Day 2: Site Visit

View of the townships around Cape Town

This morning began with a site visit to the refugee resettlement organization, ARESTA, where I will be volunteering for the next three weeks.  I’ve been nervous for days leading up to this because I imagined it would be as difficult as my negotiations with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda.  To the contrary, ARESTA has welcomed us with open arms.  Our contact, Fred, has invited us to come with him to the Ministry of Home Affairs meeting on Thursday where the details of the most recent refugee bill are being revealed.  Then, on Friday, he wants us to help him draft policy suggestions which the government accepts from NGOs later in the process.  This particular organization is designed not around the resettlement itself, but rather on skills and language acquisition.  A really interesting part of what they do is dispelling the myths surrounding refugees and immigrants in order to combat xenophobia in the country.  In 2008, there were severe xenophobic attacks, and refugees were the main target of these.  To speak to this goal of public awareness, ARESTA has a community advisor who goes into high schools to teach children (hoping they will educate their parents) about the richness and diversity that refugees bring to the area.  When this community advisor gets back from his conference next week, Fred expects to arrange a visit so we can follow him and see how the public awareness campaign works.  It’s hard to explain in words the energy that was in this tiny building, but maybe it’s enough to imagine an apartment sized office full of people passionate about helping others.  They recently moved to this building- the last one was so insecure that they had bullet holes in the walls and windows…this one’s much nicer and on the second floor now ;)

Irony of the sign over the township

The afternoon was spent at the first photo exhibition for GAPA, or Grandmothers against Poverty and AIDS.  It was a really special event held at a community center in the township where the grannies run their organization.  They form social support groups for other grandmothers struggling to care for their children who are dying from AIDS, and for their grandchildren who are left behind.  They also have after school programs for about 120 children, many of whom get their only meal of the day from the grandmothers.  There’s so much energy and warmth in this tiny building, with its school operated out of old (but brightly painted) shipping containers.  When they embrace you, you can feel the love, as if it’s your own grandmother hugging you.  So, today, they were featured in a photography exhibit telling the stories of several of the founding grannies and their struggles.  There was lots of singing- one of the most joyous celebrations I’ve ever had the pleasure of taking part in. Thursday night, this photo exhibit has been invited to take place in a large, major museum- and the hope is that it will be able to travel to Washington, D.C. and maybe even Norfolk.

Horse-pulled car…

Gugulethu 7 Memorial, stripped of signs

It’s impossible to capture the sensory input I’ve experienced in the last few days, but I think the following scene can sum it up.  We had extra time today, so we toured the townships to where the monument for the Gugulethu 7 memorial is.  The memorial has been stripped of its bronze placards.  While it seemed hard for some of us in our group to grasp that someone could vandalize that type of monument, imagine sitting in front of bronze placards that could be melted and feed your family.  You could not eat, or you could take them down and sell them…not really a hard choice in the end.  As we took pictures of the marble monument, an old rusty, half-disassembled car rolled by with 4 men on top pulled by a horse.  Yes, a horse.  Framed by the corregated metal shacks and lean-tos in the background, and garbage littering the street, these men carried on as if all was normal (while making rude hand gestures at us).  There’s poverty all around, and the housing situation is utterly pitiful, but all the organizations we’ve visited so far give some glimmer of hope that people are resilient, and people can make the best of a bad situation.  It takes time to undo the emotional and social damage of a constricting system like apartheid, but change is happening anyway- even if it requires the occasional horse…