Mzansi Toujours

After three months in South Africa, I am at a loss on how to best summarize my experience, what I’ve learned, and what has “stuck.” Perhaps more than anything else is the way that South Africa continues to defy categorical explanations. It is an incredibly old country; many claim that the San Bushmen living in the area are in fact the oldest form of Homo sapiens to walk the planet. Afrikaans and British history date all the way back to the 17th century. Yet, South Africa as we know it today is among the youngest nations in the world: a new, free South Africa has only been in place since 1994 at the end of the Apartheid regime. It faces the political and economic challenges of a country still trying to assure its footing in the socio-environment of a well-established, richly historical territory.

As I have explained in previous entries, South Africa lies at the threshold of development while also facing the extreme challenges of developing countries. Communities are grossly unequal from one to the next, and the spillover effects alter the underlying nature of all these communities. An entrenched white class of privilege lingers from the Apartheid era but a rising Black elite controls the reigns of political power. Affirmative action in employment strives to overturn deeply rooted racial inequalities by disadvantaging those historically advantaged.

The face of South African racial issues is so often painted in Black and White to the outside world, but the real dynamics are much more complicated than that. Cape Town’s coloured community is actually the majority group in the region, and their South African history also dates back centuries on the continent. In addition to the multiple ethnic distinctions among South African blacks, even Whites divide into Afrikaans and British camps. The mix of Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, Indians, British, Cape Malay, Ndabele, ex-pats, and refugees truly makes South Africa a rainbow nation with an insatiably pluralistic national identity.

Much like the United States, South Africa is a nation characterized by the juxtaposition of fervent conservatism and progressive liberalism. The country’s conservatism dates back to the separatist ideology of Apartheid but flourishes today with the enormous population of evangelical Christians. In more rural areas ethnic groups cling to age-old values. South Africa’s constitution, on the other hand, is one of the most progressive Constitution’s in the entire world. Minority groups of all shape, size, and form receive both legal protection and advocacy. South Africa is the only African state, for instance, which guarantees homosexuals complete legal protection. Still masses of the population are anti-Gay. Gay pride parades pass through downtown Cape Town while lesbians are murdered in townships and raped in order to “turn them straight.” The Constitution guarantees all individuals the right to access education, clean water, and housing. In praxis there are substantial gaps between these proclaimed rights and achieved ones, however. Many live their lives without proper housing and education.

To answer the question: “What is South Africa?” or even “What is South Africa like?” thus proves nearly impossible. It is a nation of nuance, diversity, history, and future. Who knows where South Africa will be in the next century? Their open door policy brings in thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, students, and laborers. From my own experience working at the Cape Town Refugee Centre I have witnessed first hand the rapidly changing dynamic of the Western Cape. It is not unlike New York City at the turn of the 20th century, I thought one day. People are pouring into the region and literally constructing its future socio-scape. Look how much the United States has changed over the past century and you can imagine what might be in store for South Africa. Adding 21st century globalization to the equation only further complicates the matter.

“Development” Boundaries and the Western Gaze

Note: This entry was originally written in April 2010.

Because South Africa cannot be neatly categorized as a “developed” country nor a “developing country,” its development-related challenges take on a completely different shape than both “First” and “Third” World counterparts. Take the Western Cape region as a case and point. The Cape Town city bowl, most of the Southern Suburbs, and other surrounding vicinity are considered to be “developed.” The City Bowl may not look like Athlone or Wynberg in terms of socio-economic status, but all these areas are composed of permanent infrastructure: housing, streets, shops, and schools. Gugulethu, Philippi, Mitchell’s Plain, Samora, Nyanga, Langa, and the numerous other townships that dot the area are “undeveloped” and “semi-developed” regions (“informal settlements” according to the preferred South African political discourse). Naturally, development initiatives focus on these township areas as opposed to those other areas, which are comparatively well off. It is not uncommon for policies, mentalities, and human beings to segregate these socio-spaces in a sort of de facto lingering apartheid. Worlds run parallel, “developed” and “undeveloped,” within one country.

Their geographic proximity and intertwined political reality limits this parallelism, however, particularly in light of the New South Africa. Humans cross development boundaries incessantly, even several times during a single trajectory. Increased interaction can sow more business opportunity and mutual cooperation, but it also can also create conflict and resentment. The fissures burden “developed” areas with many problematic spillover effects usually characteristic of more “underdeveloped” areas, while “underdeveloped” areas have access to additional infrastructure within the span of a brief commute.

One major side effect that plagues “developed” areas is a high crime rate. The lack of socio-economic opportunities in neighbouring areas leaves individuals struggling to make a living, and for those that choose illegal means to do so; the developed areas are clear, accessible, and profitable targets. Cape Town is definitely a hotbed of petty crime. Eight different Connect-123 interns have been mugged since arrival, albeit non-violently, but thieved nonetheless. Cape Town’s big, colourful buildings and trendy cafés give the illusion of developed security, but they are in fact penetrable. “Development” literally bumps up against “underdevelopment,” leaving “developed” areas prone to the same public security concerns as “underdeveloped ones.” Yesterday, another intern’s laptop was stolen right out from in front of her while she worked at a chic café’s sidewalk-front countertop. The illusion of development oft leaves one feeling secure while in fact security remains an underlying risk. Proverbial “underdevelopment” reached right over the weak, permeable boundaries between these domains and drove this point into the ground.

On the flip side of these boundary crossings is my own experience as foreign white development worker. I live in the developed City Bowl area of Cape Town but commute to work each day to a semi-developed lower middle class suburb. As I traverse the path from the Wynberg train station to my work building, I pass through an enormous, informal marketplace. There is an especially high proportion of foreigners among the vendors and the overall feel of the area is quite exotic. I can’t help to feel as I pass through that my own presence constitutes another boundary crossing and my Western gaze an enacted visualization of power relations. Met eye contact has often returned a “what do you want?” sort of look in response, and a few times I have even been harassed with a “hey, whitie!” provocation. Hop on the train and you’re again in another world. I suppose that’s South Africa for you.

Which abuse???

Note: This was originally written April 2010. I am updating missed entries into this blog.

There have recently been quite a few refugee women coming into the CTRC office complaining of serious domestic abuse. Our NGO’s executive director normally intervenes immediately in each of these cases. All of the most recent claims have come from Rwandan and Eastern Congolese women, however, and they have all been Kiswahili speakers. For this reason I have played a fairly significant role in these cases. After our director completed the initial interviews, she gave me the clients’ files so that I might hear out their Swahili-based narratives. This has no doubt proved a serious challenge on a number of levels.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, my ability to listen to holistic Swahili narratives and follow all the details is not yet 100% there. I have struggled to understand all the details of clients’ stories, though for the most part have been able to understand the story itself. Since the matters at concern relate to the serious accusation of domestic abuse, my lack of acquired details worried me quite a bit. I developed a two-prong coping mechanism in order to perform this auditory duty to the best of my ability. Firstly, I ask each domestic abuse client to recount her story as slowly and carefully as possible. Slowing down the speed of Swahili helps me to pick up more words than I might at a normal flow. Secondly, I ask far more questions than I would otherwise. This ensures that I am accurately understanding who did what, where, why and in what way.

A second major challenge has been the gender dynamic. I’ve felt as though domestically abused women seem rather uncomfortable sharing the details of their abuse with a young, white, man. The director of our NGO warned me about this ahead of time, explaining that the countries from which many of these women hail stigmatize talking about such marital issues with someone of the opposite sex. Even in the face of excessively violent abuse, wives and girlfriends often exhibit a culturally bound, paradoxically loyal allegiance to their husbands and boyfriends. Talking about such personal issues with a different member of the opposite sex is taboo.

As in many other domains of my work, there also looms the ever-present specter of resettlement claims. It is not unheard of for wives to put themselves in situations where they might be abused so that they can manipulate the injuries as political capital. That is not to say that domestic abuse in any way, shape, or form is, or should, ever be tolerated. It is rather, as my director explained to me, the way in which some of these women appear to “cry wolf” for which we as refugee development workers must be wary. If a woman claims she is being abused, then we immediately step in and ask her if she has gone to the police. She should rightfully escape a violent private sphere, and it is our job at the CTRC to ensure that any immediate assistance we have available be issued. We offer to take the-woman-in-question to an available shelter, phone the necessary legal authorities, and provide trauma relief therapy references as deemed necessary.

I realized that there is hence an enormous gap between social issues for [South African] citizens and for refugees. Whenever a refugee becomes involved with a particular social issue; be it lack of work, domestic abuse, a broken law, a housing crunch, or a need for education; the entire social schema becomes overtly politicized. Refugees often fall between the cracks of the South African justice and social service systems; jurisdiction over their actions is frustratingly fuzzy. Some blame domestic abuses in refugee households on “backwards” foreign cultures. The results of said cases cause questions of resettlement, [re-]integration, and repatriation to reappear at the forefront of socio-consciousness. One must transcend the matter at hand to evaluate what is really at play and what is really at stake. A case of domestic abuse is never just a case of domestic abuse. The challenge lies in remembering that it is, at the same time, domestic abuse, which must be accounted for.

Race and Religion: A Congolese Church Revival

[NB: I wish that I had to pictures to post for this entry, but I don't. I do have two videos, but I'm not sure how to upload those yet. Maybe when I get back stateside I can figure it out.]

A Congolese co-intern invited me to attend a revival-type event at her Church a few weeks ago. Although I had little to no idea what exactly this would entail, I decided to go and find out! The event was to take place Thursday through Sunday evening, but I was assured that I only needed to go to one of these days, so I headed out on Sunday evening, the closing night. My colleague explained that the event was to mark the tenth anniversary of the Church and had a guest preacher who would be exploring the theme: Un Futur Glorieux (A Glorious Future). None of the other interns had agreed to go, so I took a deep breath and hopped into a taxi all by myself.

When I arrived in an unnervingly empty Woodstock across from the appropriately designated landmark, I have to admit that I had second thoughts about even trying to attend. There was no “Church” anywhere in sight (not a Church as I knew it, anyways). I noticed an advertisement sign for the event on a deserted corner building and asked a dodgy passerby if he knew anything of it. He shrugged, so I wandered a bit farther by. About 1.5 blocks off the main road (less-than-coincidentally named Main Road) I found a nicely dressed man and woman handing out pamphlets by the front door, so I approached them. They shot me confused looks but smiled and welcomed me inside as I explained that I was looking for Un Futur Glorieux. Another man immediately ushered me upstairs to the main room, all the while asking me if I was a) invited b) a preacher. Yes, I was invited, but the preacher comment caught me off guard. I suppose that is probably the bulk of White visitors the Church receives, visiting preachers on specific missions. As I entered the main room, there were only about 10 parishioners scattered across the room. It was around 5:50 pm (the event was set to start at 5:00 pm) so I immediately felt even more awkward. Luckily, I spotted my co-intern/friend Princia, who had invited me. She looked almost as shocked to see me as did the door-people but of course was delighted that I had made it and introduced me to her cousins / small entourage.

The stage consisted of a few musical instruments, a wandering preacher, room for excess choir members, and a garishly blinding stage light. The preacher was calling out group prayers impromptu and screaming passionately about Jesus; in both French and Lingala; with a randomly evoked, piercingly high-pitch. Princia asked one of the ushers to inform the preacher to only preach in French since on my behalf so that I could understand what he was saying. What endearing hospitality! This period of the service was apparently a long, warm-up, introductory session. People continued to fill into the room over the next hour in spite of my perceived hour tardiness. Africa-time strikes again, indeed! Princia left my side suddenly, and the next thing I knew she was on stage singing with the choir. I felt a bit uncomfortable when she first left but was also delighted to hear her sing for her congregation. After about an hour of this introductory prayer and intermixed song, the room was bustling: full to the brim.

I turned around to examine the now-full Church chamber. For the first time in my life, I was, quite literally, the only White person in attendance. Perhaps this feeling, more than any other experience at this Church revival, is why the event felt so critical in my South African journey. I have been in the minority many times before, especially working here in South Africa. Never before have I been the only White person at all, however; that is a completely different feeling. At first it was refreshingly invigorating. Having grown up in Upper-Middle Class White Suburbia, I have never really been able to experience this sensation of being in the minority. So much of my academic formation has traversed critical theory to critical theory referring to diverse socio-cultural communities, and now I was planted right in the middle! I couldn’t help to smile, feeling like I was really experiencing something “different,” something inaccessible at home. Of course one might go into downtown Detroit and experience something racially comparable, but I was moreover at a Congolese Church. All the individuals around me were also foreigners in South Africa; yet they had formed a small Diaspora community amongst themselves where they could continue on their own religious, cultural traditions in this hidden, urban corner of Cape Town.

My second initial sensation was that I was the conspicuous object of a gaze. I stood out. If I wasn’t a preacher, after all, what was I doing in that environment? Who invited me? Why wasn’t I attending my “own” Church? I am sure that a significant degree of this sentiment was my own consciousness. I noticed, I felt, that I stood out in this environment and therefore figured everyone else must also be taking note of this. Perhaps this is an egocentric sentiment in the first place and I was just feeling hypersensitive. It probably didn’t help that I was seated towards the front section, either. All those eyes were already moving forward in my direction; what might those individuals be thinking about me?

My third progressive feeling of being in the racial minority situated myself in the context of my religious environment. In the eyes of God, everyone [in that congregation] is considered to be brothers and sisters. I wondered, then, how that shaped the thoughts of all the Congolese parishioners. Maybe I was especially accepted at that time and in that place because I was sharing in worship with them. If I were to be attending a more secular event, of the same racial make-up, would that significantly alter how I was being perceived and treated? I know from my own viewpoint that it would affect how comfortable I felt. As terrible as it sounds, I couldn’t help but to also consider in the back of my mind my own personal security. Because I was such a visible target, I wondered if anyone might try to take advantage of me. I felt at points as if Christian dogma itself were protecting me. After a bit of time, however, I felt mostly at ease.

The style of worship at this event was vastly different than what I am used to. Parishioners were shouting out blessings, dancing joyfully, and speaking in tongues. Some were rocking back and forth and shedding tears. I tried to do my best to fit in to this sort of worship environment, but having been raised Catholic, my comfort zone reflects a quiet, orderly mass. At one point a band took the stage, and the singers simultaneously danced out the melodies replete with hip jostles, limbos, and fancy footwork. I found myself overcome with their energy and almost at once joined in. The guest preacher started talking perhaps 2.5 hours already into the event. He, too, hailed originally from the Congo, but he currently operates numerous Churches around South Africa. An English interpreter also came onto the stage to help interpret for other South African guests, and I found his interpretations nearly impeccable. I was so impressed, not only with his word choice, but with his effectiveness in conveying the original connotations and sentiments associated with the original speech. I felt a bit lost in the Lingala but otherwise completely understood.

The original event was supposed to last from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. I arrived at 5:50 p.m. to a nearly empty congregation and stayed until the end of the sermon just after 11:00 p.m. Africa time par excellence. My colleague, Princia, helped me to carpool back to Cape Town. This experience definitely expanded my comfort zone ten-fold. Not only did I get to feel what it is like to be a true “outsider” in a fascinating cultural community, but I was also able to observe many Congolese refugees in an ever-so-crucial Diasporic institution.

English, Français, na Kiswahili Linguistic Literacy

Although my job has consistently involved working approximately 50% of the time in French, I have recently noted a sudden surge of Swahili-work. As a result I now feel as though I am hovering three separate working mentalities. English is, of course, my primary means to communicate and carry out work responsibilities. It’s my native language, so instantly adapting to, explaining, and responding to client concerns / requests comes most naturally. Most refugees do not speak English as a native language, even if they have achieved near mastery (as have many Zimbabweans) so I have an automatic upper hand. I am linguistically limber enough to respond without concerted mental efforts to carefully filter my language. My work environment is obviously also in English, though curiously there are no native English speakers among the staff. All either speak Afrikaans or Xhosa as a primary language at home.

French frames my second distinctive work mentality. I completed a lot of interpretation work between French and English when I first began my internship, especially as I helped Annel to communicate with her francophone clients. Interpretation is quite a distinctive skill. Switching constantly between languages, especially the necessity of using one sense for one and another for the other (hearing French, speaking English) requires straddling sections of the brain and then instantly reversing the functions (hearing English, speaking French). It took me a few interviews to acquire basic competency of this skill, looking up a few discipline-specific vocabulary words, and adjusting my ears to the slightly different Afro-French dialects. Now that I primarily work with clients individually, however, I no longer use French within the domain of interpretation. I can carry out my entire interviews in French, only converting to English when explaining proper nouns and recording information on paper for client file records.

While pinpointing what language I will most likely be using based off of client country of origin and South African arrival date, I have even developed the usage of a handy initial linguistic device. French Canadians tend to greet strangers with a “Bonjour, hi” in order to determine the ensuing primary language of conversation, and in the same spirit, I greet my Congolese, Rwandan, and Burundian clients with a simple, “Hello, bonjour.” They then start talking to me in whichever language is preferable for them, some proud of their newly developed English language skills and wanting to test them out, others relieved to explain their troubles in a more familiar tongue. Regardless, working in French is my second work mentality. Over time I have developed particular response phrases, questions, and explications that differ slightly from my English versions. Now that I have fine-tuned my ears to African dialects of French, I find listening to clients explain their needs is often a simpler task for me if they are speaking French than English. The English proper nouns frequently pose problems, especially as they refer to areas of Cape Town or South African institutions with which I am already unfamiliar, but working in French is enjoyable, and second-nature. As with any foreign language, sometimes the words get caught up and communication is difficult; however most the time my explanations flow without problem, and often my slightly longer processing pauses (as compared to native English) allow me to choose more precise, professional, and appropriate language.

Working in Swahili is a completely different experience. I have had five semesters at MSU in rapid succession (two accelerated courses during last summer’s Summer Cooperative African Language Institute [SCALI]) and so I feel fairly comfortable navigating my way around the contours of the language. The CTRC has a three-page long intake form full of interview questions for new clients, and posing all these questions in Swahili takes a bit of thought but is not too much of a problem. Since I have been learning French for such a long period of time now, I have taken for granted and all but forgotten the intense learning curve associated with beginning to utilize language skills directly with native speakers.

In practical terms, this means that once refugee clients start trying to explain their situation in Swahili, in their own words, with native speaker grace / speed, and at any length, I struggle to keep up. Using my limited vocabulary, asking finite questions is not too difficult. Verbally drafting detailed explanations and understanding the details of their narratives is. To make matters worse, most of the clients that come in and wish to communicate in Swahili speak a drastically different dialect from the Congo and Rwanda than the Kenyan / Tanzanian Kiswahili Sanifu that I learned in the classroom. My linguistic shortcomings in Swahili create an altogether different dynamic in these situations than with Francophone or Anglophone clients. Firstly, I cannot even begin to explain the number of clients who have outright laughed at me when I have begun speaking to them in Swahili. It’s not that my accent or grammar is terrible (though of course I make my fair share of errors); they are just in shock that I possess any knowledge of their language. “HAHAHA Why do YOU know Swahili?” they ask. Whereas my fluent French conversations lead many refugees to believe I am either a South African who has mastered French or a Francophone European, my white skin and more ostensibly foreign accent in Swahili instantly mark me as an outsider. After their initial shock, however, clients’ reactions vary completely. Most veritably appreciate my effort to converse with them. Some begin explaining things to me at a pace that leaves me understanding approximately 40%. Others revert to first-month of Swahili 101 phrases, giggle gleefully at my successful responses, and then compliment me by saying “You speak Swahili very well!” From time to time the clients are just not satisfied with my efforts and attempt to find an interpreter all the same.

Mara kwa mara (from time to time) my Swahili skills hinder their ability to abuse the system. Certain clients attempt to use linguistic ignorance as an attempt to appear more vulnerable, feign understanding of anything, and receive increased assistance. Interpreters often collude, both conversing with the client in advance and manipulating answers to optimally benefit both parties. A few times I have interviewed a client in English then allowed them to fetch a Swahili interpreter when they could not sufficiently explain a story without informing them of my knowledge. In these situations, I could overhear the dynamics of the conversion and ensure that the client was being as truthful with me as possible. One time I made a client’s eyes almost bulge out of her head by responding in Swahili when she had been conversing with her interpreter and referring to me consistently as mzungu, a very lightly derogatory term for White people. I have otherwise had to rely upon my Swahili skills to explain the entire functioning of our food voucher system, to enquire about banking details, and to assess clients’ overall living situations.

The linguistic dynamism involved in my work has made my experience even richer than I could otherwise imagine. There are not too many jobs out there that would require such consistent usage of all my language skills (English, French, and Swahili). Via French and Swahili both, I feel as though I have really been able to reach out to refugees and accommodate their cultural comfort zones. I am not a native South African either; the clients and I are both outsiders (although many do not realize this). When I speak to them in French or Swahili, it often seems to ease the tension of my own positionality as “white development aid worker” by emphasizing shared linguistic background as a critical cultural node of mutual human understanding.

CSI: Blikkiesdorp

When I was completing my typical round of refugee interview assessments this morning, CTRC director, Christina Henda, suddenly interrupted and directed me to postpone all normal procedures because we were urgently needed at Blikkiesdorp. Without much clarification, I hopped in the company vehicle driven by security personnel Stanley along with Annel, and we all sped off. As we passed the normal exit-way to Blikkiesdorp I felt even more confused but soon learned we were stopping in downtown Cape Town to pick up an official from the UNHCR branch here who would assist us with our assignment. The three others in the car jabbered hurriedly away in Afrikaans, leaving my Anglophone ears to only sense the tone of abnormality. Finally they filled me in: We were off to investigate a Somali-on-Somali stabbing that had just occurred in the recently resettled quarter of Blikkiesdorp!

There is something otherworldly about Blikkiesdorp even when it’s not a crime scene. Silver shack after silver shack glisten atop an expansive floor of dirt. Buildings are impersonally marked by a generic Letter-Number code, and the streets lack names altogether. Four units share an outdoor toilet and washing unit at their interstices. Awkwardly named Blikkiesdorp is but a nickname to the official, yet coldly distant “Delft Symphony Way Settlement Area.” No one seems to want to take ownership of this desolate plot: Media sources have referred to it as Cape Town’s dumping ground for the unwanted, and some have even drawn parallels between this site and the one depicted in the recent South African-set film District Nine.

Add a crime scene to the mix and you can imagine how I felt as I arrived. It was actually my second trip to the area but no less haunting than the first. A few children ran around aimlessly as we pulled up. The first Somali family spoke to us in extremely broken English, a bit confused why we were even there. We managed our way to another family who then guided us to the scene of the crime. Broken bits of bloodstained fencing pieces lay strewn across the austere courtyard. We were welcomed inside the humble “can-shack” for an informal statement of what happened. Our accompanying UNHCR worker seemed to know one of the women who lived there quite well, so she lead the way in asking the questions. I sat atop an informal bucket and listened intently. The moment felt completely surreal. There I sat in a shack, following the thickly accented narrative of a hijab-clad Somali refugee woman in order to assess the motive and implications of a morning inter-ethnic stabbing. It was definitely one of those “I’m in the developing world!” moments and never would I have thought freshmen year while dissecting the Federalist Papers that my Madison education might lead me to an experience like this!

After we got back in the car, my supervisor Annel and the UNHCR worker discussed the viability of the statement. Apparently the chief interviewee is quite crafty and has been known to aptly manipulate situations in her own favour. It is even quite possible that she instigated the inter-ethnic attack in order to portray her own proximal situation as vulnerable and thereby gain lobbying capital for a re-settlement interview to the United States. Her story, however, consisted of two Somali ethnic groups who are traditionally rivals jealously fighting with one another. The persons involved were taken to the Delft area holding cells, so we made our way to the Delft Police Station for further enquiries.

There we met with local police officials who had little knowledge of the morning’s events. That in itself goes to show the amount of crime events that occur in township areas. The police definitely have their hands full from day to day. After pinning down the police chief to aid in our pursuit, we awaited more crime interviews. Suddenly a young, bloody-faced Somali woman burst through the doors of the boardroom where we were waiting. The UNHCR worker interviewed her carefully. According to this woman, the morning attack involved only women. One or two women came at a group of five to six with knives because they were allegedly jealous of their resettlement interviews. On the way out the door, we ran across three additional young, Somali women who were also alleged victims. These women shamelessly peeled back layers of their conservative clothing to demonstrate the numerous knife wounds all over their bodies. Again, their eagerness to show-off their wounds left me feeling unsettled at the very least and moreover wondering if this was not all but a plot for resettlement attention. Both UNHCR and NGOs such as the CTRC fulfilled important watchdog functions for an event like this. All in all the event proved minor, but if it had been more serious, we would have been both the first agents there to aid in relief efforts as well as the first line of defense against further proliferation. Today felt like I was right in an episode of CSI: Cape Town. It was an incredibly “real” experience to learn about the way refugee crime incidents unfold within the South African justice system. As an American, I feel a bit disconcerted about the extreme efforts some might attempt for the mere right to enter my country. Ironically and pessimistically, I often feel that these efforts are in vain…even if the stars align and they are indeed granted a resettlement opportunity, I can’t imagine that starting life over as an American refugee is an easy feat.

Blue Waters / Blikkiesdorp Part 1

Even though South Africa’s most serious wave of xenophobic attacks occurred back in 2008, their effects are far from over. Thousands of refugees and other foreigners moved out of their new South African residences due to verbal threats, actual physical displacement, and general community malaise. The Somali community was targeted most acutely. Their willingness to set up shop in the dodgiest of areas, conspicuous religious differentiation, as well as many other unique ethnic characteristics make them most distinguishable to local populations. Many of the thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) residing in the Western Cape settled in Blue Water’s Camp. Blue Water’s Camp used to be a low-budget summer resort just outside Mitchell’s Plain on the outskirts of town, but the City of Cape Town acquired the land in order to assist in the secure habitation of these individuals. At its peak the site housed roughly 3,000 IDPs living in UNHCR-donated orange tents.

As time passed, however, the City grew weary of having so many foreigners living in such a temporary settlement. Their mere existence drew continuous media attention and served to recapitulate South Africa’s negative reputation as a xenophobic society. Naturally this is an undesirable international reputation but especially just prior to the arrival of the global community for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Cape Town thus incorporated a portion of its Residential Development Programme (RDP) budget to construct additional government-funded dwellings in a more permanent temporary settlement: Blikkiesdorp. The Afrikaans term for “Canstown,” Blikkiesdorp is a dusty, treeless section of Delft lacking road names and other basic civil society structures; it soon became home to the bulk of “re-integrated” IDPs residing in the Western Cape.

Those that moved to Blikkiesdorp were given re-integration aid packages from the South African government. Yet others remain at Blue Waters: approximately 350 at present. Some of these individuals do not want to move into Blikkiesdorp because of the conditions there. Many are holding out against the re-integration efforts in hopes of gaining UNHCR interviews for re-settlement in the United States, Canada, Australia, or Europe (not very likely). Their lingering is nonetheless like a tick on the back of the City Council’s neck. As the World Cup draws nearer and nearer and the span of internal displacement longer and longer, the pressure is currently building. Most recently, the City Council is pushing harder than ever to remove these individuals.

It is in this climate that the Cape Town Refugee Centre was called upon to help oversee, administrate, and control the turmoil. I travelled with my supervisor Annel, programme administrator Wandile, and a fellow intern to intake the approximately 50 people who had finally agreed to move to Blikkiesdorp (for the right price from the City Council). Since South Africa’s official national policy prohibits the establishment of refugee camps, Blue Waters internal displacement camp is the closest parallel I have seen in my work here. We pulled onto the property right off the beach and stopped at the camp overseer’s office. Just outside a small swarm of Somalis loitered, evidently the group who had been waiting all day to learn of their possible material gains for relocating once more. Beyond the main office a hoard of circus-like tents occupied an otherwise insignificant parcel of land. A one-man guarded gate blocked the entryway. Annel explained that the current tents are replacements for the UNHCR ones that were there at the beginning of the crisis and pail in comparison.

Inside the main office a short-tempered Coloured man barked orders at the Somalis who continuously tried to inquire about entry times; he treated our arrival with utmost suspicion. Apparently he was the original overseer for Blue Waters when it was a low-budget summer camp and continued to fulfill this role when it became a makeshift displacement camp. He hence seemed to lack the cultural concern and social graces of those already working in the domain of refugee work.

I had been summoned with CTRC to interview those moving to Blikkiesdorp, but in fact we oversaw operations more than anything else. Still, it was an invaluable experience. The South African government established a formula for re-integration assistance that at once became problematic. Single men, single women, and married couples each warranted a set amount of Rand subject to adjustment depending on their amount of children. The camp surveyor informed us that this was immediately a problem because many Somali men had more than one wife and these family units would exploit the system to receive as much money as possible. The husband and one wife would be assessed once, and then the additional wife would come in later claiming she is single in order to receive the appropriate funding bonus.

When I finally entered the settlement area, I was pleasantly surprised. Children played at the previous resort’s playground. Families smiled as we passed by their multi-room tents. Most people leave the area during the day to do business in nearby Mitchell’s Plain and just return to Blue Waters in the evening to sleep. No wonder people refuse to leave. Their livelihoods in Blue Waters are no worse, perhaps even better, than in your average South African township. Uprooting for the third time (at least) takes time, effort, and energy. Yet, continuing to live on the outskirts of society diminishes the likelihood of full integration into a new South African life…the re-acceptance of “home.” Like most things in South Africa, the Blue Waters / Blikkiesdorp issue is much more complicated than it appears at surface level.

Black Culture, White Culture

“Look at all those White people! That’s Cape Town for you!” wrote one friend as a caption to a beach picture I recently posted to facebook. “Cape Town’s not real Africa…it’s like Europe!” claimed a few other people whom I have met here recently. Two Afrikaner men from Pretoria made this claim at a pub after a rugby game in the Newlands area of the city. A Zimbabwean student here uttered virtually the same comment within the same week timeframe.

They definitely have a point. Cape Town is a hotbed for white, South African culture. Go to many of the beaches and you will find almost exclusively white people. Go to one of the many trendy restaurants, and the scene will look comparable. At the Kirstenbosch Gardens concert I attended a few weeks ago, out of a crowd of a few thousand, I only noticed about five Blacks. Even at a local screening of “Invictus;” a[n American] film exhibited from an outside perspective to a South African audience about their own triumph over apartheid and foundation of racial harmony; the attending audience included almost only white people. It is fairly easy to see how Cape Town gets the reputation that it does.

I don’t think the city warrants it, however. Anyone who honestly believes that Cape Town is a “white” city has slipped shallowly through, missed the “real” Cape Town, and it’s a “shame, man” (South African slang). I’m not privy to any official sociological data, but if I were to estimate, I would conjecture that the city’s Black and Coloured populations grossly outnumber the white population. The City Bowl’s downtown district is often thought of as one of White privilege, but the streets are bustling with the popping sounds of Xhosa, hijab-clad immigrant women, innumerable Coloured individuals, and but a relevant minority of white passersby. Mini buses tear around most city corners and multi-ethnic vendors sell from block-after-block. This is only the downtown area.

The city area of Cape Town is dwarfed in comparison to the Southern Suburbs, Northern Suburbs, and Cape Flats areas. Of course there are well-to-do suburbs such as Rondebosch, the liberal student haven of Observatory, and the upper-middle class Kenilworth. Anyone who thinks Cape Town is a “white” city however, hasn’t been to Wynberg. They haven’t been to Salt River or to Athlone. They definitely haven’t been to Khayelitsha, to Philippi, to Maitland, or to Mitchell’s Plain. They haven’t seen Blue Waters and they probably haven’t even been to Woodstock. These are not merely what we Americans would term ethnic ghettos but enormous parcels of land home to significant portions of the city’s population.

Historically, the Western Cape was home to South Africa’s White and Coloured populations. The New South Africa ushered in an era of migration to the region, and today the influence of Blacks, Coloureds, Indians, and foreigners is enormous. It is not only influential, in fact, but constitutive. These communities form the crux of Cape Town’s informal markets, labor force, and residential areas. Removing their presence would not only be noticeable; the entire city would cease to function. Again, this is statistically a majority community. Unfortunately, many are subsumed by Whites in public visibility due to their status as proletarians. The working class is pushed to the margins of collective consciousness in a truly Marxist fashion. Often racial conflict is merely a discussion of class conflict in disguise. Despite the socio-economic implications, Non-Whites play a substantial role in the area’s socio-cultural geopolitics.

Perhaps many Black South Africans can either not afford or are not interested in attending the concert of a white, Afrikaner alternative rock band at traditionally White Kirstenbosch. Perhaps White South Africans fail to venture en masse outside their comfortable, racially inscribed loci. In either case, these instances of de facto neo-apartheid do not characterize the entire city. Traveling down popular Long Street and branding Cape Town a “white city” is no more accurate than visiting the North Shore of Chicago and deciding likewise. Even this is not a perfect analogy, though, as the Cape Town area’s population dynamic is overwhelmingly non-White. While the legacy of Colonial façades, White restaurants, beaches, concerts, and movie theatres might lead one to deem Cape Town not “Authentically African,” (and yes, of course Cape Town is not the same “Africa” as other areas) these are indeed façades on multiple levels. The dawn of the New South Africa has catapulted the Western Cape into ethnic dynamism, and its racial branding lies upon the delimitating forced perspective of the beholder. I won’t even delve into the impact of the 150,000 + refugees living in the area. Despite my skepticism of the term’s contrived positive connotation, if one wants to experience the “Rainbow Nation,” it’s here.

Leisure Update

Hello, all! Since my last several updates have been more “official” reviews of my actual internship work / pertinent refugee issues, I thought I would take this entry to discuss a few of the incredible leisurely experiences I’ve had as of late…….That is the beautifully disgusting quality so characteristic of South Africa. Whereas my daytime work is comparable to international development jobs one might experience in other African nations, Latin America, or to my parents’ dismay, Bangladesh, during nights and weekends I am free to indulge in all the “cush” touristy opportunities that this area also has to offer: outdoor summer concerts, wine tastings, just about every extreme support one could imagine, and Euro-style bars and cafés. What makes these activities both interesting and guilty are the fissures between the two worlds.

Example: There is an area not too far away from here known as St. George’s Mall. It’s a pedestrian throughway with stone streets, oodles of cafés, stylish boutiques, and outdoor atmosphere. More than any other area I have seen here in Cape Town, it looks and feels like you are in Europe. There are even a few fountains and French-style kiosks / street monuments. Yet, there are also loads of informal stalls, beggars, and “African” proletarians serving the establishments. In fact, it almost feels like the “new” Europe of immigrants more than either the romantically conceptualized versions of Europe or Africa. And beggars in this country are RESILIENT….let me tell you. They will come right up to your table where you are sitting and assuredly ask for money. If you are walking down the street, they will approach you in the same manner without taking no for an answer. If you ignore them, they follow you the entire distance continuously hollering at you. If you say “Sorry” forcefully and pick up your pace, they will pick up their pace right along with you instead of taking the hint. Thank goodness I am doing something “helpful towards humanity” during the daytime or I would feel QUITE guilty for not giving the beggars any money. I apologize that this paragraph is littered with “quotation marks;” I just feel like I am walking on eggshells in explaining some of these topics so briefly.



That was a bit of a tangent anyways. So back to my activities! I have made TWO different excursions out into the proximal winelands thus far. That equals approximately 9 different wineries and probably 40-some samples of wine varieties. Wine culture is so amazing. I can’t fathom anything more relaxing than an afternoon of casual wine sipping set against the faint, nearly stationary sway of the vines and the jovial pulsation of rays overhead. That sounded forcibly poetic, but I tried to use the exact words of what I sensed despite their sub-par linguistic affect. In fact the calm I had imagined for trip 1 was fleeting at best. We moved from winery to winery by bike, and after stop 3 (which was actually a brandy distillery) surmounted a gradual, but deadly incline. Around 100 degrees F coupled with the brandy I literally almost passed out at the top. Great that there was water! A very pleasant if not exhausting day. Winery trip 2 was by car and FAR more relaxing. Winery 1 was over the top impressive architecturally and sit into a hill of vines: quite the unusual topographical setting for winegrowing but the aesthetics were stunning! A free tasting to top it off. Number 2 felt like a hole-in-the-wall stop in Provence, sporting the name “Le Pommier” (Appletree) to top it off! Casual. Very different from the other place but also enjoyable. Stop 3 was probably the most “authentic” South African winery, as the architecture fit into the Cape Colonial style and the setting more barebones “we make wines here” as opposed to the “there is wine here, but look at this fabulous façade and setting foremost!” Stop 4 was probably a bit of a mix between all of the above.

HOLD on. I am writing this on the roof of my apartment complex early on a Friday evening, and I just heard jazz music start playing from down the street. So much of the South African lifestyle is chill and enjoyable. I can’t tell where this music is stemming from really, but I can hear it rather clearly. At first I thought it was a protest coming from the Parliament (1.5 blocks away, so we hear them a regular amount) but it doesn’t appear to be so. I actually have to head to the laundrette before it closes for the evening. I think I will try to walk down the street and into there without shoes. Shoes are optional at most in this country, and I’ve been dying to try this myself. I’ve been here over 1.5 months; it’s about time! I will update the rest of this entry “just now” (South African English for sometime in the next few hours……if I ever get to it.)

Survival = Networking

During a turbulent and liminal period of war, French reconnaissance pilot Antoine de St-Exupéry once postulated: <> meaning, “an individual is but the product of his social links.” I am unsure whether or not I agree that this completely defines the self, but this frame of mind has proved absolutely crucial in my work thus far with the South African refugee community. Social networking is thereby crucial on two levels.

Firstly, the refugees themselves must network for survival. They are outsiders in their new communities and often unable to utilize civil society structures in the same manner as permanent residents. Whereas a South African living in Guguletu might pick up a newspaper to search for local job listings, refugees cannot follow this same work pathway. These jobs are listed as part of the formal economy. They require set standards of South African education background, work experience, and social networking. Many residential landlords require proof of a South African bank account in order to take in a new tenant or at least personal references willing to vouch for the potential dweller. Refugees simply do not have access to these professional, personal, and educational backgrounds the way that South Africans might.

To succeed as a refugee, then, one must make use of the social networks already in place. Congolese refugees must make friends with other Congolese refugees. Zimbabweans must talk with other Zimbabweans. Somalis, perhaps more than other refugee communities, remain within the Somali community to sustain their livelihoods. This concept is not much different from that of 19th – early 20th century America: Little Italy, Chinatown, Poletown, and Greektown develop as survival mechanisms. Newcomers must cling to one another in order to acquire the possibility of social networking that most domestic residents take for granted. A setup of three Angolan families sharing a household makes rent much more affordable than that of one struggling alone. The vernacular echoes of Lingala take off the frightening edge of a newly unfamiliar linguistic soundscape. Rumours of work opportunities can filter through the refugee grapevine when a “brother” or a “sister” stumbles across financial prospectives.

Alas the suggestive encouragements I am beginning to send to CTRC patrons. Only as time moves on does the networking system shift. Years of living in South Africa equates to increased familiarity with the socio-scape, a better working understanding of English, necessary experience with the medical facilities, and where children are involved, mass exposure via the public school system. Such gradual life shifts allow refugees to move deeper into mainstream South African society for networking, opportunities, and daily life. The United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) deems a refugee/asylum seeker successfully re-integrated into the asylum state once he/she is “making full and complete usage of domestic civil society institutions.” That means schools, hospitals, clinics, churches, mosques, post offices, and banks (to name but a few). Such is the final goal of the Cape Town Refugee Centre, local informal networking the primary means to this end.

On an operational level, networking is also an essential component of the Cape Town Refugee Centre’s daily work. There is an extremely limited amount of assistance that a dedicated staff of 12-15 individuals can provide for a 150,000 + member refugee community. We must resultantly make usage of additional NGOs, government services, and institutions in order to direct refugees in the appropriate direction. This was perhaps one of the most difficult skills I have acquired over the past month. As individuals, refugees require an innumerable array of general human services: medical attention, government statutory concerns, legal aid, homeless shelters, work agencies, orphanages, trauma counseling, children’s court, primary education, tertiary education, skills training, psychiatrics. The trained social worker on staff has been working within the Western Cape community for 17+ years and can refer clients to individual facilities based on personal know-how, but for a foreign student intern this task has been quite daunting. It has required a lot of running to ask for appropriate contact information, questioning references, and re-assuring the client with third-party supervision. Without networking, moreover, the Cape Town Refugee Centre would cease to properly function. If a client were to walk in seeking work help, we’d have no choice but to politely escort them out and wish them good luck.

An important part of said networking is site visits. A representative of the Scalibrini Centre visited the CTRC one day last week to share information about that NGO, the other pre-eminent one in the area working with refugees. As we have been cross-referring clients to one another for some time, the aim of this meeting was to clarify the scope of our programs and ensure that we are not sending people in vain. There is already a substantial amount of bureaucracy that individuals must penetrate in order to receive assistance so minimizing these difficulties is much appreciated. Scalibrini assists refugees with English-language classes and job-seeking. Their employment help desk program was in fact one of my initial internship offers. There, refugees receive help formatting CVs, learn about job avenues and skills training available in the Western Cape, then personally set out to find their own work possibilities. The representative who visited the CTRC stressed these particular programmatic contours and urged us to cease from writing specified referral letters as this causes conflict with those who arrived earlier and have already been waiting for assistance. Although fairly superficial in nature, this meeting made me realize how various non-profit organizations must work together to best serve the community. Each has finite resources, but provided that these organisations communicate with one another what these resources are, as well as the validated avenues of contact between them; then the larger pool can be efficiently allocated to the community in need.

African Gender Regimes

Based on my last few weeks of work, I’ve realized that gender plays a crucial role in the overall South African refugee experience. I previously mentioned that men and women are eligible for different forms of aid, but based on the current rubric they are also eligible for different quantitative amounts of aid. Consider food vouchers, for instance. Men are first and foremost more critically assessed for acquisition of food aid than are women. If accepted, men are then eligible to receive up to 200 Rand. Single women, if qualified for aid, receive 250 Rand and possibly 300 Rand upwards should they also be taking care of children. In this context, men are automatically considered to be less vulnerable than are women. The idea is that men can supposedly fend for themselves out in public better than women. When there are children involved, women are also tied down to take care of them. Child rearing is traditionally a female task in Western society, but in many African societies it is an almost 100% female responsibility.

It has also appeared from my own empirical experience that refugee women hailing from Central African nations are often less educated than their male counterparts. One of the most tangible manifestations of this educational gap is the inability of many female refugees to communicate in English as easily as their husbands, brothers, and male friends. Even those refugees that have been here 3+ years struggle profusely. Often the men go out during the day searching for work opportunities, which naturally puts them into contact with English-speaking South Africans and allows them to develop their new language skills. Wives, sisters, and mothers are frequently left at home to take care of domestic work, all the while conversing with one another in Lingala, Kinyarwanda, or Somali.

A 2003 United Nations publication on Refugees and Forced Displacement claims that almost 80% of refugees are women and children (N.B: I can cite this source retroactively if anyone questions this figure). From a practical standpoint alone, then, refugee reintegration development does need to be enacted via gender sensitive policies. Female refugees do face challenges that males / male refugees do not. I have spoken with several refugee women who have cited the threat of rape as one of the principal reasons for fleeing their former countries. Militant groups invaded their home regions, burnt and pillaged homes, and then strategically raped mass amounts of women. They are at risk sexually in a way that most men simply are not.

The viewpoint that women are more susceptible in the societies of asylum countries also reflects theoretical backing. Critical gender theorist R.W. Connell utilizes the term “hegemonic masculinity” to describe the patriarchal, male-biased nature of the public domain. Most major businesses, government structures, and law enforcement are run by men, thus making society far from a gender-neutral place. One practical application of this is the lack of action among South African law enforcement officials when women come forth complaining of gender-based violence (especially in the township settings). Others might include inaccessibility to serious business ventures and the threat of sexual violence when traveling alone at night.

On one level, it is clear that women warrant special needs attention in refugee development schemes. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, how this particular development formula pairs with contemporary feminist inquiries. If feminism is truly about gender equality (as it so often claims to be) how do we account for single male refugees who feel the same hunger pangs, suffer from the same displacement, and lack the same work as their sisters? Does singling out women as more aid dependant than men work counter to the global strive for increased gender equality? To what extent is it development-based NGOs’ responsibility to implement, educate, and advocate for more equitable gender regimes?

A fellow intern working in the self-reliant small business ventures program reviews business plans from dozens and dozens of refugees, yet she must find a balance between vulnerability and viability as her approval criteria. What kind of gender dynamic would be created if all approved business plans were for women and no men? Following the approval rubric strictly would likely yield this sort of a result. Perhaps the support of female businesses could be considered a type of gender affirmative action programme, but work is scarce in South Africa and men are often just as vulnerable. I’ve frequently heard Annell tell female clients, “In South Africa, women must work, too. You must be a strong, African woman.” There have also been instances of men squandering food vouchers on beers, cigarettes, and personal desires instead of providing for their families. Because of this the CTRC often feels uncomfortable giving food vouchers straight to filial father figures. To generalize a policy based on the presumption that men are biologically more prone to this sort of behavior seems backwards and barbaric, but how do you account for the statistical reality driving such a policy? A gender-sensitive lens is needed to promote effective refugee development programmes, yet what this gender-sensitive lens ought to look like reveals a much greater ongoing struggle.

I’m Sorry; We Don’t Pay Rent: Notes on Development

“Development” can mean any number of things. Recalling back to my “MC 320: Politics, Society, and Economics of the 3rd World” course, the quandary of defining development successfully is in itself a significant obstacle towards meeting its ends. There is strictly economic development, or the idea of capital accumulation that is preferably also self-reinforcing and multiplicative. There is political development, often loosely paired with the idea of democratization and increased power shares for the individual in society. There is cultural development, or the so-called expansion of a multi-level semiotic web in span and influence (borrowing from the Geertzian model of culture). More closely related to the work of the CTRC, yet heavily intertwined with the other modes, is the notion of human development. This means individual empowerment within its social frame, whether that be couched in terms of gender, psychology, language formation, education, skills training, or sustenance. If one further deconstructs the very notion of “development,” he/she might ask something along the lines of: “Development to what? Development from what?” Does the concept of development as it exists today not presuppose an inherently enlightenment, dare-I-say capitalist ideology of increase, expansion, and acquisition? What is the ultimate goal of development, and who gets to decide what the benchmark for this goal ought to look like? Perhaps more bluntly, to what extent is “development” metonymous / synonymous / or even reflective of Westernization?

These very theoretical questions I have struggled with during some of my Madison / Int’l Development courses have taken on an all new light now that I am working out in the field at a grassroots level. Refugees have very diverse needs related to the above-mentioned questions, but Level 1 is always sustenance. As I mentioned in the previous entry, one cannot consider more advanced forms of development needs when there is no food in the stomach. One Congolese woman literally spelled out to me: “Le ventre qui a faim n’a pas d’oreilles” (The hungry stomach has no ears.) In conjunction with this statement might be something like: “Sans abri, accablant de pluie.” (Without shelter, rain is overwhelming).

The Achilles heel of these development priorities is their fleeting usability. Time and time again I have found myself having to tell clients: “I’m sorry, but we can’t help you with your rent payment. We just don’t have resources for that.” That idea, as articulated to me by supervisors, is that rent money disappears. If we pay rent one month, the refugee client will profit from shelter for that month, but what will happen during the next month when they need rent monies yet again? Immediately, there arises a system of both dependence and fund evaporation. Food falls into a similar category, but denying a starving person the very food they need to continue breathing is entirely more problematic. We simply can’t do that either.

Level 1 Development Aid, as I’ve decided to term it, hence seems both the necessary goal and the “anti-focus” of our work. People need this sort of aid to continue their own survival, yet we work at all costs to avoid the recapitulation of said aid dependency. Like the Mama bird that throws her baby off a cliff to teach it to fly only to bandage and nurse it back to health when it fails miserably; we push refugees to utilize the informal networking system surrounding them only to aid them with “Level 1 Development” if they crawl vulnerably back into our office. The looks of desperation, annoyance, or disappointment that I see on a daily basis when I state, “I’m sorry, but we can’t pay rent” can only be coupled with a reassuring smile followed by a, “How do you feel about starting up a small business venture?” or perhaps even more accurately: << Ça vous intéresse, commencer une petite entreprise? >>

Critical Needs Intervention

Cape Town Refugee Centre seeks to aid the most vulnerable refugees before any others. This is determined by a thorough interview for each and every client, both our main administrative task and principal tool for successfully meeting the needs of individual cases. There thus exists a rough frame through which the CTRC conducts assessments and distributes aid: Families are treated as single case units (apparently this is one of the foundational principles found in social work). Single women are viewed as more vulnerable than single men due to men’s de facto capacity to go out into the world by themselves and network with far less risk than their female counterparts. Whenever children are involved in a case, the entire family unit is automatically considered more at risk than they would be otherwise. Physically and psychologically disadvantaged individuals are often more unable to work than others, so they are considered an at-risk group. Finally, new arrivals (those whom have arrived in South Africa within the past 6 months) are considered to be more vulnerable than those refugees who have already spent a minimum of 6 months in the country and theoretically had enough time to re-establish themselves.

Given this rubric, certain cases raise immediate red flags for needed social assistance. One of these such cases involved a single woman with two children needing immediate assistance with housing. To make matters worse, the woman spoke virtually no English [and broken French!]. Her son had an acute knee problem that recently required an operation, rendering him unable to walk and placing him out of school for the time being. Although CTRC does not normally aid clients in finding living arrangements, this particular case warranted immediate efforts. As senior social worker Annel explained to me: “How can a person think about work when he/she does not even have a roof over his/her head?” Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs must come into play for this type of grassroots human development work. Food and water form the primary building block for human survival. Shelter from the elements and personal security follow closely behind. Only once these needs are met can an individual begin to worry about additional ventures: education and work, emotional contentedness, and ultimately self-fulfillment / helping others. Encouraging this family to put their son back into school would not mean much at the time if they were still unable to place a roof over their heads.

From this critical incident arose the essential inevitability of NGO networking. The CTRC does not have sufficient resources to provide for all the diverse needs faced by the South African refugee community. When we encounter a case such as the above-mentioned one, then, we need to call upon the resources available via surrounding civil society organizations, government structures, and other institutions in order to help meet our clients’ urgent needs. For the case at hand, we telephoned a nearby shelter called Bonne Espérance to see if they had sufficient room to house this woman and her two children. Bonne Espérance only houses vulnerable women and their small children, but it offers them education during their up-to-6-month stay, crèche (daycare) for the little children, and support for post-residency societal reintegration.

Luckily, Bonne Espérance responded in the affirmative. Since I played a significant role in this family’s case, Annel let me accompany her when she drove the family in her personal vehicle to their new temporary home. Bonne Espérance is located in Philippi, one of the South African townships. It blew my mind to see how different this community looked from its nearby neighbors: colourful shacks piled one atop another; roosters, cows, and goats ambling freely across the busy intersections; pervasive dirt; giddy school children in their uniform-best next to disheveled one-toothed vendors; piles of fresh fruit falling victim to mass swarms of flies and insects; chickens waiting on death-row to be consumed at a township braai; and oddly enough the cheerful façade of Bonne Espérance cloaked in protective barbed wire. The organisation’s courtyard and facilities evoked similarly unanticipated reactions of pleasant surprise. I watched “half-spectator / half-participant” as the family exited the vehicle into their new surroundings and wished “good hope” to my first case of critical life intervention development.

"Over the Mountain, Down in the Valley..." Cont'd

Picture taken from Clifton Beach (read below). This is currently the background on my laptop. The following are a few more shots of that beach area just across the mountain.

"Over the Mountain, Down in the Valley..."

28 February 2010

Okay, so maybe I’m not the most efficient and timely blogger, but life is busy (and exhausting!) here during the week and the weekends have been my time to get out and see the area! I’ll try to capture some of the highlights.

