Spheres of South Africa: The Legacy of Apartheid and the Death of Madiba

A few weeks ago, I had a Skype date with my good friend (and constant inspiration) Rohini Bhatia who is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Delhi, India.  She was sitting in a posh café which led me ask her about her transition into the “developing world” as she sipped on a latte and used the café’s wi-fi which was good enough to sustain our Skype conversation.  She went on to tell me about her reservations about her time in India thus far, her work and her leisure being centered around a specific “sphere of Delhi,” as she called it.  It was the sphere of the new, young, modern, cosmopolitan, and most importantly, wealthy elite.  She shared with me her frustrations, expressing that she would soon have an “expat-free” week where she tried not to indulge in comforts of home that she was able to find, even in one of the countries that many people would imagine to be as different from America as you can get.

I let her words fester for a bit, but I knew immediately that she was explaining something that I similarly felt here in South Africa.  It’s funny because I’m currently writing this in Como Caffe, a New York Italian-themed brunch place that I frequent for its awesome red rooibos cappuccinos and the fact that it’s the only place in this city where you can get bagels (and they’re pretty decent, I might add).

I recognize that I, too, have been stuck in a “Sphere of South Africa.”  It is the sphere of the rich, in both monetary wealth and social status.  It is the sphere that is virtually synonymous with the white that excludes everyone else.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that’s defined by nice restaurants with white patrons and black servers, where even though I’m paying 7 bucks for a meal for myself, that could very easily feed a family a few kilometers away in a township.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that is full of adventurous excursions like petting cheetahs, swimming with seals, and bungee jumping that most other South Africans would never imagine doing.  It’s the sphere of South Africa that still benefits from the legacy of apartheid, an apartheid that still exists but is now wearing a different guise.  Most importantly, it is the sphere of privilege.

The spheres of South Africa are heavily segregated, separated by money, which is incredibly influenced by race.  It has been over 20 years since the end of apartheid, but the same social structures remain mostly intact.  There are no blatant laws that ban black people (or coloured people, or any race, for that matter) from navigating the social strata, but there still remains an unspoken code.  The remnants of a previous hierarchy still persists, however dismantled the system may have become.

The fact remains that you can change laws, you can create policies, have one of the most liberal constitutions in the world, but that means nothing if people on the ground continue to perpetuate now-archaic ideals of social structure.  It just comes to show that policy is useless unless people enact it; policy and culture often differ, and when they do, culture always prevails.

This modern-day apartheid, if you choose to call it that, may be an unwilling, unintended continuation of the past, and I honestly don’t think that people are actively keeping these destructive structures afloat.  However, the truth is that apartheid is still alive in a non-formalized, and because of that, possibly more harmful way.

It used to be accepted that Black people got the short end of the stick because of apartheid.  Now, they get the short end of the stick because they just do.  No explanation needed other than that: it’s because it’s what they’ve always gotten.  And nobody quite knows how to fix it, and that’s probably because there’s no quick, easy, put-a-bandaid-on-it solution.  So Black people keep getting the short end of the stick but are content because it doesn’t have to be that way.  There’s nothing that’s keeping them down anymore.  But there’s also nothing bringing them up, either.

This country has seen a lot of change in the past two decades, but it has not seen nearly enough.  I understand that change takes time, and I have faith that the country is continually improving itself and becoming more equitable.

This comes in light of the death of Nelson Mandela earlier this month.  The country has been (to me) pretty calm about the situation, probably already expecting for the past few months starting when Mandela was first admitted to the hospital.  With the possibility of the national hero’s death looming in everyone’s mind, it didn’t quite shock anyone.

Now is as good a time as any to assess Nelson Mandela’s accomplishments.  Though we all know that he has been an incredible, powerful voice for disenfranchised South African people, we cannot be satisfied with his accomplishments (and those of his contemporaries) alone.  He has contributed a lot to the fight for justice in this country, but as we can see in contemporary South Africa, the war is not over.

What gives me hope is that his death has paved a way for new, young leaders to emerge, to take his life as an example, to create change because more change is direly needed.  We need not mourn Mandela; rather, we must cultivate the Mandelas of the future.

