Storyline

For those family and friends who just want the ‘what I seen, heard and experienced’ while in Africa this summer (winter!!!), this thread is where you’ll find memos about what I am doing and any photos I may take. Though, I have been strongly advised against carrying my camera, so we’ll see how picture taking evolves along the way.

Monday 6/2
I went to my first REOS meeting today. (REOS for REOS, not one that REOS was hosting for one of their projects.) I had met almost everyone individually (all but Dineo and Marianne [pronounced roughly ‘my-yanna’]), and it was good to see everyone in the same room together. The inquiry for me right now is that it is good in a lot of ways for me to just absorb and learn and figure out the key players, how these projects are working, where they are and where they are trying to go before being truly able to provide useful input. At the same time, my tendency is to stay shushed. I want to be vigilant about not creating an ‘Amy is quiet and doesn’t speak’ pattern here and instead create an ‘Amy is insightful, eloquent and makes invaluable contributions’ pattern. What’s the balance dance here? I know it is a fallback for me to say ‘Well, I don’t know enough to speak yet,’ when in fact I really do. It is often more about me speaking than about if what could say is of value. Even if my comments are not answers, and instead powerful questions….. I GET to speak and be heard!!!!


Friday 5/30
I went to my first two meetings with REOS today. They were both part of the same large community-strengthening project in the Midvaal community centered on orphaned and vulnerable children. The two meetings were very different. The first was after a site visit to a community named Peels Farm. The community was comprised of about 300 shacks (roughly 5-8 people per shack). The larger project team decided that Peels Farm would be the best place to start their work because it is so highly monitored – any new shack is taken down by authorities almost immediately. Everyone’s shack is made out of refuse siding. Some are painted. Some looked like they’d fall over with a strong wind, and others looked remarkably good with large windows that open. One nice one even had a BMW parked below a carport made out of siding!!!! (I didn’t ask what the story was there.) The primary goal of this whole project is to sustainably improve the lives of children – their health, nutrition, access to school and services, and improve the conditions of the whole community in the process. The main guy who was taking us around today lived there, and is a very active community organizer. He started a crèche (daycare) so that parents of small children in the community could work. Several elderly ladies all help watch the little ones. Only one of the children was a full orphan, but there were others in the community who did not attend this service. We went to speak with this household I was just referring to about their situation. The conversation quickly became centered around why the eldest boy wasn’t in school. The answer was roughly ‘he doesn’t like it/want to be there.’ I couldn’t understand the language being spoken, so can only rely on translation and body language, but the caregiver seemed rather defensive about the boy not being in school. I don’t know if she thought it wouldn’t make a difference in the long run, or if she just didn’t like a quartet of white ladies coming to her door and asking her questions about these children that she was helping to care for who were not hers. It also came out that none of the kids had IDs. Apparently, in South Africa all citizens are issued a national ID upon birth and that number is necessary for access to any services: school, health care, income assistance grants…. And the cycle of not having access to these services/IDs perpetuates itself because if one’s parents were undocumented, then it is difficult to prove you/your parents are nationals and not one of the many immigrants into South Africa from neighboring countries. (And illegal immigrants are not entitled to the same rights.) In addition, there is the chronic disempowerment that goes hand in hand with such poverty/powerlessness; even when officials do come around to help remedy legitimate undocumented issues, many people do not act to resolve the situation. They are just too disempowered (especially in the face of authority) to be able to act.

This softness was evidenced in the first meeting I attended this afternoon with the nutrition focus group. There were four REOS-related people, one white community organizer, and four community members at this first “what are our actions going to be?” meeting. (This is coming out of a long string of leadership, visioning, purpose generation, and “prince” (like a frog that can turn into a prince) goal(s) creation workshops, which were also geared to start giving these people the tools to dream, think about what could be possible, and how to give voice to these ideas.
No community members said anything. Well, the guy who showed us around responded to ideas that REOS folks put out, but the three women only responded to direct questions. Given, not everything was rapidly translated for them, but two of them spoke decent English so I think that they understood a lot. REOS’ role is that of facilitator, and they are not supposed to generate content. They are supposed to hold the space to enable all the other actors to do this work. The meeting would have been over in 5 minutes had REOS’ folks not spoken up. Vanessa later recounted to me that this is part of their current learning curve: when to add ideas, when to completely back off, when to hold firm to something they know/believe will serve in the long run, and when to let what is happening happen?

The second meeting was part of this same project but now with the group centered on access (to IDs and therefore to services). Vanessa and I were the only REOS people there, and the other four people were all active civil service workers. There were no community members at this meeting. There were challenges at this meeting too, but they were quite different. All the people were very vocal and willing to express their opinions, but they easily got off task and topic quickly and it was all Vanessa could do to get them to restate their purpose without them going into action. (In all, it took at least 45 minutes to complete the simple question.) Sure, action is great. We all want to create change and not just talk about it, but the game that they are playing here is ‘how do we know what action to do?’ and ‘what actions are the right action?’ and ‘what really, according to our goals ad principles, do we need to do first?’ It is very easy for people to continue to act – it’s like a hamster wheel. You can go around and around, doing and doing, but what are you doing and why? Is there a more effective way to do things? Is there a simple solution that you are not seeing just because you have been looking at the situation in the same way for so long? What would it take to make the solution simple?

Thursday 5/29
After a 14:40 hr flight from Washington DC to Johannesburg, South Africa I finally arrived. (I always bless my ability to sleep on planes, especially when the ride is long!) I had decided in the previous weeks to bring with me the foods that I normally eat [cacao, green powder, bee pollen…etc] (for those who don’t know, I am a raw food vegan) that I wouldn’t be able to find here even though no countries like you to bring food with you for contamination and infestation reasons. So, after a nerve-racking moment of passing by declaration officials with my illegal ‘plant materials’ (declaration’s vague wording meaning any food, specimines, house plants…whatever) I joyfully got to the other side and was picked up by a lady named Paula. She was also fetching two other people who had just arrived. We all thought that we were just other fares, until they asked me about my internship and I mentioned the name of the group. Both people are intimately involved with both REOS and Berkana! After some shock and a ‘what a small world!!!’ moment, it became apparent that the same woman arranged for all of us to picked up, so it made sense that we’d all be involved with the same group. It was a crazy few minutes though.

I spent the first night in a hostel/boarding house called Pension Udube in the Melville suburb. I met some undergrads staying there who were nearing the end of a 4th quarter internship through their journalism school at Northwestern. What an immediate way to intimately learn about a place - to go and have ones job be to cover the nation’s events as they unfold!!! They probably know more about what is happening in South Africa than I ever do in the US.

I was picked up the next morning (Wednesday) and taken to Vanessa’s flat in the Kilarney suburb. This area is all apartment buildings and malls. I was told there is a zoo up the street, but I haven’t gotten out to explore like I had imagined – I have gotten sucked into reading a book and prepping this blog. Yesterday, I also mainly read but also ventured out to get groceries and a prepay cell phone. Exciting days!! Tomorrow I am going to a stakeholder meeting with Sarah, with whom I will be working with all summer, so hopefully I will have begin to have interesting things to report starting tomorrow.

Love to you all,
Amy