Today in class we talked a lot about identity and presence. When talking about presence I really realized how much I walk around at home with my head down and being in a rush. I don’t ever realize what is going on around me. I now know that I need to pay as much attention at home as I do abroad. I have noticed so much here that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been paying attention and taking the time to notice the different things around me. If I practice being present at home and slow down, notice the things that I have never noticed before I will most likely see new things each day, things that I have never noticed in my twenty years of living, things that could enrich my life.
On the subject of identity we examined characteristics of our lives in the context of South Africa. For instance, I consider being a white female a large part of my identity. We then made a list of things associated with that characteristic. Here in South Africa, white females tend to be privileged, have power, be ignorant of the townships, but they also have less power than the males, and are vulnerable to gender based crimes. We did that for five characteristics and then debated what it meant for us. In my characteristics I realized that a commonality was power, privilege/money, and a support system. In that respect I am very lucky in respect to the rest of the world in what I have available to me at home. People here don’t often have money to do things like go to school and they don’t always have a support system to help them when they are having troubles. Realizing this I am all the more grateful of the support system that I have and of the opportunities that I have been given.
One thing that is a common trend here in Cape Town is the tale of two cities. The biggest example of that is in the different parts of the city being drastically different from each other. By the waterfront, and in a few other parts of the city, everything is luxurious and obviously the people that live there are rich. The stores in that area are Aston Martin, Burberry, Gucci, Prada, Dolce and Gabbana, and all the other expensive name brand stores. The people who live there seem to stay in their own little bubbles and don’t worry about people in the other parts of the city. On the other side of the city are the townships, areas where people were shoved in the time of apartheid, where they were forced to build permanent houses out of whatever they could find. The houses are often built out of scrap metal or scrap wood that they were able to scavenge. Many times they are only about 10’ x 10’ with cement flooring and they can house around six people at one time. These people have only one faucet for every twenty people and one toilet for every ten people. These two groups of people are isolated from one another. They are stark opposites living side by side with no interactions with each other. Rather than feeling like I am simply going from one side of the city to another, when I go from the townships to other parts of town I feel like I am going from one world to another, from one city to another. I wonder if the people in the city are working to even out the living conditions. With people who have so much on one side of the city and people who have so little on the other, why not use some of the government money from the rich side to supplement the other side’s money. If for no other reason, do it for the schools. The schools in the townships are in such need for money and assistance. Many of the kids there eat only once a day and that is at school for lunch. Many of the schools also have a forty five to fifty to one ratio of students to teachers. By evening out the inequalities of the townships, even if it is just in the schools, hopefully the people will begin to improve the areas around them more and the difference between the two cities will lessen.
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