Stories from the Field: Lira

“Sometimes you want to cry, but you have to stay strong,” Lira tells me.

“There was one girl, the oldest one in the class.  So beautiful.  Her hair, her nails, everything was so nice,” Lira begins to retell, unexpectedly telling me the most impactful story she had encountered in her two years as a Grassroot Soccer SKILLZ Coach.  Lira is very quiet but very thoughtful.  You can always tell that she’s thinking just by looking at her.  When she musters up the courage to speak, rest assured that it’s something worth sharing, and you darn straight better be listening.

“She was so confident.  You could see it, you could feel it.”

Lira goes on to tell me that the female student, the perfect prototype of young South African woman, was willingly abused by her older boyfriend.  She would often get beat by her older boyfriend, often as much as three times a day.  The young girl was complacent about it, and was actually quite proud of it, telling an entire room of her female classmates. 

“He gives me money, so it’s okay,” the girl announces to the class, as Lira stared, dumbfounded.  The young participant was only 15 years old.

It was heartbreaking, Lira expressed, that someone so young has already been a victim of domestic abuse and culturally-ingrained gender based violence.  Moreover, the teenager had been impressionable enough to feel like her treatment was warranted and that this kind of behavior is acceptable.  Already, she has been exposed to engendered inequalities and has developed habits that may be hard to break.

What was most heartbreaking to me was what Lira told me next:

“Since she was the most beautiful, smart, outspoken girl in the class, everyone looked up to her.  And they didn’t see anything wrong with her story.  They think, ‘Well, if she got hit and gets something out of it, then I can be hit and get money, too!  Look at her, she’s perfect!’”  As if perfect was defined by a broken statue of a black goddess, crumbling from the inside, as long as it maintained its outer luster.

“What if that girl stays in that relationship?,” Lira asks me.  “Even if she moves on, what will she expect from her next relationship?  She may never have a good man who will treat her right because she’s expecting money.  How was I supposed to change her mind?”

These were questions I had no answers to, yet they were questions that Grassroot Soccer coaches face on a regular basis.

Our coaches are sent to be role models, to create dialogue, to ruffle some feathers.  And sometimes that’s hard to do in situations like these.  To be a role model for those who already have them.  To create dialogue about topics that nobody wants to discuss.  To ruffle feathers where the feathers are unmovable.  It’s a much harder task than what we read on paper.

Coaches, like Lira in this predicament, felt like they’ve needed to back-track; they want to erase all the things that young people have seen (or sometimes have experienced firsthand), but they know that isn’t possible.  Instead, they have to challenge firmly entrenched ideals, to dig deep into the core of people’s attitudes, and try to make impactful change in their behavior.

The question this posits is how early we need to start tackling issues of sex and domestic violence.  “We need to start younger,” Lira shared, thinking that the vital conversations she had with this particular participant in that classroom was already too late.  If there’s anything I’ve learned from public health, it’s that it’s way easier to prevent something from happening than to stave it away it once it’s already happened.

Grassroot Soccer provides a safe space for important conversations to occur, to curb harmful habits before they develop, and to empower a generation of young people not only to stay HIV-free and healthy in the biomedical sense of the word, but to also have healthy relationships with one another.  This is something that is often overlooked in the Grassroot Soccer model: that SKILLZ Coaches are promoting healthy lifestyles (physically and emotionally), of which being HIV-negative plays vital a part in the reality of young South Africans today.

On Direction

I have an impeccable sense of direction.  I’ve always thought it was a New York thing.  I tend to be in charge of leading the pack, and I take extreme pride in that responsibility.  However, since being in South Africa, I’m pretty sure the locals around here can blow me out of the water with their direction skills.  They always seem to know how to get from Point A to Point B without ever having to consult a map and without ever skipping a beat.  I can’t say as much for myself, especially since getting an iPhone a year ago.

Their heightened sense of direction is especially evident when driving in the townships.  Maneuvering yourself through the narrow, winding roads, often with kids and/or animals getting in your way, is definitely a daunting task.  Surrounded by all the spazas and shipping container barber shops/beauty salons, everything look fairly the same.  Yet, when driving around with our staff, they always knew exactly where we were and could give perfect directions on how to get somewhere from that exact spot, never once seeking the help of any kind of map or GPS device.

But then I had this realization: everything looked the same, but only to me.

Our coaches and staff members have lived here for their entire lives.  This is home to them, and they are comfortable here.  They know everything, and they can see the nuances.  I don’t necessarily want to make this an argument for the reason why local grassroots initiatives work, but this kind of inherent knowledge is the reason why they do.  What would take me months or even years to understand, locals have known by virtue of growing up here, and there is immense value in that.

I began to think about the situation differently: what if you plopped one of my South African coworkers (or anyone foreign, for that matter) in the middle of Manhattan?  How would they handle it?  It would probably all look the same to them.  Shiny and incredibly tall metal-and-glass skyscrapers, all lined up in a perfect grid.  It’s monotonous.  But in my eyes, it’s all different.  I can recognize the buildings, and not just the obvious ones like the Empire State or the Chrysler Building.  I’m talking even the unnamed ones, the irrelevant ones.  I’ve seen them all, and I could probably name the exact coordinates of where a building is located, or I sure as hell can get you pretty darn close.  I can probably give you pretty good subway directions of how to get from one building to another, if you posed the challenge.

I realize now that it’s the same for the people I work with here.  Yeah, those shacks all have the same tin roofs with matching solar panels on the top, all are painted with a similar pastel color scheme, and they seem to go for mile and miles.  But it takes a local to notice the little things: the guy who also sits at the corner near the neighborhood water tap, the Kaizer Chiefs or Orlando Pirates emblem painted proudly on a house’s façade, that one stray dog who really seems to enjoy hanging around the little shop.

There are experiences and feelings that people associate with certain places, and its that relationship that helps people to remember where they are.  Yes, these spazas may seem to be the same, but they are all different because of their character.  Because of the memories.  Because of the people inside of them.  Because of the time they used to hang around it after school, still in their elaborate uniforms, and use their spare change to buy a tiny bag of Nik Naks (which are awesome, by the way).  Many people think that having a bad sense of direction is due to a wonky memory, but really, it’s memories (plural) that are at the core of good directions.  It’s not just about brain but also about the heart.

Not too long ago, Claire and I were in the car driving home through the township of Kwazakhele following Siya who was going in a different direction.  He said to follow him until “we recognized the way,” and we were very skeptical of this.  We were on his tail for a bit until I saw a familiar street corner and a large abangcwabi, or funeral home, that I had seen before.  I yelped because I realized that we were a few blocks away from a school where I had seen my first SKILLZ Street graduation.  From there, we knew the way home.  It was a minor accomplishment, but it made me realize that I was gathering experiences and a starting to recognize places and make associations between the two.   It showed me that this place was becoming seemingly less foreign as it used to be, and that I, too, was learning the nuances.  It’s crazy to me that it has already been three months, or a quarter of the way, through my year here.  But little triumphs like that make me feel more confident for the months to come that Port Elizabeth may actually become more like home than I ever thought.

Transnational Bodies

“So why do your eyes look like that?,” the produce guy at the supermarket asked me.  We’ve indulged in quick small talk for the past few months, so I thought this was just a feeble attempt to ask “How are you?” or start a short conversation.  I had been traveling all night on a 12-hour bus ride from Cape Town and had come home from a brutal work day, especially after only getting a few hours of shut-eye in an uncomfortable seat.  I’m sure that my fatigue was showing; even the walk to the supermarket was treacherous, and I opted to push around a trolley instead of carrying a basket.  Still unsure, I asked him what he meant by his question.

“Like, how do you say… Why do they look like that?  Are you from China?”

Surprisingly enough, this was the first time since arriving to South Africa that I was blatantly propositioned about my ethnicity.

“No, I’m not.  I’m Filipino.  From the Philippines.  Except I’m from America.  So I’m American.”

