I guess I’ll start with the sonnet I wrote in Langa the other night.
O afrika, god bless your people’s land.
from heart to limb, effuse your spirit now.
to you we owe the long lives we have spanned;
for history, it’s you who takes the bow.
One Sunlight hovers in a golden glow,
One Love dwells lively in the whole of space.
combined, the earthly being starts to grow,
revealing self and other, time and place.
in Afrika, diversity is real;
(it takes two turns to catch up with your eyes)
the Voices are what make your insides feel
the harmony beneath all else which lies.
Sing, Afrika, Sing and you will be heard –
The People need the truth that’s in your word.
School started yesterday.
Here is a brief description of my classes:
Religion, Spirituality & Ecology.
It’s about the equilibrium of all things. How we messed it up and how we’re going to formulate a new globo-cultural ethos to fix it. World saving stuff, you know.
I’m so impressed with this class even though there have only been two lectures so far. It’s genius and it’s absurd that this sort of thing isn’t the main focus of all discussions everywhere. Everyone in it seems to be quite well spoken and to have valuable insight on the issue. The professor is also a funky Norwegian lady with a lot of knowledge.
History of
Since high school, I haven’t taken a class strictly about history. Religion and politics, sure, but this is just history. Nice. The lecturer seems great and I am excited to learn about gold.
South African Political Thought.
Studying the development of the way a culture thinks is awfully interesting. We’ve started with
Environmental Management and Sustainable Development.
This is my IES class and I haven’t taken it yet, but basically it’s like the science version of my first class. The teacher of this class gave an awesome presentation which enticed me to sign up:
“How old are you? How long do you want to live? What’s the world going to like then? We’re changing our planet and we can no longer do it as haphazardly as has been done in the past. Let’s study it.” Something like that only a lot more powerful.
This past weekend I spent in a homestay in the township called Langa. (here are the pics. I'm trying to include them in the blog but I think the connection is perhaps too slow.) Townships are basically designated zones into which black people were forced when the white people started taking over. They still exist today. What do you think of when you think of a township?
I guess I expected mostly poverty, but it’s not necessarily that way. There is rich and poor in the townships as there is everywhere else. My family’s house was quite plain and small with no decorations or art save a single tall standing vase in the living room. There was a kitchen and a few rooms. Nevertheless, they had a Samsung television and a Sony sound system. My mother’s name was Viola and with her lives her 17-year-old daughter named Lilitha. They speak Xhosa – it’s a click language! Whoever thought I would be learning words with clicks in them.
Our group arrived in Langa in several 10-seater minibuses on Friday night, each of us going to our own individual houses (although some people were paired up to be together.) Langa is considered to be a fairly small township, although 200,000 people seems like an awfully large population of a community that is ‘small,’ if you ask me. There are many different sections to it. The first section I recall had roofs mostly of tin and houses that were all in one conjunct kind of fashion, separated by walls with their front yards spilling into the roads. Kids were everywhere.
I wouldn’t say that I personally fancy township lifestyle, however there is definitely something to be said for such a cohesive community of people. When I say kids were everywhere, I mean they were running around joyously in the streets, playing soccer, riding on little playmobil-type tricycles, chasing each other, laughing, dancing, running into the arms of these strange young foreigners coming to tour their home. They know each other. More importantly, they know themselves. They know themselves and their families and their friends’ families and they know where to go and what to do all the time. That’s pretty awesome.
Friday night I spent mostly in a chair in the corner of Viola’s kitchen, watching these and those goings on. There were a lot of knocks on the door of visitors and neighbors coming in for a chat. They were all quite friendly and stopped to introduce themselves to me before carrying on their business in Xhosa.
I’m definitely a fan of sitting and listening to people speak another language. It’s quite nice. There’s no pressure because I am in no way responsible for the content of their conversation – I just sit there and let the cadence of their speech lull me into quite a meditative and contemplative state. I would describe Xhosa as spiraling upward and back while still carrying on in a forward-moving linear fashion. The tones are open and full, like the sound of a trombone. Your whole jaw is involved in forming the chamber of your mouth which will allow the words to resonate properly. ‘Ingooooooooosi,’ that’s how you say thank you. And to say, ‘I like the moon,’ is, ‘da-ee-tan-da nnnnniaaannga.’ But be careful, because judging by the reactions I got from the Xhosi to whom I said these things, the word for ‘the moon’ and ‘this place’ are one and the same. Kind of cool, in an existential way.
