Today was my first day of placement! I got to see where the
other volunteers are working then sit in on a CCS office meeting. Riding in the van with T (the placement
coordinator), during the staff meeting, and in a one-on-one meeting with Luann
(the director), I started to get an idea of what CCS South Africa already does
and wants to do with regards to evaluation.
I continue to be inspired by CCS’s mission and vision. It is empowering to listen to how they talk
about their partnerships as true partnerships, how respect for the volunteer
and the community are equivalent, and how they are continually evaluating
themselves to ensure that they are working with and supporting sustainable
organizations that already have projects.
My first task as an intern is to read about CCS, their own evaluation,
and other evaluation about international volunteers
The staff recognizes that international volunteerism is
under a critical eye here in South Africa at the moment as, after a history of colonial
and paternalistic relationships with other countries, people wonder what the
motivations of volunteers are and question the impact. I will get to explore this a lot more this
summer for my placement since CCS shares an interest in understanding where the
organization falls in the spectrum of responsible and ethical volunteering.
My own goals for the summer
include those of learning about existing international volunteer programs,
building evaluation skills, interacting with other volunteers to see how their
attitudes change through shorter versus longer term placements, and discovering
how the staff at CCS view having a volunteer coming in. Other things I’d like to do are to sit in on
a social work or development class or two at the University of Cape Town, visit
the Projects Abroad or other international volunteer agency offices, and attend
a session of Parliament.
Going back to the past few days…
Monday was a township tour where I started to learn about what
Cape Town is like for a majority of the local population.
The townships are areas outside of the city
with anything from humble houses to makeshift shacks where most of the coloured
and black populations were forced to live during Apartheid and still live
today. The tour started with a PowerPoint lecture by Mama Ivy, a Xhosa (pronounced with a click:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4RdHNJIh9s) woman
who grew up in the Cape Town townships and was here to share her culture and
traditions.
She explained how people go
to traditional healers and doctors and still perform rituals, despite having
also picked up Christianity.
When we started to drive around through the townships, I
felt uncomfortable being in a group of tourists going to gawk at people and the
way they live. For some reason, though,
I found myself wanting to take pictures to share with people I know so they,
too, can get an idea of just how some people live. Speaking of the way they live, though, I was
actually not surprised by the “shanties.”
If anything, I was surprised by the quality of the outside
appearance—many having glass windows and being made of cement with nice looking
roofs and murals. It was interesting how
the buildings, nicer houses, and shacks were intermixed. Apparently, the nicer homes are government
provided housing where they cleared the shacks and replaced them with small,
standard, cement buildings that they sell to the residents over the course of
several years. The residents then make
additions and make the homes their own.
It’s amazing what a little jumpstart can do to someone’s housing
situation. During the tour, we also learned
a lot about the history of the hostels made for migrant workers and how they’ve
since been converted into single family rooms.
Coca-Cola and other companies still have hostels in the townships for
their workers and families to live in.
Despite having access to people who have experienced
Apartheid first hand and their stated willingness to share details about the
history of their country with us, when I asked questions about South Africa’s
involvement in WWII and about the government structure during Apartheid, I was
met with resistance or silence.
Fortunately, I have 12 weeks to piece together
a long, detailed history.
I will use
the many books lying around Home Base, discussions with staff and other
volunteers, and we’ve already started devouring the CCS DVD collection.
I look forward to drawing comparisons to what
I already know about Guatemala’s similarly rocky history and continued
peace-building process. (Check these out:
http://www.skinthemovie.net/site/ should have read this before I left but nothing will quite pique interest in history like seeing the outcomes of it first hand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa).
The past few days, I’ve been wondering to what extent
Apartheid is really over and, coincidentally, that’s a hot topic currently in
South Africa since Friday was Freedom Day (commemorating the day in 1993 that
ALL people in South Africa were allowed to vote in the first truly democratic
election and Nelson Mandela was elected as leader of a new, FREE South Africa).
In Monday’s newspaper, there were two
relevant articles.
One by Desmond Tutu
that reflected on the past 18 years (
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/04/29/each-one-of-us-must-help-the-miracle-happen) and another by Jeremy Cronin, a leader in
the Communist Party and member of Parliament, that discussed how maybe the end
of Apartheid meant the end of racial inequality but it was quickly replaced by
an increasingly capitalistic system that led to severe economic
inequality (
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/04/29/how-history-haunts-us).
We learned today that South
Africa was rated last year with the highest Gini coefficient, which represents
the wealth disparities between the richest and poorest in the country, beating
out Brazil.
(http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/01/23/thousands-of-tax-cheats-in-sars-sights) Because of the significant
wealth disparities, blacks largely remain in the townships and fear white
people because they are so unfamiliar.
One thing that I appreciate CCS is how they help to break down racial
fear by sending volunteers into the townships where many children would
otherwise be fearful of touching a white person.
That was a lot of detail so I’m just going to end this post
with a quote from the article by Desmond Tutu and create another post to talk
about how the group and I spent May Day (International Workers Day).
“It starts within us,
with the recognition that we don not live in a vacuum. Each one of us is a constituent part of a
greater organism; our community, our country, our continent, our world. […] If
we are to improve our performance, we must improve our teamwork, which begins
with our own understanding that we are members of one team. Our hopes and aspirations are tied up not
just in ourselves and our own material wellbeing, but also in each other. For the organism to prosper requires healthy
cells.” Desmond Tutu
