Gypsy

A friend posted this song yesterday, which I had never heard before, but it immediately sent me hurtling back to winters in Pittsburgh, perpetual clouds and freezing and thawing gutters and afternoons that never turned bright or warm. Nostalgia for worlds I couldn’t touch.

My life then was lived in shades of gray: deposits of silver oxidizing in soft, heavy paper under the orange lamp of the dark room at MCG, stone buildings impregnated with decades of industrial soot, the muted poetry of trains and bridges and abandoned millworks. Dull flourescent light pushing along a day at high school, and freezing mists that weren’t quite rain and weren’t quite snow–just cold and wet.

I write this looking out over the San Francisco Bay, where the delicate span of the Golden Gate Bridge seems to hold the promise of an endless beyond of blue, and blue, and blue, and after that, everything. Worlds packed tightly together like commuters in a rush hour train, so close you can smell the wool of their coats and hear the music in their headphones.

Tall stands of redwoods shimmer in the sunlight, and I find myself wishing for fog.

 

PhotoVoice: Rural Kids Document Human Rights in Their Communities

This is a long time coming, but I finally got copies of the student work that came of Sonke’s PhotoVoice project, which I conducted along with Honor Genetski, Nyanda Khanyile, and Patrick Godana, with support from teachers, principals and parents in the schools where we worked.

PhotoVoice students learned basic photography concepts, including technical skills, project planning, and how to document their work through keeping a photo journal. They also improved their writing and editing skills, and put all of this to work in the context of Sonke’s One Man Can campaign, which encourages everyone in the community to take part in the movement for gender equality.

We chose a selection of some of the best student writing and photography, as well as themes that recurred throughout many students’ work, to present in the form of banners at exhibits in Mpathesitha High School in Nkandla, KZN, and the grade school at Mhlontlo, Eastern Cape.

Student work:

PhotoVoice Nkandla

PhotoVoice Mhlontlo

As part of the exhibits, school desks and chairs were placed next to the photographs all around the courtyard, and adults and children alike were encouraged to sit in the place of the photographers and write reflections in Zulu (KZN), Xhosa (EC) or English about student photographers’ observations. They were also given post cards of the students’ images, pre-addressed to the mayor, on which to write their thoughts and suggestions. Although I was unable to attend the Mhlontlo opening, the exhibit in Nkandla was nothing short of joyful. The whole school came together to celebrate the student work and prepare for the hundreds of visitors who came. A group of boys (neckties thrown over their shoulders) slaughtered a cow, and school mothers and teachers spent hours grating and chopping veggies for all. The shrubs were watered so thoroughly I feared they might drown. There were speeches upon speeches (the mayor, the beloved school principal, tribal elders, student leaders, Sonke…the list goes on). The gospel choir, crowned in the buttery rays of light that make Nkandla unique, performed several songs, and the school’s traditional Zulu dancers had the crowd in stitches with their not-very-gender-equitable sexual innuendo. Swarms of birds (probably smelling the shisa nyama, though Nyanda also credited the good graces of the ancestors) circled above. A strong wind whipped up everything and reminded us how small we were, even on this momentous day.

Students gather for announcements on the morning of the exhibit.

For more pictures of the day’s events, click here.

 

Why I Love Annie Weinberg

Annie Weinberg

is here on the pulse of the new day, we may look with grace at our brothers, sisters, your country, and say very simply, with hope, Good morning. on Wednesday

(from Facebook, 11/05/08)

 

Open Letter to Harvard J.D. Admissions

cc: Yale J.D. Admissions

Thank you so much for your support throughout this historic admissions season. I want to start by congratulating the Harvard Class of 2011, which has undoubtedly achieved great things and will go on to achieve many more great things. It has been an honour to compete with them. Let me just take a moment to recognise them for all of that astonishing achieving that they have been doing and will continue to do.

This has been a historic admissions season not only because I am applying, but also so many other people are also applying. Damn them!

But I am told over and over again– “Kell, stay the course. Beat the odds. The stakes are too high. Especially for you personally.” But also for the Whole World. You see, after seven years of the Bush administration, the Whole World has a lot of problems–problems that a good, hardworking lawyer can solve. I am that lawyer! (Except for that pesky J.D., which you so cruelly dangle just out of my reach.)

In today’s world you are looking for the J.D. student who not only has a surreal LSAT, but also is prepared to extend health insurance to every American by 2010, stabilize the housing market, slash the price of gasoline, and chill global warming. You are looking for J.D. students who are ready for the challenges ahead–to clean up the vile trail that the Bush administration leaves in its wake as it sulks away. You need the J.D. students who can vanquish the Republican Machine, fight fire with atom bombs, restore justice, rule of law, and voting delegates to all 50 states and Puerto Rico. And you deserve nothing less!

