Sleepless in Soweto: Olesia's Story

Confessions of a South African kid

2009-09-05T22:45:00.001+02:00

Inscription Video

2009-09-03T05:26:00.002+02:00

Photos

2009-08-27T05:24:00.002+02:00

Inscription Inside the Pages of 'Long Walk to Freedom', My Gift to the Girls

2009-08-18T18:38:00.004+02:00

Girls,

May the trials and tribulations of this man's journey offer you a permanent respect for the adverse historic struggle of your people, the evolution of your country, and the liberation of freedom.

Please find in it the perseverence, strength, and resilience to overcome your own pesonal fears and circumstances in order to live a life of reason and become leaders of your people.

Never give up.

Always forgive.

Don't stop smiling and reading.

I love you. Olesia. August 2009.

Video of girls reading this aloud after receiving it to come in the next few days, along with all other media.

Hovering over Boston right now. Luggage lost, perspectives gained. What a trip.

...Learner Training, Parent Meeting, Power Outage, Confinement, Thieves in the Night, Tears of Joy, A Gift, The Joke’s On You, and The Last 24

2009-08-17T08:57:00.004+02:00

Expansionist Desires Continued….

“Of course we can make that happen,” I responded in a haste gasp, barely catching my breath or noticing if I had interrupted him. “That’s precisely what we are here to do, Mr. Jacobs [the Soweto District Director from the Gauteng Department of Education]. We are hoping that the Lilydale deployment goes so well that we’ll be able to expand this program to schools, ideally, all over the country.”

“Good,” he said, as if I delivered the desirable answer he was anticipating. “I want to bring the XO to Soweto; have the entire district full of them. I want to move on this fast.”

I couldn’t believe my ears; was it really this easy?

“Then lets move,” I said without skipping a beat. “I will email you and your team,” who had, by this point, noticed an important meeting—their input could cost them a raise, a lack of it their jobs—occurring on the podium and, after meeting my gaze, made certain to pull up a few chairs next to the Director and I while Phindile assisted Nastya and John with the remainder of the grade 5 enrollment list, “tonight and get in contact with my OLPC Corps manager to discuss specifics such as costs. But tell me, how many XOs, or schools, are we talking here?”

The diversion of his eyes from mine and into an empty stare directed at the ground coupled with his delayed conversation indicated he had begun counting numbers in his head. The sun bounced on and off his thin glasses as I waited, momentarily taking a minute to glance at the jubilant cheers of learners rejoicing once a classmate was handed their very own boxed XO, the sharp edges of the cardboard box reminiscent of bountiful Christmas presents these children have likely never gotten.

“Roughly 13,000,” he said nonchalantly. “All the primary schools in Soweto.”

“What happened in Rwanda,” I said, wasting no time, “is that the Ministry of Education held multiple structured training seminars with all the teachers who would be involved in the multiples of schools at the forefront of deployments across the country. They also trained technical staff to ensure they could work more efficiently and independently of outside parties to strengthen sustainability. In addition, certain subject-specific modules were created to integrate the XO into the classroom.”

I was breathless. The sun bounced from head to head on the front podium row, off the District Director’s glass lens, and into my eye. I had positively overwhelmed him. One of his co-workers, an ever-smiling, nurturing woman named Lizzie, took the lull in voices to pick up where I left off.

She leaned forward, masking the pitch of her voice to ensure she wasn’t in competition with John and Nastya, who by then had barely reached labeling and distributing computer #20. “I think,” she almost whispered, “that we should invite them to the Gauteng Department of Education meeting in a few days so they can impress this idea on all the District Directors in the municipality.”

Irritated, Mr. Jacobs shot Lizzie a stiff glance and very slowly said, “That’s exactly what I don’t want.”

Lizzie and I, both finding ourselves in a forward-leaning position, automatically retracted our bodies at the sound of Mr. Jacobs’ surprising proclamation.

He continued. “I want Soweto to have this project first, and then when the rest of the District sees the laptop here, they will want to follow suit.”

With the exchange of a knowing look between us as brief as a bolt of lightning, Lizzie and I understood that the District Manager wanted the glory of an XO success story in his own Soweto jurisdiction—historically and presently one of the most disadvantaged areas in the Gauteng municipality—all three to set a precedent with the Municipality and the Federal government, ensure Soweto kids were reaping the benefits of a transformative, unique 21st century education, and take ownership of the project in Soweto in case the Gauteng Department of Education didn’t want to jump on board. Everyone has ulterior motives, I thought, but if his included offering youth who live in squatter camps, who are physically abused at home, and who will never imagine their lives to be silently interrupted by the four-letter killer in the next decade the tools to think differently about their circumstances and the potential to change them, then so be it.

“I understand,” I replied, faintly hearing Nastya and John begin calling out numbers in the 70’s. I quickly recalled Mr. Mohamed, upon introducing us to Mr. Jacobs, mentioning that the District Director, obviously a very busy man, could only make a brief appearance at the launch and that he would have other responsibilities to adhere to afterwards. I had to move. Directing my gaze at all three Lizzie, Mashooda—a young, tiny Indian woman who had also pulled up a chair next to the Director and I but had been relatively silent throughout the hasty discussion—and Mr. Jacobs, I concluded the conversation: “My group and I are absolutely thrilled that you are this invested in a much larger-scale XO deployment in Soweto and we’re very committed to working with you during the next few weeks so that this project can really see the light of day.” Now, setting my sights more at Mr. Jacobs’ administrative personnel who would try, as we earlier discussed, to raise money from corporate sponsors and contact the Gaunteng’s E-learning Director in hopes of garnering an ally in a key sector while Jacobs put his authoritative backing behind the project, I decided the XO could do the rest of the talking for me.

“I will put you in contact with our project director, Paul Commons, who will facilitate more serious discussions from a senior OLPC standpoint and maybe next week we could meet at the Department to discuss particulars. Would you mind typing your email addresses in this write file on the XO, please?”

They smiled and cautiously moved over to the little machine with a big mission and began, carefully pressing their fingers on the green rubber keys, to type their contact information. The students looked on in wild amusement.

Learner Training

Upon completion of teacher training mid-July, as a group comprised of me, John, Anastasia, and Lilydale’s entire teaching staff—including the principal—we agreed that learner training would take place Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays after school for two hours. The 87 learners would be divided into groups of three and trained by John, Nastya and I in three classrooms next to one another. The training would occur for two weeks, after which we would use the same rooms, times, and days, to continue familiarizing the learners with the XO during an after school program that would be less structured in terms of learning the XO and instead focus on the students learning about themselves, using XO programs like write and record. This would indeed be the practical implementation of the student journalism proposal for which my team and I were awarded one out of thirty spots in the OLPC Africa Corps.

And so, precisely at 2:30 PM on Wednesday, July 22nd, approximately two hours after the end of the launch, learner training began. All XOs were numbered and charged and, after Phindile distributed laptops 1-89, children whose excited screams, shouts, and laughs infected the halls of the school more potently than a biological bomb, quickly filed into the classrooms, divided into three groups. Turned out I got the rowdiest bunch.

Each one of our training styles was unique to the person leading it. While John took a relaxed and reinforcing approach by allowing the learners the freedom to roam and experiment on the XO before instructing them and Nastya took a more structured method by using the chalkboard—which could barely contain the thousands of words pouring from it from the previous lesson—to demonstrate how to use programs such as write and scratch, I began my training the only way I knew how: with the basics.

Introducing the children again to me and my group and explaining the reason why we had so frankly impeded their usual schedule of euphoria and freedom at the sound of the last bell of the day, I told them that we were Americans working with the Kliptown Youth Program and Lilydale to help spread computer literacy and a more inclusive kind of education to the grade 5 classes at the school. The computer was made for kids, it’s got loads of both fun and educational programs installed on it with the capacity to install more with the help of the server, and it’s got mesh networks that allow you to chat with your friends, I said to a sea of wide-eyed 10-year-olds who intuitively somehow knew that chat was just another deviant of fun. I continued on with battery installation, powering the XO on and off, personalizing the laptop with the entry of your name, individual color, and talking about the programs, none of which the kids cared more about than the .ogg music files found hidden beneath obscure titles in the browse function and games such as maze and implode, although the ‘speak’ man’s digitized, monotonous, terminator-like voice came in as a close—and annoying—second in disrupting both my students and I during not only the first, second, and third, but fourth and last training sessions. In the two hours I had on that first training seminar, I set a solid foundation for the rest of the sessions, especially because I managed to begin actively explaining about the navigation of the laptop, including the ‘border’.

The second, third, and fourth seminars consisted much of the same plan in terms of laptop training, divided into a daily break-down of the day’s activities on the board, review from last class followed by questions, and usually two or three educational programs like scratch, write, record, wikipedia, moon, and read for the students to familiarize themselves with before I broke down and capitulated to relentless shouting—and polite requests coming from adoring eyes—to play “GAMES”!

However, the three sessions following the initial training did not go according to plan; practical issues such as the charging, transport, and storage of laptops—despite being discussed at length during teacher training—caused problems for reasons that could only unveil themselves during the application of such activities.

After training on the first day, laptops in all three classes had to be put away into the administrative building until a more permanent solution was found. But to relocate the laptops day after day following training seminars from classrooms adjacent to the administrative building would soon prove to both compromise the security of the laptops and make for very difficult and ineffectual XO inventory counts. About 20 minutes prior to the conclusion of the first training seminar, John, accompanied by a quiet knock, came into my room.

“We are going to finish up right away and begin putting the XOs back,” he said, watching my face for approval. My silence bade him to continue. “So I’m going to start calling numbers 1-10 right now and if you have any of those learners you can send them out to the courtyard,” he said, pointing to the open space behind him, “and I will put the laptops into boxes. We’ll do that in intervals of 10 until we reach 89.”

“Sounds good,” I said in a hurry, eager to get back my kids, who were, this excited and close to the end of the school day, beginning to summon chaos. “I’ll send out my 1-10’s right away.”

By simple virtue of the division of XOs into three groups, there was no semblance of order or sensibility in the devised system—that would become apparent in the minutes that followed.

My class contained no learners in the first batch, only a few in the second, many in the third, and a multitude of learners dispersed between intervals 40-89. Each time I called for the next group, the class would, already having lost focus of the XO because I taught them to shut it down in anticipation for its storage, begin to stand, move around, ask for permission to go the bathroom, and request to be let go, all things I had to avoid in order to make sure no XOs were stolen in the frenzy of the situation. In total, it took more than 45 minutes and many frazzled nerves to tally all the XOs and carry them back to the admin building to be charged, which was a problem in itself, as even with multiple power strips and several plugs, not all 89 XOs—11 were given to teachers—could be simultaneously plugged in at once.

The next day after school, with the grade 5’s swarming around their respective classrooms while the grade 6’s and 7’s gave us disdained looks, my group and I decided to take a more organized approach to the storing of laptops. This time, instead of being given learners whose numbers were all over the place, we decided to order the learners in ascending order, with me having the privilege of training learners who were assigned laptops 30-60. From now on, before beginning training, each member of my team would count the laptops entering their class, mark which learners were absent, distribute the laptops, and ensure the number of laptops left in the class after the departure of the learners corresponded to the initial figure. But since all the laptops couldn’t be charged the first day, the first hour of training on the second day was compromised and had to be utilized without laptops. I took this opportunity to get to know the kids who would soon bring tears of joy to my eyes in my most sincere and evocative African moment yet, and tell them about OLPC.

I told them about OLPC’s mission of granting a 21st century education to children who would never have had the opportunity otherwise. I told them that children who were maimed in Sierra Leone and the Congo due to extensive civil war were also using the XO at the same time to learn how to express themselves the same way we were going to do next week, a statement acting as a prelude to my next question.

“Do any of you know what journalism is,” I asked, pleasantly surprised at the speed arms began floating in the air. A pretty girl with braided hair raised her hand for the first but certainly not last time. I would soon find out her name was Phumelele, and she would become one of the smartest and most eager students I would have. With confidence and poise seldom found in a girl that age, she began to speak.

“Journalists,” she said, “write stories.”

Brief yet accurate to a tea, I concurred with her. “Yes,” I said, pleased at her courageous intellect, “and it’s never too early to start writing stories about yourselves.” Realizing I had the undivided attention of the class, I wasted no time. “Other than to teach you about the XO, we are here to help you learn about yourselves and each other. Next week we will begin that project using write, record, and maybe the internet if it is setup by then.” At the mere mention of that word, the class erupted into enthusiastic whispers, at which point I had to quell their hopes.

“But we don’t have internet yet, so let’s continue with the training. Who wants to help me carry the XOs into class?”

Running towards me with a look of perpetual Christmas in their eyes, I had now to choose three volunteers from dozens of buzzing kids.

Parent Meeting

After approaching Mr. Mohamed with the idea of meeting with parents of the learners involved in the Lilydale OLPC project during one of our first conversations with him, Mr. Mohamed drafted a letter that requested the presence of all grade 5 parents at Lilydale on Saturday, August 1st, to inform them of the project and create an awareness around the XO that could potentially foster joint ownership in the future and mitigate security concerns.

As the first rain in months fell hard and fast from every corner of the dismal grey sky above us, that first day of August we drove into the Lilydale parking lot, taking curious notice of the very few cars and people surrounding us.

“Hurry up,” Mr. Mohamed’s accented voice sprang from inside the administrative building, his arm motioning us forward. “The meeting is across the yard.”

We were taken to a room full of approximately 15 people, mostly women—or mothers—of the total 89 learners in the grade five class. Whether or not the rest of the guardians decided to forfeit the meeting because their children did not deliver the alert, because it fell on an early 1st of the month, or because the weather was reminiscent to Noah’s Arc, it didn’t matter; here were 15 parents eager to learn about the ‘school in a box’.

After a lengthy introduction about OLPC, the XO—which was, at this point, being passed around from one astounded parent to the other—and the policies associated with the program, we were met with a cacophony of crickets after asking the parents if they had any questions or comments. After a few minutes pause, one lanky woman with a leather jacket and a white knit hat stood up.

“I want to thank-you, your NGO, and the man who used to go to this school and is now the Director of KYP for bringing these laptops for our children,” she said slowly, pausing after each passing word so as not to fumble her appreciation. “When my daughter came home every day last week, she just couldn’t stop talking about the laptop and said she even finished some of her homework for class using the computer. She is so happy and so are we.”

Murmurs of gratitude reverberated from the crowd to us and vice versa. But the lady in the leather jacket had a more important point to make.

“Is there any way that the children could take home the laptop? Or, if not, if they can be purchased individually?” Before we had a chance to dart our eyes—which harbored a look of inability to single-handedly answer the question—to Phindile and Mr. Mohamed, both of whom had expressed their disapproval at joint-ownership because of security and trust concerns, she concluded her statement and took back her seat. “We don’t have a lot of money, but we would do anything for our children’s happiness.”

We regretfully explained that although joint-ownership is an integral part of the OLPC program because it not only allows the learner to take incentive and excitement in their own learning, but multiplies the potential of the learner by allowing unhindered, private access to the tools on the XO, we were neither experts or locals in the community and had to heed the advice of our Lilydale partners, who could possibly still allow learner ownership once efforts at increased community awareness were in place and the learners showed a dedicated responsibility towards the XO.

As the meeting concluded and the parents signed their names next to their children’s on an attendance list at the front of the room, the XO’s record function capturing the movements of the crowd elicited ecstatic oooh’s and aaaah’s.

Power Outage

One sunny morning a few weeks ago, Brucie intercepted my daily breakfast of oatmeal, yoghurt, and tea to tell me a story—well, a couple stories. What started as a discussion about post-apartheid South Africa—business that lost human capital when, because of the active enforcement of affirmative action laws, (officially called Black Economic Empowerment) skilled whites were fired to make room for semi-skilled blacks—ended with an explanation about a national problem that, at least by the initial sounds of it, has little do with color: electricity. Ignoring warnings that came in the mid-80’s and perhaps even earlier about a looming electricity crisis, South Africa’s top industry leaders and politicians faced a rude awakening during the dawn of a new democratic era whose lack of planning threatened to eclipse the humanitarian gains of the post-apartheid era. To avoid serious electricity problems in the most affluent country on the continent would necessitate either the building of more water dams, wind turbines, or the extraction of more coal, all of which options were either unexhausted or untapped ten years ago. Today, regardless of what skin color one was born with or the relative prestige in which one lives, the whole of the South African population is reminded that electricity remains a scarce commodity, stretching from daily TV warnings similar to American ‘Amber Alerts’ or ‘Terrorist Threats’ to entire days without power—a reality we had to for several days confront last week at Lilydale when we were forced to forego XO-classroom integration on Monday and Tuesday.

Confinement

[Editors Note: On a short break from reading Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Kingdom of Fear,’ I’ve decided to take a more ‘gonzo’ approach to my writing; brisk, blunt, and fearless, I will emulate his indefinable style in an effort to find my own. ‘Long Walk To Freedom’ inspired me in much the same way and honed my use of descriptive metaphor.]

[Read at Own Risk.]

It is neither pleasing nor easy being stuck in one of the most beautiful and historically rich countries on earth with no money, no plan, and all the time in the world; although it allows for more ample reading, writing, and introspective time, it downright sucks and after countless hours and endless days, provides for one of the most regrettable activities ever. Despite undignified, prolonged begging from the University of Massachusetts Boston, we were given no grants and no pity for this project. As a result of little additional funding on top of the $10,000--$8,500 of which was used on plane tickets—very generously provided by OLPC, my group and I have lived a limited reality for the last several weeks. On top of being activity-less—there is much time left over after leaving Lilydale, during the afternoons, and those popular three-day breaks I’ve come to loathe: weekends—the three of us are living in a small—yet comfortable and nothing to scoff at—flat with a shared bathroom and competing personalities. In an effort to escape perpetual confinement—of body, soul, and mind, you bet—and flirt with life just a little, I a few weeks ago decided to get a month-long membership at the plush, amenity-full gym across the street: the always bustling, ever-modern, never-dirty, Virgin Active.

It is in these two hours that I can listen to music, sweat intensely, and, in a carefully rehearsed speech, explain who I am, where Boston is, and what on earth I’m doing with a one-month ticket to fitness in the middle of South Africa’s most intimate ‘township’. My trainer, Lucas, a young Xhosa guy with rock-hard abs and a steely work ethic, often times acts as my new best friend; we’ve even started training together and doing the repulsed by some, envied by all, fist-punch.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says to me with his characteristically big brown eyes and uniform smile as he sits next to me on the stretching mat in workout gear. “How was your day?”

Although I’ll answer in short, Lucas—or any other human being who is not my parent, lover, best friend, or hairdresser—will never get the full story of what’s going on inside that thick head of mine or the consequent feelings inside the deepest bowels of my beating heart.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong,” he asks for the second day in a row, waiting patiently for an answer that may offer a morsel of truth, unlike yesterday’s “it’s no big deal” response.

Everybody knows that posing such a loaded question such as ‘How are you,’ or ‘How was your day,’ to a complete—well, almost complete; he has seen me sweat—stranger is only a polite formality that the questioner never really wants answered but rather expects a bland, monotonous reply to. But since he is a good, honest man (he’s only charging me half price, 50 Rand, per hour), I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: Even if he was interested in my rambling about my metaphysical inability to transgress the physical barriers preventing me from roaming my mind and the vast valleys of the Transvaal (the former term for the municipality of Gauteng) that I’ve read about with salivating, vivid envy in ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’, it wouldn’t be right to unload on poor Lucas. Besides, I don’t feel like talking about it; being at the gym has pacified my nerves and (temporarily) palliated my confinement. Live in the moment, I tell myself.

“Nothing, Lucas, really,” I half-lie to him. He knows I’m holding something back but he doesn’t poach—I knew he didn’t want the burden. “So we doing 10 speed and 1.5 incline for another dreadfully revitalizing 12 minutes today, Lucas?”

His smile warms my senses and palpitates my heart. Time for the death run.

Two hours have passed and I am drenched in sweat. I bid Lucas goodbye and thank him sincerely for yet again kicking my ass. I feel good—but not as good as I’m about to feel when I step into a luxury known all over Canada but surprisingly less so in the bottomless pit of capitalism itself, America: the steam room. All the women in the steam room—large enough to fit close to twenty standing women, maybe 15 sitting skinnies—are naked. They were yesterday, the day before, and they continue to be today; and so, trying desperately to assimilate to the society I have become a part of, I decided the week before last that I would go naked too.

My parts bouncing up and down, I brazenly tiptoe into the scathing mist, only to be turned back—and on no nice terms.

“We shower before entering the steam,” says a lady who looks like the rest in the steam room, their features barely discernable in the fog that blocks my detailed dissection of my confronter. “See,” she says annoyed, pointing to a sign behind my back. I turn around to read the obvious.

ALL PATRONS MUST SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING THE STEAM ROOM.

Feeling defiant yet aware of fighting a losing battle, I concede to wash myself ‘before entering the steam room.’

Opening the door only slightly and closing it at cheetah-speed so as not to upset any more steam room wardens after my bitter shower, I am blinded by the white steam; all I see behind it is figure-eight silhouettes (be assured there is no shortage of curves in a South African steam room). After literally taking a stab in the dark and climbing over heads and stretching my legs in compromising positions (for the ladies underneath me) to reach the most sought-after spot in the steam room—the top corner, I plop down and am automatically enveloped, tickled, and warmly embraced steam and the calming sound of Zulu gossip. Confinement never felt so good.

Thieves in the Night

Before going on this trip, I spoke to many so-called African ‘experts’ who, despite having had very unique personal experiences in Africa and South Africa and offering me contrary pieces of advice, all warned me that no matter what I would or would not live through, what I would or would not have not seen, how long I had been in the country, or how comfortable I could have possibly felt, to never, ever, ever, they repeated, let my guard down.

Well, I did. I let it down when I felt that, after living amongst alcoholics, beggars, cheaters, abusers, addicts, thieves, children, teenagers, medicine women, Rastafarians, community workers, pioneers, and extraordinarily good people in a slum in one of the most crime-ridden countries on earth, I could survive not only anything, but everything and everyone, and forgot to put my iPod away. I let it down when I walked home alone from the field I used to run at in Kliptown. I let it down when, after being stranded at the gym one night, I allowed one of the managers to drive me home after dark. There must have been other times my common sense eluded me for instinctual spontaneity and chance; and in each case, I am nothing short of fortunate to have ended up on the good side of luck.

But I didn’t learn my lesson.

Last week, I hung my clothes on the clothesline in Bruce and Peggy’s backyard; it was a big load and would take the entire day to dry—it had been raining for hours without a bead of sun, which had as of late uncharacteristically gone into hiding. After hanging the clothes, I turned around and retreated back into the flat, thinking nothing of it until the next morning, when I needed to dress. Expecting to see two pairs of pants—one of which is my sole gym pair—several shirts, sports bras and socks still hanging on the clothes line, I am surprised, not shocked, to see only a few pairs of socks and the sports bras hanging from the clothes line.

Thoughts run through my mind like lightning: did Peggy take them off already? Can’t be; this is a woman, who, at first meeting, said, “The flat is yours,” in her confident bordering on aggressive tone, “as long as you don’t expect me to do your dishes or wash your clothes.” No way she would have taken them, I think. Besides, why would she take most of the clothes and only leave a few? Clear-cut case of robbery, I concede to myself. I rush to Brucie’s back door. He opens it, alarmed at my urgency.

“Brucie, I left my clothes on the clothes line yesterday, but most of them are gone,” I say, hoping he somehow has the answer I yearn for. “Did you take them off the line, by any chance?” My face contorted into a hopeful shape: eyebrows arched, eyes docile, lips parted. Even before I could brace myself for the answer, though, his face gave him away.

“I’m ‘fraid not, lovey,” he said, already having realized it was the thieves in the night.

