Greetings From...SOUTH AFRICA!

Hello Not Your Average Feminist readers! As some of you may or may not know, I'll be spending the next month in South Africa! This trip is a blessing and a privilege, and I can not wait to share some of my experiences with you all. Luckily for me, there is a journaling component to the course I'm taking, so I decided to share my entries on NYAF. Most of my writing will revolve around issues of race, gender and queerness, but expect some random observations and tidbits as well.

I suppose a good place to start would be with what I expected South Africa would be like. When I was younger, I had a single narrative of “Africa.” I put Africa in quotations because Africa was always referred to as though it was one country with uniform experiences. It was almost always spoken about in relation to other countries rather than as a continent with multiple countries. For instance, I learned about the Slavery from Africa, Roman Empire and Africa, England and Africa, Belgium and Africa, France and Africa. The list can go on and on. Before high school, my education had painted a bleak desert-like place full of tribal customs and half-dressed warriors.

What is most disturbing about this experience is that the majority of my classmates identified as Black. But even as I sat and listened to the history of slavery vs. immigration, I always wondered when African identity became African American identity. Other stories of peoples immigrating to the United States spoke of pride and holding onto one's ethnic identity and cultural traditions. But African people, once again African as a collective rather than as individual nations, were just in the States and only had a place in the retelling of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Now some folks, like myself, identified as Caribbean and not African American, but even African diaspora was never discussed.

It was not until high school and college when I really began to explore my own history and the historical truths which have been White-washed, that I realized I have only learned history as told by the winners of wars. Those who have had the privilege of telling their own stories and having others then take their stories as legitimate accounts of history. I suppose to summarize, what I really expected to gain from this trip was further expansion of the single narrative of Africa have learned.

So far this trip has delivered. We arrived in Cape Town a few days ago, and I can not get over how beautiful this place is. I expected a bit of nature (a welcomed reprieve from the hustle and bustle of New York City), but this is literally the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. Here is evidence of said beauty:

But not every area of Cape Town is so picturesque. We traveled to a township today to visit a cultural center. It was a community project that offered different after school programs for youth including music, dancing, and art. I definitely appreciated the fact that the art project was meant to help people learn a profitable trade, but I felt uneasy during the music and dancing class. This could just be the feminist in me, but I found it rather unnerving that all of the young boys played the music, while the young girls did all of the dancing. Their practice space came equipped with a group of chairs for an audience. This also bothered me. It was as though these students were often on display. Then there was driving through the township on a luxury bus as people either waved hello or stared quizzically. I rather enjoyed this one young man who flipped us off. I felt like if a big fancy van full of people with cameras rolled up into my neighborhood, I would have done the same thing.

I think all of these things coupled with the fact that we were were surrounded by other tourists made me feel like an onlooker, rather than a learner. Aside from different conversations I've had with individuals, I'm still looking for more authentic interactions. Thoughts/Comments/Questions?