Admissions Team, I know how hardworking you are, and I know you have spent many hours deliberating, carefully calibrating your odd little admissions scales to try and foretell who these J.D. students might be. You have made your decision judiciously, and it is not due to poor estimation of your judgment, or a consideration that you could possibly have erred, that I urge you to reexamine it. On the contrary, I unflinchingly believe that you, Godlike, can never be wrong, and yet, simultaneously, are.

(Except for the one white guy in the corner. He’s the rightest of all of you!)

So I want you to know, I will be making no decisions tonight. This has been a long process, and by now we’re all exhausted. But it is your future that hangs in the balance, and in your name, with your help, I will continue on to Victory! To my supporters–that white guy in the corner–I want to hear from you. I hope you’ll go to my website at ideasdegitana.wordpress.com and share your thoughts with me and help in any way that you can.

We Americans know that greatness can rise from the ashes, blah blah Twin Towers, Abraham Lincoln. If we all work together, share, cooperate, and raise our hands when we wish to say something, there’s nothing you can’t achieve for me.

Thank you very much. God Bless you, Admissions Team, and Bless me too, while You’re at it.

 

Certain Foreigners

As news reports of anti-immigrant violence begin to surface in the international media, my family and friends back home have been writing to me to ensure that I am safe. I am, I tell them. They ask me if I feel threatened and if conditions “in my immediate neighborhood” are stable. I don’t; they are.

So much so that, if I chose to, I could ignore the ethnic cleansing that has purged whole townships of foreigners, killing dozens of them and displacing tens of thousands. I have that option because I’m not That Kind of Foreigner; I don’t live in Those Neighborhoods. I am an American intern living a few steps from Cape Town’s central business district. I am white.

Of course, I do not choose to ignore this crisis. I identify with the dreadlocked man on the front page of the Cape Argus who wore a bumper sticker proclaiming that “We are all Zimbabweans”. Along with the many South Africans who abhor this thuggery, I swam through waves of shock and mourning before arriving at a place of action. As emergency calls reached our offices Friday morning, I saw myself reflected in the dejected faces of my colleagues, who had hoped to prevent the violence from spreading to their neighborhoods. That afternoon, I listened to a Somali woman shout over the radio, “I came here to get away from the problem in Somalia. Now, they make these problems. Where am I supposed to go now?” Her voice did not sound dejected or timid, as the majority of the news outlets had consistently portrayed the displaced. It sounded angry. Even though I am not That Kind of Foreigner, I am still A Foreigner. I came to South Africa to earn something, to better myself, just like the Somali woman. Morally, I cannot separate my plight from hers.

Yet it strikes me how easy that would be. Whatever pressures drove the mobs in Khayelitsha or Alex to loot and burn are comfortably separate from my life. Pap is not a staple for me; I could not tell you how much it costs today and how that price has increased. The power is always on in my house—no load shedding here. I have clean water, sewage, trash removal, and quiet nights. If there are killings in Khayelitsha, I read about them in the news (if anyone bothers to print a story). I don’t bother the townships with my relatively petty problems; they don’t bring their problems to me, either. Like good neighbors.

I guarantee you that Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, and Helen Zille also have such considerate neighbors; they also can choose how much to care. In fact, concern was shown for some of the foreigners who the mobs have threatened: amidst the reports of 20,000 African immigrants displaced, there were several attempts to reassure international tourists that South Africa is still safe for a rainbow vacation. Certain Foreigners must never, ever be offended.

And while tourists were shuffled up and down Table Mountain, a train to Joburg was packed to the gills with migrants returning to Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe; six extra coaches were added to accommodate their numbers and armed guards accompanied them the whole way. No government ministers were deployed to encourage them to stay—it was the most successful deportation scheme the city has ever seen. For the government, it was a solution to a problem; soon, it will be as if those people never existed. But I wonder, what songs were sung on that train? What did strangers say to each other when their eyes met? What stories were rolled up into bundles and packed out? As they watched the landscape open out before them, did they see their arrivals rewound, or was it all a terrible, unstoppable march forward?

Mbeki has done a brilliant job of fostering “good neighborliness” not only between the cities and the townships, but also between South Africa and Zimbabwe. I have long said that he would pay for his friendliness with Mugabe. I was wrong. He hasn’t paid. He has sacrificed others. While he props up a dictator’s decrepit regime, Zimbabwe doesn’t eat. Zimbabwe is detained and tortured, dragged from the back of a bakkie. Zimbabwean Foreigners (for that is what they become when they cross into South Africa in order to buy bread) are unceremoniously repatriated from Lindela. How can we blame township tsotsis for brutalizing Zimbabweans, when even the President believes that they, unlike other Africans who take refuge here, should be left to starve or be persecuted for their political beliefs? Zimbabweans must be a completely Different Kind of Foreigner.

Whilst the government wrings its hands about how close to keep its neighbors, thousands of South Africans and foreign nationals have taken action. Over the weekend, my office was converted into a relief hub, with hundreds of people streaming in and out, offering what services they could and being dispatched to safe havens around the province. Desks were pushed to the walls, and the floor became a processing center for the donations that flowed in as fast as we could sort and deploy them. On Sunday evening, I wound up at a church in Somerset West, where sandwich-making and clothes-sorting teams stepped gingerly around children’s Bible study classes. I didn’t even learn the names of the people working alongside me, mostly Afrikaner women and girls, and they didn’t learn mine. I am told that in some communities in Khayelitsha, South Africans refused to allow their immigrant neighbors to be evacuated, ensuring police that they would protect each other. I know that for every story of forced removal, there are two stories of those who mobilized to shelter the affected; for every marauding criminal who attacked his neighbor, there are twenty who resisted.

If anything is to rise from these ashes, it will have to come from the ones who resisted. We all have a responsibility to ask what happened, to walk down the alleyways and notice the spaces left behind, like missing teeth. We have a responsibility to ask why there is so much anger in the first place, and what each of us can do to address the ongoing tragedies in the townships: substandard public education that under-develops minds, soaring HIV rates that lay waste to bodies, and dehumanizing living conditions in which only the hardiest souls can thrive. And we have a responsibility to support neighboring countries as they struggle for democracy, just as they supported South Africa. Good neighbors don’t watch complacently while the house next door burns.

There are many thousands of us who showed this weekend that we are ready to rise to the task. Now, when I ensure my parents that I feel safe, it’s not only because of the privileged status that my particular passport holds. It’s certainly not because the government is capable of protecting me or even has the will to do so. It’s a statement of faith that for the many who were jolted into action, this is only the beginning. I feel safe because I’ve seen thousands of ordinary South Africans put substance behind the slogan: We are all Zimbabweans.

 

Gettin’ in the Way…: Hillary and Race Relations

“I been a lady up to now, don’t know how much more I can take
Queens shouldn’t swing if you know what I mean
But I’m bout to take my earrings off get me some Vaseline…”

Jill Scott

Let me just clarify: I have never been a Hillary-hater. She advocates the right policies, most of the time. She’s tough as nails and sharp as a switchblade. And a lot of the rage that her detractors feel towards her is expressed in ways that are patently misogynist. Newspapers and websites of all leanings frequently publish hideous photographs of her, the likes of which would be thrown out as the photographer’s folly were they of anyone else (except, notably, George W. Bush). These same images are then distorted by less reputable media outlets to resemble the garish, leering figures that the Nazis and the Allies, respectively, used to vilify Jews and the Japanese during WWII–suggesting a threat so overwhelming as to justify her isolation and humiliation. These images of Hillary as a woman out of control, in need of containment, expose the ugly face of post-feminist sexism in America.

I both denounce and reject them. Whether posted by the conservatives who have always hated her or by Obama’s supporters, these caricatures degrade us all. Furthermore, they disable any legitimate criticism of her politics, as supporters and detractors alike must check and re-check themselves against Hillary’s bar of fairness.

Let us raise that bar, and hold Mrs. Clinton to it. Regardless of the injustices she has suffered, there is no excuse for the exacting way in which the Hillary Clinton campaign has attempted, from the outset, to use Obama’s race to marginalize him. Geraldine Ferraro’s statement that if Obama were “a white man, he would not be in this position,” and Clinton’s failure to explicitly reject that statement and remove Ms. Ferraro from her finance committee are only the most recent examples of this phenomenon.

In fact, there was a time when Obama wasn’t black enough. (Remember, way back before Christmas?) The Clinton campaign rolled out the endorsements of Democratic public figures that made their names during the civil rights movement—Rep. John Lewis (GA), Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Charlie Rangel (NY), and businessman Andrew Young were all early Clinton supporters. At the same time, Hillary Clinton eagerly hearkened back to Toni Morrison’s Lewinsky-era assertion that Bill Clinton was the first black president, joking with reporters that she’s in an interracial marriage. The strategy, it appears, was to discredit Obama by suggesting that even those who, to simple minds, should support him, don’t–to convince the American public that his candidacy wouldn’t be as historic as his “latte-sipping” liberal white voting base would like to believe. (To put it less diplomatically, if even black people won’t vote for this guy…)