Over the next two days I would find out that not only were my clothes, which were, by now, rather tattered, missing from the house, but also a wheelbarrow and a suitcase of old clothes kept in a shack on the property.

“Now that I think about it,” I say, the sun diligently watching over me, “I do remember a dog barking for at least a half hour last night, and even a silhouette walk by my window.” Brucie pauses, sleuthing the scene like Dick Tracey (Brucie’s last name is, by comedic yet in his childhood traumatizing, I’m sure, coincidence, Dick). His head spins from one ear to the other.

“Impossible,” he says matter-of-factly. “They didn’t come from that way—they must have climbed over one of these fences here.” He points to two of the four fences enclosing his home; tall enough to deter a dog, a child, a resident, but not a thief.

“When was the last time this happened, Brucie,” I ask, trying to gage what kind of constant threat he lives under.

“About five years ago, but you never know.”

“I’m sorry your clothes were stolen,” Peggy sympathizes with me later before she hands me a verbal spanking. “But you mustn’t forget, lovey, This Is Africa.”

You can say that again.

Tears of Joy

You never know what you will learn from a child. Likewise, I never imagined what I would hear last Friday when, after talking about journalism as storytelling and the journalist as an artist who must ask questions not only of others but of herself, I asked the children to, out loud—and captured with the beauty of an instrument that seizes the intricate detail of time, place, and emotion like no other, a FliP video camera—answer me questions about themselves.

These are half of the grade five learners, as they call students in South Africa, at the Lilydale Higher Primary School in Soweto, the country’s most renowned area. Soweto, now the size of a small urban forest, was formerly a township whose name remains synonymous with anti-apartheid demonstrations and the heinous police brutality that followed in the 1976 Soweto uprisings, with Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s home in Orlando, and with the signing of the 1955 Freedom Charter in Kliptown—all helping to reinforce the importance of the district at the onset of democracy in 1994.

But many parts of Soweto, including Dlamini, where Lilydale is situated, and Kliptown—the squatter camp just across the river where many of Lilydale’s students live in squalid conditions without heat, electricity, or proper housing—remain not only underdeveloped, but neglected. Many of the children who sit before me during after-school training have never eaten more that one meal a day, never ridden in a car, and never seen a miniature video camera before, let alone owned and operated a modern laptop such as the XO.

I soon find out what else these resilient children have been deprived of at such a tender age.

“What makes you happy,” I ask, my voice hidden behind the camera, a protective shield providing me the license to ask anything I want.

Arms shoot through the empty air like rockets, swaying back and forth until I point the spotlight of the camera on them.

“Seeing my little sister smile,” says Phumelele, the pretty 10-year-old girl who, with her big brown eyes and everlasting smile, never ceases to amaze me.

“OK,” I say, quickly shifting the camera’s gaze to the next fame-hungry learner in the room. “Who else?”

“Singing,” shouts a girl in the front of the class.

“Dancing,” another voice rings out. I try to capture them all, my camera arm spinning in circles around the room.

“Now write your answers down on the XOs as you think of them,” I urge the youngsters. “These are your projects and we want to remember your answers.”

But once the responses begin rapidly deviating from things that make the learners happy to what they want to be when they grow up, I decide to shift the mood of the session.

“And what makes you sad?”

Silence envelops the room like an invisible cloud.

One learner, a light-skinned plump girl in the back, confidently raises her hand. She wants to be heard, but she struggles with the words.

“When people bully my brother,” she says. The camera’s fixed, unflinching gaze on her bids her to continue. “And when people discriminate against me.” Her face grows slightly pink.

“Discriminate against you,” I begin surprisingly, hoping she won’t lose her urge to share, “what do you mean?”

“When they call me names, like I’m fat.” Painful jitters come from across the room. The girl sinks in her seat, less mortified than she is regretting of having spoken. I intervene.

“Guys, no one should be laughing. This is very private and personal stuff that learners are telling us, so we should respect that. Is everyone typing this on the XO?”

With heads buried in their keyboards, fingers typing, and more hands erecting themselves each second, I come closer to the plump girl with thick braids.

“Thank-you,” I mouth to her, pleased her answer has incited others to raise their hands.

I will never forget what happened next.

“So what makes you sad,” I repeat to the class.

Completely unrehearsed, unscripted, unintended, and unexpected, came truth—beautiful, painful, evocative, truth.

With the camera as my microphone and their license to speak, I slowly walk around the room and learn about the devastation these children had been through, either through their own or relative experience.

“When my mother dies,” says a boy. I look at him speechless, the only transition to the next moment coming from interruptions from the rest of the class.

“When they hit or abuse me,” says another. I had no time to think. Tears swelled in my eyes. I fought back the emotion.

Phelo, Phumelele’s shyer other half, fights for my attention next. The flip gives it to her. She pauses when she realizes the time is hers. Instinctively, I zoom in.

“When my mother doesn’t pay enough attention to me.” Her eyes pierce mine through the camera, seemingly forever.

I know this girl; she isn't a stranger. It hurts me to think about the conditions she comes home to. I have to keep moving the camera. It lands on another girl near Phelo.

“When you lose a baby,” she says to more crackling laughter.

“You mean when someone loses a baby,” I say.

She nods.

“Make sure you guys are writing this stuff down,” I say before telling them a story about when I was young and got invited to a birthday party where no one liked me. In the middle of the night, I tell the attentive learners, some of the girls pour popcorn all over my head.

Retelling the story is more difficult than reliving the episode.

Everyone goes through pain, I say; it’s the way we react to the difficulty in our lives that makes us who we are. I think of the kids; battery, neglect, sexual assault, and poverty flash before my eyes. Realizing an hour has already passed and I have to conclude my session, I decide to offer the brave, resilient learners in front of me the only thing I can: hope.

“I want you to remember that you all can be whatever you want to be and do whatever you want to do.” They watch me, waiting. “And if you ever want to talk, please come to me. I love each and every one of you.”

After every XO is turned off and stacked neatly in groups of five on the teachers desk and as I watch 40 of the most intimate people I’d met pile out of the classroom and into the arms of waiting friends outside, I realize that was the fastest ‘I love you’ I ever meant.

As I lie here and type, miles away from Dlamini in another South African life in Cape Town and a few hours from my ascent into the skies and descent into Boston, their playful laughter still rings in my ears, their loving eyes still carry me home.

A Gift

The next day, Phelo gives me a card. It is a paper folded into the shape of an envelope, with colorful writing on it:

To: Ole
From: Phelo

I wait until I am alone to open it. On different sides of the paper, almost like a verbal origami, it reads:

You are the best. You are sweet than honey. You are stronger than a lion.

Dear Ole: Thank-you for your hard work for teaching us so much about the XOs. I wish you would not go back but a visit is not for a long time. I will surely miss you all. May you be blessed with good ways.

Poem

What is a home? A home is where the heart is. No matter no poor no matter how rich, you’re always blessed from above.

On another smaller piece of paper, in pencil as opposed to pen, she writes:

Note please

If my drawing is good please make me a superstar or an artist in America. Please.

The last item in the envelope is a paper cell phone with her phone number. What a treasure.

The Joke’s On You

A lighter side of South Africa: a literary composition of jokes ranging from Kliptown to Meredale.

Olesia: What do you call a white person in Kliptown?
Nomsa: A tourist.

Brucie: Do you know why they call them ostriches?
O: No, why, Brucie?
Brucie: Because they lay eggs so big, it’s an ass—stretch.

Peggy: O, have you seen our national flower?
O: No, where is it?
Peggy: Oh right there, hanging from the tree.

I see a plastic bag.

Brucie: So an elephant and a camel are having a conversation and things get a little heated. They start calling each other names and the elephant says to the camel, “nice tits on your back.” The camel retorts, “yeah, well, at least I don’t have a dick for a mouth.”

Brucie: After the Zimbabwean war of independence in 1980, many white Zimbabweans moved to South Africa, where they continued to enjoy many luxuries they could no longer reap in their own country. We South Africans used to call them ‘wenwes’ because they would always talk about their privileges in the country back when it was Rhodesia and whites had all the power. They would say “when we this…” and “when we that…” After the end of apartheid in this country, though, we called them the ‘Soweto’s’ because now they said, “so where to now?”

One day I was talking to Peggy and Bruce, and something inflammatory came up. Brucie started talking. Peg interrupted.

Peggy: Brucie, you better watch your mouth or she’ll broadcast it t the world on that blog of hers.

I must have turned a shade of crimson. And remained speechless.

Man that walks into Nomsa’s house: Hi.
O: Hi, who are you?
Man: I’m a cop, but don’t worry—not the corrupt kind.

I laugh. He asks Nomsa for something and leaves.

O: Nomsa, what did he want?
Nomsa: Oh, just weed.

The Last 24 African Hours

Cape Town may be the most stunning city on earth. It represents a world of jagged rock and majestic greenery; a land of breaking waves, fluttering birds, and hovering clouds. It is a place more than 80% of South Africans have never seen. Home to tourism and real estate, the city has as many whites as it does blacks, although as in the rest of South Africa, blacks are poor, whites are not. But unlike in the rest of South Africa, the whites here, at least aesthetically to the naked eye, seem materialistic, pretentious, ignorant. Gucci sunglasses and blonde hair are staple sights in this city, the disparity between the whites and blacks less evident because you hardly see the blacks. This is white South Africa, a world away from the worries of Kliptown.

I am staying with a friend of a friend, a Nick. He is funny, kind, welcoming, and smart. But he doesn’t lie. We start to talk about racism in the country, division in the country, corruption in the country.

“When either you or your friend, or family member, your coworker, someone you know, has been robbed or mugged, or even killed during a robbery, you can’t help but turn hateful and become a little bit racist,” he says before remembering a time him and his friends fell asleep at a cottage in Durban only to wake up to shattered glass and empty pockets.

“They stole everything,” he says as we take in the indescribable beauty of the Atlantic Ocean’s waves breaking against rocks on our right and multi-million dollar condos in front of Table Mountain on our left. “I was pissed.”

That was kind of like the time he awoke to shuffling noises at his house and saw a man hovering over him, holding his cell phone and muttering he was going to kill him. It was also similar to the time his car was broken into.

Regardless the color, every South African has a story; unfortunately, it’s usually one of angst against ‘the other.’

I leave to Jo’burg tomorrow, to Boston tomorrow.

This journey has left me exhausted. Changed. Learned. Better. Affected. Timeless.

Thank you for sharing. Thank you for reading. Thank you for the emails. Thank you for being here.

Media to come soon.

Anger Boils Over In Johannesburg Slums

2009-08-07T22:30:00.001+02:00

http://www.boston.com/news/world/blog/2009/08/_by_olesia_plok.html

Here's To You

2009-08-07T22:15:00.003+02:00

Ive learned that I need my friends

Ive learned that I can be bossy

Ive learned that I am very organized, responsible, and demanding

Ive learned that I will stop at nothing to achieve a goal

Ive learned I am easily hurt because my compassion is wounded

Ive learned that without writing, I am confined to a brain of anxiety

Ive learned that Im addicted to creating; without it I feel worthless

Ive learned to take comfort in 40 10-year-olds

Ive learned how powerful is the urgency and plea of the spoken word, how overpowering the secrecy and nuance of the written

Ive learned how pivotal physical exercise is to mental freedom

Im learning there are detriments to ambition

Im learning that intelligence comes as much in the form of dialogue as it does literature

Im learning how much love is in this world and yet how often children are in search of it

Im learning how much I love to read

Im learning to trust no one but myself

Im learning how ignorance imprisons

Im still learning to overcome my fears

Im still learning to think before I speak

Im realizing how talkative and curious I am when I lead a sober life

Im continuing to be amazed at the goodwill of the people in my life—k.a.,a.p.,o.p.,s.p.,k.k.,r.g.,p.o.,h.s.,v.w.,p.l.,b.d.,t.m.,m.m.,b.m.,s.l.,f.b.,a.g.,p.c.,j.m.,d.l.,a.c.,p.r.,j.a.,f.p.,a.a.,l.w., s.f..

Im remembering how big dreams are when you’re a kid

Im continuing to learn that the human experience is so difference it can by virtue never be the same

Im starting to believe that children are the strongest humans on earth

American NGO Plugs South African Slum into the Digital Age-One Laptop at a Time

2009-07-28T23:26:00.000+02:00

http://www.boston.com/news/world/blog/2009/07/tando_thandolwe.html

Transcript of My OLPC Lilydale Launch Speech

2009-07-28T22:51:00.002+02:00

July 22, 2009, 9:30 AM

Good Morning!

Principal Mohamed, Lilydale Teachers, Ministry of Education representatives, community members, guardians, and learners:

Thank-you so much for coming today and being a part of the launch of the very first One Laptop Per Child program in Gauteng.

My name is Olesia and next to me are my group members, Anastasia and John. We are Americans from Boston and we represent One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, the non-profit that hopes to equip every child in the world with one of these durable, child-friendly green and white laptops.

And that’s why we are here today—because OLPC is donating a laptop to every grade 5 learner at the Lilydale Higher Primary School in Dlamini. Not only will these laptops be available for leisurely use at the school, but they will also be integrated into the classroom by teachers, and even the grade 6 and 7 learners will have the opportunity to learn on the laptop, which known as an XO.

You may have seen, heard or read about this laptop. It was specifically designed to be an affordable technological tool for a child under the age of 12 and has more than 10 educational programs already installed on it. It also comes with problem-solving games, a chat, and a network that allows up to 150 learners to work simultaneously on one project.

We are also very proud to announce that we are installing wireless internet at the school and providing a server to store hundreds of gigabytes of information, including digital textbooks.

During the winter break, when the learners were relaxing, these teachers—come on up!—were back at school—training how to use the laptops. I can confidently say we are very happy to have their full support and enthusiasm for this once-in-a-lifetime initiative.

Starting today, we will begin training the learners for an hour after school each day and as soon as next Monday, the teachers will begin using the XO during class time. The XO’s will move with the grade 5 learner throughout their time at Lilydale and will then be recycled and used by the incoming grade 5 class.

Although this is the first school project in Gauteng, 250 XO laptops were privately donated from two Boston sisters to the Kliptown Youth Program in Kliptown, Soweto. The Director of the Program, Thulani Madondo, is here representing the project, which is very familiar with the XO’s and has had a very successful tutoring program with them. Mr. Madondo has offered for several older KYP members to assist Lilydale teachers and learners with the XO after my team and I leave the country in August.

A letter has gone out to all the learners’ guardians about this program and we are looking forward to their feedback on an August 1^st meeting.

I hope everyone is excited as my team and I about this project because you are all part of an exclusive number of schools receiving these XO’s all over the African continent. Over 30 teams from all over the world are across Africa right now doing the same thing we are in an effort to increase computer literacy. Teams in Ghana, in Sierra Leone, in Sao Tome, Ethiopia, Senegal, Congo, Nigeria—you name it. There are even two more South African teams in Limpopo province and the Cape, doing the same thing.

The goal is to show the power of this laptop so, with government involvement, the NGO can attain its mission: One Laptop Per Child.

Lastly, I’d like to express our enormous gratitude to Mr. Mohamed and all the teachers at Lilydale for being so receptive to this amazing program.

Again, thank-you so much for coming. Without further ado, lets donate these XO’s!

Last of Launch

2009-07-28T22:23:00.003+02:00

Restraining themselves.

Marked XOs. The girl on the far right looking down was the most inspiring interview subject; I tried to post the video but the connection timed out, I believe. When I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said 'a chartered accountant.' She's 10.

Picture perfect. 89 grade 5 dreams come true.

Ministry of Education Reps. writing their email addresses on the XO.

After unpacking the XO, all the learners had to re-pack the laptops and return to class.

Launch Cont.

2009-07-28T22:01:00.002+02:00

Boys will be boys.

Phindile preparing to kick off the launch.

Honorable Ministry of Education representatives.

Full House.

John handing over one of the first ten XOs to its rightful owner.

OLPC Launch and Apartheid Museum

2009-07-28T21:43:00.004+02:00

Preparation. July 22nd.

Seats awaiting bums.

Lilydale students and I minutes before the launch.

Mandela as 'the Rainbow Nation'.

Padraig O'Malley's--a good friend--book on Mac Maharaj, an Indian who was imprisoned alongside Mandela on Robbin Island, at the Apartheid Museum's giftshop.

Visual Display of the Last Few Weeks

2009-07-28T21:09:00.005+02:00

Cornrows. Me. Cornrows on my head. Circa end of June.

Famed primatologist--less eloquently knows as 'the ape lady'--Jane Goodall and Thulani at KYP. Beginning of July.

Teacher Training II. Phindile is on the right. July 16th.

Apartheid Museum Entrance. July 19th.

"To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Nelson Mandela wall quote at the Apartheid Museum.

Living in Luxury, South African Superstitions, Madiba Day, The Apartheid Museum, Violent Uprisings, Teacher Training II, and the OLPC Lilydale Launch

2009-07-28T13:35:00.004+02:00

Sunday, July 26^th

It has been one week since my last blog post and two weeks since I lived among a portion of South Africa’s forgotten citizens: the more than 10 million people—most of them unemployed—who live inhumane existences in neglected settlements surrounding major cities.

Life has changed drastically for me since leaving Kliptown. I am now living comfortably in a 24,000 square foot property on the cusp of Soweto known as Meredale. Across the road, Southgate Mall—complete with water fountains, escalators, movie theatres, grocery stores, and elite black South Africans whose tastes in apparel are just as haute couture as their taste in cars—constantly reminds me of neo-conservative, developed, privileged and consumerist South Africa—and it’s sharp disconnect with a vast majority of it’s inhabitants.

It pains me now to say that when I used to go to this mall while living in Kliptown, I felt at ease; no longer forced to stare poverty in the eye each time I dodged toxic puddles that separated densely-populated tin shacks adorned with young women washing, cooking, and carrying infants on their backs; no longer immersed in darkness early in the night; no longer looked at as a bitter enemy and beneficiary because of the color of my skin, I felt less responsible, more ignorant in the mall.

Mere steps away from indignity, rape, alcoholism, human toil, suffering, and the want for basic necessity, I wrapped myself in a purchase of an England soccer zip-up and a movie ticket at Southgate. Even in the depths of Soweto, I could not evade Hollywood and the fickle, hollow perception of security that mindless consumerism with it brings. Or maybe it was just the mall itself: a warm, safe structure conducive to the gathering and interacting of people. Even today, while I can’t be sure what made me feel so peaceful at that mall, I know returning to a routine of abuse, labor, and stunted growth in Kliptown was daunting.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and since my time away, I realize what a blessing being exposed to such a jolting reality was; indeed, often times I wish of trading in the heated carpet under my back, the omnipresent light between the shadows, the constant internet connection, and the padlocked gate around this castle which I now call home, for the endless internal thought and societal pondering that I could not escape among the petrol-smelling, dilapidated shacks in Kliptown.

The Afternoon of Monday, July 27th

Living in Luxury

Driving to Peggy’s that whirlwind Sunday afternoon, I knew my South African and Soweto experience would dramatically change, both for the better and worse. The wheels of Thulani’s car rolling through the winding roads of Meredale, an upper middle class, predominantly black suburb on the outskirts of Soweto, we finally arrived at our destination, not even the brick fence fortified enough to shield us from the sprawling garden—only half of which was budding because of the current winter season—that beautifully crawled up and down the big, brick house like an overbearing poison ivy. Two small cars stood in the gated garage behind the powered fence and across from the house as if to symbolize the only remaining piece of the rich man’s puzzle.

Thulani’s eyes widened as he personally came to grips with his country’s crude, abrasive economic disparities. After only having driven less than ten minutes, Thulani, who has admitted to wanting a better life outside of the slum because of his lack of retaining it—due to communal gossip, envy, and misconceptions—in Kliptown, was confronted with another world, a world that blacks have attained and live while his day-to-day is confined within a shack.

The gate opened while a small, aged, friendly white South African couple greeted us at the front door. We would soon be told that this was Peggy and Bruce, or Foss—full of shit, as Bruce likes to say—and Brucie, or Presh—short for precious, as Peggy adoringly calls him. As they gave us a tour of their house and the flat that we would be occupying for the next month, I watched Thulani become increasingly anxious and uncomfortable, his face either expressionless or full of anger and embarrassment, the former a reaction to centuries of discrimination and tyranny by whites, the latter an undeniable shame in, regardless of what anyone else thought, knowing what filth you came from and were shortly returning to.

Peggy’s sweet, white South African accent interrupted my powerless sympathy for Thulani.

“And although there is no washer and dryer in here,” she said as my gaze went from her mascara’d blue eyes, across the flat, through both sets of windows, and finally to the crisp, still baby blue waters of the swimming pool in their backyard, “we do have a washer in the spare room attached to the house.”

“Oh, so there is a washer,” I said, neither surprised nor disappointed.

“Of course,” she said, her mouth curdling to reach another puff of her cigarette, a permanent fixture in her hand. “I don’t do my own washing.” Although it was obvious Peggy didn’t have any ill-intentions or malevolent superiority in saying that, her innocuous comment was a perfectly smelted dagger in the heart of Kliptown, its words a constant reminder of the painful and seemingly permanent barrier between the haves and the have-nots.

After explaining that no, the flat wasn’t heated, Peggy stood over three invisible pads underneath the warm, fuzzy carpet, and said that once plugged in, the pads provided heat for the flat. Although I’ve never mentioned this to Foss or Presh, ever since tossing and turning in the cold on a rock-hard duvet that first Sunday night, I permanently relocated myself onto that heated floor, my preferred place of slumber until today.

Living in the flat reminded me what it was like to live in comfort, in luxury, in excess. It’s nice; neither necessary or unnecessary, heated floors, poorly-pressured shower heads, and hot water are undeniable satisfactions that more than half of the human beings living on this planet will not only ever enjoy, but will never even know the sensation of.

Alternatively, the flat has also brought uninvited problems into my daily routine. A long, confusing, impractical, and precarious walk from Kliptown, living here has banished me to a schedule not of my choosing. Instead of going to KYP to visit with Thulani, Pam, Christina, Nelly, and 375 of my closest brothers and sisters whenever I pleased or going for a run at the Kliptown field, my days are now filled with going to a fully air-conditioned, equipped, and modern gym, reading, and trying to get away from the relentless, persuasive beckoning of the single-most symbolic instrument of modernization, want, and mindless escape: the TV. Despite my earlier whining that living in Kliptown induced mental decay, it is surprising how little is accomplished in a modern flat where one’s personal space is limited, interrupted, and exploited by modern entertainment and interpersonal relationships.

South African Superstitions

After retiring around 10 PM the first night at Meredale, I fell fast asleep and woke early the next morning to find Bruce, who has accumulated his wealth by sustaining a lucrative blind manufacturing business, calling for Wonke, Bruce’s personal Zulu laborer who lives in a flat slightly similar—though less prestigious—to ours on Bruce’s property.

“Wooooonke,” Bruce loudly yells to the polite, 35-year-old Wonke, a man Peggy says is fine and good but is often spoiled by Bruce, who, according to Peggy, loans Wonke thousands of rand (ZAR), takes unexplainable days off without compensation, and cuts work. Wonke, who has three children to support, lives alone in the flat.

Yawning loudly and wiping my eyes with my fists, I walk towards the door facing the pool and turn the handle. Brucie, an avid conversationalist who will talk until either the sunset or narcolepsy hits his latest contender, spots me right away.

“Good morning,” he says, his bright blue eyes piercing mine, his Santa Claus stomach protruding from his torso slightly more than it was last night. “You haven’t seen the garden yet, have you?”

“No,” I said, perfectly conscious of just having committed myself to the arduous task. And so after an hour and half, I had finally seen the luscious Garden of Eden.

Mesh wire cylinders filled with rocks holding a pot of overflowing flowers, apples barely hanging on nails waiting for hungry birds, a myriad of different colored cacti, and water peacefully dripping from stone fountains, Brucie said the upkeep garden, which was, he carefully pointed out at least three times, both engineered and built with his bare hands, would not be possible without the help of hired weekly gardeners. He didn’t mention whether they were black or white.