The outdoors activities Cape Town has to offer are phenomenal. Hiker’s paradise. You can climb Table Mountain and Lion’s Head Peak (the main attractions) as well as countless other mountain paths that intertwine with the coastal range for any assortment of 1 hr, 2 hr, 4 hr, 6 hr, 12 hr, or multi-day hikes that one might want to pursue. So far I’ve only made it up Lion’s Head peak, but the path wrapped 360 degrees around the mountain for breathtaking views of the city bowl, the Atlantic Ocean, and the harborfront. South Africans claimed the hike would be a breezy 45 min. venture, but walking from the apartment complex to the tip-top definitely took more like 2 hrs of hardwork. The trek culminated with the dissolution of any one set path and some pretty legit mountain climbing. Have to say that the top was worth the terror, however. Highlight for me was actually seeing hefty breezes blow condensation across the peak and visible cloud formation puff out across the cityscape.

The abundance of hiking opportunities is perhaps only surpassed by the South African beach scene. So far I’ve been to three hahaha. Most beaches are past the City Bowl on the other side of the mountains, but geographically that’s not a very long distance. Less than 15 minutes by cab and about 50-70 rand (less than 10 dollars for sure). Even less money if you’re splitting the fare. The first beach I went to is Clifton Beach, a fairly popular beach with locals of all size, shape, and colour. It reminded me quite a bit of the beach I went to in Marseille on the Mediterranean as far as beachgoer scene, overall heat, and accessibility. I guess that analogy was lost on you all, because the only other person that would possibly know what I’m talking about is Dana who was there. Clifton Beach is set into an ocean cove, however, with luscious vegetation specific to the Western Cape and a green, vegetal backdrop. Excellent sand that squishes perfectly between your toes. Sorry for any of you reading this who are trapped and sick of Michigan winters!

The next beach I went to is called Camp’s Bay…it’s basically South Africa’s nod to South Beach in Miami or St. Tropez in Southern France. Not your casual beachgoers but people dressed to impress and drop a few hundred rand on minty mojitos at a trendy café. Incredibly European and the standing polar opposite to the townships of Philippi and Khayelitsha. Camp’s Bay is also situated just across the mountain from my residence in the City Bowl, but I realized upon my arrival there how even something as simple as geographic landscape probably helped to entrench South African apartheid. Crest over the hill in a taxi and you literally feel like you are in another country…in another world. Of course it is easy for a privileged minority to withhold rights from the depraved majority when their de facto worldview renders the ‘Other’ virtually invisible. I also realized how so many could have fought so hard and so reticently for this parcel of land…it’s purely hypnotic. In all cases (c/o Darius’s franco-english), going to Camp’s Bay was an all too guilty indulgence for an evening of bourgeois beach frivolity.

The last beach I went to was a venture of just yesterday. I honestly don’t recall the name, but according to one Northern Irish intern the name of this beach is actually Welsh. LLalenguko-whatever. It, too, is located on the other side of the mountain but quite a bit further along the coast than the others. The beach was predominantly white, but you could still definitely tell that it was more of a local haven than a spot for tourists. Unlike the other two beaches, this beach had quite a few surfers there: not your young hooligan hang-ten surfers either…surfers of all ages, genders, sizes, and skill levels. Lining one end of the beach was an enormous formation of boulders. I actually went exploring this particular area and got myself semi-lost for a non-worrisome period of about an hour. Certain areas were clearly victim to Mother Nature’s brutal hydro-erosion as the surf pounded them with relentless vigor. Other highlights of the day included speaking Swahili with a Zanzibarian henna artist and savouring the most refreshing popsicle I have ever tasted in my 22 years of gustatory ignorance: (NB: This is not trite hyperbolic bloggery but an honest and earnest statement) a frozen granadilla! If you ever find yourself in a position to do the same then you can also transcend reality and come join me atop Mt. Olympus.

Since I suppose I’m on the topic of outdoors adventures, I’ll also fill you in on my trip last weekend to Cape Point and Boulder’s Beach. Cape Point is a national park in South Africa home to peninsular panoramas, a bronze medal in biodiversity, and wait for it………………………wild baboons! Our guide even gave us a full-on baboon debriefing: “Now remember, if a baboon comes up to you and grabs your bag away, don’t fight him! He’ll win! Let him have it…he will most likely fouille (lacking the English word at the moment) through it looking for food and then return it.” I saw one baboon out of my bus window but none up close as I climbed to the end of Cape Point. Right adjacent is the Cape of Good Hope, which is (contrary to popular belief) the most SouthWESTERN tip of the African continent and NOT the place where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. It still marks an important landmark around which Vasco da Gama sailed looking for a route to the East Indies. Again, stunning.

Boulder’s Beach is famous for zoological reasons. In the early 1980s, a group of penguins randomly appeared on this beach and formed a colony. Today penguins dot the fairly small beach area and continue to breed / multiply each year. These are the only penguins found anywhere on the African continent (outside zoos). It felt a bit odd to see penguins outside in their normal habitat of such hot weather. Right nearby I also met a shark spotter. This is not a hobby but an actual occupation in South Africa. People are employed to sit atop a cliff with a pair of binoculars and scan the waters below for the signs of any nearby sharks. I felt oh-so-comforted knowing that the South African shark awareness system is both high-tech and fool proof. Of course this one person out in the hot sun over 100 m away could never miss an oncoming shark. The shark spotter I met was watching out over Muizenberg Beach. In an odd twist of fate, Muizenberg holds both the Guiness Record for most popular surfing beach in the world and the infamous local claim of being quite popular with the local shark communities. Again, whatever could go wrong? Nonetheless, shark spotting seems a viable career option for @JenniferFulton should she fail to find any other shark-related work opportunities!

Picture

This is taken from the rooftop deck of my apartment complex. The parliament is only 1.5 blocks from here, and yesterday marked the South African "State of the Nation" speech by President Jacob Zuma w/ guest appearance by Nelson Mandela at said locale, so a group of us watched some of the event perched atop our building....In the background is Lion's Head, the mountain I climbed last weekend (see facebook photos).

Real Refugees, Linguistic Labour, and African "Authenticity:" 1st Week at my Internship

11 February 2010

I have officially worked at the Cape Town Refugee Centre for a week now, so I suppose it is about time that I blog about my experience thus far.

For the Casual Reader: I am so content with my internship placement. In many ways, I can’t image a better synthesis to my Madison/overall education than what I do at the CTRC. When I graduate from MSU this May (hopefully!!!) my official degree will be “double majors in Comparative Cultures & Politics and French with specializations in African Studies and International Development.” My work literally allows me to dabble in each of these various areas. Refugees come to South Africa from various other cultural frames which guide the kinds of lives they desire to develop and lead here but also, as [often violently] displaced persons lead highly politicized lives. I work in French everyday, multiple times, engaging directly with refugee clients and acquiring a vocabulary of discipline-specific jargon. The African studies portion is quite obvious as I am IN Africa learning not only about South Africa but the various regions from which our refugee clients originate. The work itself is essentially development work; it is human development in the sense that we are attempting to develop/ameliorate the lives of individuals, but we focus strongly on basic problems of food security and habitation with additional programs relating to education, trauma therapy, and income-generating economics. The staff is incredibly welcoming, and I have already been entrusted with a great deal of legitimate work. I feel so blessed to have been given this opportunity, especially as the serendipitous outcome of a rather rocky internship search.

For the More Avid Reader: The commute to my internship is approx. 50-60 minutes door-to-door. That includes a 10-15 minute walk to the Cape Town central train station, a 35 minute train ride to a working-class southern suburb called Wynberg, and an additional 5 minute walk to my actual internship. The Cape Town Refugee Centre is located in a commercial complex called “The Wynberg Centre” adjacent to a post office, some small business ventures, and an escalator (roltrappe!) ride up from a small mall-type area. There is an enormous, informal outdoor marketplace spreading across the majority of the area. My first day impression was that, in contrast to my plush accommodations in the City Bowl (downtown Cape Town), this was a much more “authentic” Africa. Couldn’t help but smile as I was met with loads of fruit stands, hair-braiding salons, a mini-bus transit centre, street meat, commotion, energy, Afro-beats, working poverty, blatant loitering, hot-weather smoking, and general Blackness…By that I mean that Cape Town is a true representation of what South Africa likes to call itself: “The Rainbow Nation.” Blacks, Coloureds, Whites, Malays, Indians, Afrikaaners, foreigners, African immigrants, Middle Easterners. Yet, in the words of Kelly Moehlman when I told her I was going to South Africa @ThePeanutBarrel: “Cape Town is SO white!”

