Hello to everyone in the states, I send my best regards, I hope life is treating you fairly.
I am chilling in a spare room in our house right now, we are getting ready to go out with Vernon to a rural community for a field trip today. He is a half an hour late, and I am taking advantage of the time, but that is the story of South Africa, half an hour late and relaxed about it. He didn’t tell us many details about the trip today, but I am looking forward to moving beyond the bustling metropolis that is Cape Town, and the crowded townships that surround it. I go on runs from time to time, up to a place on table mountain called Rhodes memorial, a monument similar to the Lincoln Memorial, but recognizing a man who played a large role in the exploitation of blacks for the mining industry, but also a large contributor to the University of Cape Town. When I sit on the memorial I can see out maybe ten or fifteen miles. I can see the commons, a large grass field, 1.6 mile around, which I walk through to get to downtown Rondebosch, I can see the roads with the small cars busily going to and from, and two large water towers in the distance. In between these landmarks are dwellings, of people, in all directions, as far as the eye can see. Closer to the mountain and university, the houses are larger, more suburban, two stories, and as my eyes look of into the distance, as the houses blur into the indistinguishable haze, I know lie the townships, Khayelitsha, Guguletu and others.
Well, Vernon arrived, and I stopped writing for the day, so now, it is the next morning. What was I saying. Well, yesterday, what I was getting at was that there seemed like there were so many people in and around Cape Town, and simply not enough space or natural resources for them all to sustain themselves. But, after driving into ‘the country’ I’m not sure the problem is that there isn’t enough land. There is land, it’s just that the people don’t own it, and don’t have the means to buy it. Also, the land doesn’t look very fertile, unless it is irrigated. The unemployment rate in this country is very, very high, so I have been looking to bridge the gap, in my mind, wondering first, if it was because of a large population, or secondly, not enough natural resources. It seems like the problem is one common to the history books, the difference between the proportion of land owned by the richer versus the poorer. Little land, and little education about the land. I am working with refugees, who face terrible xenophobia as they look for jobs and try to establish themselves here. But, I feel that, as I help the refugees find jobs, how can I ignore the people who were born in and around here, who cannot find jobs.
I am enjoying learning about these dilemmas, and seeing the reality of them in my internship and day to day life. I am finding the world to be quite real here, as real as hunger pains in the stomach, and fear in a refugees eyes as they struggle to explain a dilemma to me in a language they brokenly speak. In the midst of this world, where staying alive, and healthy, is enough, I am beginning to find my place.
But, one strange thing I have noticed coming to South Africa is the love affair the people have with America. From here, America is the land of milk and honey, the promised land, where rich people drive around fancy cars and party and listen to pop music. In the spirit of the great Gatsby, the American dream is alive and real, here, far enough from the green lights to distinguish what the green lights actually are, merely a neon sign on a store that reads, ‘open’, so that one can come and buy and spend money. And so, instead of a recognition of life in a small scale, and appreciation for beauty and community on a local level, there seems, at least economically, not to be the self-reliance and community cohesiveness that I expected, but rather a longing towards the American mystique. The relationship between The United States and South Africa is not that of a Parent investing in their child’s future, but rather the treatment of an older sibling to a younger sibling, one looking up to the other and the other picking on the first. Yes, the citizens of the United States may be importing businesses, and therefore jobs, but they are also by and large exporting the profits.
These are some of the problems that are beginning to emerge in my visual field as I spend time here. It seems the world, at large is quite immature, and as I grow older, this is the world I am inheriting. For now, I am still a student.
Half of the time studying abroad, I have been hiking, going to nice restaurants, relaxing in the pool at our house, and hanging out with all the good people on this trip. The other half of the time I have been working through the real issues I talked about above, in my mind, and in person. It is a nice balance, one that at some point I will have to reconcile the discrepancies. But, for now, I am enjoying both sides thoroughly.
Brett enjoys Chapmans Peak view: 21 January 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment