I can't title this post anything other than "SPRINGBOKS RULE!"

It’s been quite a while since I last posted, so I am going to have to brush over a lot here for the sake of time. Since my last entry, I have been to Namibia and KwaZulu-Natal, a province on the other side of South Africa. But most importantly, since my last entry, South Africa defeated England in the Rugby World Cup to become the reigning World Champions. The Springbok pride is still going strong weeks later. I think the victory has made me a little more South African and a little less American. And I'm liking it...

Okay. Because there seems to be so much to cover, I think I’ll write this post a bit differently. I’ll just do a section on work at the clinic, a section on our travels, and one on random experiences. Finally, to force you to make it to the end of my painfully long entries, I am going to add a “Bendles” section for fun. Maybe this will have to become a tradition with the rest of my posts. The Bendles section will just include a few quality quotes from our beloved Dr. Bender from the week before. Let us begin.

Hannan Crusade: Take Two

It seems my last post was heavily focused on an encounter with a mother and child, so I think it’s only fair that I give you all un update on their situation. Exactly one week after I first met that little girl and her mother, they returned to the clinic for more pre-treatment counseling. I was able to discover that both mother and daughter are in fact HIV-positive, but fortunately the little girl still has a very high CD4 count and does not yet need to begin treatment. In addition, the reason her mother was crying the week before was because she was afraid to tell her husband of her status. The only reason she had even been tested in the first place was because her daughter was sick and when she took her to the doctor it was encouraged that she have the child tested for HIV. Once the little girl’s test came back positive, the doctor persuaded the mother to test as well. When all of the counselors were gathering around to reassure the mother that everything would be okay that first week, they were actually offering their support to be there with her when she discloses to her husband and to provide encouragement for him to get tested as well.

I have spent a lot of time trying to understand this woman’s fear, trying to imagine being so afraid to tell your partner of your status when, in all likelihood, he was the one who infected you in the first place. I cannot wrap my head around that fear because to me it is implausible. If the husband was not loyal, my thought is that he is the one who should be afraid and begging forgiveness. There is so much talk of women’s empowerment issues and the need for women to stand equal next to men in the workplace and in greater society, but they cannot even stand as equals next to their husbands who have infected them and their babies in their own homes. I know that is a vast generalization, and certainly not all infection at home comes from men, but a very large portion of it here does. And if women have to fear being left by their already adulterous husbands, on top of the fears of their infection, how are they to be empowered? Where does one begin to help them? Certainly a lot of attention must be focused on the husbands and their roles in this mess, but in terms of HIV, families infected do not have time to wait for empowerment or equality. Treatment must be pursued, so empowerment may be forgotten.

People cannot be discussed as mere vectors or victims of disease; they need to be looked at as the still living, not the dying. With antiretroviral treatment made available to this mother, she and her child can live. Luckier than some (but still nowhere near as privileged as others), this little girl can have the opportunity to draw pictures for her mother as I did for years to come if her mother stays strong on antiretroviral therapy. But now that she has the drugs, where does that leave her as a woman? I’ve realized that ARVs will treat the illness, but not the inequality, and now this mother is putting it all in context. What if her husband does not accept her? What if he leaves? What if she has no way to support herself or her child? What good are ARVs if she cannot eat? It’s so very depressing to acknowledge that science can only go so far and society has to take on the rest. Statistics can be used to measure access to treatment, but access to the greater issue of survival cannot be measured quantitatively. So back to my original struggle to understand this mother’s fear, I suppose I will never fully understand it, because I have been born into a place where my rights and, what’s more, my value, are seen as equal to that of any man. There are no laws preventing a man from leaving his wife in my country or here, but the implications of such an event are incomparable for a woman of the States and a woman of South Africa.

Look at me go again. Sorry. There is actually a reason why I am going off about women’s empowerment. Even though I have never found myself to be an ardent feminist, I have seen in this clinic the inordinate impact of HIV on women and I’ve witnessed how the virus thrives on the structure of this society. It’s a symbiotic relationship, the union of HIV and inequality requires more than medicine to combat. Poverty permeates all of these issues, but functional inequality promotes poverty, and thus this is where I want to focus my energy. I have developed a certain interest in empowerment, if only for the sake of supplementing the struggle against HIV/AIDS. I have decided to twist my research paper to focus more heavily on the ways that the Sizophila counselors have turned their own illness into economic opportunity and - here’s that hazy word once more – empowerment. I look at that mother and wonder what she would do if her husband did leave her. For all I know she could be the breadwinner in the family, but if not, would she find work? People wonder why women turn to prostitution in the face of AIDS in Africa, but what would you do if you had a hungry little mouth to feed at home and no options other than to sell yourself on the street? Would you let your child starve?