I understand what she means based on the City Bowl’s presence of Euro-cafés, cosmopolitan food, and general white privilege, but Wynberg is quite different. I hesitate to call it more ‘authentic’ because of the CCP baggage that comes along with that word, but let’s just say Wynberg is far more in tune to what I had imagined when wanting to come to the discursive conflation that we Westerners refer to as “Africa” (writ large). A bit dodgy, but not unsafe. To in turn complicate the idea of “authenticity,” the informal marketplace is BRIMMING with cheap American paraphernalia: High School Musical 3 backpacks that failed to sell back in the U.S. Various NBA-team jerseys from years back. T-shirts w/ corny slogans written across the front. Cheap watches. I immediately thought back to Professor Harrow’s class when we read a Nigerian novel and discussed the notion of ‘the bad copy.’ The image, representation of America and the Western entertainment industry, is everywhere. From my perspective it could easily be construed as a ‘bad copy’ of our everyday lives, the very items that failed to be bought in our culture and were turned over to anyone who would take them for cheap prices (NB: I need to research more on how this whole economic transition operates before so confidently asserting such things, but this is what I assume.) Yet, these items provide a livelihood for those that sell them. They take on meaning divorced from their 1st-level semiotic value (few are buying the backpacks as avid High School Musical 3 fans) and resurface as valuable commodities. Wynberg is by no means a township area, but it is definitely home to a lower-middle class sect of society with a vibrant outdoor market area. I’m digressing from my actually internship, so I’ll try to move on….

When I first arrived to the CTRC, I was surprised to find that I’ll be working with several other interns. I knew there was another intern there already (via my pre-departure twitter stalking) but I initially met an orientation with Christina (program director, CEO of the NGO if you will) and two other interns: Brett from UConn and Steph from some small school in PA. The intern-I-found-on-twitter’s name is Jenn and she is from the U of Oregon. Christina introduced the baseline structure of the Cape Town Refugee Centre so we could start to figure out where our background skills, education, and interest best make us fit into the organization. The CTRC is an NGO serving the greater Cape Town area’s refugees as an implementing partner of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This means that we receive the bulk of our funding from the UNHCR and then allocate the funds according to specific budget lines and how we deem them best utilized. I’m sure I will write a lot more later analyzing the interrelationship between the UN, NGOs, and int’l political issues as I perceive them, but for now just think of the UNHCR as the int’l governing structure making decisions on refugee status / needs and my NGO, the CTRC, as the grassroots arm power enacting its policies. The South African government adds another variable to the equation in so far as it processes, grants, and “accommodates” both asylum seekers and bona fide refugees, but I’m still not totally clear on what its role entails, so I will add to that later as well.

The 3 main programs w/in the CTRC include: psychosocial services, education development, and an income-generating project. I have worked principally within the psychosocial service program thus far under a professionally trained social worker Afrikaaner woman named Annel. She is an incredibly kindly woman and has been a constant resource for my persistent questions, needed clarifications, and general obliviousness to certain organizational processes. The other main worker within this programme is Fwamba, who works with the bulks of incoming refugees to inform them what is / is not available for them through our NGO. The psychosocial services programme is a sort of umbrella project which seeks to assess the general lives, needs, and desires of our clients (The refugees are always referred to as clients…it is a very professional environment and relationship structure.) It is very social work heavy and involves the prescription of food vouchers, the artful construction of a file representing an overview of each client, and lots of referrals to other organizations / programs / businesses as deemed necessary. The main tool at our disposal is the interview. Clients arrive to the front waiting room, and then we call them back for interviews to determine what their most pressing needs are whilst attempting to screen out abusers of the social welfare system. In this sense, our office feels very doctor’s office-esque. They arrive, wait, and are called back for ‘treatment.’ From what I’ve observed, people wait for a long, long time, and no one seems to mind it. I think that is partly a symptom of the much more relaxed “Africa time,” partly something that refugees have by their very nature become accustomed to, and partly due to the overwhelming number of clients we must process in a relatively short amount of time.

The other two programmes are educational support and income-generating. I don’t know much about the educational support programme as of yet, but it is mainly designed to provide each and every refugee child available funding for schooling in South Africa. We strongly support universal education as a prerequisite for further aiding our clients and thus have significant funding available to help with registration and uniform costs. The income-generating programme is quite a bit more interesting. During our most recent fiscal review with the UNHCR, they decided to steeply increase the amount of monies we receive for the income-generating project and moderately decrease general monies available for more direct forms of aid. In the income-generating programme, refugees are encouraged to adapt the skills / experience they had working in their home countries and creatively modify them to economically integrate themselves into South African society. Funds go towards unavailable capital needed for small business ventures and basic skills training in available South African fields. The development scheme is quite similar to micro financing in that the businesses are not overly ambitious plans but small niches in the informal economy that are self-sustaining over time. Lots of craftiwork, lots of sales in the outdoor market areas, and some basic skills training. “Africa needs trade, not aid.” There is a noteworthy psychological aspect to this sort of development, too, as once individuals take some ownership and enterprise in their own lives, they gain a sense of both purpose and pride. I’d love to get more involved in this program within the upcoming weeks of work, for sure.

My French skills have been an ENORMOUS asset so far in my work. Our clients come mostly from the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Somalia; so clearly French has come in handy. (For those less well-versed in the global French community, the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, and Burundi are all significant French-speaking countries). Due to its sheer size and the perpetuation of its civil conflict, the DRC provides us with approx. 40-50% of total clients. Our senior social worker, Annel, grinned from ear to ear when we interns were all introducing ourselves and I explained that I had near-fluency abilities in French and a practical knowledge of Swahili. Granted she smiles like this often. Nonetheless, I have done some legitimate interpretation for her during her interviews and worked predominantly in French for some of my personally conducted interviews. Most clients have some English skills, but I would estimate that about 60% speak / understand French much better than they do English. I always start my interviews in English, because these people are in English-speaking South Africa and need to learn the language in order to adapt. However, as soon as there is sufficient difficulty in communication, I explain to them that I also speak French and offer them the possibility to carry on in that language instead. So far all of them have gladly accepted. Haha. The accent is a little different to understand but not as difficult as I had actually anticipated, and whenever I come across a discipline-specific or other vocabulary word that I do not know / have forgotten I merely use other words to explain the meaning, a feat that has proved very successful. In fact, interviews in English proceed much the same way. Often we must explain terms and ideas in multiple manners in order for the clients to understand what it is we are asking of them. My most rewarding experience was interpreting for a newly arrived Congolese family during their interview with Annel. Husband, 8+ month pregnant with twins wife, and two adorable little kids playing in the corner. This family understood virtually no English, and after Annel would ask/explain something, they would turn their heads to look at me with eyes of dire need. I felt at that moment like I was truly accomplishing something significant…my presence enabled this family a bit of comfort in a new environment and the capacity to explain their concerns to someone financially and professionally fit to help them.

I’ve used a bit of my Swahili, too, but many of the clients who speak Swahili are from East / Central Africa and also speak French. Thus, I have sometimes worked briefly in Swahili then transitioned into French. This week a new intern arrived who is studying in Cape Town but originally from Congo-Brazzaville so that gives me yet another chance to use my French skills in the workplace! None of the other interns have any significant linguistic background.

Last Friday, I made my first visit out into the townships. We don’t normally see clients on Fridays, but a single mother with 1 disabled son and 1 daughter showed up on our doorstep looking for urgent housing assistance. After working most the day on their case, Annel and I ended up personally driving the group to a shelter called “Bonne Espérance” in a township called Philippi. We took a few wrong turns on the way, so I really got to see the ‘other side’ of South Africa. The townships really are a different world than downtown Cape Town. So close geographically, yet I was firsthand witness to ambling goats blocking the streets, corrugated metal shacks jam-packed into a rural-urban ghetto, and the indescribable smell of extreme poverty. After seeing those sights, it seems difficult to consider taking South Africa off of a developing country list.

My most current work task involves the reassessment of certain grant recipients. We receive special donor-funded grants from the UNHCR for unaccompanied minors, children with disabilities, adults with disabilities, and elderly persons; but they must be reevaluated every 6 months in order to ensure that we are allocating our resources as effectively as possible. The current files haven’t been reassessed for 2 years due to more pressing needs, so that is my primary task for the next 1.5+ weeks. Unaccompanied minors are refugee children who, often because their biological parents are deceased, fall under the custody of other guardians. I have been digging through the CTRC’s file system the last few days to consolidate contact information, call the clients, set-up an appointment, interview them, and ultimately reassess whether or not they need this source of funding in their lives. A big task but also very rewarding.

I really do love my internship thus far. I feel as though I have studied issues like African politics, development, ‘African’ French, and int’l conflict for such a long time now, but in this job I can attach a human face. These are not Madison policy issues to debate with overzealous college students but cultures and politics that quite frankly govern the lives of visible, living, breathing human beings. On top of the issues, I am also getting a very strong feel for the operating procedures of an NGO as well as the possible conditions of their financing structures. I will definitely fill you all in more as I go on, but I also need to be careful not to compromise too much of our clients’ confidentiality.

Cheers!