on my time at Ikamva, I’ve
come to two main takeaways. During the first couple of weeks working at the
Makhaza office I would find myself both consciously and subconsciously comparing
my experience there with previous experiences I had. In particular, I worked
for a very similar organization in New York a few summers ago and thus I would
compare my experiences there with the ones I was having at Makhaza. However, I
soon realized that this was fair to neither organization since the contexts in which
they were operating were so dramatically different. For example, I think some
of criticisms of Ikamva were a consequence of their very limited financial
resources and human capital at their disposal rather than an inherent
organization problem.
On a similar note, my time with
Ikamva has taught me to think even more deeply about the assumptions that I
bring to life. Obviously, going into my service placement I was trying to be
aware of these assumptions, but I would soon realize that some of these assumptions
were so deeply entrenched that I did not even know they existed. While America
immense inequities in its educational system that work to prohibit certain
peoples from obtaining it, however once one achieves a high level of education
(e.g. Stanford degree) it is almost certain that they should be able to achieve
a level of economic success should they so choose. Yet, at Ikamva and in the
South African (Cape Town?) context I was forced to see that this is not always
the case. A few of the tutors at Ikamva were UCT graduates, some even with
advanced degrees from prestigious American universities, and yet they were
struggling to find any sort of job that would pay a decent wage. Having these
conversations, forced me to reexamine how I thought about education and its
connection to social mobility and economic success.
Finally, working at Ikamva Youth
has made me realize how much the small routine daily tasks matter to me. While it
is important to have board goals as an organization for what you want to
accomplish, for me personally that is not enough to find fulfillment. For me, what
matters most is being in an environment where the various tasks that you
complete are fulfilling in and of themselves. Tutoring is a great example. In a
systemic context, tutoring could be working to decrease the achievement gap and
provide opportunities to under resourced students. Yet, the tutoring itself is
also incredibly enjoyable and rewarding even when separated from this bigger
picture. I certainly plan on doing a lot more service learning (or learning
service) in the future, which will most definitely be heavily influenced from
the experiences I have had for the last quarter in Cape Town.
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