After a short geography lesson, I walk away with my avocados.

As I was walking home with my groceries in hand, there was a mother with her daughter on the sidewalk.  As I passed them, I heard the child say, “Look, it’s a Chinese man!”  It must have been Point Out Paul’s Ethnicity Day because these two times were the first, and still the only times this has happened to me, both on the same day.  As I kept walking, I heard the mother chastise, “Honey, don’t say that about the man. “  I smiled for a second, but then I realized that she made it sound like being Asian was the same as having an extra nose or fingers for eyelashes.  “He may look weird, but he’s still a good person, darling.”

I want to clarify that these were not the first times I had been asked about my origin while in South Africa.  The second a word comes out of my mouth, people already know that I’m not local, and usually hit the nail right on the head and guess that I’m American.  Maybe it’s just the circles I’ve been around, but nobody has ever asked the follow up question, “So if you’re American, why are you Asian?”  Cue one of the iconic Mean Girls quotes when Karen asks Cady, “If you’re from Africa, why are you White?”

Now what does being American really mean?  We can go on for days about apple pie-eating, eagle worshipping, gun slinging, flag bearing Americans for days, but being American is more than that.  After pondering for a while, I realize that it’s incredibly difficult to define what being an American entails.   Does it have to do with being born in America?  No, because there are a lot of immigrants like myself who consider themselves Americans.  Is it living in America?  I live in South Africa, but that doesn’t make me South African.  Is it being raised in American culture?  American culture has infiltrated even the farthest reaches of the world, so that’s a little wishy-washy.  Does it have to do with legal citizenship?  I’m sure a lot of undocumented immigrants would say that they are American despite having no legal status in the United States.

So what does being American really mean?  It comes down to a personal identification with the United States.  How do I understand and see myself within the American fabric?  What is my place?  This rant is me trying to figure that out.

This discourse of being American is further complicated by race.  For whatever reason, American tends to be synonymous with White, and I’ve experienced this in both the United States and abroad.

In the US, why is it socially agreed that a non-White body must have a different origin?  It is assumed that it must come from somewhere else.  In my case, I am actually an immigrant, but for many other non-White people, their origins are the United States and their families have been in America for generations.   Never have I thought to ask a White person, “I know you’re American, but where are you really from?”  It’s a shared experience that most American people are descendants of people who came from somewhere else, some who came earlier than others, but the fact remains the same that everyone has some kind of outside cultural heritage, but for White people, that seems to be forgotten.

While abroad, like in the anecdote with which I began this blog post, I’ve been prodded and interrogated about my background a lot because of it is so multilayered.  I found it especially relevant while traveling in Asia where I was able to physically blend in while still be a cultural outsider.  People would treat me differently or speak to me in local languages, but I had no idea what was going on.  There were times where I just wanted to put a sign on my forehead that said I was American because I wanted people to recognize that I was different from them, even if we looked similar.  Being abroad, especially in Asia, was the time in my life when I was most conflicted about my race and nationality:  I wasn’t a typical American, but I wasn’t a typical Asian, either.

This is the curse of what I am choosing to call the “transnational body.”

I call myself Filipino-American because one, without the other, could not completely describe my entire cultural background, and even in combination, it does not fully encompass all of the cultural influences that make up my worldview.

Yes, I am a Filipino who immigrated to the United States now living in South Africa.  I would say that I’m a hodge-podge of cultural influences; from growing up in the predominantly Black and Hispanic Bronx, to going to a performing arts school, to eventually studying the Indian diaspora through dance.  Along the way, I took a lot of things with me, and my personality and way of seeing the world now is informed by these cultural experiences.  Only under the specific circumstances in which I grew up, learned, and developed would a person like me ever be created.  This is the same for everybody.  It just so happens that my own path was a lot more jagged and unclear.  But for all intents and purposes, I call myself a Filipino-American.

What I’d like to argue is that, even amongst all this diversity, all of these cultural artifacts fall within this umbrella term of “American” because all of these products, despite having roots around the world, were being translated into a contemporary American context, thus making it American.

