October 19, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Essay: Learning from Cape Town
A Springside student spends a summer in South Africa
by Kimberly Ashby

When most kids think of summer, they think of hanging out with friends, sunbathing at the shore and completely avoiding anything remotely academic. But last spring, when I began to search for a memorable way to spend my last high school summer, I wanted to go in a different direction.

I have always been an ambitious student. I have challenged myself with difficult courses and have sacrificed free time for studying, but when I entered high school, it seemed to me that it was important to conquer more than algebra and biology.

I witnessed the cultural ignorance that thrived undetected in my school community and I wanted to do everything in my power to make a change. I joined Springside’s multicultural board and got involved with community groups in Philadelphia. The more I participated, the more I realized that multiculturalism would be a part of my future.

With college plans and preparations everywhere I turned, I felt as though my aspirations for what I wanted to achieve “someday” needed to speed up. I had gotten past the carpools and sleepovers of my youth, and it was time for me to turn my dreams for social justice into a reality. The Summer Academy at Cape Town was my method of action.

I found the Summer Academy rummaging through summer programs on the Internet, and once I read the description and calendar of events, I decided at once that I wanted to participate. Before me was the opportunity to spend a month in South Africa, living with students from around the world, all of whom were coming together for a common purpose: to learn from each other.

The program was a guinea pig test for an African Leadership Academy that the administrators were planning in the hopes of creating more effective leaders for the future of Africa since inadequate leadership is one of the problems holding the continent back. I had the chance to throw myself into an environment that was unfamiliar, an environment in which I could practice everything that I had preached about opening one’s mind to other lifestyles and societies. College may have been a year away, but I was ready to start making an impact.

From June 19 to July 11, I learned a great deal about South Africa and about myself. The faculty informed us that the academy’s goal was to educate us on South African history and culture, improve our leadership skills and introduce us to other talented students from around the world. I can honestly say that the administrators experienced success in every one of these goals.

My classes in Cape Town educated me about a society, which my history classes had only touched on. I had the chance to read the words of Nelson Mandela and to hear guest speakers introduce me to the pain of apartheid. I walked the hallways of Robbin Island Prison and saw the cell in which President Mandela was confined for 27 years. I learned the names of civil rights activists such as Desmond Tutu, who challenged the unjust beliefs ingrained in a society.

Every person whom I learned about became proof of the capabilities man has for positive change. I sometimes get frustrated when my efforts for multiculturalism go unnoticed, but these political figures showed me that my work would not be wasted.

Although I was enlightened by the classes I took at the Summer Academy, I learned far more outside the classroom. The people whom I met in Africa and the places that I saw were the most memorable aspects of my trip. I will always remember the first night in my cabin. I talked all night with three very different girls, two of whom were American and one who was South African. As three girls of color, we discussed our upbringings and how our race had affected us.

While the American girls’ stories sounded similar to mine, my South African roommate, Zukiswe, had a drastically different experience because she grew up going to a white school during apartheid. She described the constant exclusion that she experienced not only because of the intolerance of her classmates, but also because of the encouragement of her government. This was when I first began to understand how much of a role race plays in everyday life in South Africa.

Everywhere you go there, you are first identified by your race. The neighborhoods people lived in and the way in which they lived their lives were all partially determined by their skin color. Because I am often the only student of color in my advanced classes, I often feel as though I stand out and my peers even refer to me as the class’ “token black girl,” but in South Africa, I witnessed racial division rise to a far greater level. I could see that the years of having to carry identification cards that classified non-whites by their race had remained in the collective psyche.

Even the race classifications were foreign to me and took some time to understand. Black and white seemed like simple enough distinctions, but the “colored” population was considered a completely separate race from the blacks. This term described people of mixed origin, who in the United States would probably be considered lighter-skinned black people.

I had a hard time telling the difference between blacks and coloreds, although my South African friends could instantly tell. There was even some debate about whether I would be considered black or colored, which only added to my confusion. The whites in South Africa were also divided. The country contains both English and Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers), and these two groups not only have animosity towards the blacks and coloreds, but have hostility among themselves.

Race was only one aspect of the country’s division. Tribal affiliation separated blacks as well, and it was terribly important whether a person was Xhosa or Zulu. These tribes had completely different languages and cultures.

Cape Town seemed to be severely divided by economic status as well as race and I came to understand that South Africa was a country of extremes. Downtown Cape Town is an exceptionally wealthy area with million dollar houses lining the streets.

A few miles away in the townships, however, people are living in poverty in small shacks made from discarded wood and sheet metal as their homes. The townships were the areas on the edge of the city that blacks and coloreds were forced to live in during apartheid because they were not allowed to live within the city limits. Although there are many blacks and coloreds who live in Cape Town today, a large number of them still reside in the townships and when crossing the border from Cape Town into Khayletshia, I felt as though I was in the segregated American South.

Although these neighborhoods were the most dangerous areas I visited during the program, I encountered my most rewarding experiences there. All of the students at the Summer Academy were required to participate in a community service project in one of the various townships. I was thrilled when I got my first choice and had the opportunity to work at the Khumbalani Daycare Center in the township of Khayletshia. This center was specifically for children who were either infected or affected by HIV or AIDS. Some of the children had even been orphaned by the epidemic.

During my sophomore year, I participated in an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign at Springside and Chestnut Hill Academy, and I have felt passionate about the topic ever since. In my classes, I learned about the details of the disease and its effects on the continent, but the experience of playing with children that had to fight this battle dwarfed everything I had read about. Imagine having a fatal illness before you learn to tie your shoes?

The statistics I learned about were extremely upsetting, but I never would have known that any of them were sick if I had not been told. All of the kids had wide grins on their faces when they saw a crowd of unfamiliar teenagers approaching. It didn’t matter that we could not speak the same language or that some of the volunteers were white.

All of the kids were ecstatic to see us. There weren’t any temper tantrums as you might expect from American children. It was mind blowing. These kids were cramped in a tiny space and had limited amounts of toys, food, and diapers. Most tragic of all, many of them had a life-threatening disease and yet they were just happy to get attention.

This made me realize how much Americans take for granted. I enjoyed my service more than any other aspect of the trip because it not only gave me a better understanding of the people and their society, it made me proud to actually make a difference in the township. I felt as though I was making my first steps towards easing all the injustices that I wanted to fight.

By traveling to South Africa, I did not end world hunger or find a cure for AIDS, but I returned to Philadelphia with a greater understanding of how I’d like to make an impact. During my trip to Cape Town, I was introduced to a nation’s history and culture. I had encounters with baboons and I climbed Cape Town’s massive Table Mountain. I even got to feel the accomplishment of making fifty rambunctious kids smile.

But one of the most valuable lessons I learned in South Africa was that there are lots of kids who care about each other’s well being. I went into the program thinking that I was somewhat alone in my pursuit of racial tolerance and understanding, but this trip showed me that there are people from all over the world who share my passion.

Yes, someone needs to stand up for human rights issues, and I am willing and ready with a protest sign and a bullhorn, but I now realize that I don’t have to save the world single handedly.

Kimberly Ashby is a senior at Chestnut Hill’s Springside School.