Our first night in South Africa, and Stella finally got some sleep.
We went to church in the morning, a Catholic ceremony that included swinging incense into the hot air. Some of the service was in English, and the music was all-absorbing and rich; lyrics were projected on the wall on either side of the sanctuary so that we too could sing, though the words were in Xhosa, and one section was reserved for women who beat the time on percussive pillows.
A nine year old told Dani she looked like Taylor Swift.
After
church, Siyabonga led us first to the memorial to Amy Biehl, the young
white Fulbright student who was killed by an angry mob in 1993 (Footnote 1), an
event featured in a book HFB used to read, Mother
to Mother; there he asked Roosevelt to sing our national anthem, which felt unusually personal and mournful in context. We moved from there to a memorial dedicated
to the Gugulethu Seven, young black activists killed by the police in 1986
(Footnote 2). After explaining for both sets a moment of forgiveness that occurred, and the way this was further reinforced through the national healing that came of truth and reconciliation work, Siya then grieved the vandalism and decay that have occurred for both monuments: important history is either not being taught or it's not being appreciated. Physical tributes to national wounds and healing are also not being maintained.
If we don't understand the traumas we're surrounded by, we're sooner to resent and disparage neighbors, both from stresses we don't understand and behavior we misinterpret as selfish; and if we don't understand the victories and heroes that emerged to tell truths and step in to heal such traumas, we're slower to energize around common values and goals. I've thought about this, because when my family lived in Hungary for a year, in 2010-2011, schools were beginning to weaken instruction in foreign language and in history, and this has only gotten worse as Hungary marches further towards autocracy: we need our conflicts and victories to be witnessed, to be memorialized, to be taught and felt, because this is how we invigorate and improve upon what is best in ourselves, and how we recognize and repudiate sickness.
I hope that our students recognize the wisdom being offered them by their elders and ancestors, at home and far from home, who tell them again and again what it means to appreciate what we have and who we love, and that everyone is some way a sister and a brother.
Maybe they felt this back at Isilimela, where students and teachers hosted guests from Bellville and Seattle and also community members, serving a feast of chicken, stewed lamb, noodle salads, spinach and sweet potatoes, and my favorite, chakalaka. I met a friend of Mimi's, Sylvia Mdunyelwa, who talked to me about the message she tries to share when she's brought into schools, a message of hope and respect that mirrored Siyabonga's earlier in the day: she has plenty of opportunity, as she is an active jazz singer with a illustrious past. Sylvia went to a website and found a picture of her with Nelson Mandela. If you look up Sylvia, jazz, and South Africa, you might find it too.
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