Bodies are storytellers.  This is something I say to myself every time I rationalize getting a tattoo one day.  Our bodies tell the story of where we have been, and in examining the body, we can understand a lot about the person within it. 

The problem with the body, and especially the transnational one, is that the stories they tell are often misleading.   Bodies can change at a different pace than reality, some parts are completely permanent, and many things are just plain wrong.  People say to never judge a book by its cover, but you most certainly can because it can provide a lot of information.  However, a book’s cover is definitely not the only criteria to use to understand the entirety of a book’s contents.  By looking at my outward appearance, you wouldn’t know that I spoke better Spanish than I do Tagalog.  Or that I know more about Indian folk dances than I do about Filipino ones.

Why does having a transnational body, a minority one that is now twice removed from its origin, matter while being abroad?  And what are the implications in South Africa?  South Africa has its own history that has informed a unique modern racial environment that is dictated by the vestiges of apartheid.  Race is constructed differently here than it is in the United States, and though I cannot confidently say that I understand it fully, I know that it plays a major role in how I understand South Africans and how South Africans understand me.

What am I trying to say?  I’m not really sure, other than that things are not black and white.  Or coloured.  Or Asian or Hispanic or however else race is categorized.  In our constantly changing world, we have to design new paradigms through which we understand race because our former ideas are far too limited to include the entire scope of the people’s ever-evolving diversity.

Stepping Back to Step Forward

Nearly two years ago, I walked down Long Street in the heart of Downtown Cape Town.  I was about halfway through my Semester at Sea voyage, having already been in three continents in two months with a slew of countries in Asia left to go.  I was only going to be in Cape Town for five days, and that was one of the longer stays at a single port.  Under these circumstances, going so many places for such a limited amount of time, you never really knew what you were going to see, and you never quite thought about ever going back because there were so many places ahead of you.

While on SAS, I did a photo project entitled Shoe-mester at Sea.  Before my departure, I purchased a fresh pair of Toms shoes and wore them every day while at port and proceeded to photograph my feet as I traveled around the world.  There was multi-layered reasoning behind the project, the main concept being that people are always advised to leave a footprint on the world, and what better time to do that than a 105-day circumnavigation around the globe?  However, I was more interested in the impact the world would leave on me, and I thought that the best way to represent that was to document my shoes as I tread.  That’s how the Shoe-mester at Sea project was born.

Throughout the semester, I took hundreds of photos of my shoes.  As time went on, the literal blank canvas became covered in dirt and grime, and that gave the shoes their personality.  From the mud stains on hikes to a pink tint from Holi powder, the shoes got a lot of wear.  Every blemish became a story of what I was doing in the shoes when the blemish happened.  This was how I chose to remember my trip.

When taking the photos, not only did I want to highlight the slow deterioration of the shoes, but I wanted people to take notice of the ground on which I stood.  The photos shared a lot about the places I was fortunate enough to visit.  From the vibrant red earth of a dirt road in Ghana to the gray-and-silver concrete jungle of the streets of Tokyo, and everywhere in between, all of these places were different.  The project was a way for people to see what it was like to walk in my shoes, quite literally, and live vicariously the photos.  We often forget to look down because we’re always told to keep our heads up, but the things we find at our feet can be more telling than anything we see at eye-level.

One of my favorite photos in the entire series was one taken at the storefront of the African Music Store on Long Street.  In the entryway, there is a colorful mosaic with the words “Welcome to Africa” encircling an outline of the continent.  Something about the photo was so memorable because it stood out from so many of the other earth-toned photos that are part of the set, and it really emphasized the importance of looking at the ground because there are beautiful things that we often miss.

During my trip to Cape Town earlier this month, I was walking down Long Street and thought back very vividly to that photograph.  Of course, I was gravitated towards visiting the site where it was taken, and upon arriving, I had smiled to see that it was exactly the same as I had seen it two years ago.  Naturally, I took another photo at the spot, wearing different shoes this time around.  In reflecting about the picture, I get chills.