South African Superstitions

Starring and diligently ‘ooo-ing’ and ‘aaahhh-ing’ at his various masterpieces and sometimes barely audible stories while my breath and urinary tract painfully reminded me of what I had left to do that morning, I noticed a break in Brucie’s stream of consciousness and decided to make a break for it.

“You see this,” he said, as if eager to foil my mental plan with a game of wits, “this I also made myself. He pointed to a bronze cutout figure hanging on the wall.

“Can you tell what it is,” he asked, hoping I wouldn’t guess.

“No, what is it?” I conceded.

“They are owls: scare away the blacks,” he said in a calculating tone, as if sharing an age-old secret with me. “They are afraid of owls, and snakes, too.” He pointed to his current work-in-progress, a slithering bronze snake. “If they see this, they’ll stay far away and never break-in. According to their tradition, or something. Weird, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, weird,” I said, glad I had stayed for the duration of the botanical tour to experience white South African stigma towards blacks, accurate or not.

Peggy and Bruce are not racists, nor do they hold certain stereotypes against blacks. Peggy is keen to recite me her favorite claim to fame on many an occasion: her brother Patrick was part of the South African Communist party and dedicated much of his life to the liberation struggle under apartheid before the iron hand of the Nationalists severely stifled any political dissent during the 1960’s with the passing of the sabotage, treason, and state of emergency acts that forced him into a self-imposed exile.

Peggy’s son has a black adopted son, and Brucie, although hesitant to admit Wonke as his ‘friend’ when I suggested as such, deeply cares for and nurtures Wonke as his own son, providing him a, relative to the standards of most black blue-collar workers, plush accommodation.

Despite those facts, Brucie has, more than once, admitted that for the majority of whites in South Africa during that blasphemous half a century—much like the majority of Russians and Ukrainians in the former Soviet Union who knew nothing of the outside world and swallowed Stalin’s propaganda of industrialization and growth through torturous five-year-plans and the supposed gains that came from the injustices of a communist despot—the prevalent idea of the white minority as inherently superior over the black majority held a lot of weight—the untangling of such an engrained theory would take Bruce almost 60 years to accomplish, he admits.

Still, despite their egalitarian stance—both in speech and practice—towards the 80% of the citizens in South Africa, there are times when imperialist philosophy can’t help but seep into kitchen conversation.

“But when you think of it,” Brucie says, not wholly confident, perhaps still reciting his high school lecture, “most of the countries in Africa would not be where they are today without the white colonizers. They built infrastructure, developed industry, and invested in trade.”

Although an argument I have heard before, even from the most liberal Iranian professor at UMass Boston when making a case for colonization, I decided instead of picking a useless fight, to give myself the most valuable of gifts: attentive listening.

But Peggy changes the subject.

“You know one thing that continues to make me mad about Patrick is the stuff that comes out of his mouth sometimes,” she said after a long and what appeared to be pleasing drag of her cigarette. “You know my son’s adopted child, the black one,” she said as she waited for my confirmation of her statement.

“Yes, I remember,” I answered.

“Well I remember a few years ago Patrick telling Dwayne, my son and the adopted father of this black child, that it wasn’t right adopting him and that the child belongs in his own culture, with other blacks. Can you believe that? And he even tells us that we don’t belong here in South Africa—that we should move.”

“And what does he suppose he’s doing here, living in the Cape, being just as white as you are,” I asked, dumbfounded that a liberal freedom activist who supported Mandela—a brave man who helped pioneer the non-partisan and multi-racial Freedom Charter, a document promulgating a united country for all South Africans—would disprove of a mixed family.

“I know,” Peggy said, “he’s insulting.”

Far from the racial harmony and understanding that the most ethnically and racially diverse country on the continent strived for at the onset of democracy in 1994, South Africa is still at bitter war with itself: whites, regardless of whether they are Afrikaans or not, continuously find themselves defending their political and cultural beliefs in the face of criticism again racism, historical affiliation, and work ethic, as a result finding solace only in other whites who bear the same societal burden—as the obvious minority—ultimately acting to strengthen ties between their cohesive community; Indians and coloreds are also united in their defense against the blacks, who resent their historical privileges during apartheid and continued affluence; while blacks—or Bantus, the name of South Africa’s original inhabitants who traveled from the Niger-Congo region—who comprise 80% of the country, psychologically revolt against all other creeds and colors, including blacks of other tribes (such as a recurring theme on the most popular Soap Opera in the country, Generations, where a ‘gogo’, the local term for grandmother, persistently, and in no nice terms, tries to persuade her Zulu granddaughter to give up her dreams of marrying ‘that Xhosa boy’) in an effort to show their disdain towards the stark socio-economic differences that persist in the country today.

And still there will always exist the rare anomalies that confuse South Africa’s mixed political and ethnic landscape even further: elite blacks who, after working on gold mines, being employed by Afrikaan masters during indentured slavery, or going to a prestigious school, speak Afrikaans and are ostracized by the rest of their race; radicals like Patrick who think racial integration constitutes yet another form for white imperialism; or people like Peggy and Bruce, who, despite their most genuine efforts to remain just, constantly fight capitulating to stereotypes against blacks when they get stopped at a red light in Johannesburg by a threatening black man who demands money, as was the scene last week, a perturbed Peggy explained.

An extremely difficult country in which to live because of the visual contrast of us against them, or ‘the other’, and the multi-dimensional hierarchy of wealth and power, South Africa today is more divided than it is united. Indeed, many blacks have been left out of ‘Mandela’s South Africa.’

Madiba Day

Madiba, Mandela writes in his ‘Long Walk to Freedom,’ is both the anti-apartheid hero’s Xhosa clan name and the name of one of his many sons, all spawned by different wives.

Madiba is also the endearing term which garners the most respect for the now ailing former President, and when Nastya and I were watching TV last Saturday, Nelson Mandela’s 91^st birthday, that term was most often used when referring to the ‘inspiration’ and ‘pride’ the living national icon instilled in not only South Africans or Africans, but the human race.

Throughout the duration of the day, TV programs had entire segments dedicated to Mandela the child, Mandela the Xhosa, Mandela the teenager, the man, the political pioneer, the prisoner, the president, and the legend. Men who spent many of their lives in Robbin Island with Mandela, former ministers in his administration, friends, and colleagues all donned themselves to speak about their experiences with Mandela; helicopters equipped with long-range video cameras swarmed Mandela’s mansion in Haughton—a multi-millionaire enclave of exquisite wealth, rivaling some of the most expensive and elegant Hollywood homes; and people all over the country were beckoned to do a selfless deed in their community for 67 minutes, a figure which, when subtracted from the current year, represents the year Mandela officially acted on his political consciousness and embarked on his long walk to freedom, beginning with rejecting the conventional wisdom elite blacks were taught about the honorable Englishman and climaxing with Mandela’s attendance at his first ANC meeting.

The only man missing from the elaborate celebration was Nelson Mandela, whose old age and deteriorating mental and physical health have been cited as reasons for the charismatic leader’s increasingly common absences at public events.

The Apartheid Museum

Keen on avoiding what was sure to be long, winding lines of locals and tourists alike at South Africa’s most comprehensive Apartheid Museum, my group and I decided to pay tribute Sunday to the most sophisticated and long-lived example of institutionalized racial segregation in the history of mankind.

The museum itself is situated right off the M1 highway, between Johannesburg and Soweto, on the same plot of land as Gold Reef City, a property now an amusement park but long ago one of the vastest gold mines, one that was owned by whites yet labored by black South Africans and foreigners from across the continent looking for work during an industrial boom. Workers were paid next to nothing in return for working more than 12 hours, were mistreated, beaten, exploited, and if lucky enough to survive the wrath of their master, died in work-related accidents in record numbers; the rich history of South African protest and revolt began with one of the largest mineworkers strikes organized by the Communist party and the ANC in 1946.

At the entrance of the museum hung three identical banners, approximately 20 feet high and 4 feet wide, that bore Mandela’s face in different colors—not unlike Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup cans. The museum, a large building that inside traveled through time with each tourist like a labyrinth, was more wide than it was tall, made purely of brick, and completely unassuming. In an effort to evoke emotion and create a sense of identification between the subject and the historical implications of apartheid, museum staff recreated the entrance as a typical 1950’s or 60’s South African entrance.

“European Entrance Only, by Order” the sign above John’s head read. The museum employee motioned him and Nastya through it.

“Non-European Entrance Only, by Order” was the sign under which I was told to walk. And so I did. Checking my dignity, pride, morals and smarts, I was now just a thing, distinguished only by race and the inability with it associated. I walked underneath the sign, between the walls, through the entrance and into a room full of giant ID cards that classified people as either Zulu, Xhosa, African, European, Colored, or Asian; as with all other layers of apartheid, material goods, including ID cards, become more desirable with rank—unchanging, permanent, hereditary rank. While the cards—referred to as passes, to be shown by all citizens at all times to enforce apartheid rules and regulations such as residency, familial ties, and segregated employment—for Europeans were professional and organized, the cards for Zulus were thinner, carelessly signed, an lacking order. Although by 1955, eight years after apartheid, some 12 million people had been registered under the Pass System, the security measure was in reality implemented to control and targeted at South Africa’s silenced democratic voice: blacks.

The museum, complete with riveting photography, video, audio, hanging nooses, regulation prison cells, Nationalist propaganda in the form of newspapers, radio broadcasts and movies reminiscent of Hitler’s Mien Kampf, and millions upon millions of words of commentary, was a vast time capsule that left no injustice unprovoked.

After the Brits and Afrikaans signed their Treaty of Union peace accord 6 years after the end of the Anglo-Boer War, they drafted a constitution that largely left out South Africa’s primary inhabitants, blacks. This marked the motivation for the 1912 inception of the ANC. After contestation within the organization about whether or not to support struggles at the same time independent and overlapping with ANC principles of democracy and racial unity, the ANC unanimously agreed upon a coalition of forces including trade and labor unions, communists, feminists, Indians, and Coloreds, forming a hypothetical document called the Freedom Charter, signed in Kliptown in 1955. The beginning of defiance against the state also marked the escalation of its suppression: the violent quelling of women’s revolts against the government banning their homemade beer production, one of the only sources of income for African women, made international headlines, as did the enormously successful 1952 Defiance Campaign.

Mandela, who was one of the architects of the ANC Youth League—a younger, more exuberant ANC branch meant both to bolster membership and revitalize the dimming organization—was also an ardent proponent of racial inclusion in the ANC and the most faithful advocate—in the face of strong opposition—of the MK, the ANC’s military wing.

Once Mandela was certain that freedom could be achieved only by taking up arms and fighting the state with its own weapon of callous indifference, the MK began training for acts of sabotage, guerilla warfare, and ultimately, revolution. Mandela was sent to Ethiopia to meet the last emperor, to the Congo, Sudan, and at least five other countries on the continent to secure regional support and funding for what would become South Africa’s ‘final solution’ to apartheid; he was arrested in Durban upon his return and sentenced to five years in prison. Once the MK headquarters was raided two years later, Mandela and half a dozen other MK organizers were spared the death sentence and charged with life imprisonment on Robbin Island, a time during which the strength of the ANC waned and labor unions such as COSATU played an integral role in mobilizing radical opposition to apartheid policies.

The last two decades of apartheid were marked with the most radical, mobilized, and determined youth movements in South African history, leading to the famed, bloody 1976 Soweto uprisings, a single picture of which remains one of the most memorable of all time: A crying woman, with fear and irreversible devastation in her eyes, as the backdrop to a young, bleeding, unconscious man being frantically carried away during the riots that left hundreds dead, most at the hands of vile and careless police brutality. The young man, who died instantly, was Hector Petersen, to whom a Museum is dedicated in Soweto; his sister is one of the KYP board members and I plan to interview her at the next meeting in early August.

The Nationalist reaction to the stiffest form of defiance the state had ever seen was unprecedented: torture—including rudimentary water boarding—exile, lifetime imprisonment, draconian prison sentences, summary executions, political assassinations, and assisted suicide were all tools by which to punish, muffle, and prevent opposition. The sporadic yet nevertheless practical use of biological and chemical warfare by the Nationalist government against political dissidents, later to be sold and used in Angola, was another covert instrument of the state.

Although the scars of apartheid were deep and the casualties many, the loss of life during the transition period to democracy, from 1991-1994, were more than four times that of the apartheid era. With Afrikaan communities betrayed over the Nationalist government’s concession to hold peace talks with kaffirs, the Afrikaan term for the N word, black communities betrayed over the ANC’s concession to hold peace talk with the devil, and bitter in fighting among ethnic South African blacks, the country that was praised for being the only in the history of mankind to come to democracy without a battle was indeed on the crumbling verge of civil war.

After Mandela’s release from Robbin Island following 27 years of imprisonment, a portion of which was solitary, the man with the support of the nation was able to quiet the people.

Peggy’s chilling words still echo in my head: “If that man, and I can’t even say his name because I’ll cry, if that man came out of prison and he was mad….”

She didn’t have to finish. I did for her.

“He could have incited a civil war,” I said. The room fell silent with concurrence.

Violent Uprisings

8 Minutes to Midnight, Monday, July 27^th

“Many blacks have been left out of Mandela’s South Africa…..”

Referred to as ‘service delivery’ protests, slum riots have captured the front-page news again and again the last few weeks: one in Durban, one on the outskirts of Johannesburg—all desperate, all violent, all hopeless.

Midnight, Tuesday, July 28^th

Images of burning tires surrounded by angry faces waving metal rods and clenched fists fill South African newspapers daily as of late. Underneath the photos, journalists quote locals proclaiming to be ‘tired of broken promises’ by ANC councilors and ‘demand to have their needs met.’ Those unmet needs—lack of electricity, power, infrastructure, health care, and education—are the same as the needs of millions of others waiting to die in South African ghettoes, all of which were, according to the ANC, slated for abolition in 1994.

‘SERVICE DELIVERY RIOTS TURN XENOPHOBIC,’ one headline read last week about the Durban riots, which began with loud singing and chanting and evolved to the violent looting of shops owned by Ethiopians and Zimbabweans.

12 months shy of the Soccer World Cup, suffering South Africans continue to have at their whim plenty of attention—and courage—to exploit towards their own justified ends.

At last word, the Zuma administration appointed a committee to investigate the so-called lack of ‘service delivery’.

Teacher Training II

Early Tuesday Morning

The second batch of teacher training—consisting of the ten out of the total 13 teachers at Lilydale—occurred on the 15 and 16^th of July, when we met with the teachers for four hours each day. Although we had two previous teacher training sessions in late June where all teacher attended, disparities between the rate of understanding were evident among the teachers and it was obvious we had to start from scratch—not a play on words, for all those OLPC-friendly readers who may be confusing ‘scratch’, the term used to refer starting from nothing, to ‘Scratch’, a program on the XO that allows the user to create graphic animations and designs—during both July sessions.

The days were divided by a noon lunch; the first portion of the day revolved around basics such as battery life, turning your XO on and off, saving files, a brief introduction into the most useful—subjective indeed—programs on the XO such as Read, Write, Calculate, Scratch, Record, Memorize, and Wikipedia, navigating your XO, accessing the mesh network, and most importantly, stopping functions using the border.

Although most of the teachers’ English skills were commendable, to some teachers, who have never even used a computer before, if was tough to teach simple technical lingo that we take for granted, such as mouse, hover, drag, ect. Phindile, who acts as the spokesperson for all the teachers at Lilydale, instructs math, and speaks almost impeccable English, had the XO down in a matter of hours and her agitation for the redundancy of the training was apparent. That redundancy was also necessary, though, for teachers of the Zulu tongue, like Job, had a very difficult time keeping up with the speed of the training and almost at all times required assistance.

Because we didn’t want to have the teachers constantly depend on us for help and instead wanted to empower them with the tools necessary to lead a successful school deployment at Lilydale, we decided it best to prepare subject-specific questions that can be solved using programs on the XO—and require navigational skills to complete—for the teachers. In total, four questions based on Math, Science, English and Social Studies were created. The teachers did relatively well, completing—in varying degrees of success—the first two problems. The next day, the teachers worked on the remaining two problems for the first two hours and following lunch, we discussed practical matters including their thoughts on the deployment, on the XO, on its practicality in class, the storage of the XOs, and the most contentious issue to the teachers—while the most integral to the OLPC mission—the ownership of laptops.

Although all of the teachers at the first training agreed that the idea of joint ownership—official ownership of the XOs would be had by the school while each student would be granted the opportunity to take their marked XO home once the learner, as they call students in South Africa, demonstrated a commitment to the program and his/her education—could be successfully enforced at Lilydale, the second batch of teachers were opposed to it entirely, or at least until they could discuss the advantages and disadvantages in depth as a collective group.

Most of the teachers agreed with Phindile that the XOs, especially in a high-risk area like Soweto, represent an attractive bounty for criminals.

“We are worried that when these kids take the XO home, their unemployed brothers, sisters, and maybe even parents, will steal the XO and sell it, or keep it for themselves,” Phindile said during day two’s discussion to the agreeable murmur of the group. “So I don’t think we are prepared right now to make that decision, but we are so grateful to have been chosen as the school receiving these computers.”

Similar heartfelt sentiment followed from the rest of the teachers as we wrapped up the training session and began talking enthusiastically of the July 22^nd launch.

“We truly feel so blessed to be a part of this project and we are so excited to begin,” said Joyce, a grade 5 Social Studies teacher.

“So you think you will be ready to incorporate the XO into your curriculum as soon as next Friday,” I asked with hesitation.

“What are we waiting for,” Joyce exclaimed at the top of her lungs while the rest of us, full of glee, piled out of the administrative building.

The OLPC Lilydale Launch

We arrived to Lilydale Higher Primary School at 8 AM for a 9:30 AM OLPC launch and began assembling chairs, preparing audio equipment, and perfecting the speech we had prepared the night before. It was a beautiful sunny winter day and I, along with my group members, was walking around in only my KYP t-shirt, one that, might I add, garnered much praise and admiration.

As the clock neared 9 AM, dignitaries from the Guateng Ministry of Education and local community leaders began sticking out like sore thumbs among the 300 uniformed children that swarmed the outside courtyard where the festivities were to be held—their sharp attire and gigantic height compared to the kids gave them away.

As the kids noisily shuffled into the five rows of multi-colored chairs at a quarter past ten and Mr. Mohamed, the District Director of the Ministry of Education, and my group members and I watched them with delight from the podium row, Phindile began her headlining role as the Master of Ceremonies.

“Good Morning and thank-you for coming to the One Laptop Per Child Lilydale Launch,” she said into the microphone before inviting the courtyard to join her in the singing of the national anthem, a mix of English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, and Sesotho—its awkward breaks made apparent by mumbling children and adults alike.

Then the choir, the District Manager, Mr. Mohamed, and Phindile all extended their most benevolent words to OLPC, our team, and Thulani—who is himself alma matter of Lilydale—for bringing XOs, education, technology, and incentive to Lilydale’s young generation.

After my speech, which will be posted shortly hereafter, John, according to a list of all grade five learners, called each name one by one to receive their XO while Nastya assigned each XO a number with a permanent marker.

The children were chaotic with adrenaline.

Expansionist Desires

Mesmerized by the energy of the explosive potential the 89 learners giddy with excitement about their very own XOs were dispelling on me, I failed to notice Mr. Mohamed motioning for me to join the District Director and him on the other side of the podium row. Jumping at the chance to sell the idea of expanding the project to the entire municipality of Gauteng—the smallest yet most populous and industrious in South Africa—I pulled up a chair and rushed to be of assistance.

The District Director didn’t waste time.

“I want to make this project Soweto-wide, maybe even Gauteng-wide,” he said as I tried to mask my excited shock. “Can we make that happen?”

Busy Bee

2009-07-24T21:47:00.003+02:00

Good news--the OLPC launch went over so well, I've been tied up drafting a comprehensive proposal for the Gauteng Ministry of Education about what a district-wide OLPC project would look like.

Photos, videos, and words to come on Monday, when the dust settles and I reach equilibrium again.

It's been a tough week.

Again, I thank my loyal support team.

OLPC Week

2009-07-21T21:42:00.005+02:00

Tomorrow is our big Lilydale Higher Primary School OLPC Launch.

Below is a prelude to all the upcoming coverage including pictures of the first teacher training at Lilydale June 29/30.

Confused or Enlightened?

Subject-specific questions for teachers constructed around the XO.

Creating own flashcards on memorize. The teachers LOVED this appy.

More questions. Many of these were altered for the second teacher training because we found them either to be ineffective or impractical.

Working hard.

Here's To You

2009-07-20T22:19:00.006+02:00

ive learned that i cant sit idly by when injustice occurs around me.

ive learned i am easily taken advantage of and represent a prey for predators; that despite my tough exterior i am all three weak, damaged, and insecure.

ive learned i value health and intellectual stimulation

ive learned i am only beautiful if i believe all of myself--at all times--to be

ive learned i can survive on very little

ive learned trust is the most important thing in life

ive learned that looks can be deceiving

ive learned to trust my instincts

i am learning to let go of fear

i am learning people of different and same colors live separate realities

i am learning i cannot do everything alone

ive learned how much i take for granted

im learning how 'comfort' is neither necessary nor unnecessary

ive learned how much i can change a life

i continue to learn how beautiful people are

im learning not to judge people who hurt me but rather to ask myself why

im learning how instrumental my psyche is to my environment

ive learned to take advice and welcome defeat

The Supposed Redevelopment of Kliptown, A Sour Grape Named Pete, Writing on the Wall, the Case of the Stolen iPod, and the Next 48 Hours

2009-07-18T10:11:00.007+02:00

The Mourning of Monday, July 13^th

I thought I would have little to write about since my last blog post. With a lull in teacher training until the 15^th and 16^th of July, a postponement of the trip to Durban because of an unforeseen delay in the inaccessibility of group monies—which also deems it impossible to engage in historical tourism such as the Hector Petersen Memorial Museum and the Apartheid Museum—Thulani and others not inundating us with the political shortcomings of Kliptown because of the weakening novelty of our presence coupled with our increasing comfort level in the slum, I figured this would be an eventless week.

I was dead wrong.

Although my external surroundings have ceased to provide me with riveting writing material, my most immediate omnipresent reality—living at Sally’s—has made for an unbelievably exhausting, frightening, and irreconcilable last few days.

But first….

The Supposed Redevelopment of Kliptown

Last Friday, when John and I were walking home to Sally’s, we walked past a big white pick-up truck that seldom appears in Kliptown, usually property of rich white industry owners. As we walked past the truck surprised, we both caught glimpse of the men inside: they were indeed white. Although I didn’t think to greet them, John instinctively did.

“Hey, white people,” he called out to the plump, redheaded 30-some-year-old man in the passengers seat as we walked past the truck. We almost turned the corner into Sally’s yard when we heard a voice from the truck yell back.

“Eh, come here,” the voice, which sounded to be laced with an English accent—similar to the way Afrikaners speak—shouted at us as we turned around and saw the man’s face in the passenger side mirror and his left arm motioning us to come back.

Intrigued, we turned around and walked back towards the car, both stopping on his side a few moments later. Next to the man who beckoned us sat another equally round and aged man who reminded me of Seinfeld’s Newman. He watched as the other man engaged us.

“What are you doing here,” the man, later to be identified as Eddy, asked us, surely astonished at the odds of seeing any whites—apart from foreigners receiving slum tours—in Kliptown.

“We live here,” John replied of our team’s favorite and most shocking answer to Eddy’s question, begged of us at least twice a day.

“Doing what,” Eddie retorted, as if certain we couldn’t possibly be living here without a sensible reason to do so.

“We’re working for an American NGO donating laptops to children in Dlamini. We’re working with a local youth organization here, too—the Kliptown Youth Program,” I answered, anxious at the chance to receive a reciprocal introduction. “Who are you guys?”

