Blogging: my anti-drug

I'm just going to give you a little disclaimer right now. Today was an intense day as far as subject matter that we covered. Now that I have had a chance to sit down and think about it all, my mind is reeling. I have all of these thought that I'm thinking inside of my head. I need a couple of minutes to get out of my own head and my own thoughts. I don't even know if that makes sense to you, but that's the best way that I can describe it.

It's weird how into blogging I have become. Literally, all day I think about what I want to write in my blog at night. I will have an interesting thought or questions, and immediately I take a mental note to put it in my blog at night. This has seriously become my form of therapy. I have NEVER really been like that before. I can usually talk everything out that I need to, but for some reason here I need to write down my thoughts in my workbook, my blog, and in my journal. That's a lot of writing!! Lucky for you all, I do my blogging second so I'm fresh and ready to go still :)

This morning it was back to lecture and discussion in our classroom. We woke up this morning and the sky was looking a little stormy. After our luck with finding our way to class and the rain all day yesterday, we decided to take the Jammie to class. The Jammie is the campus bus system here. You all know how good I am at riding public transportation, so I was really glad that we went as a large group.

Our lecturer this morning was Steve. He gave an overview of current events that are shaping the current dynamics in South Africa. Steve is a child of an ANC member (This is a political party in South Africa. They were one of the major players during that apartheid movement.) and he grew up in a family that lived in exile moving from place to place. I believe he said that he went to 23 different primary schools when he was young! He provided an amazing perspective and insight into life in general, and his lecture this morning got the day started off right.

Currently, Steve holds a couple of Master's degrees and will soon be starting his PhD program. He has studied at various universities and colleges in South Africa, and he did one of his programs on Rotary Scholarship (that's a pretty big deal) studying at Berkeley, California. He views himself as a social change agent and he thinks that education is the key to impacting the world. I am officially in awe of this man!!!

I don't know how many of you have been paying attention to the news, but right now there are Xenophobic attacks going on in South Africa right now. We talked a lot about this during our morning lecture. Steve spent some time working for an NGO (yep, again...I want his life) in the Office for Conflict Resolution, and he also spent some time working for the UN. He has been doing a lot of work with the Xenophobia issues. Here is the low-down for those of you who are a little confused (I suggest you take a look at BBC or CNN if you want to know more), so the Xenophobic issues started in Johannesburg because it is further north. People from Zimbabwe fled to JBurg because of economic/political issues within their own country. Basically, their needs weren't being met in Zimbabwe. However, a mass amount of people sought refugee in JBurg, and that had an adverse affect on the people of JBurg. Now, because of this influx of people, the people in JBurg aren't getting their needs met as far as food, work, shelter, etc. It is taking more of a toll in the townships because those are people who are barely getting their needs met as it is (if they are even being met). When other people come into their area and start taking portions of the necessities that leaves less for the people who live there. So the actual citizens of the townships have started attacking people from Zimbabwe. The refugees have started moving away from JBurg and into other areas of South Africa which is causing the same affect in other parts of the country. Basically, large numbers of people aren't getting their needs met and they have no where to go to get help. (That is all a very brief overview, please look into it more online.)

It was really enlightening to hear Steve talk about his perception of the root of the Xenophobic attacks. After our discussion, I have come to the conclusion that its really just about de-humanizing people. The attacks play on people's vulnerability and its a fight for survival at this point. At the heart of everything, I think that they attacks are just a scapegoat for much larger issues that can be addressed. Instead of focusing energy on people taking refuge, maybe larger issues should be looked at like politics, education, economics, unemployment, gentrification. Then maybe everyone can have their needs met and it won't be such a fight for survival.

After this discussion, I started thinking about my blog entry from yesterday. I wrote about how people from South Africa seem to have a greater understanding of the interconnectivity of life and their role in it. Our discussion about xenophobia today got me thinking that maybe I assumed too pretty of a picture. While I know not ALL people from South Africa are lashing out at foreigners, it made me wonder how many of them really choose to look at the larger picture. I wonder how many of them can see the affect that their actions have on each other, and how many of them actually believe in that?

In a nutshell, this morning I learned that as much as we all have the ability to become disillusioned with politics, our lives are intertwined into the politics within our own borders as well as within the finite borders of something much larger- the world.

With all of the xenophobic attacks, it was made very clear that the major problems are happening in the townships. We will be traveling to the townships next week and doing homestays there for the majority of the week. I started thinking about how these people are opening up their homes to us despite all of this going on. They are inviting us into their homes, and in turn into the hub of their cultures. The families are letting us into their lives. The are educating us knowing that their neighbors, friends, and families might now be okay with foreigners coming into their towns. That shows such immense trust on their part, and I'm really honored and humbled by it.

I told you that I was a thinking machine this morning. We haven't even hit the afternoon yet! This afternoon was our much anticipated trip to Robben Island- one of the prisons that Nelson Mandela was held in during his time in jail.

Robben Island is just that...and island. So that meant that we had to take a boat to get there. For those of you who read about my adventures on the boat yesterday, you are in for part two. We get on this little tug-boat of a ship and start our 8-mile (45 minute) journey to the island. We were rocking and rolling on that boat. This time we had the sense to sit under the boat so that we didn't get rained on. Good thing it didn't even rain! The people in our group started dropping like flies at this point. We had three girls who took motion sickness meds which knocked them out for the whole ride. One girl got sick in the bathroom, and all but 3 people turned an interesting shade of green. BUT we finally made it to Robben Island, happy to set foot on land.

We started off by have a tour of the prison. Our tour guide was actually a prisoner who served time in Robben Island. You can imagine how interesting that was to have a tour conducted by a person who lived through that piece of history. We are all very lucky to have experienced that- it's something that doesn't happen everyday. We got to see Mandela's jail cell, the place where they did work, pictures of him in jail, and I may have stood in a spot where he at one time stood.

The tour was a little bittersweet. I spent the majority of the time trying to wrap my mind around what it must be like to be in jail for 20 years. That's nearly all of my life! I can't imagine what it must feel like to be imprisoned for something that I believe in. At the same time, I had a wonderful resource right in front of me- our tour guide. He experienced everything that I had so many questions about, but I was very hesitant to ask anything. I had a very weird feeling about the tour guide, his role, and his feelings about Robben Island. He was standing right there, a piece of living history, living HIS history, and it was somehow over-shadowed by the fact that Nelson Mandela was there at one time as well.

If anything, this just shows me how much I don't understand about his perspective. For all I know he was honored to be giving this tour even though his history wasn't talked about as much. At the same time, he might have felt resentment, or he may have felt nothing at all! I have a lot to learn, and at the same time it may be something that I never fully understand or learn.

On our way back from Robben Island, we decided to ride on top of the boat so that we could see the sunset and the lights of the city. I absolutely LOVE lights! For 45 minutes we got to see more beautiful views and sights. I hope this beauty doesn't ever get old!

Well, I had better get going. Tomorrow morning we have to be up and at our bus by 5:15AM because we are going on a SAFARI!!!

So for today's shout-outs:

• Capestorm for sponsoring our group. They didn't really sponsor us, but we all bought so many raincoats and fleeces that they might as well have!
  
• TJ and Nate for keeping me warm on top of the boat on our way home. TJ is a human furnace!
• Nate because it was his BIRTHDAY!!!
• Steve: we WILL be chatting again after we are done with our homestays because I love his perspective on life. I think I might want mine to go in a similar direction.

PS...I PROMISE that I will post pictures tomorrow evening. It takes a REALLY long time for them to upload into our blogs. Tomorrow's entry will probably we shorter, but you will have more to see. For now, ciao :)