Penguins, lions, baboons

We saw lions the other day at the Drakenstein sanctuary--29 cats rescued from circuses and overcrowded zoos and porches in Beirut, every single one born in captivity.

Here are the best two minutes of the experience:

Then yesterday, on our way to Cape Point, baboons crowded past our van:

 

 Cape Point:

At Boulder Beach, penguins:

Three Hour Circle, HFB unto itself

        Students finished their day at Bellville and went out again with host families (while we adults went to Lita's gorgeous home for a lovely braai and oryx pie).
        We gathered them on the stage to process their thoughts and observations. As I wrote yesterday, this is a critical moment in their trip, as they see so much so loudly through their homestays in Bellville. We also focused on some of their experiences with male-female interactions, which continued in the halls and in other corners to stand out for them--or rather, for the girls, some of whom had repeated unwanted attentions.
         I met with a couple classes yesterday, a grade 9 English class and a grade 12, and we talked about the usual things they like to discuss with an American teacher about schooling differences: how we grade and test our students, how we divide up our terms and lesson breaks, what we eat at lunch and what sports we play, how discipline works. I asked them a few questions, too. But then I asked, in both classes, about the moments in the Q&A during yesterday's assembly when boys called out for one of our students' numbers, and when another asked if it hurt when she fell from Heaven. I explained that in America, we have been trying to teach our boys not to behave like this. And so, I asked, is this normal here, for boys to feel comfortable being so obnoxious to girls, even though it leaves the girls no good response and makes them feel dirty and unsafe? I used my magical powers as an ignorant American to blunder into a conversation probably too sensitive otherwise, magical powers that are the bridge our American students provide between Isilimela and Cape Town. The grade 9s said it was just the older boys, and they were arrogant and immature. The grade 12s said it was just immature people, and anyway, perhaps the difference between American and South African humor is wide. Ah, humor: I pointed out the social force in laughter, and how uncomfortable it is to be on the wrong side of it--wanting to fit in, we join in on laughter; but this laughter is a powerful way to reinforce social roles and cultural ideas, many of which benefit someone but hurt someone else. Ultimately, the grade 12s said most boys at Bellville are gentlemen. I don't doubt it. But the benign or chivalrous behavior of gentlemen is also not the same as the dignity of feminism I claimed we are trying to teach and embrace back home.
        When observing another culture, it's so easy to see that boorish behavior is not just about one individual being immature or trying to be funny. It's a whole culture providing the comforts and support that allow someone to behave that way. What we observe and feel here confers on us another lens: A) In our American culture, too, it's not enough to simply call out or discipline individuals for what feels to us like individual behavior. B) Cultural change requires teachers.
        Our students are these teachers.
        From our circle on the stage, students made observations about gender and race--through Bellville, towards Roosevelt and Seattle, towards Isilimela and Langa, back again towards Bellville and Hoërskool Bellville. Ultimately, we discussed the contours and comforts of power and the survivals and triumphs of those able to see these contours most vividly, by dint of struggle, neglect, abuse. We talked for three hours. Perhaps they are ready to teach.

       

Bellville Hoërskool

            Our students came to Bellville High School after their first night with Bellville homestays. We, their teachers and chaperones, were discussing the power of this event of South Africa and the growth of our students; through experience, we have seen a big leap when they move from the township to the suburb. And it's happening. This suburb that somewhat resembles what they know--the comfortable little detached houses, the greenery, the evenly spaced shops, the new cars, the many white faces--allows them to take reactions from open minds to the almost entirely alien interactions and environments in the township and sew them back up again. The contrast is not merely one between South Africa and the United States, they see, but neighborhood to neighborhood: resources do exist in abundance here, and they are parceled out in extremes.
            The stark environmental shift did not account for the biggest piece of students' racing thoughts and feelings, though. It's the attitudinal shift that they observe, the questions and comments from the Bellville parents about Langa and pronouncements about race, and the internal buzz of respectfully listening to hosts while trying at the same time to piece together the history students have learned, townships moments they've had, and what relates to America and what seems uniquely South African. Did you feel safe in Langa? Did you feel safe in the school there? We like what you're doing, but understand it's reverse Apartheid here, where if you apply for a job, the Black will get it. And one student reported this statement: Things were better for the blacks during Apartheid.
            We love our HFB families and our hosts, and they have been welcoming, gracious, and generous. What I told students yesterday was that they might hear statements from the older Afrikaner generation that would make them uncomfortable, but to try not to judge or think less of their hearts, but consider it as a useful lens to view the larger South African tapestry. Ideally students can feel grateful and warm towards their families and also be hearts-open to the wounds they see continually cultivated by these, even these nice, good people, to the townships and their residents.
             Do the casual attitudes of comfortable people who have nothing to do with government and who live apart from suffering have an effect on those in segregated poverty? This is certainly a question Roosevelt students, and certainly members of HFB, should be willing to entertain.
             The student performance this morning was electric. The Bellville audience was excited and receptive, and when we started singing "Country Roads," we Americans were all surprised when the audience, who filled the auditorium utterly, including those seated on the floor in the aisles and up to the wall of the stage and all up the wings, thundered in chorus with our students.