The Sizophila Counselors are finding a new niche for themselves in a world that has yet to understand the obstacles that inhibit every step that some women take. In a community where unemployment hovers above 70% across both genders, what are the primary caretakers, the mothers, to do? Add AIDS into the equation, remove a generation of mothers, and reform the question: What are grandmothers to do? I still can’t believe how much this one little girl and her mother have made me think. It’s almost nerdy how much I have pondered their situation at night. I don’t have a single answer for that mother. I can’t even help her when she does tell her husband her status because she does not speak English and I do not speak Xhosa (aside from a few miserable attempts at clicks). All I can do, worthless as it seems, is to continue to think of her and her child and hope that the answers will come. But I do know this much: odds are it will be the Sizophila Counselors, the people who know the problems best, who will finally find solutions for the women of Gugulethu. WHO documents, UNDP reports and international prescriptions and recipes can try to be culturally sensitive, but the authors of those proposals will not be with this young mother when she sits down to discuss HIV with her husband, and they won’t be there in the days that follow. I take comfort in the existence of the counselors and I am desperately pouring hope into their ability to change their own corner of the world. I’ve recognized that they can do a damn good job of it, certainly much better than I ever could.

The week after I saw this little girl and her mother for the second time, I threw myself into interviews with the Sizophila counselors to explore the empowerment issue a little further. I had finally finished collecting phone numbers and data from the thousands of files and there was a lull in my workload as I waited for an upcoming meeting about the pregnancy study. I thought that maybe Nokwayiyo would find the time to sit and talk with me, and maybe even Elizabeth, the head counselor, but within 2 days I had six interviews completed. Nokwayiyo was extremely helpful in explaining to everyone what kind of research I was doing and asking if they would be willing to speak with me. We went to an empty room, and one by one, these women told me their stories. I did not yet interview any of the three male counselors, but in light of my favorite patient pair at the clinic, I was more interested in talking to the women anyway. I couldn’t believe the stories I heard. In everyday work, these women are like superheroes, impenetrable to HIV-related stigma. But in talking to them, rather than just stalking them in the counseling room, I learned that they too have been left, they too have been hurt, and they too have infected children whom they worry about. One counselor has a 7-year-old daughter who is also HIV positive, but despite her own open lifestyle, she is unable to tell her daughter that she passed on the virus to her at birth. These women are independent and lonely, experts and ill-educated, and leaders and learners, all at once. Most of them are back in school now, either finishing matric (senior year of high school) or going on for certificates in social work and peer education. Women who never thought they’d be in school again are both teaching their community and taking classes on how to better it. I am convinced that there must be more than 24 hours in their days. That or they never sleep.

I could keep going about the counselors forever. I had better just cut myself off before I start coming across like I have a crush on Nokwayiyo, because that is probably what is about to happen. She has just been so incredibly warm to me and so willing to help me in my studies that I really wish she could be a mentor to me forever. She leaves next week for a two week internship for her social work certificate, and then she will be back just as I am getting ready to go back to Tanzania. I am going to attend the annual staff party with her and then give her a pair of tickets to visit Robben Island with her daughter. She’s never been and has always wanted to go, and her daughter should be able to enjoy it with her. Plus she says she’s too afraid to ride on a boat alone. But I think South Africans deserve to see the prison more than any visiting American, so if I’ve seen it, she should too. I hope it will serve as a good thank you for all she has taught me, but if I am not disciplined, I might end up buying her a plane ticket instead so that she can come back to the States with me and you all can see why I’ve been so lucky to work with her. We’ll see what happens.

PS – One of the counselors is into fashion design and is really good with a sewing machine. She told me to bring in my ripped jeans tomorrow and she is going to mend them for me since I don’t have anything with me to do it myself. I am way too spoiled by these women.