When thinking about it, what are the chances of this happening?  I took hundreds of photos during my semester abroad, and I’ve taken millions upon millions of steps in my lifetime.  Yet, on the other side of the world, I found myself standing in the same exact spot as I did two years ago.  I had no idea that I was ever going to find my way back to South Africa again, let alone be able to live and work in the country for a full year.  It makes me realize the privilege I’ve had to travel so extensively and the opportunity I have to keep doing so.  It also makes me wonder: how many more places that I’ve already gone will I be able to revisit?  At this point, it’s limitless.

If you watch the video intently, you will see that I blatantly took photos of my shoes pre-departure in my neighborhood in the Bronx and throughout New York City.  I tried my best to take photos upon my return at many of the same places in order to see how much change the shoes have undergone during the time I was away.  What I neglected to realize was the change that would be made in the person wearing the shoes that would inevitably happen over time as a result of traveling the world.  I became a different person from the time I had left to when I returned, with a lot more experience under my belt and a whole bunch of new wisdom in my head.

Upon taking the photo at the storefront on Long Street for a second time, I had the opportunity to have that same kind of self-reflection.  The Paul who stood there two years ago in his Toms shoes was very different from the Paul standing there now.  It’s incredibly important to have these kinds of moments, to take a step back in order to step forward; to realize how far you’ve gone and how much further you will go.

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So now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I will give a brief summary of my entire trip down the Garden Route to Cape Town.

Claire and I decided to drive down the Garden Route, a stretch of beautiful coastline between the Eastern and Western Cape provinces, because it has been so heavily recommended by friends and colleagues who have done it in the past.  To break up the 8 hour drive, we took several days, stopping along the way in different cities and towns, staying at hostels (otherwise known as Backpackers here) and getting into loads of adventures along the way.

The drive over took five days with stops in Plettenberg Bay, Knysna, Oudtshoorn, and Mossel Bay.  Along the way, we met some awesome people, including a Swiss German hip-hop dancer and a recent high school graduate from Reunion island volunteering at a village in The Crags, a very large tour guide whose raspy voice was due to his vocal chords being crushed in a rugby accident, and an Afrikaaner bartender who shared his philosophies on life until the wee hours of the night.  Every day was a new adventure: riding elephants, getting an impromptu township tour, climbing through caves, riding ostriches, sandboarding down the longest dune in South Africa, and petting cheetahs were just some of the things I was able to do while driving down the Garden Route.  And don’t even get me started on the scenery, mountains kissing the shore the entire way through, and some pretty awesome food, too.

Upon arriving to Cape Town, we had an amazing and well-deserved reunion with the interns (though it had only been two months since we last saw each other).  I was able to go back to a lot of the places I had already seen, which induced a whole lot of nostalgia, but I was also able to have some new experiences like hiking Lion’s Head and getting a tour (and a little work done) at Grassroot Soccer HQ and the Khayelitsha Football for Hope Center.  Though most of the interns headed out for a huge music festival, Rocking the Daisies, the boys (and Kelsey) stayed behind and had a very relaxing weekend.  Who wouldn’t have enjoyed a great lunch at the Old Biscuit Mill, chilling in the hammock on the Kloof Roof overlooking Table Mountain, and watching Mulan with a cold cider and a hot bowl of chili?  Especially after a long week full of adventures, it was great to chill out for a little while.  It was a vacation, after all, right?

After an amazing week of fun, frolicking, and frivolity, it was time to head back to Port Elizabeth and back to the real world.  After a 12-hour overnight ride on the Intercape Bus, we got straight back to work to prepare for an HCT Tournament that upcoming weekend (which was a success, by the way), and also preparing our farewells to Kelly and Ashley, the two Fulbright English Teaching Assistants who instantly became our friends upon coming to PE and who showed us the ropes.

It’s crazy to think that time is going by so quickly, because before you know it, it’s going to be November, which would mean three months of being in South Africa, or in other words a quarter of the way through the year.  No matter, tihngs seem to be shaping up, and I look forward to my next visit to Cape Town during Thanksgiving and all of my other travels during the December break!