“We’re surveyors,” Eddy replied. “We’re plotting the land here.”

“Does that mean you’re going to redevelop it,” I asked in a tone mixed with elation and disbelief, already bracing myself for a negative answer.

“Yes, we’re going to provide temporary housing for these people while we bulldoze the land,” Eddie bluntly answered, not at all resigned by my curiosity. “And then we’ll redevelop this area, providing decent houses for all these people.”

As my mind raced with the possibility of being privy to a candid conversation that wasn’t meant to seep out of the doors of that truck, the chance that the deserving people of Kliptown would see developmental progress within their and my lifetimes, and the urgency of with which I had to deliver this news to Thulani, I made sure not to let these man pass without a personal inquisition—in case I never saw them again.

“Are you serious,” I quickly asked before their nods signified my immediate posing of the next question. “When will this happen? How long will it take? Do the people have to pay for their temporary housing? What about the housing that you will provide afterwards—will it be subsidized or free of cha--”

“We’re surveying the land now,” he cut me off, “and we’ll begin the work in December. It’ll take about 6 months, maybe more. It won’t cost the people anything while we relocate them, and after that, these houses are theirs free.”

“Is this a nation-wide government initiative to finally eradicate slums—something that was promised in vain in 1994?”

“Yeah, Zuma wants to get rid of all the squatter camps.”

“And will Kliptown’s status then be an ‘informal settlement’ instead of just a squatter camp,” I asked.

“Precisely,” he answered.

Eddie went on to reveal that although, yes, he and his partner represent the main company contracted by the South African government to survey squatter camps in Gauteng, there are a few more private contractors also being paid to do the job. When asked why none of the residents of Kliptown knew about the redevelopment—something that has seemed to relentlessly elude them for decades—Eddy said that once the land has been plotted and marked in December, an Executive Committee of Kliptown leaders would be chosen to represent the voices of the people on the issue.

Thinking of a conversation I had with a soulful Rastafarian named Peteo a few days back about the ample amounts of skilled labor and potential of the Kliptown people and the need for governmental agencies to empower and involve the people instead of delegate and enforce rules that are often times impractical and ineffective, I immediately objected.

“But the people should be involved now, not later,” I said, trying to prolong the conversation through the open window of the pickup as I noticed Eddy and his partner begin to get agitated, if not by my critical questions then by my persistence. “If what you say is true, and it sounds too good to be, then I’d really like to talk to you further.”

After I told him I was a journalist and he painlessly agreed to talk to me soon, I asked him to see maps of the area that was up for development. Blueprints with numbers, sketches, and in my case, question marks, flashed before my face like a fluttering bird before Eddy put them away.

“Many parts of Kliptown have already been redeveloped,” Eddy said as if to reassure me of his professional integrity and personal sincerity. “The area that’s slated for demolition, the one you’re standing in now,” he said, twirling his finger in a circular motion outside the window, “is called Ward 13. Many of these wards have already been redeveloped.”

Now it made sense. One of the areas on the map I managed to peak at was Ward 12, a plot of land that was home to squatters and beggars before the government provided subsidized housing in the form of apartments—the ones that sit tauntingly across the tracks, offering vacancy only to those who have steady employment and can afford to pay the rent each month.

Despite my skepticism, I pressed him for his number and an interview time of Monday or Tuesday. After I thanked him and watched the men’s black laborer jump onto the back on the truck with a leveler while it drove down the dusty path and out of the corner of my eye, I raced to KYP to inform Thulani of my most enthralling conversation.

My news delivery fell on deaf ears.

“It’s not the first, second, or even third time this supposed redevelopment has been promised to us,” Thulani said to me as we stood underneath the sunshine, both of us squinting to met the others gaze.

“But I saw them, they were here,” I tried to plead with him as if trying to prove the authenticity of Eddy’s words to myself. “I even saw another guy with a leveler and maps, and they said they were going to form an Executive Committee of Kliptown representatives.”

They’ve said it before, Thulani’s eyes said to mine. “Let me come with you when you meet them,” he asked.

“Of coarse.”

I called Eddy that Monday and he said he would phone me for a meeting on Wednesday.

That call never came. And neither did Eddy.

My calls to him have gone unanswered to this day.

A Sour Grape Named Pete

Before he founded and became the Director of KYP in 2007, Thulani used to work for ***, or *********. Although he won’t reveal why he left, or, maybe more appropriately, what drove him away, rumors persist that Thulani’s partner Pete, who bears a striking resemblance to Pete Marley and whose first name is very unlikely to be Pete, embezzled funds from *** to line his own pockets, feed his own family, and, as of late, the most scandalous rumor of them all, to pamper his much younger girlfriends, many of whom are *** members.

For about two years, Pete used to rent Sally’s entire home and sometimes house foreigners in the dwelling—for a fee, of course—for a few nights after he gave them tours of ***, an organization very similar in nature to KYP, save for the fact that it is predominantly performance arts-centered while KYP prides itself on its educational focus. As a result of Pete’s tenants—many of whom did not rent a room but just came through the home—the walls of Sally’s house are covered with writing; most are aphorisms valiantly spoken by Presidents, great leaders, or civil rights activists, others are personal quotes, and still others remain puzzling—brain-teasers meant to both inspire and provoke. Even outside the house, the words, written in a myriad of different fonts, sizes, and markers, follow you like a stubborn conscience. I remember questioning Sally about Pete the day after out midnight arrival in late June.

“Who is this Pete, Sally,” I asked, expecting to get an answer revolving around a bald, middle-aged white man.

“He works for *** and used to rent this house from me,” she replied in perfect English despite her Zulu accent. “He would bring travelers here and they would leave a piece of themselves behind.”

Their pieces were everywhere. Eric from France, Heidi from Boston, Isaac from Germany, their words strewn about like dirty laundry.

“My mother left shoes to walk with,” reads a bold, green, and anonymous message underneath the clothesline in the backyard.

“Whatever you don’t master will master you,” reads another.

“No better day than today.”

The majority praises Pete.

“Pete, you are an inspiration, keep smiling.”

“The world is a better place because you are in it, Pete.”

“What you do for these kids is invaluable, Pete.”

As I start walking down the hallway and towards the front door, the bedroom filled with letters like alphabet soup disappears behind me. I find myself outside, staring at a message at least 9 feet high, smudged and barely legible.

“Do it yourself, Pete,” my common sense finally makes out.

That’s the moment I began to doubt the validity of the writing on the wall.

The next day, Peteo, who also used to volunteer at ***, asked if he could take me to ***, the first and biggest of all of the youth organizations in Kliptown. As we walk through the 4,000 square foot library and around Kliptown’s first soup kitchen, I notice banners, posters, and donations made out to *** in the name of ‘Basketball Without Borders,’ the NBA’s charitable wing. These, along with donations he receives from foreigners, are the funds that have gone missing, funds that instead of going to feed *** members, are going to purchase the GUCCI glasses I notice on Pete’s face as he greets me during a performance at *** that day.

After my obligatory wave, I witness something that, as a woman—and in light of allegations of infidelity by statutory rape against Pete—makes my skin crawl.

One by one, their eyes bulging and their hands trying to cover their pubescent breasts and revealed buttocks’ like a game of twister, 10 girls, aged 10-15, I gather, shuffle barefoot out of a building adjacent to *** dressed in animal skins and feathers, ready for a performance.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Timberland boots, GUCCI glasses, and bouncing dreadlocks as Pete makes his way around the pulsating circle of girls.

“We must expose him,” I remember Pam telling me.

Writing on the Wall

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

At the beginning of our stay at Sally’s, we were treated like guests in the house. As our stay progressed, however, we were given more and more undue responsibility, treated with verbal and emotional disdain, and were expected to comply with South Africa’s traditional, rigid, and suppressive gender roles.

Perhaps it began with me doing what I do best: opening my big mouth, speaking my mind regardless of the crudeness of my words, and trying to persuade others to seek justice and defend human dignity in life.

It started two weeks ago on a sunny Thursday afternoon when John, Anastasia, Darion, Sally and I were crossing the tracks out of Kliptown to catch a TAXI bus to Johannesburg to get our hair braided in cornrows.

A few days prior, Anastasia informed me of Sally’s complaints about how Joe, Sally’s live-in boyfriend—who spends most of his time in silence either sleeping or eating—borrows her money to go drinking without her, is possessive of her whereabouts while having the unrestricted luxury to come and go as he pleases, and may be cheating on her.

Having heard what I did, I started to piece together slivers of memory in my mind: a flirtatious glance here, a late night entrance there. What I imagined to be a thousand sleepless nights needn’t turn into a million, I thought before my duty to self-censorship as an allegiance to respecting Sally’s privacy interrupted my wild, run-away indignation. I remembered all the times that Sally said she loved Joe but refused to be dependant on him; if he never proposed to her she could care less, she said with confidence. But as the days wore on, she began referring to Joe as ‘my husband,’ a man whose meals came before our own, whose calls were catered to before our needs, and whose presence warranted no physical activity or domestic labor, unlike our own.

Both having come from compromising relationships, Anastasia—whose nickname in Ukrainian is Nastya—and I were livid upon hearing about Joe from a woman who, at this point, called us her children and whom we had developed a strong personal connection with.

So on that beautiful Thursday afternoon, as I sat outside Kinky’s hair salon on a busy Johannesburg street scrunching my face every time my scalp burned at the pull of the woman whose hands were intertwining my most thinnest hairs, I was less surprised than I was alarmed, when, at the exact moment her cell phone rang, Sally predicted both who it was and what they wanted.

“Oh my God,” she said fearfully, anxiety pitching her voice to a shriek. “It’s my husband, Joe, he’s going to kill me. We were supposed to be home hours ago.”

Although all four of us getting our hair done—a delicately intricate and precise job that takes both skill and patience, lasting about an hour a head, maybe more with Caucasian hair because of it’s relative silk compared to African hair—did delay our plans substantially, we were neither flirting with freedom nor purposely extending out trip to the city. He had no right to demand she—who was not only doing something for herself, but accompanying her paying guests and self-proclaimed family members—live her life according to his suffocating hourglass, chained in steel stipulation and branded in fine print.

“Baby,” she spat out with haste in one breath as if answering the sole lifeline call of a participant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. While the rest of the conversation—as short and pandering as it was—was being conducted in Zulu, Nastya and I fixated each other with our eyes, the pupils doing the talking—and the pitying.

Once she was off the phone, my liberal Western bias, as if with a mind and temper of its own, decided to interject.

“What does he want,” I demanded. “You aren’t even doing anything wrong, Sally, you don’t have to cater to his needs.”

“He wants me home,” she replied. “We’ve been gone so long and he said he went to the house and was surprised not to find me there. He couldn’t get in because we have the spare key.”

“How did the conversation end,” I asked, knowing full well her voice trailed off far later than her hand descended from her ear.

“He hung up on me,” she said, her face contorting with the thought of repercussions. “He’s angry.”

“Fuck him,” I said. “He doesn’t even let you go out while he can do whatever you want.”

“That’s not fair, Sally,” Nastya added.

“Has he ever hit you, Sally,” I asked, hoping her despair towards Joe would melt the armor of loyal honor she wore on her chest and give her no choice but to ignite the all-powerful, ever-burning flame of truth.

“Only sometimes,” she said with not a hint of shame or embarrassment but with a dose of guilty complicity. “When I get loud or I go out, he hits me, but not all the time.” She gestured with a hard fist when she spoke, adding to my suspicions that he hit her face not with his hand but with a close-knuckled punch.

In South Africa, domestic violence is pandemic: the words of a good friend and South African expert reverberated in my head.

“Sally,” I began, the anger almost eclipsing my diplomatic patience. “Even once is too much.”

“All the men I’ve ever been with have hit me,” she said. “All of them.”

“You don’t have to stay in while he goes out,” Nastya continued. “You should have the same rights as he does, because you two are equals.”

“Leave him alone,” she snapped, her tone unapologetic and sharp. “He is a good man and he loves me.”

The walk to the Jo’burg TAXI stand from Kinky’s hair was marked with brief bits of laughter, conversation, and Sally’s concern for her tardiness and apparent disobedience to a man she did nothing but treat wit regality.

Any comment solicited by Nastya and I about her ‘husband’s’ blatant disrespect and abuse towards her either went unnoticed or were repeatedly met with crass reprimand.

Sally had been quiet and irritable before he arrived, constantly burying her head in her lap, physically losing her appetite because of his absence, and looking at me in a drastically altered light, as if I had told her a lie about the way a human being deserves to be treated.

Joe did not come home until later that night, approximately around 8 PM, when he entered the unlit home just in time to savor a dinner it took us, with the lack of light and the snails pace of the single propane stove, almost two hours to prepare.

They went to the living room to talk as soon as Joe, an attractive 30-some-year old light-skinned man with a Santa Claus belly, walked into the house.

When they arrived back into the kitchen ten minutes later and before my famished team or I could serve ourselves a plate of pap—a cheap yet appetizing and multi-functional white corn meal—and boiled chicken, Sally reached over and above us to build a heaping tower of Piza worth of dinner on Joe’s plate.

Without being provoked into words, she declared, “I have to give my husband his food. He’s hungry.”

I almost lost my appetite. Trying both to change the subject with an imitation of a French theatre director who had been working in Sally’s backyard with Kliptown youth and lighten the stiff mood in the cavern-like kitchen, I summoned for her attention.

“Sally,” I beckoned. “Watch, who am I?” As my group members watched with humor and anticipation while I comically mimicked Eric’s solo, Sally remained absent from my audience.

“Sally, you aren’t even watching!”

Keeping her torso upright facing the sink as she added mashed cinnamon squash to a separate plate that she put down next to the main course, which was, at this point, getting cold while Joe remained seemingly oblivious to his surroundings listening to Darion’s iPod—as he often did—she turned her face towards me. I could see the vindictive malice in her eyes.

“I’m preparing food for my husband,” she said as if I—not my dubious performance, not my food, not even my needs, but my worth—would come not second to his, but last.

Frustrated, I glanced at Joe, who was still sitting, listening, paying no attention to the maid at his feet and the glorious meal in front of his eyes.

“He’s not even eating it, Sally,” I said, certain I may have crossed the line. “You cook and you clean but he’s not even paying attention.”

As she dropped the plate in her hands and slowly turned around, I sensed my group members become tense, their eyes dart from me to the floor, their earlier opinions evaporate into a missed opportunity.

I realized I was on my own. Sally sat with her food in her lap, looked directly at me, and began, in a pitch neither loud nor calm, but certainly full of intimidating righteousness, to talk.

“Ola,” as she called me, “You leave Joe alone.” Her voice was demanding and protective. My throat tightened. She went on. “He is a good man and has done nothing to you. You can call me names, hit me, whatever, but you leave Joe alone. He’s my husband and he’s not going anywhere.”

With Joe’s earphones still tightly in place—yet unbeknownst to me whether or not the volume was turned up or down—I told her that I was kidding, that I just wanted her to watch my stupid dance. But it wasn’t about the dance, and it wasn’t about the food; it was about me persistently talking down her ‘husband’ for hitting her and treating her like a barn animal while she hung on his every unjust principle and bought into his idea of a woman’s supporting, not leading, role in life.

Many parts of South Africa, especially undeveloped, traditional slums like Kliptown, swell of patriarchy and represent a society based not on egalitarianism between the sexes but on historical duty, engrained societal expectations, an unquestionable compliance on the part of women, and a silent culture of victimization. Through my conversations with women in Kliptown, observations of daily interactions, and privies to communal gossip, I have been confronted with a reality where a vast majority of women in Kliptown have been or are beaten, are used to being beaten, and find nothing wrong or unusual about being beaten. These same women spend their days cooking, cleaning, and often times pondering the sexual and emotional fidelity of their unbecoming partners. Men, on the other hand, expect women to speak when spoken to, to cook when ordered to, to scrub without being told, and to assume the position whenever deemed necessary.

With sexual promiscuity and drinking representing one of the sole pastimes in the squatter camp, Kliptown has a soaring HIV/AIDS rate of at least 10%. For women, there is little to look forward to in life; I recall Nastya saying that one of the only achievements a woman can obtain in Kliptown is childbirth.

Barely-teenage mothers roam the Kliptown markets every day, men with babies draped across their chests wink at me during that transient instant when your eyes lock as you pass the other by, and women are blamed—not only even, but especially—by other women for provoking and escalating an argument that results in a protruding goose egg on her head or a crimson-navy bruise enveloping her eye.

I stood in the kitchen while the room, along with my moral judgments and righteous remarks, fell silent.

Walking to my room on the cold tile that night, I knew tomorrow would not be the same.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Despite multiple apologies to Sally for getting involved in her relationship with Joe and breaking her trust, she was never the same around me. Gone were the days when she endearingly called me ‘Ola’ and took me on random errands around Kliptown. Gone was her infectious laugh and confidence in our blossoming relationship. Anew was a tempestuous and bitter feud that sparked the moment I uttered those fateful words the night before. I had, in a matter of seconds, gone from Sally’s ‘favorite little helper’ to her imprisoned puppet.

Although I got it worse, Nastya also received her fair share of crude remarks and gender-specific responsibility, none of which either of us deserved. But it was dealt—and in heaping proportions. While Darion, John, Joe, and any other males in the home were spared any and all responsibility and nagging, Nastya and I not only had to clean after everybody every night, not only had to sweep the floor and turn on the outside tap at Sally’s beck and call at least a dozen times a day, not only had to re-clean the dishes we carefully washed—in the dark and underneath glacial waters—at the previous night’s dinner, but most tragically of all, we were constantly subjugated to endure belittlement and verbal abuse from a temperamental woman whose wrath we could not escape.

“She is so manipulative,” Nastya said one day. “It’s as if we’re her physical and mental slaves.”

Nastya had no idea. A few days later, on a dreary Saturday afternoon, Sally told me to sweep the room Darion and I share. I peeked into John and Nastya’s room, which was usually synonymous with a war zone, before looking into mine: bed made, luggage and backpacks neatly piled one a top the other, window open to let in the day’s melancholy breeze.

“My room is clean, Sally,” I slowly said to her, confused as to why she would both order me around and single-out my nearly immaculate room out of all the rooms in the house. “What are you talking about?”

That’s when a fusion of barely comprehendible and insidious statements unapologetically made their way out of Sally’s mouth.

“Joe doesn’t like a dirty house,” she plainly said. “Yesterday, visitors came, and what if they looked into that room?” To ensure neither my eyes nor Sally were playing tricks on me, I for the second time looked into my room.

Nothing on the tiled floor besides dust invisible to the human eye. Regardless, I figured Sally did have a point, considering it was her home and I a mere guest within it. She was trying to open a reputable—and one of its kind—Bed and Breakfast in Kliptown, too, so the rooms should always look presentable. Plus, I conceded with myself, she’s right: what harm could a little sweeping do?

Carrying the broom into the house from outside the front door, I brought it, along with the dustpan, into my room and began to sweep. But apparently Sally’s aim was not a clean room. Rather, it was a complete ambush on the character she had meticulously envisioned for me.

“You’re a woman, Ola,” she said as if she were my mother, trying to teach me one of life’s great lessons. “You must keep a clean house.”

Shocked and insulted, I had no words in my defense. I played right into her weaving web.

“Sally,” I began, almost pleading with her, “my room is clean and I do know how to cook. I swept the kitchen floor for you yesterday without you even asking and I always do the dishes. This room is clean.” I bent over to reach the broom under the bed.

“You know, Ola,” she said, still hovering over my every move behind me in the room, “one day you are going to marry an African and he is going to hit you.”

I stood up straight, tears almost swelling in my eyes. My steel strength of the last month had disappeared. I felt young and alone. I bit my lip as she went on.

“Because you don’t know how to clean, Ola,” she said, emotionless. “You have to be a real woman.”

Ill equipped to defend my dignity and at a loss for words and a draining energy count, I mustered the courage to utter: “Sally, you’re offending me.”

She left the room as if nothing had occurred.

And that was that. I never looked at that woman the same again. Far from the loving, hospitable loyal friend I encountered the first few days of my stay at her home and even further from a lost woman in denial trying to protect her abusive boyfriend, the woman who I had just spoken with was a conniving, hateful, wicked creature. Regardless of who started this, I knew it had to end.

I began feeling uneasy around Sally, Joe, and even my group members—whose relationship with the heads of the house were not only cordial, but growing into a harmonious quadruplet—that very instant and distanced myself to solitude in my room for countless nights.

Perhaps in a demented cry for help or guilty shame, whenever possible, I obsessively washed the dishes, swept the floor and the porch, picked up crumbs, and neurotically organized my room.

Nastya would only recently reveal that Sally, who took a delicate liking to her after we had our falling out, also cautioned her of future domestic violence on the part of John.

The Case of the Stolen iPod

I woke up early last Friday morning, as I usually do, with ample energy and a restless mind. My timeless remedy called out to me yet again, and, after I brushed my teeth and put my contact lenses into my eyes, I laced my shoes and set out on my daily run around the Kliptown soccer field. I never go alone, and today I was to meet Cianda, a young man about my age who studies Journalism at a local college by day and attends to his KYP member duties by night, at 8 AM sharp.

Running out of the yard and onto the street, I realized I had forgotten my iPod, an absolute necessity for crisp South African winter mornings and long, introspective, monotonous runs around a bare field.

Searching my daily carry-on, the ironing board, my even ransacking my backpack for the device, I came up empty.

I immediately rushed into the living room, where Sally and Joe slept every night, rolled up into John’s sleeping bags on the floor. I wasn’t worried about waking her; she was an early-riser and liked to know all of our whereabouts, prompting her plea to inform her of our daily plans.

“Sally,” I asked.

Eyes squinting and hair sticking upright like a peacock, her head rose from the covers instantaneously.

“What, Ola,” she replied.

“Have you seen my iPod, it’s missing.”

Despite her personal feelings towards me, she was an aspiring businesswoman who had a B&B and a reputation to uphold; a patron’s missing property would tarnish the stay and impression her first clients had.

She sat upright on the floor. Joe was awake, too.

“Are you sure, Ola,” she asked. “Where and when did you leave it?’

“I put it in my room yesterday after my run,” I answered, scouring my mind for precision and clarity. “I remember having it when I walked into the yard, before I saw Sam, who wanted to talk.”

Both Sally and Joe’s facial expressions seemed to ever-so-delicately-flinch.

“Sam,” Joe said, referring to his cousin, the one who had been frequenting the house very often as of late, at first to help Sally and Joe perfect their B&B business plan, but lately just to be, listening to Nastya’s iPod while we prepared supper and despicably offering the both of as an ‘injection’ whenever the issue of sex aroused.

“Yeah, Sam,” I said, completely oblivious to their having labeled him the culprit. “He wanted to talk, so I went into the house and brushed my teeth. I swear I put the iPod back into my room, either in my bag or on the ironing board,” a temporary holding spot of mine.

“I don’t trust him,” Sally said as Joe kept repeating his name, over and over. “Sam has stolen before. Who else was in the house? Sam told me he saw two girls in the house with John.”

John and Nastya, who had both been awoken by the havoc, shuffled into the living room, still half-asleep.

“They didn’t go into the house,” John said with conviction. “They were with me the whole time. The only time I wasn’t watching the rooms was when I was washing the dishes [one out of the two times any man did them during my stay, and only at mine and Nasty’s request] and when I went for a smoke. Sam was here the whole time.”

“We must find out who took it,” Sally said as she folded the blankets over and began to get dressed. “We’re going to a woman who will tell us.”

The woman, who I presumed to be a local fortune-teller, healer, or a witch with divine powers, wasn’t home.

We walked to Kliptown Square, where John’s female friends sold me a beautiful traditional bead necklace a few nights prior. After a minor interrogation by Sally, we concluded that the girls had no way of being in the house and that Sam’s story didn’t match up. I persuaded Darion to escort me to the soccer field so I could have my run—this time, to clear my mind.