Travels

I’ll try to take this in chronological order. We had a day off from class a few weeks ago so Robin, Alison, Liz and I rented a car and drove up through the Northern Cape all the way to Namibia. We wanted to go far enough into the country to see the largest sand dunes in the world, but we HAD to be back in South Africa in time to watch the World Cup on Saturday night, so we settled for canoeing on the Orange River that separates South Africa from Namibia instead. Poor us. We got free canoes and got to spend the afternoon waving to South Africa on our right and Namibia on our left. The only expense Namibia showed us at all was in gas and the car fee to drive across the border. We didn’t even need visas as Americans, and as attractive young women, we hardly needed our passports. I am pretty confident we could have said “Oops, we left them in Cape Town” and made it across anyway.

So after exhausting our arms from rowing, we risked the reptiles in the water (hoping there were no crocs!) and went for a swim. The running joke is that I now will probably get schistosomiasis from snails in the water, but we’ll have to wait and see for that one. We made it back with all of our limbs and hopped back in the car to go watch the game. Somewhere along the way we also attempted to climb our own version of the largest sand dunes, but they were burning our feet so badly that we couldn’t even make it to the top in sandals. The dessert is A LOT hotter that I expected.

So, the Springboks. Wouldn’t it be cool to watch the Springboks play from the town of Springbok, South Africa? Yeah, that’s what we thought. We were so terribly wrong. Springbok was pretty much the only main town between the Western Cape and Namibia. In between were miles and miles of desert, sprinkled with small villages that do not even have access to a hospital. You don’t want to know how expensive gas was out there. But anyway, back to Springbok. We arrived there late Friday afternoon and I immediately pulled the hotel bandit routine, getting a room for one so we could sneak everyone else in without being charged per head. We soon realized though that there would be nothing to do in Springbok for the night, so we pushed on to an even smaller town on the coast to watch the sunset. We were able to save the room in Springbok for the next night and our lying Lonely Planets told us that there would be plenty of accommodation in Port Nolloth, the coastal town. To make a long story short, my lone wanderer housing hunt kept failing left and right; for some reason every tourist in South Africa must have booked up Port Nolloth for the night. We were forced to go to the Emerald City-esque Country Club, a place that was entirely mint green, where even the lights in the grass shone green on the already green plants and trees. It was intense. Fortunately, we got a room there where we only had to pay for two of us instead of all four and we simply pushed the beds together to form a “Spoon Castle”, which has become a regular event for us here, and we all could finally rest our heads after spending the entire day in the car. Unfortunately, none of us could shower because the water was more like milk than H2O, and none of us could eat because there wasn’t one inviting restaurant in town. Port Nolloth probably will not make the list of places to which I must return.

So I was supposed to be talking about Springbok, not Port Nolloth. We got back into town from Namibia with enough time to grab dinner before the game on Saturday, but again, eating would pose a problem. We went to the busiest restaurant we could find (which isn’t saying much) and found ourselves a table. It took at least 10 minutes before any waiter would so much as look in our direction, meanwhile the rest of the establishment was openly mocking us and laughing. I guess that Americans are not as inherently popular outside of Cape Town. This was really my worst experience with the stereotype that all Afrikaners are cold and unwelcoming. I’ve heard this said a lot, but the sociology major in me always resisted believing it. Regardless of the truth, these particular Afrikaners sure were doing a good job of playing the part. I don’t know what the common regard for Americans is in this part of the country, and I don’t know if we were being stereotyped as well, but I do know that the atmosphere was awkward and uncomfortable. We ended up wasting too much money on nasty food and getting out of there as quickly as we could to find somewhere else to watch the game. At one point, someone had actually talked to me when I got up to see the TV screens, but she spoke to me in Afrikaans. When I apologized and told her I was American, the conversation ended. So watching the game there was clearly going to be about as much fun as watching it from England. Instead, we found the Inferno Sports Bar, a quieter place, and we all grabbed seats without opening our mouths to give away our nationality. Fortunately, no one at the Inferno seemed to care that we were American, in fact someone even offered to buy us drinks. And most people just ignored us all together because they were so focused on the game. The one thing I wish could have been different would have been to be in Cape Town again by Saturday night (which wouldn’t have been possible) so that we could rush Long Street with the rest of the South Africans, just as if it was UNC beating Dook and we were rushing Franklin. The celebration in Springbok paled in comparison Cape Town, where people were jumping on cars and singing in the streets. I guess it makes for a funny story, but we’re all still a little bitter that we were stuck in Springbok when our “home town” was going wild.

