The second week of orientation has dismantled any illusion
of Cape Town as a perfect utopia. As awful as that sounds, I appreciate having
a more wholesome concept of this city and the situations of the people living
in it. We’ve left the glamorous tourist attractions in the past and have moved
on to understanding the rich history through various museums and exhibits,
tracing from slavery to apartheid to post-apartheid. However, traveling through
the communities themselves has been more impactful than any historian’s recount
or written narrative of South Africa’s circumstances.
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| Mariko drumming in Langa |
As we made our way through Langa (the oldest township in Cape Town),
Khayelitsha, (unemployment rate of about 60%), and Mitchell’s Plane (population
1 million), the metal shacks and sporadically tangled power lines started to
blur together, each poverty stricken area indistinguishable from the next. However,
the faces and the stories I encountered serve as a mechanism to differentiate each
of the neighborhoods to which they belong. I’ll remember Langa for Odon, an
Angolan artist who came to Cape Town with 50 rand (roughly three US dollars).
He used that money to buy 4 pieces of paper to paint on and sell in the street,
marking the start of his new life. He is the genuine rags to riches story, not
because he founded some corporation and lives in excess after getting a
mediocre degree at a no-name university, but rather because he started with
essentially nothing and found the path to a life he feels grateful for. With a
smile of utmost pride, he stated, “I now have a car, a family and a home,”
three commodities taken for granted by the majority of us. From some of the
conditions witnessed thus far, one would expect there to be an ominous gloom
permeating the city, but almost every corner of Cape Town seems to be buzzing
because of the outlook of the people who inhabit it.
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| Vernon with Odon, amazing sandpaint artist, at Guga S'Thebe Arts & Cultural Centre in Langa |
Fortunately, we’ve encountered a lot of the people who have
turned their positive outlook into action. In Khayelitsha, the activists behind
the Treatment Action Campaign welcomed us into their snug office to inform us
of the work they are doing concerning HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and
awareness. While their cause isn’t groundbreaking, their approach is,
especially considering the lack of resources and immense target population. The
three members giving us the talk, who bravely admitted they live with HIV, are
involved in a campaign run by wearing T-shirts labeled “I am HIV positive.”
Along with erasing stigma, the shirts create a platform for dialogue about the
disease between the uneducated population and the knowledgeable campaigners.
Its hard to wrap my mind around the fact that that dialogue may be the only
gateway to information about a life-threatening illness for many of those
affected by it. I felt inspired and optimistic while sitting in TAC’s rundown
office building, but was overcome by a tinge of hopelessness upon stepping back
outside, where many unemployed members of the community were walking aimlessly
midafternoon, and the rows of communal porta potties reminded me that girls
have to risk their safety just to use the bathroom at night.
Luckily, the future lies in the youth’s hands, and we were
lucky enough to meet a group of about 30 children at the Manenberg People’s Center,
located in the heart of a township most notorious for its gang violence. We
could hear the excited shouts of the children as soon as we entered, and I was overcome
by a joyous vibe unfit for the damaged neighborhood beyond the barred and
bullet-holed windows. When one of my peers asked the group of kids what they
want to do when they grow up, a boy proudly dressed in slacks and a blazer was
first to respond. His options in life are two-fold, well technically six-fold.
He can join a gang, as most of his peers do, and sell drugs to neighbors, all
while contributing to the degradation of his own community, or he can aspire to
chase his 5 dreams. Whether or not he ever becomes a Navy Man, choreographer,
businessman, architect, or activist is beyond me, and one can only hope his
incredible drive and brilliance can reap well-deserved benefits. However, the
following days spent touring our internship placements reaffirmed my hope for
this neglected generation’s brighter tomorrow.
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