Out of Africa

What contrasts in Africa! As soon as we got clearance in the port of Cape Town, I gathered up twenty students to visit the offices of the Tutu Peace Centre offices.

Nomfundo Walaza, whom I know from UNCSW work, and who is now the CEO of the Peace Centre, met us there. It was a hot afternoon, the air conditioner was down, the PowerPoint wouldn’t work; we sat together in a stuffy room for three hours, and it was a powerful experience of conversation.

Nomfundo is a trauma psychologist who has worked throughout the post-apartheid years, and who worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. One point she made about that work was that very few white South Africans participated, explaining that it was too hard for them to hear the horrors that people told. And she told us enough of those horrors to feel the reality of it. She described being twelve years old and tear-gassed and shot at walking home from school, seeing the leader of the group gunned down and fearing that she would be an easy target because of her height....

No sooner did I get that group back to the ship and change clothes than it was time to get up (3:30 a.m.) to lead another group on a four-day safari. It soon became clear that amongst my group of 64 students were some of the most grossly entitled, demanding....

I cannot do any description justice, but they pushed my every button, buttons long dormant… especially because of having listened to Nomfundo the day before. I kept trying to find the teachable moments and may have been wiser to look for the teachable persons!

Racism is alive and well—or more honestly, alive and sick—in South Africa. White people fill the good jobs. Black African women hold the lowest jobs. Our safari lodge was beautiful with great thatched meeting rooms, lovely dining rooms, exquisite food, and a beautiful pool. Each group was assigned to a (white) ranger and his/her jeep for the duration, with a black African tracker to sit on the front of the jeep. The rangers dined with us, the trackers did not. In the entire operation, capable of housing a hundred people, there was one black man in a non-service role. The maids wore black dresses in the heat, and carried beds up and down stairs on their heads. Many of the students’ bar bills for a night was more than a maid’s salary for a week. And these older women bowed and served entitled students who assumed it was appropriate because, of course, they were paying customers. There was also a contingent of lovely caring students with a high level of awareness—the group of us agreed to putting tip money directly into the hands of the maids—otherwise it would have been distributed disproportionately in the direction of the more highly paid white staff. I had several truly wonderful conversations with the black African women. They encouraged me to work for them at the UN, they patted me and hugged and tearfully thanked me for putting the tip money into their hands. They thanked me for learning their names and speaking to them as human beings.

You know when someone wants your money, and you also know when something deeper and more genuine is happening; I have deep and genuine and black memories of mother Africa!

When I finally got back to the ship after four very long days, I was exhausted, but I also felt sullied, dirtied, by what I’d seen and been part of. I woke up desperate to go to church and found myself at St. George Cathedral, Bishop Tutu’s “People’s Church” on the 160th anniversary of the Anglican presence here. It was a high mass, Palestrina’s Missa Brevis, with lots of smells and bells, and with a brilliant sermon. Between feeling the need to go to church and getting there, I met up with Doc Brown, our wonderful ship physician, Terri, and Linda. So we all went to church, though I was the only Anglican, and I ‘came out’ as an ordinand to them. I was so proud of my church that day in that place, the place where people found the strength to make a stand, a long stand, reminding me of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s church in Georgia. I met Lavinia, Bishop Tutu’s assistant, when I randomly selected her to ask if I might make a donation in exchange for the well-worn prayer book I’d used. Not only did I get the prayer book, but she offered to send me an autographed photo of Bishop Tutu to keep in it....

My friends from the ship and I went to tea near the Parliament buildings and then, for a real contrast, on to the pan-African green market, like a huge swap meet of goods from all over Africa. I bought a painting and a drum and a wooden bowl. (I have been part of a drumming group on the ship and I am finally learning to play....)

I promised contrasts, but in this post, have spoken more of the challenges. Tomorrow I will write of the beauty and joys I was part of for my few days in Africa, kind of like saving dessert for after dinner!