Cape Town, Final Reflections

February 22, 2018

Dear HFB Family,

            We are writing to you on our last night in Cape Town, and students are so sad to be leaving, but so ready to see you again too. We spent the day traveling to the southern most tip of the continent and swimming with penguins, and right now, students are with mamas, loving them up.

            Everyone is doing well, though a fever has made its way around a few students: on a scale of 1-10, students have consistently rated their moods nines and tens, with a few eights at the lowest points.

            This afternoon, our teacher friends at Isilimela ferried students to their mamas in Langa because our colleague, Siyabonga, out of an abundance of caution, was worried about us driving into the township in our vans. A taxi turf war flared up in Langa this morning, and two people were shot and killed. Our colleagues were not worried about driving in the neighborhoods in their cars, and they certainly weren't worried about our children at home with the mamas, or the farewell braai at mama Thandi's. We know you must be concerned to hear such news. Please trust that we are taking care of your children. Ms. Plesha is in close communication with the mamas and Isilimela teachers as well as with our children.

            Soon we come back to you, with songs, stories and hugs.

            We love these kids.

David

February 23, 2018

            We have just left our friends where they were singing to us outside the check in counters of the Cape Town airport. Mimi carried an empty bottle around the student circle, collecting tears. And when we left them, Isilimela and Bellville students continued to sing long after they were out of our sight. Despite the joyous songs, it was a somber affair, though loud enough to once again attract many travelers who celebrated with us from the sidelines.

            This morning, Roosevelt students went to Kirstenbosch Gardens for our final reflection in South Africa. They were prompted to discuss our walking tour of Langa, re-integration with the HFB students who traveled to Northern Ireland, and then to go bigger: what will you take back with you from this experience.

            I am so impressed with the thoughtfulness and sophistication of these kids, their sincerity and kind, forward hearts. I am proud to stand with them, and I am especially glad to look to them for their decent intentionality as it positions itself towards a world that can be both loved and improved.

            They were largely uncomfortable with the tour of Langa. As Fiona explained it, there were moments people of Langa were turned into exhibits; she felt the violation of it. But here too is an example of the complexity and richness of our students’ thinking: Fiona felt especially uncomfortable when we were allowed to take pictures of the woman selling smileys, sheep heads, as our guide explained why she wore yellow face paint and how she rubbed clay into the heads to make them beautiful; but then when Fiona saw the tour guide give the woman a little money, Fiona wasn’t sure what to make of the transaction: was it simply exploitative, or was there something positively transactional in it? Many people were struck by the company hostels that have been turned into stark living spaces for multiple families crammed into small spaces with few beds and communal kitchens with flint stoves but without water. Lydia said what struck her about the hostels was how everyone there was waiting for more official housing. And then she referred to something one of the Isilimela students had said—that people kept voting for Nelson Mandela because he was the face of the movement, but he wasn’t perfect: he promised houses, as many politicians after him had promised housing: but those people are still waiting, and they’re lucky if their grandchildren get the houses for which they’ve so long been in line. Quinn’s reaction was a humanizing one: She said she was told and was expecting things in Langa to be so different, much as it had been presented in the tour; but when she walked into her mama’s house, she found it was the same size and layout as her grandmother’s. We didn’t go to an alien planet, she mused; these people are people. Elaine suggested that one thing she hopes the HFB class studies and discusses after they return is sustainable tourism. She felt the tour was degrading, and there were difficult elements of it to consider; for example, she pointed out how the craft vendors in Langa sold the exact same crafts as everywhere else; she wondered, when she buys their wares, is she helping the person or contributing to a kind of demeaning cycle of tourism. Rudy noted that they had been taking so many cute pictures of the kids in their neighborhood of Langa, but it was important to be mindful to share experiences on social media appropriately. Posting pictures whose subtext is “these are the poor kids of Langa” might not sit well with these kids in ten years. I liked the care and sensitivity of this conversation so much.

            They brought similar care and generosity to their thoughts about reintegrating with the other half of the class. Louis said he didn’t know anything about Northern Ireland, and so he was excited to learn from the experiences of the other students. Olin made Polly’s heart light up when he connected this to the farewell story she told at the Company Gardens with the three schools the other night, about Gray Squirrel who went on a journey to learn from many mentors how to make a basket that wouldn’t leak water: Olin said, Polly talks about sharing stories and opening our ears to people who do so, having a piece to put in our baskets; Olin said he was excited to return to class now that they have such rich pieces to give to each other to carry with them. Elaine warned of returning and comparing experiences or competing for whose was the best; if we’re not sharing with each other, she said, we won’t learn anything.