After the hugging and screaming died down we went back to our room to watch the news anchors travel to each major city showing the mayhem that ensued. Feeling a little left out, we just went to bed so we could get up early the next morning to sneak everyone out of the room before I checked out. Things continued to go downhill, as I killed my first ever animal on the road driving through the desert in the morning. It was a dassie, a little groundhog-like creature that clearly doesn’t value life at all. There were HUNDREDS of them in and around the road, just asking to be hit. I even gave the stupid creature the entire lane as it looked like he was on his way to the edge, but he turned and ran under my tire at the last moment. Just as I’ve mentioned in previous posts about my shrieking and insanity, I again started up my yelping and yelling at every furry animal we passed, futilely ordering them to stay out of my way. It finally got to the point that I was swerving and slamming on the breaks so much because of the plethora of dassies that everyone else in the car told me I had to choose between their lives of the dassies’. I guess I chose their’s, but I hesitated for a minute at the thought of hitting another animal. I knew Trevor would be mad at me.

I drove for a few more hours while everyone slept, the dassies finally cleared the road, and it was by far the most amazing drive I’ve ever taken. I am not going to say how fast I was going for my parents’ sake, but between the scenery and the dry wind and the endless open road, I felt more free (and drove faster) than I ever have before. I can’t put it into words, but I was probably happier driving in that desert than I was when I first got my license and could take my very first drive alone.

Okay, I am going to skip ahead to talk about our next trip to KwaZulu-Natal. This was a trip with the entire program in which all travel expenses were covered by tuition. SWEET. We left on a Saturday morning and flew to Durban. Then we drove for a few hours to the Drakensburg Mountains where we stayed in beautiful chalets that sat in the slopes of the mountains. The meals there were amazing, which of course would be the first thing I mention. There was mac and cheese at dinner, something I have been deprived of for far too long. Furthermore, the view from my chalet, which I shared with Kavita, was to die for. It was nothing but mountains all around us and I could see them from the comfort of my queen-sized bed (the only times in my life I’ve ever had bigger than a twin bed is on vacations, so excuse the excitement) when looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows that surrounded me. I would have been happy spending the rest of the week in that room alone if I had to. But I didn’t have to. We all had the opportunity to take a guided hike up one of mountains, which was, of course, amazing. We stopped at a waterfall along the way and about half of us braved the freeeeezing cold water to go for a swim and sing the Carolina alma mater in the water. Being the hopeless klutz that I am, I actually took a pretty nasty spill when trying to climb behind the waterfall and scrapped up my feet pretty badly. But it didn’t make any difference. Everything was so beautiful that I didn’t want to stop hiking. Brendan and Kristen, the whole hike made me think of you guys and Ithaca. There were no 60-foot waterfalls to jump from, but there was a lot of baboon poop, which you guys love just as much.

Unfortunately, we only had one day in the mountains before we left on a six hour drive to Hluhluwe, where we spent the rest of the week. We went on a game drive one morning, did a tour of a village another, and painted a 1^st grade classroom on another. The game drive was beautiful, but definitely would have been better had I not gotten stuck next to Dr. Bender. I’ll come back to that in the Bendles section. The village visit was awful, the worst part of the whole excursion, but of course Bendles loved it. We walked around people’s homes, feeling extremely uncomfortable and exploitative, and the whole way Dr. Bender was getting in people’s faces and snapping photos of them. This from in PhD in anthropology. I don’t get it. Jennifer was the only smart one in the group; she chose that day to get sick and stay back at the lodge. Actually, about half the group got sick after her as well. Apparently it was food poisoning. Miraculously, my immune system stood by me and I was spared, for once. I think being a vegetarian was what saved me. But I don’t want to dwell on sickness or the village visit. The day we painted the school made up for any bad times in the village tour. I spent about as much time playing and dancing with the kids as I did painting, but I think by now I have resigned myself to limited productivity when there are kids around. We took turns teaching each other dance moves and games and then when I had to return to work they cluttered around the windows to ask us questions and watch us paint. The principal had the whole school sing a song for us and greet us, and in turn we thanked them for having us and encouraged them to finish school so they could come and paint our school on a visit to America. By the end of the day, the painted room felt much less important than the exchange we had with the students. I think we have mandated that this program return to the school each year to paint another room or help in some way.