Sally and Nastya met us at the soccer field after returning from Sam’s mothers house, where he now lives unemployed. They brought back stories of Sam being a liar and a thief, certainly the culprit.

When they went back to Sally’s, I headed to KYP, feeling an unexplainable unease. Embarking on my daily ritual of checking my email, I regretfully teased out the most alarming words.

‘Sad News’, the subject line from my dad read. I opened the email expecting the worst. I got it.

‘Your grandfather passed away this morning. He died of a heart attack. He looked so well when your mother and I visited last week, but grandma says he mobilized himself the for the visit.’

A political term such as ‘mobilize’ being used to describe my grandfather’s efforts to sustain his health in the face of family was heart wrenching.

My heart sunk. Images of him stroking my hair while I pretended to sleep during a visit to Ukraine last summer danced in my mind. I walked home from KYP that afternoon in a sullen daze.

Later that night, Nastya announced her iPod was also missing.

Joe called Sam to the house, hoping he would either confess or return the stolen property; he did neither. Sally and Sam began screaming at one another while Joe stood between them, separating their furies.

That night we went to Joe’s aunt’s house—the same house Sam lives—with Sam, who remained either a foot ahead or behind us at all times. While Sally and I were watching a Michael Jackson tribute, a big-breasted, demanding, alcohol-wreaking woman with short hair and a fried chicken foot in her mouth walked into the house asking for Joe. Sally looked disturbed and agitated but mentioned nothing of the incident. I would later find out the woman was Joe’s ex-girlfriend, the one who bore his child only a few months prior.

Most of us returned home sober around 11 PM that night; Joe had had a few beers.

The Next 48 Hours

I knew we had to get out the instant I heard her scream. It was a shrill more damning than anything I’d seen in a movie, more painful than any physical harm I’d ever felt, more memorable than my most vivid nightmare.

The piercing cry traveled through the walls like a ghost, instantaneous and hollow.

It was Sally, screaming, crying, hysterical. I had retired to bed about 10 minutes prior and was about to meet slumber when I heard her. She is a loud woman, I though, she plays around; maybe it will go away.

But it persists.

Next came running footsteps, a crash, and the loud bang of a door. More shouting. Then Nastya’s feeble voice. My heart beats faster and faster as I rush out of my bed. I open the door just enough to see Nastya standing in the kitchen, timid and quiet, defending herself against some sort of allegations.

Arming myself with a flashlight, I come into the kitchen, only to find John and Nastya’s distraught faces.

“What happened,” I ask the both of them.

“Sally’s crazy,” John says matter-of-factly. “She just lunged at Nastya because she thought she heard her and Joe saying that Kliptown was the ‘hood.”

“I heard noises. What happened,” I ask John, trying intently to decipher his words amidst Sally’s frantic cries behind the wall.

“She was acting erratic, screaming and throwing things, so Joe threw a phone at her,” he explains. “It exploded against the wall. She ran out and he went after her. He’s trying to restrain her. She’s acting irration—”

His words were interrupted by Sally’s plea.

“OLA!” I heard her scream. “Come here.”

I walk towards her, truly not knowing which step would be my last.

“Olesta [Sally’s nickname for Nastya] and Joe, they didn’t think I would hear them, but they were talking about me behind my back,” she says, her eyes wide with terror and filled with tears, half of which were running down her face. “I’m NOT drunk, Ola, I know what I heard. They betrayed me.”

“Sally, I didn’t say anything, I swear,” Nastya says, herself on the verge of tears.

Joe approaches and tries to take her firmly by the arm, her feet still planted in the floor, screaming for him to let go. “OLA, OLA,” she screams, grabbing my arm as if to hold on to me and escape a savage beating.

He drags her out of sight. The screams continue. I hear muffled cries and distorted breathing. He’s suffocating her, I think.

“John!” I scream, “Come here!”

Only Nastya comes. We hold hands as I slowly approach, ensuring we make our presence known with the intermittent calling of her name. As I shine my flashlight into the living room, knowing full well that I may be hurt, I see only Joe’s back and Sally’s weeping face in front of him.

We stand there until fear grips us hard and fast. Quietly, we rush back to John, comforted by his masculine presence.

“John,” I say as Sally’s piercing screams resume, this time more desperate then ever. “He’s beating her, aren’t you going to do something?”

John, patiently looking me in the eye, says: “Have you ever heard of the expression, T.I.A.?”

“Of course,” I answer back, outraged at his justification of the situation yet understanding of his immobile vigilance.

“This is the custom in Africa,” he said, compromising his own values. “It’s typical.”

Although I knew he was right, it didn’t make the gruesome, filthy act we were being made compliant to right.

“OLAAA!”

I had to do something.

I slowly walked back to the living room, this time so paralyzed with fear that I only shone my flashlight into the room corner, not at the chaotic couple. Her awareness of my presence gives her a newfound confidence—strength to confront him. She begins a new.

“MAANDLA,” she forces out between sobs and a choking breath. “I love you, I do everything for you, but you betray me. You cheat on me and you talk about me behind my back. You don’t love me the way I love you.”

His back is towards me, her painfully contorting face looking in my eyes. Knowing I am behind him, he tries to console her by thrusting her towards him. Her weeping quiets and I walk back towards the kitchen, knowing our safety is at a pivotal threat.

“I don’t like this,” I say to John and Nastya’s frozen faces, hers dug deep into the shoulder of his jacket, her tears forming a pool in its crevices. “We have to leave.”

I meant now, this instant, this second, tonight, today, now. No longer could I bear responsibility for the brutal beating and unrelenting pain of this woman, the knowledge of this domestic fight, and the memory of what was happening between these walls.

As her cries ascended and descended in pitch like a rollercoaster about to jump its rails, we decided to share the same bed for the night. I was too petrified to sleep alone, wondering if she might implicate me by running into my room for safety or he may try to silence the one who put the thought of liberated women into her head, the one who may have seen everything with her flashlight.

“John,” Nastya whispered, “Lock the door.”

“We’ll be fine, relax,” he said.

“Please, John,” I begged. He got up and turned the key. We clung to each other and listened to our breath.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Over the next half hour, the only words we were able to get in came during rare respites in Sally’s crying, this time more painful and enduring than before. Although there is no way to tell, it was obvious he was sodomizing her. No words can describe the anger, pain, sadness, and revolt that I felt.

Her voice sang a scarring melody of cries and screams, agonizing in helpless pain.

And it went on. Soon she started moaning, pleasured by what he gave her, followed by more fighting and crying.

I fell asleep nauseous and scared, the voices and images of that night burned deep in my retina until the morning, when Sally emerged from the house silent with dark circles underneath her eyes.

“Are you OK,” I whispered, almost mouthing it out of fear he’d hear us.

She shook her head as tears swelled in her eyes.

He followed her outside.

“Good Morning, Ola,” he said effortlessly. “How are you?”

“Good, Joe,” I answered without spite, still reeling from his gestures a few hours back. “How are you?”

“Good.”

I made myself sick. I needed to tell someone, to do something, but I couldn’t. All I could do was leave.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

The next few days are like a frenzied hurricane in my mind, happening so fast and destroying everything in their wake.

Sally took her raped shame out on Sam, who she called over to accuse of stealing our iPod’s again. She decried me for telling Thulani my iPod was stolen and accused me of having broken her trust again.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

The next morning, her uncle sat us down and told us that Sally wanted another $1,000 for our stay. He warned us that our things went missing because we let strangers into the house and can we please help with the cleaning after we cook.

Outraged, shocked, exploited and betrayed, I finally burst.

“Sally,” I began, trying to calm my boiling blood. “You have treated us with nothing but disrespect and contempt. You have made us your slaves, physically and physiologically. You know it was a family member who took the iPod and now you’re trying to have us pay 100 RAND a day to live in a home with no electricity and no power? We already buy your propane and paraffin for you, and now this? Well, we’ve had it. I feel my personal security is compromised here and I refuse to spend another minute in this house, being spat on by you.”

“The girls could have stolen the iPod,” she lied through her teeth as I narrowed my eyes at her.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Hours later, as I was preparing burgers in the kitchen with Nastya, Sally asked John, someone who has always garnered her respect because of his gender, if he had bought detergent.

“Ahhh, I forgot,” John said, almost unapologetically.

“Why do we have to pay for it?” I interjected, disgusted.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she hissed. “Don’t twist my words, Ola.”

I said nothing, my back turned to her.

“Look at me,” she vehemently demanded.

Mistakenly, I did, landing in her trap.

Winding vile treacherous Zulu phrases off her tongue as if she were possessed, I imagined her putting a spell on me.

I kept silent, kept cooking.

Moments later, Nastya said she saw Sally pointing through the window at us with numerous people.

“We’ve been marked,” she said. “We gotta go.”

When we rushed to tell Thulani what we saw, he had no choice but to agree.

“It’s no longer safe for you here,” he said with concerned eyes. “You have to leave tonight.”

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

I called a woman named Christine—you’re a lifesaver, Dave—to ask for accommodation. She only had one room, she told me apologetically, but I should call Peggy, who should have room for all four of us, and lives nearby.

Luckily, Peggy answered the phone and agreed to host us for the duration of our deployment.

We packed our bags and hoisted them into Thulani’s car in a matter of minutes.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

As we began our rocky retreat from Kliptown, I put my hand against the window and watched, through barbed wire and watery eyes, the sunset across the tracks and the rusted tin shacks disappear behind me.

Coming Soon to a Computer Near You

2009-07-12T13:43:00.002+02:00

For those who have diligently been checking in to read about the latest, much has occurred that I didn't have the strength or ethical legitimacy to write about--until now.

Stay tuned.

Kliptown #4

2009-07-06T13:37:00.004+02:00

Two of the kids from the creche--an old-English term for nursery school--next to KYP blessing Thulani, Darion and I with their enthusiasm in the KYP office a week ago.

They don't look amused--especially not Christopher Wallace.

Kliptown Picture Set #3

2009-07-03T16:04:00.005+02:00

Christina and some of the girls.

The girls and I.

Crossing the bridge between Kliptown and Dlamini on the way to Lilydale, we walk by one of the most trash-ridden and unsanitary areas of Kliptown, complete with at least half a dozen swine.

The Kliptown view from the bridge. Tires and bricks weigh down the tin roofs atop the shacks.

A child amid the tin.

Kliptown Picture Set #2

2009-07-03T15:47:00.005+02:00

The porter potties that get drained every week but replaced every decade.

A delicious, traditional South African dish of rice, steamed cabbage, and chutney beef.

A sliver of unfulfilled hope for equality in the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication, more commonly referred to as 'Freedom Square.'

The train tracks of disparity.

The Holiday Inn across the tracks.

Kliptown Picture Set #1

2009-07-03T15:28:00.005+02:00

These overflowing garbage piles get cleared every day--from a designated area only--but that doesn't stop the pile-up in the man-made drainage channels and all over the squatter camp.

The view from our home.

Laundry.

A drainage channel on the right hand side of a Kliptown street.

Nomsa's house, where I live, is one of the biggest and most modern in Kliptown. Her aunt's home is in close competition for that rank. Nomsa inherited this home from her grandmother.

Kliptown the ‘Abomination’, Stagnant Lives, Systematic Eradication, Teaching the Teachers, and a Funeral

2009-07-03T14:41:00.002+02:00

The Afternoon of Saturday, June 27

We haven’t had internet access since last Friday because our bandwidth, the amount of internet credits you must purchase in South Africa to be able to use wireless internet, expired. My group is partly assuming the responsibility of KYP running dry for the month of June about a week early because of our substantial contribution to internet use and downloads since our mid-month arrival June 18^th. Thus, my preliminary prediction is that this post won’t likely see the light of blog until July 1^st or 2^nd, when the new monthly bandwidth kicks in—one whose space we will be careful not to suffocate. Even so, just this morning, the KYP generator—providing electricity, powered by petrol—broke, meaning no more electricity at KYP, no more interne access at KYP, no more luxury of charging my MacBook every day, and no more consistency in weekly posts. T.I.A. Also important to clear up that while some ‘homes’ in Kliptown have access to illegal electricity, contrary to my last post, the electricity at KYP has never been illegal. Rather, the nuns who temporarily donated the land KYP now sits on were paying for the electricity bill Thulani inherited when he opened KYP in 2007. Since then, though, because of the demand for the illicit electricity around the squatter camp, cables kept getting stolen and their replacement represented a draconian liability for the electricity company. And so, Kliptown continues to live in darkness, the blind leading the blind.

I type this in Momsa’s backyard immersed with writer’s block. For the past few days I’ve not wanted to write; instead I watch and think, watch and think. And read. Sometimes audacious turns of phrase dance in my mind and find uncommon partners; other times I do not think of words at all.

I am beginning to assimilate. No longer a traveler watching the ‘other,’ I too have—in some ways—become a mere object behind a lens, some unidentifiable statistic who lives in a squatter camp that others come just to visit, to gasp at, returning momentarily to their lives across the tracks, borders, or oceans that separate the haves from the have-nots.

It is mid-afternoon, but my eyes are heavy.

Life here seems to have reached a standstill. After many long days and short nights, this Kliptown reality is diffusing in, around, and through my consciousness in a way that has forever changed me, the way white milk spreads itself in a cup of dark coffee, producing something much richer and wholesome in return. With no newspapers, no television, no clock, and not even a change in the routine of the locals so as to signify a measurement of time, accomplishment, or change, it is easy to lose your mind—and your ambition—in Kliptown.

“What do people do around here,” I ask Thulani, whom Momsa secretly reveals last night goes by Sexeni, both abbreviated and appropriated from ‘success.’

“Many of them drink and do drugs,” he says as I am grudgingly reminded of the throbbing base of the disco music my eardrums have been inundated with for the past 10 days. On our way to KYP from Momsa’s each morning, we walk past this so-called discotheque, already filled with the usual suspects. Sharply greeted by the masked stench of malt liquor and sloppy arm gestures of worn-out men holding near empty bottles of beer while a young girl wearing a short skirt smiles at us, I hasten my pace and deny them a proper ‘Sawbona,’ meaning ‘Hello’ in English.

This Saturday the music sounds especially enticing. And for a large majority of people in Kliptown—most of who are young adults or curious children—soccer-less activity is both a scarce and intriguing find. Drugs and alcohol suffocate most childhoods; the gangster life presents yet another escape; And for those who are neither bandits nor drunks, the silent killer known only by its intimidating acronym—AIDS—unsparingly takes its victims like a blind thief in the night.

Early Sunday Afternoon

We’ve had a few days off from OLPC activity with more teacher training resuming Monday and Tuesday. We first went to our school Monday last week to speak to the principal, an Indian man who, with easy, crowned himself as the founder of the modern Lilydale Primary School, a school that teaches students in grades 5, 6, and 7. The school is located in Dlamini, the district of about 20,000 black inhabitants living in their own plots of privately owned land in brick, single-family homes. Although Kliptown is a community of squalor and shacks, because of the importance of the Freedom Charter—signed in Kliptown in 1955—it represents, like most other areas of historical significance, a tourist destination, while Dlamini acts more like an isolated suburbia where no white has ever stepped foot before. As we walked down the concrete streets adorned with organized rows of housing on either side of this middle to lower class Soweto neighborhood, our bodies transformed into red targets for eager schoolchildren who ran after us like we were dripping white chocolate.

After a 15-20 minute walk from Kliptown to Dlamini, we had arrived at the Lilydale Higher Primary School, the educational institution where we would speak to the principal about how best to implement the OLPC mission—one laptop for every child, in this case being one grade of children, as we only had 100 XO laptops for distribution—during our summer stay in South Africa. The principal was a heavy-set man in his 50’s with white hair, a round face, and, as I would soon find out, a self-righteous air. The school was unlike anything we had seen in Rwanda; it was more a rendition of a pubic school in Boston. Gated, clean, and separated into 5 or 6 classrooms—which together house some 300 students, 87 in the two grade 5 classes alone—in the shape of a rectangle, the school is well-funded and organized, the infrastructure secure. There even exists a computer room complete with a brand-new projector for broadcasting directions about login to students. Indeed, this, Soweto is not a rural area and the Lilydale Primary School not a financially-starved—and already somewhat computer literate—school; had our project been in rural South Africa, we would have surely arrived to a different reality. The financial stability of Lilydale and Mohammed’s—the principal’s first name—seeming commitment to the school and excitement about the XO’s—or praise for it’s revival after the end of apartheid—are factors that could easily act to further saturate the school and strengthen sustainability after the end of our deployment in August. Easier said, the apparent wealth of the school could be used, upon our successful pilot program of course, to privately purchase more XO’s for every class within the school.

We arranged with the principal that he would give his authority and backing while we met with the ten teachers at the school to introduce them to the OLPC idea and ask them to come in for training both two days before their break—Friday, June 26-July 20—and during their break, a concession the principal was hesitant to confirm the teachers would make.

Late Monday Afternoon

But, after some persuasive probing about why it’s imperative for the teachers to come in for training during the break, they agreed to do so; three of the teachers said they were willing to come in on the 29^th and 30^th, and the rest (about six) offered to come in on the 15^th and 16 of July, a few days before the July 20^th resumption of school. With the principal’s Big Brother-ly gaze hovering over their decision, the group also agreed to give us two hours on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the break last Friday, and we began training at 1 pm Tuesday.

Quiet and reserved—unlike the kids that fill the halls and fields of Lilydale during school—the teachers all arrived around 1:30 and began taking their XO’s out of the boxes. Much like the rest of humanity over the age of 12, the teachers were stumped on how to actually open the XO. Going over basics like turning the computer on and off, battery recharge, and opening and closing applications—the spine of navigating on the XO—took the longest and was the most difficult to teach. Using words like ‘hover’, ‘mouse’, and ‘scroll’, even to English-speaking teachers, was both a foreign and ineffective method. We quickly realized the patience, problem solving, and resolve necessary for learning. Because we had yet to purchase power strips, we were both please and fortunate to find the XO’s both charged and flashed with the most updated application cycle. The rest of Tuesday and the duration of Wednesday was further spent on learning the basics of operation and sampling some of the most integral—and easy to use—applications to learning: write, wikipedia, memorize, calculator, speak, and record. Although fascinated with the ‘neighborhood’ function that allowed the teachers to invite people to their activity and chat with their co-workers about how “hungry and tired they were,” and that some of them “wanted to go home,” it was apparent that without our diligent and informed instruction, the teaches would have much to learn on their own. As with the students in Rwanda, some teachers were faster and more enthusiastic learners than others. This learning curve especially played itself out today, on the 29^th, when the three teachers who came—out of which one was two hours late—were all learning at a different pace. After reiterating the basics of the XO to our pupils, we had them work on two specific problems (one designed for Social Studies and the other Math) for the rest of the day. Although we made ourselves available for questions pertinent to the activity at hand, we wanted to empower the teachers with hands-on experience instead of doing the work for them. After a few moments of stillness and what I can hyperbolize to have been crickets, the teachers began following the problem-specific instructions—which were written—needed to finish the exercise. Although both exercises were completed, they were done with ample oversight and tutelage—and with varying degrees of detail, time-consumption, and success. We plan to introduce the two Science and English-centric problems tomorrow, the fourth and last official day of training with the first group of teachers. The benefit of having two groups training separately is the advantage of using the first group as a prototype to test out methods that work and don’t work, as well to try to gage the productivity of the teachers. Even so, after this first week of training, it has become apparent that this deployment will continue to be an uphill battle, conventional learning against progressive technology. Far from being an educational Cold War with two opposing ideologies, the conflict lies in trying to teach an old dog new tricks; teachers who have never used a computer, or only ever used a Windows PC, will find it very challenging to learn Sugar, let alone incorporate it into their curriculum, the ultimate goal of OLPC. Moreover, if the teacher doesn’t feel confident using the XO, it is unlikely to be introduced into class, as the teacher legitimacy as the class instructor lies in their authority. Our plan is to, after a big media blitz at the school July 20^th, to train the children after hours—meanwhile giving more time for the teachers to practice on their XO’s—before we being allotting any sliver of class time to the XO. When we are wired the rest of our funds—which were donated through OLPC—before the end of June, we plan to purchase routers and a modem to establish internet access at Lilydale, in addition to setting up the server.

We plan to travel to Durban, the Indian-majority province in South Africa, before the second batch of training July 15^th and 16^th.

The Indian principal smokes as he wishes in the administrative building of the school; although a part of the school students usually don’t frequent, from time to time young girls—dressed in what looks like boarding school attire—enter the building to help with tea and cookie preparation—as happened with us that first introductory day. The principal smokes anywhere he wishes as if the school is his own hookah lounge. Speaking with one of the teachers after the initial teacher workshop, he is surprised I both noticed and mentioned the audacity and callous disregard of the principal to smoke in the school, a non-smoking facility. When I ask whether the principal does what he wants because he is Indian, a menacing smile creeps across the teachers face in vindication.

“Yes,” he says, as he calls over one of the other teachers to share my revelation. “And you know he teaches grades 5’s, too, but you don’t see him training with us. Indians, they are all like that.”

That’s when I realize that racism creates angry, hypocritical recipients; it spreads from the oppressor to the victim like indiscriminate wildfire, creating a vicious, discriminatory cycle of prejudice and unforgiving memory, planting the seeds of vengeance in a newly-formed stubborn identity.

Thulani has repeatedly told me that despite a democratic republic and fervent promises of social welfare from charismatic leaders, that egalitarian mantra has not yet evolved into practical reality. Instead, he said that races are, although no longer institutionally, this time economically segregated. Generally speaking, the socioeconomic status that white, wealthy Afrikaans (the Dutch who first claimed South Africa as their bounty before the Brits flexed their muscle of empire and domination), whose language can best be described as a mixture of Dutch and English, still remain atop of the class hierarchy and are comprised of heirs to mine and diamond fortunes, as well as business and landowners. Next in South Africa’s colorfully warring lineage of wealth and social stature are the Indians, followed by the Coloureds—a mix of Indian and white, Indian and black, black and white, or anything that isn’t a racial pure breed—and then the Blacks, or Africans, the first group of people both in that country, continent, and earth—depending on which school of ‘truth’ you belong to.

“The Afrikaans think they are better than the Indians, the Indians think they’re better than the Coloureds, and everybody thinks they’re better than the blacks,” I remember X telling us during an afternoon drive from the Jo’burg currency exchange yesterday.

“So the more white people have in them, the more ammunition and justification they have to feel more elite and privileged than others,” I say, uncertain of whether or not my blunt honesty comes off as pretentious.

“Exactly,” X says. I breathe a sigh of relief. He’s told me that Africans, or maybe just South Africans, are not only non-confrontational creatures, but that they also tend to have difficulty communicating their thoughts and emotions—whether they be professional, personal, sentimental, or political. I’ve kept his words close to the inquisitive nature of my lips, but I’ve noticed that time and trust has loosened his tongue. I begin to ask more provocative questions, and X answers not only in kind, but also in elaborate detail, sowing his country’s scabbed history into a coarse fabric before my ears.

“You see those two electrical towers over there,” he asks as he points to the two white towers engulfed with a water-painted portrait of a couple, a flower, and a dry wheat bundle. “These are not in use anymore, and they are now actually used for bungee jumping, but until 1985, these towers, located in Soweto, were used solely for the benefit of white industry owners in Johannesburg, and acted as an insulting reminder of oppression to the majority of black Sowetans.”

He goes on to tell me that that year, 1985, is also the first year that Africans in Soweto were able to purchase land and formerly own their homes, effectively dealing a justified blow to the enforcement of the 1913 Land Act, “which ultimately deprived blacks of 87 percent of the territory in the land of their own birth,” Mandela writes in his autobiography. He goes on to, in that same paragraph, pit 1913 as the year Africans became not only inferior to the white man in class, but in the eyes of justice. The Land Act was the first of more than a dozen black-discriminatory legislations passed by the British, acting via the United Party, that consequently paved the way for a wholesale subversion of freedom for the African people that culminated in institutionalized apartheid under the Dutch-led Nationalist party in 1948.