            Finally, students are so excited not just about what they have done and seen, but about carrying on their knowledge, in a depth and a generosity that has so impressed us teachers and reinvigotated our jobs as educators. Students are excited to carry what they have learned, to open up to a wider school community in South Seattle, to open their hearts to new friendships, to embrace the welcoming spirit they’ve learned here, to challenge racial and social divides in our own school and city: They recognized their own power to do so, as leaders in our building and our city. As Lila said, this experience was not just for me to go somewhere and learn something, but to share it, to take it and do something with it.

            God, these kids.

            When we broke the circle, we had an hour to wander the Kirstenbosch Gardens. I don’t know what the feeling was—happiness, sadness, love—but I was lingeringly tearful, moved--warm in the belly and face. It was the calming embrace of the rocky crags reaching from the sculpted green expanse of the gardens to a fogged-in sky. It was the greens, the flowers, the slope of a place cut for delicacy and quiet sensory joy. It was the warm honeys of the flowers that everywhere seemed to nurture a sense of goodness and hope. But it was also these gorgeous travelers with their adult minds and child hearts.

            They have learned that their hearts are just as large as they allow them to be.

Walking Tour of Langa

February 22, 2018

            When we are in school in Isilimela, and when we go up to the second and third floors, we have a stunning view of Table Mountain, and several block apartments, and then right up next to us, densely packed fields of shacks. Langa packs in 150,000 people in a mostly single-story seven square kilometers. Yesterday was the day of our walking tour of Langa. It was sure to be  powerful, because so much of what we observe here is both beyond our experience and by design just out of reach. Last year, the tour was bleak. It was a poverty and injustice tour. Our students had walked the entire way in a respectful, shaken silence. This year, though, felt so different, still taking us to the stark results of deliberate apartheid planning in a visit through steel- roofed lean-tos and rows of government apartment blocks, but we were also led through markets and life, brought into shacks where babies were cared for and where traditional rituals and ceremonies were described; we were prepared with greetings so we could engage with residents we passed. There was still the political activism of the tour--see us--but also the vitality of daily life and traditions passed on--see this.

            We started at Guga S’thebe, an arts, education, community resource and skills center since 1998, richly supplied with art and light and workers who clean and guide and sell art. Guga S’thebe, we learned, means “old platter,” and our guide explained that the old platter is both tradition and also Apartheid, and that we keep and rise from what is old. This is a stunning, vibrant place with mosaic murals and various forms of art everywhere, including the shape and reach of the buildings themselves. In one room, people are working with molds to make ceramic pottery which they fire and paint; in another, a group of musicians is amped up and playing in a large hall designed from recycled containers and other materials; in another room, a person is making mosaic images from shards of tile and glass; in another, paintings, art from sand, carved wood, wire. Still another room provided Wi-Fi to community working quietly on computers. Elizabeth, one of our parent drivers, had been longing to return to its coffee shop the whole time, and it didn’t disappoint. Later we would return and shop. For now, though, it was a starting point, a walk from future directly to the past.

            Because right next to Guga S’thebe is the old courthouse used to process Dompas violations. In the nineteenth century, Langa was a place to house migrant labor; but later, after the Group Relocations Act, Langa was designated a township for Blacks only, and people were brought to the courthouse and jailed if they failed to have the Dompas, which you couldn’t get if you weren’t registered with a company in Langa, and you couldn’t be registered with a company in Langa if you were a woman. If you were from another township, you would need a special pass to come into Langa. Otherwise, jail. Pumi, our guide, explained the whole colonial structure surrounding the courthouse, as well as the company hostels we would later see on our tour.

            One of the most powerful visits on the tour, for me, was entry into a “pub.” Last year, we were warned not go to the beer hall, and before our tour, Ms. Plesha told Pumi we could only look on from outside. But we were brought anyway. We had entered a two foot alley between shacks and entered a wider boulevard and were invited into a shack that was nearly black with soot. This was the pub. We crowded in, a woman sitting quietly beside a frothing can the size of a garbage bin. There was jug of beer placed on the floor in the middle of us all. Pumi then described what this was, how it was made, but most of all, how this was used: shared and passed during rituals, ceremonies, and all important passages. It’s a beer with little alcohol content but long in tradition. Our rear guide made us feel the ritual of the moment as he picked up the jug and said, this is how you drink it, and he explained, how to blow the top first, and with both hands, and to drink, and to pass. He explained about its use before boys were sent into the forests and deserts to become men, and three weeks on, when it had happened. Pumi would not explain this particular ritual, because it’s only for men to know and they keep private what it is they experience there. But our other guide explained what he could: At 18, young men are sent to the woods alone, without drink and with only a corn cake for food: the week is spent in a spiritual journey, but also in dehydration, which aids in the circumcision that occurs after the week. They have two more weeks after this, relying on themselves once more, encountering who knows what—only the Xhosa men—and when they have returned, goats and more are slaughtered, and they are expected now to behave, changed, healed, as men. And the beer is passed round once again. We were in a shack we were shown last year only to pity. But here it became a living room, and a sacred place.