Friday night not a lot else happened. I guess they enjoy watching tv. Although I generally repudiate mental saturation by television, it seemed somehow cultural to watch Predator and Bad Company and goofy African soap operas in the company of Viola and their family friend.
Saturday morning we got a tour of Langa. This day I got to see that some people in Langa aren’t living so badly at all. One family had a BMW and a huge house with a beautiful sun room. We went to the Catholic church, which was the central force for infrastructure at the time of Langa’s establishment, creating schools and medical facilities and whatnot. We saw the sports center, which was several big rugby and soccer fields, and they told us about how sports is a huge factor in uniting South Africans. We know this from Invictus and the world cup, of course.
We also saw the cultural center, where musicians and artists gather to do awesome things together. A man put on a short play for us (just a long monologue, really) and we watched this group of kids in a marimba ensemble perform. They just blew my mind, really, they were so young! David Burchi would love their spirit, not to mention their rhythm. Way more genuine and enthusiastic than any percussion ensemble in the states. Plus, the songs were beautiful.
We saw the Amy Biehl memorial and the site of the gunning down of the Guguletu 7. That was pretty weird. I remember watching that Amy Biehl documentary in Mrs. Wolf’s class sophomore year and groaning about it and of course never considering that I might actually be in the very spot where she was killed.
Our tour guides were great. One of them wrote a poem about the Guguletu 7 that won a national prize and recited it to us on location. Melesesue, Mike and Sabu. Sabu’s family owned a restaurant and many of us in our group spent the night there hanging out on the roof talking to locals and getting to know everyone around us.
That night was probably my favorite part.
It’s just this:
Africans are so freaking intelligent. I think they’re just really motivated to learn, and that’s awesome. Politics, economics, history, religion – they can school any American in any debate about anything. That makes talking to them super cool, because they also have a genuine understanding of who they are and even who we are and what it’s like for everyone to just be themselves but to coalesce in society, in modernity. Venus was on one side and the moon was on the other and we had many amazing conversations about life,
At some point Will, Sam, Abe, Melesesue and I walked down to the corner where there was a big fire and people cooking chicken burgers – which is basically a huge drumstick between two pieces of bread. We walked around just a little bit together and then made it back to the restaurant and eventually back to our houses.
Sunday I was dead on my feet. I was pretty intensely affected by the energy of the whole experience. Something Melesesue said to me:
Africans are the most powerful people because they have maintained a strong and cohesive connection to their ancestry, to who they really are and where they are coming from, despite all else. They’ve got it. They’re all in this together and they know so. When it comes time for them to rise up, it’ll be something the world has never before seen.
So that was the home stay in the township.
I’ll think I’ll probably be able to go back there because I am going to be volunteering with a group called Ubunye. I’ll go to a township once weekly and have a class of ten or so 11th graders and I’ll go and do things like goal-setting workshops (using a curriculum provided for me by the Ubunye people.) This I am excited for.
The week prior to the township consisted mainly of UCT orientation and logistical things. I went to the beach one day – the
So here I am, it’s been two days of classes. I’m really psyched for all the school stuff that is to come. I’m going to learn a bunch and be really smart. That’s the goal.
I never thought UCT would be too cool for me, though, and it just might be. Everyone looks super sharp all the time. Funky hair and well-put-together outfits and man, there are just so many people! I am thankful I did my undergrad at a fairly small institution, although this is definitely exciting and fun. The food is good, though, and I’m beginning to get to know my way around pretty well. Plus, I see people in my group often enough. I don’t want to see them too much because it’s hard to make friends when you’re with people you know, but luckily we are all pretty much on the same page in that respect. I met one girl in my religion class this morning whom I liked a lot. Her name is Naram, maybe? She is doing her masters in African studies and perhaps has inspired me to look into doing the same thing.
Last night was a full moon and we did the full moon ritual. (Bag me, bag me, bag me!) Next time it will be on the top of Lion’s Head, a nearby peak next to
Afrika, man. Everything here is so profound.
I’m feeling the love, I can’t really help it.
om.
Oh yeah, and I just finished my book, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. If you want to dig the South African mentality, or even if you just want to read a really awesome novel, I strongly recommend this one. Peekay is the man. (and thanks to Gary Butler for loaning it to me)
No comments:
Post a Comment