Wednesday Afternoon

As we drive through the most affluent area of Soweto, named Diepcleuff—pronounced deep-kloof, after the Dutch term meaning BLANK—my eyes follow Thulani’s finger out of the car and into the suburban neighborhood as he points towards a large home in the distance.

“That’s Winnie Mandela’s house,” he says of Nelson Mandela’s second wife. “She is revered by the people because she was so political and to this day remains South Africa’s most popular and charismatic first lady. Rumor has it he divorced his first wife, I can’t remember her name, because…”

“Evelyn, the nurse,” I blurt out from the back seat.

“Yes, Evelyn,” he says, unflinchingly. “You see, people say she wasn’t involved with the anti-apartheid struggle enough, and so Mandela divorced her,” he continues to say, dividing his visual focus half to us, and half to the road ahead as we dodge car after car on our way back to Kliptown.

“But Winnie, that Winnie even got into trouble with the ANC because she was so involved; in the 70’s, she participated in a ritual at the time and hung a tire over the neck of an informant like a noose before she set it ablaze,” he explains as his voice travels further from my senses and I imagine a densely populated, 70’s-era South African street filled both with angry shouts of indignation and the melodic patriotism of traditional African songs competing with the screams of a dozen men whose faces twist like demons as their heads are engulfed in crimson flames and the pungent stench of burning rubber and human skin slowly infect the crowds as a reminder of their sins.

“Informants, what informants,” I ask as a speed bump interrupts my frenzied scanning of the pages of Mandela’s autobiography—the one I’ve managed to read only a quarter of.

“During the 70’s, when ANC solidarity and the abolition of apartheid struggle was at its peak—especially among the youth—the ANC was very cautious of government informants who posed as ANC members and leaders, some infiltrating the organization’s top ranks and even going so far as to participate in mass protests that often resulted in jail time just to prove their fraudulent allegiance to the organization they were strategizing to topple,” Thulani said as we hung on his every word like a spider from a web. “And so if an informant was ever caught, or an ANC member ever suspected, some of the most passionate practitioners of the resistance, including Winnie Mandela, would join together and burn the men alive by lighting the highly flammable tire around the neck of the informant as a spectacular lesson to those in attendance. Even today, when blacks protest, they bring tires as a symbol of their history and their anger.”

I am immediately reminded of the dozens and dozens of children huddled around a circle of burning fires every time dusk falls on Kliptown.

It was not only the men who were persecuted for their treasonous espionage in the ANC during that electrifying decade that now fills history books with images of mob-filled streets, bloody protests, and police raids; Women also burned to death by tire necklace. The Nationalists were keen to realize that women were a more malleable political tool than men because of their sexual prowess and difficulty to expose, especially as the ANC, in its evolution, was more and more striving to represent a union of all South Africans who sought unconditional freedom, including females.

In fact, Mandela’s autobiography depicts the relentlessly persistent and organized mobilization of mostly blacks, fewer Indians, even less coloreds, and some whites, to fight against the state apparatus that caged and stifled the rights of man, putting the interests of white Afrikaans above all. This defiance campaign—a term I’m using as a description of general non-compliance with the state as opposed to the 1948 Defiance Campaign, the name of a planned and executed series of peaceful protests, rallies, threats, walkouts, and strikes against segregation laws—grew in strength and numbers since it’s formal inception in 1912 until it’s institutional vindication in 1994. This ‘Long Walk To Freedom’ came first as a predominately black rights movement, then adopted nationalistic tendencies, combated communist in-fighting, suffered contention over racial inclusion into the ANC, and as Mandela hints to me, ultimately resulted in an armed resistance, the only weapon of efficacy when fighting the impenetrable war machinery of the state. As a result, South Africa is a nation of social activism and protest until this day. Strikes result most often from claims of corruption, but the commonplace wage demands and unfair working conditions also boil workers over the top.

I was told the teachers in Soweto were on strike shortly before our arrival in Jo’burg June 18^th. Thulani informed me taxi drivers were airing their grievances by abstaining from work the week before, and just this week, doctors are putting down their scalpel in exchange for a remote control during their time-off. A British man residing in South Africa lamented about the inefficiency of the South African labor force at last week’s soccer tournament, and although he did not say so, I intuited he was talking about blacks.

“This week it’s the teachers, next week it’s the doctors; you never know what they’re striking for,” he began with a slight annoyed superiority in his tone before telling me that his maid was robbed at gunpoint and his wife’s jewelry stolen the day before. I could only imagine the color of the assailants and the perpetual stereotypes that linger beneath South Africa’s veil of ignorance.

Friday, Dawn

After the first teacher training at Lilydale when I managed to penetrate one the teachers trust—Bennie—by openly criticizing the principal for smoking, I continued to probe about his life and this teacher’s strike I had heard with such animosity about from the Brit a day earlier.

“I heard all the teachers in Soweto were on strike last week,” I say to his nodding face. “Why?”

“We weren’t on strike,” Bennie clarifies. “It was just a protest.”

“Was it because of corruption?”

“Yes,” he answers back, either surprised by my interest in the subject or knowledge of the precise facts. “Some of the school’s management is corrupt despite there being many administrative and managerial positions open for internal competition a few weeks back, none of the skilled teachers and professionals that applied were chosen, and for no reason at all.”

“How was it resolved?”

“To some degree, they stopped discriminating, but it will happen again. When I first started working, I only made about 500 RAND for three months.”

“And how much do you make now,” I asked, taking the chance of offending him in exchange for a relevant answer.

“About 4,000,” he answers without hesitation as I converted that number to a mere $500 American a month. “That can barely be enough for living expenses.”

“Barely,” Bennie, who divulges his membership in a union, says. “The doctors are severely underpaid, too. People criticize them for striking in such a crucial industry, but they deserve more.”

I leave the school that day at odds with my own impressions of South Africa. Although inspired and celebratory about the perseverance of the ANC in writing a history engrained with beads of personal sacrifice that ultimately led to a liberation of the masses that continues to be practiced today, the country’s gains remain marred by unfulfilled promises, untapped potential, and unjust living conditions for so many of the party’s most ardent supporters. Yet most of them remain patiently waiting for tangible chance and refuse to betray the engine that succeeded to add the practice of apartheid to that withered history book.

More than one of those I talk to say the age-old African curse of absolute power has bestowed itself upon even the most fervent pioneers of equality.

“Some of these leaders, they just want to stay in power forever,” an ANC critic recently said to me. “It’s not about the people anymore—it’s turned selfish.”

Kliptown is a jarring example of egalitarian principles succumbing to that insatiate thirst for power. Although one of the most sophisticated and esteemed hospitals in the Eastern hemisphere is just a stone’s throw away from Kliptown, none if it’s inhabitants can afford its drop-in fee, not one school exists in the squatter camp.

The very term squatter camp is even laced with political malaise; an ‘informal settlement’ is in theory identical to a squatter camp, save for the colossal fact that squatter camps are bereft of government-subsidized refurbishment plan. Indeed, they are left to rot and decay without purpose, without assistance, without a future. It’s as if the poor are a heavy burden on South Africa and her people, even the burgeoning affluent African population, as if their savage survival is a threat to the rest of a newly civilized South Africa, as if their exists a plan, instead to emancipate them, to systematically eradicate any footprint they ever had. While health care, education, and even basic needs like electricity are shamefully invisible in Kliptown, the chain of super markers that tightly grip the commercial produce monopoly in Gauteng, ShopRite and Pick and Pay, raise their prices for the same goods in Kliptown that can be found for cheaper in Pimville or Jo’burg, meanwhile appearing to maintain a semblance of competitive practice by advertising under separate names.

“In South Africa, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer,” Pam, the plump, heartwarming woman who heads an AIDS support group and kindergarten program at KYP says to the FliP video camera I’m holding for a young Californian NGO journalist while we walk around Kliptown, voyeuristically filming it’s sorrow. “This is an abomination, it’s filthy.”

When I sense our journalistic camaraderie and his searching for words, I jump in with my own questions for the woman who says that despite her anger and disgust for the place in which she lives, she sees hope and prosperity “in ten years, when I’ll be dead.” She couldn’t be more than 55, but she complains of stomach and back pains. Admits she’s never been to a doctor, refuses to go. It’s not the money, she presses.

“Pam, are you happy with what the ANC has done since the end of apartheid?”

“To be honest with you, O,” she calls me, “no, I’m not.”

Her dream for Kliptown, she says, is real housing. No more shacks, tin, tires, rocks, filth, and pigs. She says she got involved with KYP because the NGO is instrumental in offering the majority inhabitants of Kliptown, the children, an alternative to drug and alcohol. To ask which drugs predominate the vices of the youth escapes me.

Thulani has, in the past, told me his ultimate dream is to extend KYP’s influence from an after school program to an organization that has a capacity to house it’s members, many of whom are mentally and physically abused after the heavenly KYP gates close at 6 PM daily. After that, he says, and when he is financially stable, his only plan is to get out of Kliptown—for good. And he won’t often come back, either, he admits, hoping to thwart the bitter envy by the human remnants of Kliptown for anyone who manages to get out of this onyx ghetto alive.

For there are also those who do get out, yet not breathing. According to Thulani, someone dies everyday in Kliptown. Although an inevitable check on immortality for every being alive, for the people of Kliptown, death is so common that funeral insurance—up to 40 RAND per month—is a staple in the monthly budget—for those who can afford it. The bodies of those whose families are like most in Kliptown, and don’t have money to pay for the funeral either prematurely or at the time of death, sometimes rot around living family members for an entire month before being transported to the state-sponsored morgue.

“This family, they are very lucky because they had money to pay for the funeral costs,” Thulani says early last Saturday morning as the drives us from a 31-year-old mans—his friend—funeral in Kliptown to the Pimville cemetery. Cause of death: AIDS.

“About 20% of the people in Kliptown are HIV positive,” he answers me as I read the program of the deceased, written by someone on his behalf in first person.

“…I was born to [______ and ______]. […..] I worked in [______] factory until I got sick. [……] I will be remembered by my family and friends.”

I heard about the death a few days before the Saturday funeral. Word spread like wildfire that a young man had died of AIDS; the deceiving truth is that most AIDS victims die in the winter from a slight cold. He left behind a young child whose care was now confined to his grandmother, as his mother was also terminally ill with AIDS.

“Does that mean the child has AIDS, as well,” Anastasia asked as we looked through the windows of Thulani’s car and into the boy’s glassy, unknowing eyes.

A simple, sobering “yes” was all Thulani gave.

Later the next day, being escorted by some of the KYP girls back to Momsa’s just before dark—a ritual that has eased over time as we accustom ourselves with the community—we walked by the house of a friend of mine a KYP member—who, because of the difficulty of her name, the sparse time I’ve had with her, and her striking resemblance to pop star Rhianna, will be addressed by that name—a beautiful girl whose radiant spirit shone through her eyes the day we met.

As we walked along the road parallel to where her and her family members were sitting on the steps of their home, I asked the other girls why I haven’t seen her around KYP lately.

“There’s been a death in the family,” Christina, the light-skinned—colored, in fact, according to Thulani—soft-spoken KYP accountant of 21 told me.

“Is that the same man that died of AIDS a few days ago, “ I asked, unaware of why, after the words flew carelessly out of my mouth, their void filled with an eerie silence.

“We don’t talk about AIDS here,” Thulani’s half-sister, or Lady D, as she likes to be called, said as pangs of embarrassed guilt barraged me like the blitzkrieg, answering my question in tacit nuance.

“If something happens to you, you can tell people about it if you want,” Christina added, “but here in South Africa, and even Africa, we don’t talk about other people like that. It can land you in a lot of trouble.”

Taking their comments both in stride and respect, I tapped into my courageous side.

“But everyone talks,” I spat out. “Every culture gossips.”

“Especially when they have nothing better to do,” Nelly, the sympathetic KYP cook—and natural comedian—admitted when all three of the girls realized that the real lesson lay in exploring the truth.

That conversation reverberated in my head as I watched Rhianna read the program at the funeral, an event that consisted of a very similar chronology of events to Western funerals, save for the fact that is occurred under a tarp in a clearing between the shacks.

So it was her family member. A cousin, I would later find out. As she walked with the rest of the hysterical family to the cars and buses awaiting to transport the procession to the Pimville cemetery ten minutes away, she caught my presence and we shared a hug.

At the cemetery, song battled perverse thoughts and images of death that hauntingly danced in my mind with anxiety. A small man who seemed a close friend of the victim was laughing and stumbling about during inconvenient times, singing the hymns with passion. I suspected he was drunk, numbing the all too familiar pain of losing a life to the insidious acronym.

Back at the tarp, every person in attendance douses their hands in a bucket of cold water, symbolic, I am shortly told, of a release of the memory of death and the birth of a new day, a celebration of life. As at least two hundred people line up diligently for the free meal after the funeral, a man with good English and liquored breath seeks my conversation.

“You know we’re lucky,” he begins, “that today’s funeral was one of AIDS, not gangs.”

“What do you mean,” I ask, confused.

“Those funerals can get dangerous,” he continues, as if predicting my next question. “If you are in a gang, and you die from a bullet wound, your former gang members shoot guns at your funeral and burn tires at the cemetery. It gets violent,” he warns.

I am speechless. He doesn’t mind.

“You should have brought your camera to take pictures of this,” he says with a smile on his face.

“I didn’t know if it would be appropriate,” I answer back, simultaneously surprised at his desire to have a family’s most intimate moment photographed for the preying, judging eyes of a foreign audience and regretful of having forgot my camera at Momsa’s earlier that morning. “I hope it doesn’t happen again, but if it does, I’ll bring it next time.”

“It’ll happen again,” he chillingly reassures me. “It’ll happen again soon.”

Soweto Impressions, Kliptown Dreams, Beyond Poverty, First Sleepless Night, a Place of God, and Feeding the Village

2009-06-24T12:08:00.005+02:00

DISCLAIMER: Upon beginning my written commentary on this blog for the first time, I heavily weighed the meaning, content, and direction this medium of communication ought to take. I realize it is being viewed by, what I hope is, hundreds of people and its material being—because of the nature of the details I have disclosed—judged both for journalistic ability, accuracy, and Western bias. My prerogative for this blog, after careful consideration, is to offer the reader an unbiased, unfiltered, unapologetic view of the thoughts, fears, emotions, and impressions that are formed inside my every fiber during this trip. Please understand that my philosophies are constantly evolving and the multi-dimensional view from my gaze indeed subjective; this blog is not an infallible encyclopedia of facts and figures. Instead, it is a crude documentary of what I’ve done and the way it’s affected me—as seen with my eyes, told in my words, laced with my personal descriptions. I apologize in advance if this blog has, in the past, offended anyone by misrepresenting people or inaccurately reporting facts, but this is not an immaculate authority or news piece; indeed, this collection of work includes opinion and editorializing actively working in tandem with empirical observation, reality, and highest above all, truth. And on a lighter note, as I try to vomit this information out as fast as technically possible, some grammar and spelling mistakes will inevitable accumulate. It should also be noted that very rarely do I proof-read my blog—a consequence of very little computer access, computer charging capabilities, electricity, and a lack of time in general—ultimately resulting in what may be constituted by some as run-on sentences and minor structural mistakes, a problem I leave your common sense to remedy. With that said, your comments, criticisms, and most of all, support—Lysexy, phoenixx, Rana, my parents, KKlingle, Mahoney, SoldaderaSenorita, and the OLPC Corps and Core team—and continued following are not only encouraged, but mandated for this writing to reach its literary potential and these two months to affect us a people.

Kliptown, Day 3, Sunday Afternoon, Calm Before the Storm

I am awoken this morning by the loud, raspy sounding voice of a man a couple yards away preaching to the people in a make-shift church; he sounds more like the Devil than a man of God.

We arrived into Jo’burg Thursday night to a spitting rain, a light wind, and world of difference. We were greeted by Xolani Madondo, who is the brother of Thulani Madondo, the noble young Director of the Kliptown Youth Program (KYP), the NGO we will work with for the next two months. Xolani also brought his friend and a member of the KYP, Daniel, to the airport to meet us, and, after withdrawing RAND (the South African currency), we jumped into a taxi full of men on our way to Kliptown, the oldest district of the Soweto (SOuth WEstern TOwnship) township, a place we, at that point, were not experienced enough to commit to calling home.

Driving through the vast and bustling metropolis that is Jo’burg was in stark contrast to the sleepy and underdeveloped village-town of Kigali. The highway stretched across the city like an overprotective octopus and the sprawling stamps of industrialization imprinted the city like birthmarks, from the giant Coca-cola billboards, to the chains of commercial warehouses and department stores, to the everlasting brand of neo-conservatism that can only be found in the twinkle in Ronald McDonald’s eye. And even out of this uniformity and structure, individual bush fires burned on the hills like fireflies.

Watching first the signs ‘Orlando’, ‘Soweto’, ‘Pimville’, and then ‘Kliptown’ disappear from my periphery and into the onyx night behind me, I found my body, half an hour after getting into that taxi, bouncing up and down as the vehicle tried to dodge pothole after pothole in an area that looked like a man-filled garbage heap. We had arrived. And I was no longer an outsider; this was my home too.

Only a few people were visible: all black, all poor, all walking somewhere with someone, keeping to them selves, not causing trouble. Watching out of the window, I saw a blaze out of the corner of my eye; it was a fire, with people huddled around to catch a heat wave. It is winter in South Africa, and it is cold. People wear warm clothes like winter jackets, wool hats, and mits, most of which are by now won and torn after being donated by American, Canadian, or European NGO’s long ago.

We arrived at the house of our host, Nomsa, shortly after and were pleasantly surprised to find it very large and inviting, a house bigger than Western middle class standards, both in furnishings and property size. We felt safe that night and decided we would indeed inhabit this home for the duration of our stay in South Africa.

Kliptown is a slum. The standard of living of the people is beyond poverty. Visually, looking at the squatter camp from above while crossing a bridge, you see tin shacks—very rarely brick or wood, sometimes adorned with flowers, other times drying clothes—piled one next to each other like a frayed puzzle with reis or large rocks atop the tin roof to keep from blowing away. On the ground and in the community, you walk through narrow passageways filled with rotting food scraps, piles of garbage, and streams of brown water, surrounded by shacks and shacks that extend north, west, east, and south, some covered with cheap aluminum barbed wires, but most adorned with small children playing, crying, running around, washing clothes, pushing a wheel barrow, or kicking around a decrepit soccer ball. The sounds are filled of laughter, shouting, and rarely, car exhaust. The people, although probably not happy to live in such an impoverished state, are a proud and dignified group living day to day in a maze of tin.

Xolani, who likes to go by X, explained to us that Kliptown has no electricity and, for a community of more than 45, 000 people, only has several water pumps and some three or four dozen portable bathrooms, which, according to X, are the only aspect of basic necessity that is ever attended to in Kliptown. Even so, X said, the only change that occurs is the company that administers sanitation in the community, not the service that is provided. The hardworking people of Kliptown live on sometimes only one meal per day, sleep on the floor, and have to support upwards of ten people in an area smaller than an average room by Western standards. The outhouses are changed only every decade, and those who have some expendable income—a small majority of the 40% of people employed in Kliptown—rely on an experienced local electricity thief to dig a hole under ground extending electrical wires from the power transformers to a plug within each ‘home’, and most people buy propane stoves to cook what little food they can afford to buy.

But across the train tracks, conveniently separating the local poor from the shopping and historical center that attracts some thousands of tourists every year, sits a developed slab of land whose yield of profits the people from across the vertical divide will never see. X and other locals congregating around the KYP all tell me how much they resent the erection of the multi-million dollar tourist center, known as Freedom Square, which includes a museum that holds the Freedom Charter, a document signed in 1955 that is integral to the anti-apartheid movement started by the African National Congress (ANC), a shopping district, and a Holiday Inn.

“This is how the government develops Kliptown,” the locals angrily and sarcastically proclaim. And this is also how the people of a poor slum steal electricity from a system which so selectively builds divisions among it’s own people, only a fraction of whom can afford to live on the other side of the tracks in the newly subsidized condominiums because thy have steady employment.

Adults are amazed at the color of my skin; children ecstatically amused.

“Do you know how to wash dishes like she does,” asks one patronizing 17-year-old as he passes me and Sopimwe, a local helping my host mother do dishes, outside this morning.

“Yeah, and I know how to cook, too,” I say in my defense making certain not err on the side of defiance.

“Then show me, prove it,” he continues to mock me as I refuse to appease him and he changes the subject to the local porridge, asking me if I’d ever had it.

Nearer to KYP, another man asks me to take a picture with him because I am a white girl and he wants to hang our picture on the wall.

“Do you have a camera,” I ask, knowing full well the negative answer before the words fly out of my mouth.

“No, we are beyond poverty here,” he says to me, his English not only good but articulate, his demeanor suspicious. He goes on to tell me that this is no environment for children to grow up, that this is not a home. “The man that brought water here, we though he was good,” he says, “until the pipes he installed to irrigate the water and reuse it ended up to be too small.” I want to continue talking to him about how neglected the ghetto is, but Thulani warns him in Zulu that he isn’t to talk to us without first consulting with him; my premonitions were correct. After Thulani leaves, the straggler comes back, this time with questions for me.

“Are you with a left-wing group or affiliated with the government?”

“No,” I say, “I’m just a writer,” as I dart my eyes away from him in hopes of dashing his curiosity. He disappears.

We woke up early Friday morning to go to KYP, our NGO and the afterschool program located in the heart of the Kliptown community, acting as a multi-dimensional lifeline to so many of it’s members. Enclosed in a colorfully painted brick semi-circle, KYP is a large space that is made of three or four concrete and wood structures that are made to act as a dance hall, a formal and informal office, (the latter of which is where the server and main computer are stored) and a storage area where children receive donated clothes every Friday, the casual day when members (as young as three and as old as 20) rehearse both traditional and untraditional dance routines. The nucleus of the space is divided into concrete and earth platforms, consisting of one basketball hoop, two soccer nets, and ample space for horseplay. But it’s as if every other sport ceases to exist in the daily regimen of South African and African youth; basketballs and courts are used for one thing and one thing only: soccer. The KYP field is brimming with soccer balls and future all-star athletes.

When we first walked in Friday morning, there were about a hundred frenzied toddlers running around at the daycare loosely affiliated with KYP on the other side of the fence. Anastasia and I, the other Ukrainian girl on my team, dove into the mass of children as if they were a pool a top which we would float; instead, they were more like venom-less vultures who swarmed us into submission. Captivated as much by our skin as we were by their happiness, the kids, both boys and girls, huddled around us and took us from place to place while Anastasia taught them duck-duck-goose and I showed them a reflection of themselves on my digital camera. The children, even as young as three, were very disciplined and well-behaved, all following directions and listening to their elders, a group predominately made of older women who tirelessly work for free and give their time to raise a conscientious and loved youth. We observed the kindergarteners consume a lunch of porridge and kids of up to 50 take a simultaneous nap on the floor underneath a wool mat before the afternoon sun shone at least 100 bright faces into the KYP gate.

These were the majority of the KYP members, aged 5-18, who chose, because of the consistent sense of community and security, to come back to the project that gives then clothing, a hearty meal of rice and beef (in some cases their only meal of the day) everyday, tutoring in science and math, and an opportunity to excel, to make friendships, and to feel a sense of belonging. As the evening progresses, the children all disperse to partake in their individual activities; some were playing soccer, others talking and laughing, and most others rehearsing their dance sequences, which, to my pleasant surprise, for the older kids, consisted of a choreographed number to a series of house and techno music.

