Sarah's 1st blog entry

Sarah on Signal Hill

I’m not sure if this still makes sense, but I don’t think it will ever hit me that I’m here.  I have come to learn more from meeting different people and getting to know them than I ever have in a classroom. 

We did have our first class a couple of day ago, but the notes I was taking sent chills up my spine, as simple statistics became faces I knew, people I’ve met.  As I listened to Vincent lecture on the protests in Soweto, my mind immediately went to our tour guide at Robben Island. This man marched along side his classmates who were no older than me only to see his pregnant girlfriend get shot through the face by police.  The deaths among those oppressed by a ruthless and malicious government are no longer a statistic to me; they are as real as the people I have met every day.  I can picture this man in his mid-twenties spending bleak nights in Yemen or Angola resisting persecution and oppression in the only way he could: violent desperation.  And now, in 2010, this same man can shake my hand outside the maximum security barbed wire fences that used to detain him and so many others.                                                                                                             

      

Benjamin, former political prisoner, current Robben Island tour guide.   

What has impressed me most about this country is those who were cruelly oppressed for so long are so incredibly forgiving and thankful for how far they’ve come.  I’ve heard those who lived for decades in the tin and packing crate allotted to them for creating a home tell me that they still have to pinch themselves when they can stay out as late as they want, when they can walk through the front door of their favorite restaurant, when they can travel wherever they please without a passbook.  This hope and optimism is something I will admire and hope to aspire to for the rest of my life.

 That being said, one of the things that surprises me the most is an intangible effect of the apartheid regime.  While the poverty and social class of those most affected is something I could have predicted, the brainwashing involved in such an evil system has caught me off guard.  The physical separation and classification of apartheid has left so many feeling they belong in some places and don’t in others.  It has left those who once found pride in their African heritage confused, simply because their hair falls when one wraps a pencil around it or their skin is a shade lighter than their neighbor’s.  When I really stopped to think about it, I found this exists everywhere, though maybe not as blatant on account of such obvious divide and conquer techniques imposed by the apartheid government.  People get so concerned as to where they belong, that they don’t realize they can “belong” any where.        

I went out to a bar with a few friends that, as far as I could see, had never seen three white girls walk in for a drink.  While the experience initially left me feeling jittery, I began to feel as if I had rebelled in my own little way.  Not that anyone really had a problem with us being there, I just felt as if I had crossed a line, bridged a gap so to speak.  I think people would feel connected to more people and on a greater level if they stopped worrying about where they belong.  This assumption, however, is based on very little since 99% of the people I have met have been more welcoming than I ever would have imagined.

I feel as if one of my main goals for the next few months (as of now) is to “belong” in this country.  It is hard not to walk through the townships and feel some sense of accountability, some feelings anger towards myself for having everything handed to me simply because I was born in a certain part of the country with light skin.  I remember leaving Robben Island, in all of its beauty and horror, wanting to track down our tour guide and ask him, “What do you want me to do?”  It is no secret that just by having the money to stay here for three or four months puts me in an extremely privileged class of people.  Now my main concern is what can I do with that?  I am not a tourist.  But what is my role?  How do I belong to a nation of people?