            Kate and I worried for our girls, when, during the Q&A, the first question was a shout to Tessa: What is your number. Later another boy yelled out, Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven? Mandy said their students would never say these things in private, but in the anonymous crowd, they felt they could get away with it. The behavior nevertheless highlights the beginning of an effort in America to re-educate our boys so they don't celebrate their masculinity in ways that literally or figuratively pin women down, and in my classroom, to consider what laughter in moments of aggression really carries. Kate talked to Tessa, and she was okay.
            Really, I think she was on a high from the performance, their last one, and one for the books. Our kids were stars.
             (But if you want to see something truly polished, watch Bellville High School win the flashes competition, and if you don't know what that it is, you should also watch it.)

 

 

HFB retreat at Melkbasstrand

               Roosevelt students sadly missed a day or two of Isilimela time because of the sports day on Monday and then a strike or teacher march on Tuesday; they finally shadowed their buddies on Friday, which at Isilimela is a shortened schedule (which accounts, but only a little bit, for the additional noon to two lessons taking place on both Saturday and Sunday with the teacher, Lulalime Zondi, with whom I was working Friday, at the extra expense of taxi fare for the learners coming in from different townships). I encouraged students before school to view their experiences through two lenses: first, what does it take to teach classes of between 40-65 students with few paper resources or books; second, what does education look like in a culture with an oral tradition. Students gathered after school to reflect on what they saw.

               These are some of the things they reported back:

·        Students talking through the whole class;

·        Students absolutely quiet through the whole class;

·        A lesson a teacher would not provide because learners misbehaved the day before;

·        Students not moving through the dismissal bell, staying;

·        Teacher leaving 10 minutes into class and returning at the end;

·        Learners staying in the room doing homework when a teacher didn’t show up;

·        Teacher banging erasers to get attention;

·        A single calculator being shared and passed around in math class;

·        No posters on the wall;

·        A learner waving away the pain and screaming but returning his fingertips for the remaining punishment;

·        Teachers saying, Are you following?

·        No one leaving to go to the bathroom during the lesson.

               Now we are here at Melkbosstrand, on the weekend retreat with all the Hands for a Bridge teachers and students, making art, playing games, having conversations about race, and walking on the South Atlantic coast.

               This morning Polly told students that water is the first medicine, and water is our ancestor, that teachers are ancestors, and that when students make their art, they’re doing so through their ancestors: acknowledge and open your hearts, she told them, to teachings of your ancestors. Be grounded, your mind to the ground itself.

               Pum moved from there to the honesty and humility HFB students wear on their backs, calling on them to finish this sentence: “I am a product of segregation / apartheid / integration, so I became…” Her statement moves students past several historical layers and demands students so quickly interpret their history and consider its deeply personal effects. Then she asked, how comfortable are you talking about race with your own group of people? Pum let students sit with this before asking about discussions with a person of another race—because if the first is hard, then how much more so the next? Buddy groups made up of Bellville, Isilimela, and Roosevelt then discussed what made them comfortable and uncomfortable with such discussions, a brilliant way of allowing students to cross the bridge most proximate to feelings about race, while also allowing some hard truths to come out. Learners were given time to speak out to their classmates of different races and cultures—just listen, do not feel judged or guilty, but really hear.

               One student said she was totally comfortable because she was raised to accept every person as a human being. White Roosevelt students don’t often say such things in my presence. They acknowledge their discomfort and say they are afraid of offending, or getting something wrong, or speaking for someone else who has more right to say. Acknowledging this discomfort is a first step towards recognizing the racism that pervades so many institutions and interactions. Is the discomfort because you don’t know what offends? Interrogating such uneasiness is a way of being honest and seen in each other’s company; but if people simply pave over all that useful telling bumpiness by saying I believe everyone’s equal and accept everyone, there’s little room for authentic witness, connection, understanding, growth, or healing.

