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!