Capetown Contradiction

8/4/2007

My name is Orpheus. I’m in South Africa. This is my first Blog.

Presently, my neck is propped by a plethora of plush pillows and my bare heels are cradled in the folds of fine linens-- courtesy of the Southern Sun, a luxury hotel that’s nestled between the picturesque majesty of Cape Town’s Table Mountain and the bustling commercial harbor. Just hours ago, on my way back to this waterfront haven, I watched from the highway as the South African sun glinted over an infinite jumble of plastic bags and corrugated iron that served as makeshift rooftops for far too many families. I sat, troubled by the juxtaposition of this impoverished township of Khayelitsa and my own accommodations, which were nearby and worlds away at once. There is a local saying that the White South Africans of Cape Town “live in the shade of the mountain”, which is to say that they are unscathed by the hardships confronting their Black, Colored and Indian counterparts. My group’s Thompson’s Tour Bus bumped on, approaching the comforting cool of that very shade. Although I feel that I am a tourist in name only, and a learner by intent, I was conflicted about my own fortune and wondered what Tembokaze would think about the superfluous sixth cushion in my hotel room, or about the large screen laptop computer on which I am currently typing.

Tembokazi and Babalwa are two vivacious twelfth grade girls that I approached during a break in classes at a High School today, a Saturday. During our introduction Babalwa was careful to give me her wrist to clasp instead of the hand that she’d been using to munch on chips. I asked both girls why they chose to attend school on a Saturday, and Tembokazi spoke up: “I want to be an accountant, and I don’t mind coming to school today. If they told me to come on Sunday, I would come. Here, I can get the help that I really need.” Babalwa and Tembokazi are taking advantage of a program run by an NGO called ASSET, which gives a limited number of disadvantaged but eager students the opportunity to get additional tutelage on the weekends. This opportunity of huge benefit to these students’ learning. Still, many of these young South Africans commute to these intensive sessions from townships where their families are crowded into tiny rooms right on top of other families, or crammed into small and scrappily constructed “informal housing”. As Mr. Leslie Bird, a fifteen year veteran teacher of the ASSET program told me this afternoon, “Apartheid is over, but it is taking time for things to change.”

Although these students readily acknowledge that their access to education is superior to that of their parents, it is evident that the South African government and the nation’s educators have much work to do to create educational equity for all in South Africa. When I think of the broken windows and huge classes in Zonnebloem NEST High School, or the weary but hopeful expressions in teachers’ lounge at Fairmount Secondary School, I am angry and inspired at once. In the face of a changing school system, under staffing and lack of funds, teachers and students alike, are fighting to make South Africa a place where the dreams of every Black Colored and Indian child can bloom. The awe that I felt to see children happy to sit at a desk on a Saturday, starving for a just a scrap of knowledge, is indescribable. To hear: “Education is everything”, from an 18 year old boy makes me feel lucky for my privilege and ashamed for treating my opportunities as mundane reality.

Aboard the bus, Leo, the Capetonian driver of our day’s tour, told me to listen carefully to a song about Nelson Mandela entitled Jacarda Bougainvilla. He sang along with reference to his native country:”Mandela… Makin' a home for everyone…” I jingled the Rand in my pocket to the Afro-Jazz rhythms, staring at the mailing address I’d gotten from Babalwa. She has no email access, but who knows what she’ll be able to accomplish with her bright smile and big dreams.