The camaraderie was, for the most part, unrivaled. Absorbing the various goings on occurring around me like a dry sponge in the presence of water, I intuitively noticed a teenager who seemed to be a dance instructor, about 13, whip a younger boy—who was not slapping his rubber boots either hard or fast enough to produce the desired tone for the dance—in the face with a stick. The teenager saw the boy’s face begin to crumble and the tears being to swell in his eyes, but he remained undaunted, unflinching, menacingly stone-cold—until he caught me watching him. He quickly moved to another area of the dance troupe while I made my way to the injured boy whose face was now in his lap, along with a river of tears, on a nearby curb. I put my arm around his and held his cheek to mine as I fought back the waterfall of my own physical emotion and realized yet again how universal and unforgiving pain and suffering really is. As he began to control his sobbing and I my anger for the older boy, we both crutched our selves unto the other. Wiping his tears away with grimy fingers and consequently producing muddy tears that slowly streamed down his face in agony, he looked at me as if to say thank-you, and, after a forcibly contrived hug from me, he got up and left. When I watched his dance number a few minutes afterwards, our eyes remained locked and our bond impenetrable; I haven’t seen him since and don’t exactly remember what he looks like. The incident, although not high in severity and commonplace all over the world, gave me a footing from which to understand that a majority of the crimes in Kliptown, and on this planet, are done to our own people, whether they be black, white, male, female, or simply human.

After each of the age groups and sexes performed their respective dance numbers for us during a welcome ceremony and as the night began to descend on the blue sky and pushed the sun away, Thulani brought out a big bag of white Reebok sneakers that were donated by a member of the Boston Celtics after one his children was brought by Peter Johanssen, a teacher at Meadowbrook elementary school in Boston, to Kliptown as part of a yearly tour. This particular Celtic remains unnamed. In fact, much of the funding that KYP receives comes from private individuals with ties to the Boston area whose hearts have been warmed and uplifted by the miraculous work they see being done at KYP. Aside from the electricity—which has been rerouted illegally to light KYP, surely in an act of God—all the new wood structures, internet connection, and of course, the laptops, have been made possible by philanthropic contribution. As Thulani distributed some dozen sneakers to the most committed members of KYP—soccer leaders, dedicated tutors, dance instructors, and altruistic group leaders—an eager, not envious, crowd of more than 100 happy faces watched and clapped with glee while the campfire smoke—or the energy of the selfless goodwill encircling us—watered our eyes. And after an evening prayer, they all were gone; after all, it is not wise to walk around in Kliptown late at night.

As the children ran around, behind, and in front of us in an effort to scurry home before blackness hit, John, an atheist man and my group member, somehow managed to articulate something we had all felt yet couldn’t verbalize.

“If God’s work is done, it is not in a church,” he said in an uncharacteristically tender tone. “This is a place of God.”

That night, Friday night, a female KYP member, Supimwe, slept with Darion and I in a queen size bed; it would be the first out of two very long weekend nights for me and my team, as, in the celebratory spirit and a communal mindset, we bought enough food to feed at least 15 people, some of whom were adults not belonging to KYP, and overspent our budget. They stayed late into the night and forbade my body and mind to rest. Thulani told us the day before that no KYP child will ever beg for anything from us and that, despite the conditions in which they live, they are, from infancy, taught, if not by their parents, then by Thulani, that dignity is the soul of a people and pride is the vehicle to achieve that underlying principle of man. Perhaps this is why it was so offensive when, after multiple discussions with Nomsa—hereafter referred to as “Momsa” after being cleverly coined as such by John—about sleepless nights and empty wallets, X was embarrassed and offended when she told him, Sunday night, that there was just not enough food for him and his boys, who, mind you, had been chaperoning us around throughout the, thus far, short duration of our stay in Kliptown. Although the situation is now resolved and a rift has not been sown, our relationship with our NGO could have begun to debilitate had issues of food, monetary responsibility, and communal sharing not been discussed at length.

Momsa’s house has no electricity. We sleep on the bed she forfeit to sleep on the floor. We excrete ourselves in the outhouse, light our curiosity—books, movies, baths—by paraffin lamps, and wash ourselves with cold water heated warm on the propane stove, the same way we prepare meals. We pay Momsa’s female friends—older women who have no job, but skills—to handwash our clothes in the hopes that our 100 rand somehow benefit the community in which we live and have come to not only appreciate, but care for and respect.

Speaking to some of the local female members and employees of KYP about the sanitation and living conditions in Kliptown, they told me that despite the ANC government’s ministry of Waste Management sending a waste truck to pick up the tons of garbage dropped off in an allocated area each day, the locals are careless and choose to throw their garbage in any stream, corner, or cranny they can find. The litter is so vast that is certainly translates into perilous health concerns for children and the elderly; some parts of Kliptown literally are, complete with filthy pigs, a human wasteland. Whether or not this local complacency that acts to the detriment of the sanitation in Kliptown is an angry retaliation at a system which has—despite the end of apartheid and the simultaneous election of the ANC to the Presidency in 1994—neglected, stunted, and enslaved a very African people for nearly 350 years since the coming of the Dutch to the Cape of Good Hope in the 1600’s, or simply a tired, lazy routine of a hopeless people, aesthetically, Kliptown is not a pretty place and it is easy to justify racist stereotypes at first glance.

When asked how the 60% of the community that is unemployed find money to buy food, the answers very varying. Some clean houses or wash clothes, others sell traditional jewelry or vegetables in Freedom Square, while still others do not work—simply because they refuse to or because they are tired of looking for work in what is still a very segregated and racist country—and either collect unemployment or continue to have children to so they can receive child support.

Proud and respectful, most of the people who inhabit this dense community are not complaining; rather, after informally talking with then, they admit to having come to accept the neglected state in which Kliptown now finds it self in.

“Nothing ever changes,” says a man whose name I don’t remember. “But we at least expect the area to be electrified.”

Wednesday Morning, Before Day 2 of Teacher Training at Lilydale

Indeed, in Gauteng, the area that encompasses Pretoria, Soweto, (comprised of millions of people in which Kliptown manages to carve a black hole) and the surrounding suburbs, the lights that fill the star-struck sky seem curiously to ignore the 50,000 people Kliptown in it holds.

But X remains optimistic.

“We can’t expect the government (the ANC) to enact change in the 15 years of its history,” X said, perhaps indirectly explaining why South Africans awarded Jacob Zuma, a charismatic, eccentric Zulu the ANC Presidency in large numbers this May. “I still have hope things will change.”

On Saturday we went to a soccer tournament with the Kliptown boys. They won both first and second place and it was a shining moment for the poorest team on the field, the mental recognition far outweighing the material reward—soccer balls, jersey’s, ect.—although pride comes in many forms, especially for males. The boys sang Afrikaans—one of the eleven official languages in South Africa (English, Zulu, and Afrikaans)—and Zulu songs all the way home. When the bus dropped us back off in Kliptown, the team walked a little taller into the KYP—past the mud puddles, (so as not to tarnish their cleats) sitting infants, and barbed wire—as the entire mass of youngsters within KYP took notice and applauded the winners.

Yesterday we had teacher training at Lilydale and today we have the same. Will write more on that tomorrow, as well as give a brief history lesson based on ‘Long Walk to Freedom.’

I have not yet been to Jo’burg, save the taxi ride into Kliptown the day of our arrival, but heading to the soccer game, we passed Pretoria and witnessed the affluence and luxury in which a minority of Africans and the majority of whites live; the social and economic inequality offers a glimpse into 1950’s apartheid whilst simultaneously providing a semblance of opportunity.

Finally, in terms of security, I have never felt safer. I am more at ease here than some parts of Boston. Although trouble can easily be found for those in search of it, we’ve been following the rules and staying home at night. I do not fear when biology strikes and I have to go to the outhouse to relieve myself. The nights are quiet and peaceful, the days bring us warm welcomes from the locals, and the KYP members who act as our chaperones have only our best interests at heart. The community here, as I’ve said, is a dignified and communal place. Unlike other Westerners, or whites, we do not come to praise their toil and trouble before we leave to our plush existence at night. No, we live here—and for that, we are granted security and a reciprocated respect. No longer will I be ‘Sleepless in Soweto.’

Soweto, Soccer, and Dlamini

2009-06-24T11:45:00.006+02:00

Children walking arm in arm in Dlamini, a large plot of private property comprised of brick-housing, electricity, and a hopeful future for those who live a 20 minutes walk away in Kliptown, where less than a 1/5 of housing is brick and only a number of residents have a yard big enough to cultivate.

The 2 Kliptown soccer teams that ended up winning both gold and silver in a soccer championship near Pretoria on Saturday. While only a contemplation, it is curious that the poorest bunch is either the most hard-working or diligent of athletes, adolescents; luck had nothing to do with it.

Playing against your neighbor. Number 10, on the right, was the shortest kid to compete in the entire tournament of 50 kids under the age of 13. His ball-handling, speed, and unrivaled might earned him the MVP, a piggyback ride, and a cheering applause from his proud and elated team mates at the awards ceremony following the game.

Jo'burg skyline---a world of difference from the shacks in Kliptown; a contradictory mirror-image of the two Africa's I've seen.

Dlamini.

More to Come...

2009-06-22T17:00:00.002+02:00

More Kliptown pics--highly indicative of the reality in which I live--and commentary to come tomorrow.

Kliptown #1

2009-06-22T16:33:00.005+02:00

Committed KYP members receiving Reebok shoes that were donated from a Boston Celtic.

Xolani, or X, goofing around with a Superman costume that he found in the donation box.

My group members, John and Anastasia, with two KYP members on their laps while watching dance performances the first night of our arrival.

Excited kindergartners the first morning of out arrival.

John walking around the KYP premises the morning of Day 1.

Last of Rwanda

2009-06-22T16:23:00.002+02:00

Watching the soccer game at the National Stadium.

Adetola (Nigeria) and I at the Hilltop two nights before the departure of the teams.

Eddy Mintela Winnie and I that same night.

Playing soccer with the locals.

The names of a quarter of a million people, out of a total of a million dead in the genocide, whose skull and bones have been properly identified engraved in a plaque that stretches 20 feet in the Kigali Genocide Museum's garden.

Second Last Batch of Kigali Pics

2009-06-22T15:40:00.004+02:00

The staple housing found in Rwanda. Although this may look sub-standard to a Western audience, brick housing is a luxury in poverty-prone areas and are an envious rarity to those who live alongside us in Kliptown in tin shacks and filthy environments.

A fire forever burning in the memory of the million deceased in the 1994 genocide at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

After a day at some historical museums and the King's huts in Southern Rwanda, we all dunked ourselves in the pool to cool off from the scorching heat and engaged in some fierce chicken fights.

Outside the King's main hut.

Men carrying potatoes on their head. They often travel very long distances and begin this training at an early age. Boys and girls, as young as 4, are made assets of the family at an early age; boys plough land and transport goods while girls cook, and clean, and sometimes produce traditional jewelry for sale.

More Rwandan Pics

2009-06-22T15:19:00.004+02:00

View of countryside. Rwanda is a jewel in the heart of Africa known as the land of a thousand hills. It's plush vegetation and heavenly climate make it a tourist favorite and cure even the darkest of psychological blues.

All the OLPC Corps teams at a technical training workshop at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

Me and my group members and an OLPC Corps Chicago member on the KIST balcony at lunch. From left to right: Cory, Olesia, John, and Anastasia (being deviant).

Tiffany and Maria from Berkeley University--they are deploying to Uganda (I think).

Coy (from Colorado and deploying in Rwanda) successfully taking apart an XO during yet another a technical workshop.

Select Pictures from Kigali

2009-06-22T14:55:00.003+02:00

Above is an image of a home in rural Rwanda from my window.

Traditional Rwandan dancers at the launch of the OLPC Center for Laptops and Learning in Kigali.

More dancers--this time ladies.

The view from my window next to the Hilltop Country Club. A very clean street, much like all others in the capital and the rest of this very proud country. At an unemployment rate of 60%, those who can find employment often work--doing what is much more rigorous than menial labor--cleaning the streets and clearing land ample for agriculture in a country that is still highly agrarian.

Me and my new OLPC Corps friends. Above me is Hassan and Adeola from Nigeria, next to me is a Corps member from Ethiopia or Eritrea, and others are unidentifiable, but only by me.

Me and Kliptown Child-Soweto Day 1

2009-06-19T14:01:00.003+02:00

Taken this morning. Second time 'Kigali Kids' soccer video encountered an error. Internet connection here is faster but also unstable and though I highly doubt any video uploads will appear on the blog at all for the entire trip, I will relentlessly continue to try because the content is exceptional. More pictures coming soon. Kids all around, inspiration abound.

Teaching Workshop with Kids, Soccer with Locals, AIDS Tests in Africa, Regional Politics, and Being Called ‘Mazunga’

2009-06-19T11:27:00.001+02:00

Writing in the hostel before supper about my day and the things that I’ve forgotten to write since day 1.

Today was productive. We went back to the school we visited on Friday where we taught the teachers how to work the laptops. We arrived at the school early today and had the children’s eyes flock to us at the speed of light. They were excited to see us and greeted us with ‘Good morning, visitors.’ The teacher told us that this was the first time the kids had used their computers in class and that she didn’t want to use the ‘tops until after the end of the lesson.

However, the two hours we were there proved to be effective and the teacher, to her surprise, saw the value of the laptops after we used the wireless-free Wikipedia application, where the students answered how many people reside in Kigali, who the president of Rwanda is, and even how the RPT (Rwandan Patriotic Front) stopped the genocide. As in every classroom setting, (ours was grade 6, although you can tell some of the kids were a lot older because they were either drop-outs or never went to school to begin with) there are slow kids, bright kids, and absolute geniuses. Kigali is no different. We walked into Social Studies class and despite initial obstacles of teaching the children computer skills, we used write to establish what the class knew about city trademarks and the wikipedia maps of Africa and Rwandan facts. By the end of the two hours, it was very rewarding seeing the kids using something so foreign to them and being so interactive with the teacher and eager to learn.

Apart from learning, the kids were mesmerized with my hair and origin. In their absolute glee, they kept calling me ‘mazunga,’ which, from conflicting translations, either means ‘white person’ or ‘rich person’. Either way, in their eyes, and relatively speaking, I was both.

Last week I went with a friend to the Kigali Hospital because she wanted an AIDS test after receiving some devastating news from home.

Continued June 18, 3 PM, from Nairobi Airport waiting for Jo’burg flight.

Although the experience was foreign to me until that moment and continues to be so because I was not the subject, it altered, moved, and surprised me; I got to witness the stigma associated with AIDS in Africa—from a Caucasian perspective. Getting to the hospital was easy; it is located near the US embassy and, like a puzzle piece out of place, despite its relative proximity to other institutional buildings, it is surrounded by concrete homes ranging from humble dwellings with people peeling banana stock, to big, five-room homes that probably house diplomats, to affordable apartment buildings that foreigners—such as the OLPC ‘core’ team—rent out. As soon as we stepped out of the car that took us to the hospital, we were starkly greeted with the shocking vision of people gathered around a woman lying on the floor on her side. Upon closer examination once we approached the entrance that her extended body blocked, we saw she was bleeding from the head, face, legs, and side. The cause was most probably not internal, as I saw cuts on her flesh resembling trauma that could have been a fall. After a few minutes, she was tended to in not a hurry; it was surprising.

Registering with the hospital was not hard, and despite the English barrier, most administrative officials at the hospital did speak in a communicable English tongue. Their records were all digitized, although when we went to pay for $120 USD for the pap smear, HIV test, and Heb B and C blood tests, we could not pay in credit; only cash. Logistically speaking, the waits were hours shorter than in any Western hospital I’ve ever been to and the entire bureaucratic system was very efficient. The hard part was the doctor and the stereotypes we encountered from angry and judging eyes.

To have AIDS in Africa is common. To treat AIDS in Africa with Western medicine is taboo. To be a foreigner getting an AIDS test in Africa—or at least Kigali—was traumatizing.

I followed her into the doctor’s office, an area where patients open the door to see the professional; our stay was interrupted more than once due to this flexible and informal practice, something that made me feel more comfortable than insulted. He spoke good English and his big belly welcomed us into this unknown, foreign sphere that decides the fate of many in a single day.

He made chit-chat, even asked me if I was Polish because after looking at my name, he realized it was similar to one he had seen a few hours earlier, a fellow Slav. Then he asked why my friend was there; at that point the skies shifted and we were treated like prisoners of our own imagination.

“You think you have AIDS,” he asked in an air of disbelief mixed with anger.

“I don’t know, I might,” she said, tears streaming down her face at the realization that she is expressing her deepest fear to a complete stranger. She later told me how offended she felt at the doctor’s demeanor towards her, as if she knew nothing about the epidemic and how dare she, a privileged white girl, think she could possibly have AIDS, a disease that kills so many of his patients each year, and mock the severity of the problem.

He then asked her to un-button her shirt and unzip her pants as his hand moved below her waist in examination for protruding elements under her skin, a move that exacerbated her anxiety.

“Stop crying,” he said, this time a little more sensitive to her genuine fear. “Does your vagina feel different than normal?”

She shook her head.

“Unusual discharge, stomach pains, headache?”

The answer was no, no, and no.

“Why do you want to know now,” he asked, “It is not imperative to find out immediately.”

“But in the West,” I shot back in her powerless defense, “We are told that early diagnosis is key—you should know immediately so you can go on anti-virals and so that you don’t infect anybody else.”

He looked at me as though I knew too much or I was just regurgitating propaganda—I couldn’t tell. “Are you prepared for the result, whether it be yes or no?”

“Yes,” she said after a simultaneously mental and verbal hesitation.

Go to the room down the hall, he directed, and you will get a test. Then go to the lab to get your pap smear.

And so we did.

The HIV test, which signifies a positive with two lines instead of one, consisted of a single prick of the finger. The results, a relieving single vertical line, were instantaneous. My intrusive peak into the strip beside hers proved also to be good news, but with millions of people on the continent infected and infecting their offspring, the sigh of relief was relative.

The pap smear was, surprisingly, a better—and the results equally as pleasing—experience, as two male gynecologists—a daunting reality before the calmness of one of their voice’s penetrated our fears—administered the test in haste, professionalism, and a sophisticated tool.

“I came here completely inexperienced with African men, and I walk away with not one but two, having seen me vagina,” she said in jest. We both laughed the experience away.

Rwandans are very friendly, talkative, and giving people. The sight of foreigners attracts them to act compassionately, either because they are naturally good people with big hearts or because they want to project a united Rwanda, a loving Rwanda, to the rest of the world. In my opinion, it is both. After the workshop with the children on Monday, I rallied troops—the Corps members who came from their school early (my team), the ones who were feeling sick and took the day off, and those who simply didn’t bother with the activity—to play soccer. Where would we play, we asked the receptionist. At the national stadium across the street, she replied. Yes, for free, yes, now. The walk there was hot. Upon arrival, we realized the stadium was being utilized for ‘Armed Forces, Sports, and Culture’ week—yes, we too saw the interdisciplinary nature of each separate department .

There would be a game played there after President Kagame, followed by a government Minister, spoke at length about one people, one country--a united Rwanda that wants regional integration with the rest of Africa. In addition to the numerous genocide memorials across the country and educating youth about the true history of the genocide, the country is actively pursuing reconciliation as a people, both in media, in education, and in the pursuit of justice (thinking of you, Pam). Although only 18 out of 81 people charged as the principal engineers of the genocide have been indicted in Arusha, the Truth Commission—‘Rwanda-Never Again’—and the transparency of the last two decades in the country, at least to me, seem to be the cohesive agents of unity needed to bring about healing and a lasting peace. But by an American NGO Director living in Rwanda, I am told Hutu’s and Tutsi’s still avoid each other and the tensions—this time from the efforts to bring about a systematic obliteration of a people—simmer beneath passionate and vehement speeches of national pride.

After getting a nut seller dressed in drabs to direct us to a vacant field and buying his good as a show of gratitude, we approached a group of 30 locals playing soccer with a decent ball that could use pumping. Whether it was the buoyancy of our newly purchased soccer ball (thanks Eli!) or the fact that we were courageous enough to find the hidden field solely for the love of the game that charmed the locals into letting us play, play we did. For three hours.

Impressed with the skill, health, athletic ability and warmth of the men and dripping in sweat and covered in red earth, we retreated back to the stadium to watch Uganda play against Rwanda, where I watched a young boy who was intrigued by me pick his bare foot with a safety pin. Although he was probably a well-behaved orphan who never stole and who was probably not a foot soldier for an orphan-keeper who, in many developing countries uses the innocence of children to distract foreigners and steal from them, I am shamed to admit that I kept checking my camera to be where I left it.

On Tuesday, we had another tech session at KIST, where we discussed access points (A.K.A. routers or linksys) and mesh network (the network that connects five XO’s without a server or access points) capabilities. But before that, we were told by one of the OLPC core members that after visiting some blogs and overhearing team discussions, he wanted to dispel rumors that the OLPC Corps are salesmen and ‘guinea pigs.’ Instead, he reassured, we were chosen because we are a talented and conscientious group of students who are here to network and help children who don’t have access to technology.

“You also aren’t here to sell these laptops to governments, although government participation is key for the sustainability of your individual projects,” he continued.

“But isn’t that exactly what Negroponte said we are here to do,” asked Ian, an evolutionary biologist by philosophy going to Uganda to work alongside his mother, the Director of an NGO.

“Well, yes, I guess,” the core member replied, a little flushed and speechless. “But that’s not the case.”

As you can imagine, we moved faster than lightning from that topic and onto OLPC News, the independent watchdog of the OLPC organization. We were told that we might be interested in posting our summer experiences—critical or not—on the official OLPC page so that our words are not ‘manipulated’ on the omnipresent world-wide-web.

“But we are still encouraged to post—uncensored—on our blogs, right,” I shouted from the audience. Of course, I was told.

Random facts: The clubs in Kigali are few, but the music seductively addictive, the locals beautiful and warm. I am repeatedly told (Skiiills) the best music and nightlife is in Nigeria, and I learn to believe it. Rwandan tea is heavenly. A mixture of whole cream and the local herbs, it is a light and comforting way to begin your day. There are no McDonalds’ in Rwanda; capitalism’s best trick has proved literally invisible in the heart of Africa. One of the Ghanaian team members arranged for a church service at our hostel after trying to convince, or fundamentally-indoctrinate in John’s words, John that there is a God, and his name is Jesus Christ.

One of the most special people I met in Kigali—all of whom it was emotional to leave this morning and last night—is Eddy Mintela, a bright Congolese man whose grandfather was President of then-Zaire and who wishes to follow in his footsteps to be a leader for the people. My hopeful instinct tells me that in 20 years, he will be the Democratic Republic of Congo’s head of state and in 40 years a living legend. Although never finished, we began a fascinating conversation about the history of the one of the most volatile and war-torn states on the continent, after which I learned of the C.I.A. inextricable link to the instability of the country and the region. By replacing one bad dictator (NAME) with a democratically-elected and charismatic (NAME) Kabila, who years after the coup turned into a shadow of his former self because of his nationalistic tendencies, the CIA was instrumental in leaving Kabila no choice but to give ‘a call to arms’ to the Congolese people in order to fend off troops from neighboring Uganda and Rwanda, who wanted to depose Kabila after he had them thrown from his country following his inauguration because he accused them of pillaging the country. As a result, thousands of children were trained as killers and whose bodies are today either scattered around rural Congo or drifting aimlessly in search of food and shelter, forever changed. Eddy’s groups XO project is aimed at improving the mental health of these children and turning them into future leaders. This is the same man who taught himself English and won the national essay competition on development; the same man who, despite his brilliance, cannot attend post secondary in the US or Canada because he the African educational system from which he graduated is so unaligned to Western standards that there is no possibility of a transfer of credits of course equivalency.