Those, it now seems, were the good old days. When Obama won the South Carolina black vote by a 4:1 ratio and repeated that success in state after state with large black populations, suddenly, the rhetoric changed. Bill Clinton immediately reminded reporters that Jesse Jackson’s success in the state had not represented the broad-based support necessary to secure the nomination. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has discounted Obama’s victories in heavily black states as irrelevant, saying that only the big states (which also happen to be whiter and browner) matter. This is worse than the usual Democratic pattern of taking the black vote for granted in general elections—it suggests that, at least in Southern states, black votes don’t matter at all. In 2008, the only thing worse for race relations than the question of whether a candidate is black enough is the tacit suggestion that he is too black to win.

I take this personally. I am not black, but I am young, having grown up after the civil rights movement and benefited my whole life from integrated public schools and workplaces. Yet I was aware from a very early age that my black classmates still bore the burden of racism and economic disadvantage—and that we, as a white children, bore the burden of history. Our generation’s struggle is to realize the opportunities that civil rights legislation permits, but does not itself achieve: to demand equal respect and reach equal representation in positions of power. This does not mean that we have to vote for the black candidate. However, it does mean that, as much as possible, we must reject white privilege. As a bare minimum, it must become unacceptable for white people to consciously and openly decide to use race privilege for their own advancement. The Clintons’ race rhetoric blatantly disregards this principle. It sets us back. And it is the one reason why I will not vote for Hillary.

As I said earlier, she’s right on most of the issues. But she’s wrong on the principles. And if there are a lot of things that the MTV generation, my generation, isn’t as wise about as, say, Hillary’s demographic, race relations is not one of them. Her campaign needs to take a cue from that other group of voters that she just can’t seem to win—young people. Especially considering the damage she’s already done, she now needs to strongly reject any racist comments and work to root out the racist overtones of her campaign. Instead of discounting the black vote, she should try to win it. Even if she doesn’t succeed, a more inclusive campaign would give her some ammunition against the charge that she’s divisive.

For now, though, Hillary is a stumbling block. Ferraro has publicly reiterated her racist comments, and in an amazing feat of contortionist reasoning, Clinton’s campaign manager has accused Obama of bringing race into the debate because he complained about the race-baiting. Hillary’s apologist reaction to the whole affair attempts to reduce this to a personal issue between two candidates. But the feminists of the 1970s taught us that the personal is political, especially when the two people involved are competing to be our country’s leader. Personally, I want the next generation to grow up accustomed to a fair playing field and healthy race relations, not as bearers of the baggage that the Clinton campaign seems content to saddle them with. To quote (completely out of context, I admit) neo-soul singer Jill Scott, a Philadelphia native whose vote, in the eyes of the Clinton campaign, is irrelevant, “You’re gettin’ in the way, of what I’m feeling…”

 

URGENT: Support the DREAM Act

I’d like to urge all my readers to take action on a very important issue.

The Senate may vote on an amendment called the DREAM Act as early as today, and I urge you to support this legislation. The DREAM Act would allow undocumented child immigrants who graduate from US high schools to eventually become US citizens by completing at least two years of college or military service. Currently, it is incredibly difficult for undocumented students, even those who have lived in the US for most of their lives and earned a high GPA in high school, to attend US colleges and universities. As a teacher who has worked with children who would be covered under this law and knows their potential, this issue is very close to my heart.

It’s easy to show your support. You can click here to send a form email through the United Farm Workers–it’s as simple as filling in your name and address. Based on the street address you enter, the site will direct your email to the right senators. Or, if you prefer not to go through the UFW, you can write your own email and go to the Senate’s website to send it directly to your state’s legislators. (And yes, kids can do it, too! You will be able to vote someday, so politicians care what’s important to you.)

Thanks for your help!

 

I 2 I : Kelly & Simphiwe

Last Saturday, a colleague from Amazwi and I were invited to the graduation ceremony for a Sotho initiation school. During initiation school, children are separated from their parents for 3 months in order to learn skills they will need as adults of their tribe. Although the schools themselves are very controversial and some parents refuse to send their kids, on graduation day, the whole village celebrates the return of the initiates.

The mood was buoyant, and everyone wanted portraits in their graduation attire. I obliged, but I shared my camera with Simphiwe, the 8 year-old daughter an Amazwi staff member. Although her English is very limited, we communicated through gentle tugs and pushes. I nudged her to get closer to her subjects, and then saw that she was getting so close that I had to set the lens to macro. She would walk directly up to a girl her age without saying anything and compose her shot with the camera six inches from her model’s nose while the other girl stood there calmly. Although I photographed, too, and the initiates’ proud poses and fantastic costumes were stunning, what was most enjoyable was watching Simphiwe photograph her peers: two girls gazing serenely at each other, completely linked for the split second before the shutter snapped. Here you can see both my images and hers: mine, images taken by a conspicuous outsider; hers, photos taken by a girl who, were it not for the camera, could have passed completely unnoticed.

