At the Hector Pieterson Museum and the Sharpeville
Human Rights Day festivities I was really struck by
how young so many the victims of police brutality were in the anti-apartheid
movement. I became very emotional upon reading the quote that Hector
Pieterson’s sister had said in relation to his murder. I was unable to find the
exact words online but she was essentially saying that Hector’s death should
not be remembered as some heroic or prolific act. She worried that his memory
would become one of heroism rather than one of a twelve-year-old boy who was
murdered in cold blood for something that he did not fully understand. I had
never really thought about how important the politics around the death of
someone so young come into play when memorializing their death. It bothered me
that such even had to be taken into consideration.
At Sharpeville on Human Right’s Day
I was also struck by how young so many of the victims of the massacre were as
well as how politicized the celebrations were. The majority of the victims
seemed to be under the age of forty, with a vast majority around or younger
than my own age. That really struck me because I could not even fathom what it
would be like to lose a friend to an evil like apartheid so young. I could not
imagine my life being cut so short for something so evil. Also, frighteningly
enough, it made me consider the current political tide of my own country and
whether or not I would be willing to die for my beliefs. It in many ways
terrified me that I could even ask myself that question at all.
The day that we spent at the
Pimville Boys and Girls Club in Soweto was incredibly refreshing to me after a
couple of days of grappling with some really heavy realities. I did however, at
one point in the day, find myself looking around and realizing that many of the
children whose graves we had visited in Sharpeville were around the same age as
the kids we spent the day playing with. It also became very clear to me that
many of these children were the first or second generation in their family
“born-free” in South Africa and that was pretty overwhelming as well. While at
the Boys and Girls Club I helped to reorganize their library and then spent the
bulk of my day with a new little friend named John attached to my back. Though
John and I did not speak the same language fluently, we were still able to
converse with laughter and dance and that was pretty incredible. I don’t think
there are many things so curative as a smile like his.
On Wednesday we departed for Kruger
National Park where we were lucky enough to see some really incredible sights.
Aside from the game drives that we went one, it was just generally refreshing
to breath in some fresh air and get away from the city a while. Between the two
game drives we went on I got to see: giraffes, zebras, warthogs, water buffalo,
wildebeest, impala, springbok, elephants, rhinos, lions, tortoise, hyenas, and
pythons. Aside from all of that I witnessed monkey’s jumping around on top of
the hut we were staying in and bugs the size of a small mouse. The sunrises
were beautiful and though I sometimes struggled to stay awake throughout them,
I was so glad to have been able to see them.
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| Sunrise at Kruger |
On Friday we spent the day
traveling back to Cape Town and although I felt very lucky to have been able to
learn and see all that I had on the excursion, I was very happy to be going
home. It was during this travel that I realized just how much Cape Town has
actually become a home to me. I’ve found myself having to distinguish on this
trip between “home home” meaning Connecticut and “home” meaning Cape Town. I
think that in itself is testament to how much this place has made its way into
my heart over the past few months. I am excited and a little sad to have only
one month left to explore this home but fully intend to make the most of
it.
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