               But that is certainly just the start. When all was said, Pum asked how far they are willing to go. You are Hands for a Bridge, and I know you speak about equality and connect with each other, but if you believe in these things, how far are you willing to go?

               How much can you speak each other’s languages, how much have you tried? If you came to this group not speaking Xhosa, how much Xhosa have you learned? If you came not speaking Afrikaans, how much Afrikaans have you learned? And students from Roosevelt, how many words do you know from the tribal languages of your lands? How far are you willing to go?

               What will you do?
               Here are some moments from Isilimela's performances at the night's open mic.

District 6, Bo Kaap

               District 6 was a lively, working class area with a rich cultural life and generations of neighbors building community and home since 1867. After the 1950s Group Areas Act, which allowed the government to declare and restrict a neighborhood to a single race, 99 years after this district was created, South African government declared this highly desirable neighborhood between Table Mountain and the center of Cape Town for white people, and began extensive demolition as the residents stood witness to purposeful theft and violent disregard for home, a calculated obliteration of a community that had been fully integrated for a century. A Hands off District Six campaign successfully put the taint on the project, and the whites for whom the area was intended conscientiously stayed away. And now the area, aside from some recent homes for police and army personnel and a technical college, remains a vast empty yellow wound between Table Mountain and Cape Town, a memorial to the racial theft and violence of apartheid life.

               Before fully entering the museum, Polly gathered students and reminded them that they are guests on this land, to think, as they listened to the stories and took in the exhibits in the museum, to consider the reservation-based peoples and their histories and present conditions, and the violent incursions of colonialism around the world. And she told students to thank the ancestors for the knowledge they would bestow on this land.

               Our guide through the museum, Joe Schaffers, or we think maybe he was also Youssef (Joe) Sharief Rassool, moved from vivid relatable detail to global perspective, teaching and provoking us a great deal. Specific details included the kind of trust people had before they the community was shattered and removed 36 kilometers away to the Cape Flats: Every child’s mother was everyone’s mother. If you dropped a bag and went somewhere, it would be there when you returned. A tab at the grocer’s meant you were trusted to pay later and the grocer was trusted not to alter the tab, and such trust was a piece of neighborhood intimacy. I have a student from Somalia who this year explained what it was to move to Seattle, where doors are closed and his family is isolated from neighbors living just on the other side of a wall.

               What is tragic about District 6 is the dehumanization and theft that occurred there, but also the willful destruction of what was clearly a paragon of diverse religions, cultures and backgrounds, living together in open accord. Joe catalogued the numbers of religions in a breathtaking list off the top of his head, and said there existed total acceptance of every one by everyone. But then they were removed, and not as a community—as individual families: sent to new place without stores or clinics or community centers or playfields or neighborhoods. The architecture was destroyed, yes, but the culture of the city and the intimacy of the neighborhoods too was entirely annihilated. And as more and more people were added to the population, Joe said, it was inevitable that, like increasingly crowded rats, they turned on each other, grew territorial, and gangs, theft, garbage in the townships is no surprise.

               Ubuntu, Joe said--community, togetherness, connection, kindness or person to person--it's a lot of rubbish. The concept held out to inspire the tourists is not lived in South Africa. No one is born a racist, but for two generations and more, people have been taught that segregation is right and natural, and this has become embedded deeply in the way people view others and themselves. So Joe holds it as his mission to change the mindset. He fully embraces each one, teach one, and to show people, through District 6, what is still possible and what has been broken and how deeply, and perhaps we will witness and teach ourselves those whom we meet, with total acceptance, brotherhood, Ubuntu.

               In the afternoon, after the ferry to Robben Island was cancelled for the afternoon due to turbulent waters, we went to Bo Kaap, a neighborhood that, like District 6, had a colored population made up of the Indonesian Malay families who once supplied labor to the building of Cape Town. Unlike District 6, it was not razed. There were so many mosques--and like the churches, synagogues left alone in District 6--they were respected and feared because of their international reach that Bo Kaap was left alone. Its houses are each painted in vibrant colors, which is why it's the cover of Lonely Planet South Africa year after year. There is a story of drunken merchants who used the colors to find their home, unlikely because of Islamic prohibitions on alcohol; our guide said the colors were instead a defiant expression of individualism in response to Apartheid. And it has become a vivid representation of the rainbow nation.

                We arrived in the neighborhood just in time for the call to prayer. Our students are being called in so many ways.