If you would like to donate an old (but functional) digital camera to Simphiwe or to SOMA, please leave a comment with your e-mail address. Donations to SOMA are tax-deductible, and I will happily provide you with a receipt.

Link to Photos:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=nqgcrwt.7p5gpkah&x=1&y=6f9id2

 

The Yogi of Acornhoek

One of my colleagues at Amazwi School of Media Arts stopped by the local creche and elementary school in the town of Acornhoek to offer his skills as a yoga instructor. The principal took him up on it–on the spot! Ten minutes later, all of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders cleared the desks and chairs out of one of the classrooms, and around a hundred children packed in shoulder to shoulder. In the midst of the mayhem, Tom sat on top of a table and greeted the students in Tsonga, “Avusheni.” The students immediately settled down, responding in unison in a singsong, “e-e.” “Minjhani,” he asked, how are you? In call-and-response form, they all replied “nkomo” and waited for further instruction.

Over the next hour, students and teachers alike learned yogic breathing, stretches, and massage techniques aimed at helping reduce stress and teaching respect for one’s body. Aside for a few rogue oranges that fell out of children’s pockets and rolled across the floor, nothing could break the kids’ focus. They repeated Tom’s every word and gesture, giggling at the new sensations and at the crazy Australian man in the “Free your soul” t-shirt, giving class from atop a table. It was so popular that he returned again today, this time giving class outside. In the coming days, I’ll be uploading from all three lessons (including the creche). Here’s a start.

 

“So much happening in the villages…”

For my first lesson as a SOMA instructor, we did an exercise aimed at bringing in native language resources to English writing. I started by reading poems from Nicolas Guillen’s El Gran Zoo, as well as some poems that my students in New York wrote in response, in both the original Spanish and in English. Then we worked as a class to write a similar poem, taking a non-living thing and describing it as an animal. (The students chose Gossip as their animal.) After writing a poem together in English, I asked them to write independently in one of their native languages, Tsonga or Sotho. Then I demonstrated my thought process when I translate a poem from Spanish to English, especially what I do when things don’t translate word for word, or when there are many possible translations. The last step was working together to translate their poems into English.

I had a lot of reasons for wanting to do this exercise. Though the students publish in English, they conduct most of their fieldwork in tribal languages, and it’s important to retain as much of the original nuance as possible when quoting sources. On an aesthetic level, too, translation is fertile ground for innovation in the English language. When something doesn’t quite translate, it’s tempting to revert to a cliché, but it’s much more interesting to look for a way to capture the original meaning, complete with all of its images and references. However, for students who have been taught that their English is “not as good,” cliches come with the comfort of conformity, whereas literary brazenness in a second language carries the danger of misinterpretation.

I’m also interested in providing structure for their development as Tsonga journalists. According to the students, there isn’t a single Tsonga-language newspaper in South Africa, despite Tsonga’s status as one of the country’s eleven official languages. While we are currently preparing the students to enter into the English-language market, there is also an unexplored market for Tsonga journalism. The expectation is that the students could transfer the skills they are learning in English into their native languages, but there’s a much better chance of that happening if we actively promote Tsonga writing and are able to guide their use of it as a professional language.

One of the major reasons why we haven’t worked in Tsonga yet is because none of the SOMA instructors speaks the language, so we cannot copy-edit the pieces, and our ability to aid in the writing and revision processes would be seriously limited. Rather than view this as a barrier, I see it as a phenomenal opportunity for transferring a lot of responsibility to the group (another reason why the classroom is a great setting to begin this process).

As a teacher, it was a new experience to lead a writing workshop in a language I don’t speak. I liked the dynamic a lot, because it emphasized the importance of their expertise, as they debated the best way to explain to us the meaning in English of each untranslatable line. The students were critical of each other’s translations and held each other accountable, challenging the authors to explain what they really meant with each verse. For me, this meant stepping back a lot, and watching them argue in a language I can’t even parse. I was there only to bounce back my understanding and offer ways to approach the translation.

My hope is that the students will find some way to make their voices heard, in any language, and turn a profit doing it. Asked how Issue 01 of The Amazwi Villager went over, Siphiwe said that “the stories were about local people, and written by us, so they were interested, but they couldn’t believe it was so thin. There is so much happening in the villages!”