To wrap things up, we spent our last night in Durban, most people at a hotel, but a few of us (the cheap ones) at a hostel. Three students and I took out our driver, Tabiso, for dinner and learned all about his life and his interests, the main one being to win the upcoming election ad be the next President of South Africa. I really admired his optimism, but as a man who refuses to get on a plane or a boat, I am not sure how successfully he could campaign, let alone run the country. And his political party, Wake Up Africa, has yet to be registered, so I doubt that he can take down the army of the ANC. But I guess there’s always a chance. I wish him the best of luck.

Finally, on Saturday we flew back home to Cape Town. Everyone was exhausted after two flights and we were all very happy to be back at the house. It’s so bazaar to realize that this house has become home because none of you reading this will ever see it, but after a week away, we all realized that it really was more than just a vacation house. We actually live here. How strange.

Random Experiences

I want to mention a few of the things that don’t normally make my blog posts because I am so busy writing about work or travel. First of all, I have to share that I attended my first South African theatrical production about 2 weeks ago with Dan, his roommate, Andrew, Kavita and Robin. We saw A Christmas Carol. Well, we saw a very unusual version of it. I have to say, I definitely liked it better than anyone else in our group. The story was very South African, with Scrooge being a businesswoman who ran a mine and Tiny Tim being “Tiny Tambisa”, the daughter of a miner. HIV had killed Scrooge’s sister and Scrooge then had to support her orphaned niece. The show had some cool dancing and some creative elements, but there were also a lot of comical and cheesy lines. For example, the Ghost of Christmas Present said she gave birth to Santa Clause randomly and also claimed to birth 2000 other people. That was never explained. There were many other instances like that, but my personal favorite was the way that Tiny Tambisa limped with crutches on stage but resumed her normal walk as soon as she was at the edge of the stage (and sometimes even earlier). I guess no one ever told her that the audience could still see her.

Enough about the show, it really isn’t that important. I want to tell you all about the most uncomfortable part of my days here in Cape Town. Brendan, this is about recycling, so you should keep reading. In South Africa, it is almost impossible to find any form of recycling bin anywhere. Everything is just thrown away. At first, I couldn’t handle it and I would hold onto my recyclables in a futile attempt to find an appropriate bin. But after walking to my bus stop for work early on Wednesday mornings, I have discovered that there is a recycling service in Cape Town. It is run by poor black South Africans, who only enter Tamboerskloof for the purpose of tearing through trash cans on garbage day to pick out all of the plastics and cans. In my first few weeks here, I thought they were searching for food, and I could hardly walk by them without wanting to dig a hole fifty feet down and tunnel past. But eventually, I realized that they are actually collecting recycling because they can make money in giving it to the province. One of the wealthiest parts of this city does not have any recycling services other than the poverty that encourages certain black South Africans to dig through trash cans every Wednesday. And while I feel better knowing that they are not searching for food, I still cannot get used to the site of someone going through my trash to find items that the city is too lazy to collect. At least it is a source of income, but the racial segregation that still exists in many areas here is highlighted by the Wednesday morning “infiltration” of citizens who will never know Tamboerskloof for anything other than its recyclables. It is little things like this that demonstrate the remnants of Apartheid, and it is the lack of services such as recycling that reminds me that this still is a developing country.

Bendles

Ah yes, finally, I can get back to Dr. Bender. I would like to share a few quotes from our excursion, the first two being from our game drive and the last from our night in Durban.

1.) “You know, there’s something to be said about zoos. You don’t have to be there at 6 o’clock in the morning.” (This was said to me around 7am when we were driving through the park.)

2.) “They should just tag the animals and call us when they locate them so that we don’t have to drive around aimlessly looking for them. When is this going to end?” (This was about 3 hours into the drive, after she had been sleeping for most of it.)

3.) “I see a lot of Indians, but where are all the chiefs?” (I actually did not have the pleasure of hearing this quote because I didn’t stay with her in the hotel in Durban. But Durban is a town with a large Indian population, and even though Bendles studied in India as an undergrad, she still isn’t comfortable around people who are not white.)

There were many more fantastic quotes. These are just a taste. But probably the most offensive thing to me was the way she spoke to our drivers the entire time we were traveling. She was so patronizing and condescending to them, openly behaving as if they were beneath her. I won’t go into more detail here because I will get too worked up and I will go on forever. I’ll save some for the next Bendles section.

Time to write a paper, folks. Hopefully it won’t be another few weeks before I can write again.