It’s hard to believe
that this is the second to last blog post I will be writing, let alone that we
leave on April 30th – just 11 short days away. If I could somehow take all those I loved
from back home and move them here, I would do it in a heartbeat. So with this being one of my last posts, I
wanted to take some time to reflect on who I came here as, and who I am today.
On the day before I left
for South Africa, I wrote a journal entry about change, and how fearing change
can become crippling. I talked about how
perhaps it is not just change that is feared though, but it is “failing we
really fear and change is merely an avenue that increases our likelihood of
failure.”
Now this discussion of
change was centered on the idea of “achievement”. Some “succeed” at embracing change while
others “fail” to embrace it and can see it as a road that leads to
“failure”. But what I have learned in
South Africa is that it is important to understand and measure the change
process, not just the end result.
In America, we go to
great extents to measure results. In college,
your GPA is “worshipped”. In interviews,
potential employers want to know what you achieved. In the business world, companies emphasize
profit. In politics, we care about who
“won”. Now I am not saying that in South
Africa this is nonexistent, but perhaps, such emphases in South Africa are a
cause of the “westernization” or “globalization” the country has experienced.
What I learned about
change though is the importance that must be placed on measuring and
understanding the process and context by which change occurs. In other words, on a national level, South
Africa has become the most unequal country in the world. But solely looking at this result provides a
limited understanding of why it has become so unequal? Examining the stark divisions carried into
the new democracy from the apartheid era, the government’s promise to provide
creating a sense of dependency, and the economic push for big business,
provides a better understanding of why South Africa is so unequal. On a community level, it is challenging to
tear down these barriers. So if
community-based organizations or NGOs only looked at the impact they had on the
communities they work with at large, it certainly would be discouraging. For that reason, many organizations examine
the impact they have on the people they work with, in hopes that this will
infect other community members.
I came to South Africa
very result-driven. I was hungry to work
and hungry to learn. And what I found is
learning does not just take place by achieving results. I have learned the most just through hearing the
stories of Capetonians. I have come to
appreciate the process required to enact change long-term change. South Africa may look grim in terms of its
current political situation, inequality, and stark poverty. But I am convinced that change is possible if
enough South Africans work towards it. "Vision
without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, and
vision with action can change the world.” Nelson Mandela
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