We have about one hour until we arrive in Jo’burg and the tangerine sunset out of my cabin window has just elicited a split-second lag in the response, “that’s beautiful.” My computer battery is at 16% and I don’t know when I’ll have internet connection to post. A few things that have went wrong in regards to our deployment: the teachers in Kliptown, or maybe Soweto as a whole, are on strike. We have had no formal communication with the school since three weeks ago and the instability of the consistency of life—and education—in Africa may jeopardize our plans, but only momentarily. More of a pressing concern at this point is the lack of accommodation for the rest of the trip in Soweto, including tonight. After offering us lodging at a local woman’s house, the Director of our NGO has abruptly pulled that invitation and instead suggested we stay at a hostel nearby. We will most likely surely rent a car tomorrow morning and look for apartments before spending the rest of our weekend talking deployment, making lesson plans, and hopefully visiting beasts at the renowned Kruger National Park, where two of my team-mates, Anastasia and John, plan to have a ceremonial wedding.

Coming to this unknown continent has enriched my mind and ignited my senses. This is a continent rich in history, littered with death heroes and stories on imperial conquest. It is a continent marred with prejudice yet cleansed with the resiliency and self-sustenance of the people. This is Africa.

Rwandan Genocide, Happy Boy with One Arm, Taxi Kidnappings, and Meeting the Head of State—A Week In the Life

2009-06-15T08:12:00.002+02:00

Written Sunday night

I’m going to try and sum up what has been happening since I arrived in Kigali. Side note-watching a riveting documentary right now on Burkina Faso at my new hostel, the Hilltop country club. As I type, everyone else is watching the Confed Cup, drinking beers.

So I arrived in Kigali exactly one week ago today. We arrived at dusk, but even then the hills, valleys, and mountains of this breathtakingly beautiful country were evident thanks to the lights that illuminated their peaks. I smell diesel and campfire, where locals burn charcoal to cook peeled corn and banana, a fruit Kigali’s eat more like a vegetable staple. But we (at the hostels) get beef.

As I type, the internet connection is very shoddy and I have difficulty accessing Gmail and YouTube; also had to hang up on a Skype conversation with my dad because of the instability of the wireless. This is to say that I am aware the video tease of the youths playing soccer was nothing more. Indeed, after over an hour and a half of waiting for the clip to download, the page froze. Trying to re-scale the image in Final Cut to a smaller resolution was also fruitless. It is a pity I cannot—yet—share the beauty of the OLPC project, the country, and the youth with you.

Other memorable aspects of the first night is the abundance of motos, or cheap dirt bikes that act as registered taxis and zip around the city with local human cargo, and as of late, many of the OLPC corps members. The price of the motos is 400 Franks instead of about 1,500 for a regular taxi, one of which had a driver that locked the doors to our taxi and began to drive off after we refused to give him the absurb 3,000 Franks he incoherently demanded. Luckily, my male group member John opened his door before the driver locked ours and we were able to leave the car in one piece. That happened 2 days ago. Excuse the lack of fluidity in this blog, as I’m trying to recall the events of the last 7 days from a discombobulated set of memories in my mind.

My room was comprised of a bed, a desk, and a bathroom. The bathroom has a regular toilet and an enclosed area comprised of a ridge to prevent water from spilling out on the floor from the showerhead, which only works when it wants.

For me, Sunday night ends around 12 30 AM when the dogs, wolves, or coyotes bark at the full moon and Monday morning begins around 3 AM when the rooster begins his relentless cock-a-doodle-doo.

Monday through Friday went by fast, as we were so busy working at the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology (KIST) on configuring our servers, taking apart our XO’s, getting to know each other, and eating up the words of Nicolas Negroponte, the CEO of OLPC who spoke during the gala events with government officials commemorating the Rwandan government for their multi-million dollar commitment to laptops. Since 2005, the Rwandan government has purchased millions of laptops and hope, by 2020, to achieve literally one laptop per child in the country, a strategic move aimed at jump-starting the Rwandan economy by making it IT, intelligence, and knowledge-centric and by investing in the densest human capital of the country: the children, a demographic that makes up an astonishing 66% of the country, that figure partly being aided by the thousands of orphaned children left behind after genocide. The events of were meant to celebrate the opening of the tentatively-named ‘Center for Laptops and Learning’ at the KIST and the continuation of OLPC in Rwanda.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame was there. I met him. He’s an articulate, serious, warm, and sophisticated man who was the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front that fought the Rwandan military death squad during the civil warm in 1990-1994 before the April genocide.

After the event, we watched a traditional dance and some of use spoke candidly and under the influence about the ‘constructivist’ OLPC philosophy that Negroponte so fervently preached: give each child a laptop so they can teach themselves how to learn, revolutionize the way learning is taught. Although we know we are lucky to be given such a tremendous opportunity, we also realize that we are a trial, a group of guinea pigs, the workers who teach after Negroponte preaches that education in Africa—and the rest of the developing world—is fundamentally flawed. Despite the colonial parallel, this program is miraculous. Free laptops to children in rural areas and a focus on acquiring internet allows means that students work with local NGO’s to establish electricity and internet connectivity in these areas, as well as work on basic needs such as plumbing and irrigation. In some small and are developing Africa.

A few days ago I went with other students to a school here in Africa that has had laptops for a year but has had little success in integrating them into the school system. We went as a trial run for our individual country deployments and also to re-train the teachers with the laptops so they can use them in class. This is challenging and rewarding. Upon arrival, I noticed the blackboards were full of English-language lessons, from how to be a disciplined brother or sister to how to protect the environment, to paying taxes as a good citizen. The schools introduced English only last year from the Ikinirwandan ethnic tongue (the only in the country—a lonely statistic in the rest of the continent) and French, which the teachers speak fluently (Belgium colonized the country after Germany until independence in 1961) but the children do not. We had to speak very slowly.

After the workshop, where I taught the teachers, aged 22-46, how to use the mesh network, record and video functions, and chat, I couldn’t resist playing ball with the kids outside, who were so sweet and welcoming, despite our conversation being lost in translation. That is the video I am still trying to upload. One of the children wh was running around with a smile from ear to ear had no arm. I didn’t ask. Another local passing by on his bike with donuts spoke to me in broken English. He had to peddle 5 more hours to his destination. These people are so resilient.

Yesterday we went to a few museums, the exiled King’s hut, and to a restaurant where we ate traditional food and played chicken fights in the swimming pool after a Ghanaian was the first to jump in. It was a lot of fun. During the drive, we got to see rural Rwanda, a country with a 60% unemployment rate, more people on the street than in cars, women carrying products on their heads, and very traditional clothes still adorning people who are most likely very poor. Aesthetically, the country is marvelous and plush, the people warm and welcoming.

Today was the genocide museum in Kigali and a ride by Hotel Rwanda, which is the hotel that the Hollywood blockbuster was made in honor of, but doesn’t actually go by that name. The museum experience was so evocative. Commemorating the one million Tutsi Rwandans and moderate Hutu’s who were slashed, murdered, raped, and piled atop each other in ditches and mass graves like in Nazi Germany, the museum sits atop graves of a quarter million of those people, surrounded by a garden so beautiful and vivacious that it’s hard to imagine how many skulls lie beneath.

There was a childrens room that had about 60 case studies of infants and children who were killed during the genocide. That, along with the bones room, was one of the most difficult parts of the museum tour because it had the child’s favorite food, most prominent characteristic, age, and cause of death, which acted as a gruesome juxtaposition to the sweet facts.

The rest of the museum was broken up into subsections of the history of Rwanda, how the Belgians separated the Tuti and Hutu and created the legacy of hate, segregation, and ethnic tensions in the country beginning in the 1920’s. Many of the other examples we saw of genocide in that museum (such as the Germans in the last part of the 19^th century in Namibia) were also a consequence of ‘the white man.’ The most frustrating part was obviously the West’s complicity with evil: the Rwandan genocide. France’s involvement of supplying arms and training to the radical Rwandan militias was also appalling. But most of all, the blatant ignorance of a chilling warning cable sent to the UN by Canada’s UN armed forces General Romeo Dellaire with knowledge of the genocide thanks to an informant days before the atrocities is most despicable. He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize of his compassion for humanity and the psychological torment he now suffers because of his 'responsibility to protect'. Seeing a memorandum of the Cambodian, Yugoslav, and as recently as Rwandan genocides was evidence to the fact that all people came behave like animals, and even worse; what kind of animal species tries to obliterate their own race? It is also depressing that despite all the ‘Never Agains’ uttered by Kofi Annan and Madeline Albright, a genocide is happening right now in Darfur, with only recently the name of the Sudanese President being cited for crimes of genocide. Until very recently, Sudan continued to hold a deceptive and offensive seat in the UN.

Moments of goodness came with moderate Hutu’s who sheltered as many as 100 Tutsis from slaughter and the brave and resilient Paul Kagame.

It is now Monday morning. Half of the Africans on the corps team have malaria and combat fever and chills for days on end.

The group of students from all over the world—Quebec, US, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Namibia, Tanzania, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Europe, Madagascar—is phenomenal and the people I've met along the way, Rwandan and other--you know who you are--are remarkable and have left an everlasting tattoo on my persona. Thank-you. This is just the beginning.

Today I go to teach the kids. Will write more tomorrow.

What to Expect when You're Expecting (a Blog Post)

2009-06-12T16:32:00.008+02:00

Happy Friday.

Just cracked the first Primus Rwandan beer in the last few days. Ahhh.

T.I.A.

I don't get internet connection at my hostel. I only have internet for a half hour in the morning (when we get breakfast at the other hostel where there is wireless internet, which, aside from being very slow, has only two working power strips) and at supper time. So even if you get to be one of the lucky two to use, the connection speed is caterpillar-like and uploading pictures and video is nearly impossible. With that said, I have collected a lot of amazing videos and pics that I'd obviously love to share BEFORE I get back to Boston, lol.

With that said, this is what you should expect in the next few weeks: written post everyday (written on word without internet connection and then pasted into blog once we get wireless), and hopefully, maybe, probably, pictures every week. Once we get to Soweto, the internet situation should be better, the security situation worse; good substitute, right? So, at the end of my deployment, or when I have 67 hours of energy to spare uploading all of the best pics and video I've taken (I have a FliP camera that saves in .mp4 instead of .avi so must find converter first), you will visually witness the beauty, diversity, and reality that is Kigali and South Africa.

I also have a YouTube account now (TheOle1984), where you can find all my video. In order to try to please the consumer, I picked the most recent and most emotive video to publish first (but hopefully not last). This is a short video of eight 6-11 year old boys that were playing soccer with a ball made of spun together plastic bags in an extremely uneven and potholed compact earth outside of a school in Kigali, Rwanda. And they were happy. Very few of them spoke English, and the ones that did were shy. Yet, despite that fact, I was able to have the boys choose captains and then teams, after which we played ball. One of the boys--the one who spoke English the best--managed to be outstanding in a phenomenal group of soccer talent.

They were even sweeter and more content than I had imagined upon approaching them, officially making my trip thus far. That was my favorite part of the day, the rest of which was spent teaching teachers how to use the XO, a machine they've had access to for a year but have not used because of the difficulty of integrating the laptops into their lesson plan and a bad experience with porn-surfing while connected to the internet at the nearby Kigali International Airport. Hence, the laptops have been essentially under-utilized and ignored.

More on that later. This 45 second clip takes 1 hour and 45 minutes to download. 12 minutes left!

T.I.A.

Because this is taking so long, it may be the only sampling ya'll will get, other than my words, so enjoy this. I will paste in exactly one hour and 12 minutes unless the file is not compatible with YouTube, at which point I will erupt.

T.I.A.

This is Africa (T.I.A.)

2009-06-12T08:29:00.001+02:00

Written Thurs, June 11, 8 AM—On bus full of OLPC group members heading to the KIST (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology) for another IT seminar. Driving through the heart (but not the downtown) of this unbelievable city with a dark and unassuming history.

I’m alive and well. Thanks for everyone’s patience and support. It’s been a long few days here in Kigali with, ironically, very little Internet access. I want to thank everyone who has held me in their prayers over the last few very difficult days—both in regards to Africa and in regards to Edmonton. We can only do this as a family, together, with justice, love—and forgiveness. From now on, though, I will not mention anything about the incident, other than to say that I am deeply heartbroken and amiss. This has changed me forever but the value of life has not only been preserved, it has been strengthened. Please smile a little longer today.

Africa. Kigali. Rwanda. Beauty. Despair. Compassion. Change. Development. These are all simultaneously occurring realities in this country. But before that, let’s talk logistics.

The 15-hour flight from Boston to Jo’burg was turbulent. I fear flying, although at this point I don’t know exactly how much I fear. It was a long flight, throughout the night, with decent food but little shut-eye. There were many interesting people on the flight: some Americans who were on a medical mission going to Durban, others who were Caucasian South Africans going back to SA, and other Indian SA citizens (when the Brits colonized India, they sent laborers to SA, their other lucrative colony. As a result, Indians are a significant minority in South Africa and have mated with both whites and blacks to create a sort of mestizo race of people living in the country, wealthier and usually higher in rank than the majority of SA-in blacks.) Others on board were there either to watch or play in what is most likely a preliminary round of matches for the SA 2010 World Cup, known as the Confederation Cup. It’s held in Jo’burg and surrounding area from June 14-24. There are some all-star players arriving for the matches, and I’ll be sure to take pics when I watch a match in the coming week. I leave here on the 18^th and my deployment begins the day after for two months in Soweto.

We landed in Jo’burg right on time. Initial aerial view of the city was reminiscent of Edmonton: hills, flatlands, agricultural land. Once in the Jo’burg airport, we got our first taste of SA. The airport is so beautiful—very vast and modern. Maegan, you will appreciate the aesthetic simplicity and conservation of the design of the air conditioners: they protruded from the pillars in the airport like bubbles. I don’t have a picture, though. Sorry love.

We arrived at the Jo’burg airport on the 6^th, and, my, oh my, what a luxurious place. We were going to stay at the InterContinental (practically physically attached to the airport) but it was close to 3,000 Rand (SA currency, approx. 8:1 Rand to American conversion) per night for one room, to be shared among my two group members, the couple John and Anastasia. We instead took a shuttle to the Sun Sunrise hotel that was equally prestigious (far from searching for luxury, we were very tired and didn’t want to travel far—esp. not into the crime-ridden city center—because we had a flight to catch to Kigali through Nairobi the next afternoon). Needless to say, the shower was nice, the bed plush, and the food plentiful and Western. Initial reactions of SA-ans is warm, yet we were there for such a short time I cannot truly say. The airport had a Muslim prayer room in it and people seemed to look less exhausted than Americans. God knows what many of the have been through, though. I want to move ahead in the blog so very badly but there is so much to say that I will keep it in order…and speed it up.

I read the English-language newspaper at breakfast and the Confed Cup was all over the news; Also news of ANC rivalry with another political party or a branch of the bureaucracy. The newspaper is wider than Western papers. I miss the newspaper—both in anticipation of it’s possible demise and the literal lack of having read anything recent in the last little while, other than Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom,’ which is a fascinating and simple read.

The flight was from Jo’burg to Nairobi was very smooth and we were fed multiple times as well as offered unlimited alcohol, something in which I did not indulge—until Nairobi, where I tasted my first African style lager; T’was nice.

I am continuing to write now but I want to get something up on the blog so stay tuned.

Last American Post

2009-06-04T07:37:00.006+02:00

Hi.

My parents are back from Australia today; SO good to see them. My wisdom teeth--or the gap where they used to exist, shall I say--don't hurt that bad anymore. Pam got me 'Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent' by Eduardo Galeano today. She said it was good despite his being a liberal. Oh, commies, how I love thee. Things coming together. Some checklist items I thought I'd share.

Polio shot? Check

Yellow Fever for Rwanda shot? Check

Hep A shot? Check

Meningitis shot? Check

Typhoid shot? Check

One more I don't remember? Check

Oxycodone oral ingestibles for pain? Check

Extra Strength Tylenol? Check

Malaria, Amodium, and Cypro orals? Check

Not one but TWO cans of pepper spray? CH-check

Head on straight? Check check check.

And now....why I wanted to be a part of OLPC:

This opportunity spoke to me like writing on the wall.

To be an agent of change within myself and others around me seemed too good to be true. To get a stipend while doing it was even better. To go to a continent plagued with history and scars seemed like a test--a test of time, character, and strength. I think we all wanted to feel a little more alive. For me, personally, I am going to learn so much when I go there, that to sit here and write some pseudo intellectual reflective piece on why I wanted to be a part of the project would be pure lies and ego. So there. I am excited. I am eager. I am inexperienced--in technology, rigorous travel in a developing continent, and in the art of teaching. But I am a survivor and I know how to listen. I am going to give myself and my mind wholly to this project and those kids, and I am going to be a changed person because of it. Anything that allows me this opportunity to step outside of my skin in this way must be grasped, held, embraced, and analyzed. For this I am grateful to everyone responsible for the OLPC mission.

Some very memorable quotes from some very special people in my life about this trip:

"Nicolas Negroponte has brought the price of computers and education down so much--that enough warrants him the Nobel Prize, in my opinion." Larry Webber on Nic Negroponte.

"What, do you want to live your life in a closet forever and just do the motions? So do it--you'll be joined by a million other people who are waiting to die." Nancy on being afraid of SA.

"Pepper spray? You need an AK." A drunk friend.

"When I first heard about this trip I was terrified, but the more I think about it, the more proud of you I am." My brother.

Going to bed. Will make next post in Kigali, in about 3 days, after about 40 hours of flight and in-airport sleep.

1 day until the beginning of an unforgettable summer.

Wow. So Soon.

2009-06-03T07:46:00.002+02:00

3 days.

three.

two plus

one

days.

Ps. That's supposed to be a visual three. Got two wisdom teeth pulled today. Must sleep. Tomorrow's post will focus on why I decided to invest in this project and what drew me to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to its mission.

These Questions Should Have Been Asked Long Ago--Welcome to the Life of an OLPC Non-Techie!

2009-06-03T07:42:00.003+02:00

--first of all, what is the mesh network? that allows all the XO users to have access to information on each and every computer, right?

-second, since the XO has no hard drive, the storage capacity is on the SERVER (which is the large server with 1GhZ processor, right?) and 1 gig USB's, although we won't be purchasing those for each student because we have the server. how many gigs can the server store?

-moreover, for fully simultaneous info sharing between 100 computers, we are told to get 2 access points (AP's) and one server, meaning the mesh can handle 30 XO's, the AP's can handle another 30 each, and the server can only handle 10? is this right?

-also, our NGO already has a server from previous deployments, and because of this, they already have 300 XO's, meaning another server (for more storage capacity) would be nice. can we still take the server that is going to be allotted to our team in Kigali knowing there is already one at the NGO?

-these access points--should we purchase them in the US? what are the costs, what do they look like, what properties should they have, ect?

-some more stupid questions: what does the generator do? it charges the laptops, right? how much petrol do we need for 2 months of charging? do the chargers work in SA? if not, where could we purchase *converters* and how costly would these be, and do we need EU or US or African ones? are these converters the same as the plug in/outlet adapters, or are they entirely different? if so, what are those?

-also, where can we purchase power adapters and power strips, and how many of each do we need? these are for charging mass amounts of laptops at one time, right?

-our NGO already has internet...this means they have the vsat modem, too, and we don't need to purchase it, right?

-it is up to us to buy solar batteries, right? how much are they and where can they be purchased?

-last but not least, where do we purchase the 2 network cards for the server?

JFK Award Winner

2009-06-01T05:40:00.004+02:00

Been A Minute

2009-05-30T02:12:00.006+02:00

Yello there.

Been busy writing and filming for the Reporter at school for commencement week, so haven't had much time--or info--pertinent to S.A. to post.

Really tired. Exhausted. Graduated today.

Here is a pic of what the newest OS (operating system) for the XO looks like on the computer screen, with all the applications surrounding, in a circle, the X that is meant to represent the one laptop per child.

7 days.

More--much more--to come on Monday.

2009-05-25T02:22:00.002+02:00

group didnt get together today as anticipated. disappointing. hoping tomorrow brings more organization and luck. should have a lot to post then.

12 days.

2009-05-24T01:03:00.001+02:00

super excited. going to miss my parents immensely. but the world is mine. and it awaits.

13 days.

2009-05-22T01:50:00.002+02:00

kind of obsessed with posting. nothing new today. talking to bryan stuart from olpc now. behind--WAY behind--on laptop planning and incorporating citizen journalism and HIV/AIDS prevention--the very mission that landed us on a plane to jo'burg--into the laptop KYP curriculum.

been focusing on security and accommodations and the practicality of living in soweto up to now. realize that's not enough. after all, we are going there for a reason.

14 days. lol. guess i was one day ahead yesterday. my. bad.

Think they'll be this happy when I arrive? You're right, WAY happier!

2009-05-21T02:26:00.002+02:00

Tick, Tock

2009-05-21T00:21:00.003+02:00

its a waiting game at this point. everything is ready to go. will meet with group on sunday to talk about plan, back-up plan, and a back-up plan to that back-up plan. we are going to the slum of soweto. many people try to paint the situation with pretty colors, but the reality is not luxurious. however, if we stay on track, go in confident, and do our job--all the while making sure to compensate locals and contribute to the community--we'll be fine. also important to be in a tight knit community where people will stand up for us and their word will go a long way. despite the 1:2 HIV/AIDS infection rate in kliptown and a 60% unemployment rate, one thing kliptown is, is deep-rooted. the oldest settlement in soweto at an inception year of 1903, kliptown has 'soul'. we are staying with a respected woman in her home.

spoke to our ngo director today and his voice and confidence in us shone through the skype wire. he was very reassuring and i know we are in good hands.

still need to go over detailed lesson plans and got the go ahead from director to personally incorporate AIDS prevention into the 2 month stay. "it would be a shame if you didnt," he said. good man.

finished compiling thorough contact list today; is comprised of soweto, s.a., and north american sources. people make this world go 'round.

a special thanks to everyone who has been so warm and relentless in opening their lives and sometimes homes to a woman and a group they don't even know. couldn't have done this without you all. would post your info but i fugure you'd hate that.

14 days.

2009-05-20T06:24:00.003+02:00

flights booked. bos to atl to joburg. then joburg nairobi kigali. kigali nairobi, joburb. then SOWETO. talked to good people today. excited and confident. talking to south african developmental fund tom and some other people. grammar, spelling, and punctuation out the window as of now. leave june 5. 15 days.

2009-05-19T05:21:00.008+02:00

Here is a pic of the darlings I'll be kissing on the cheek in the coming weeks. To find out more about these preciosos, hit up the Kliptown Youth Program's website.

Might not stay in Soweto anymore. Many 'maybes' currently floating in the crowded stratosphere above my consciousness. Should be booking tickets tomorrow barring we find a good flight from Kigali to Jo'burg. Have good contacts in Jo'burg; people have been kind with words of wisdom and love.

Ciao

2009-05-19T00:05:00.003+02:00

Booking flights as I type. Leave June 5th, 10 days shy of my 25th birthday and get into Jo'burg on the 6th, departing the next day for Kigali. Rwanda Air has monopoly on outgoing flights, so it's hard to book with them after the conference on the 17th of June, especially because the other OLPC S.A. teams have booked far in advance.

Funding has been denied by UMass Boston. We are told to rent a car once in Kliptown. Might scrap our agreement with Box.com to allow for an emergency monetary fund. Things getting serious.

Until the next post.

XO Pics

2009-05-18T01:31:00.002+02:00

This is me and my XO, Ntombi. According to the OLPC website, the XO is "a small machine with a big mission. The XO is a potent learning tool designed and built especially for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments. It’s about the size of a small textbook. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that is readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. It’s extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, and fun."

2009-05-17T21:31:00.002+02:00

Today I begin my foray into digital media and foreign correspondence. Join me as I document the trip of a lifetime into South Africa's most historic terrain, Soweto, where I will live and work for the next two months distributing XO laptops to children as part of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).