Colby Magazine

Volume 91 Issue 1 Winter 2002 Article 8

January 2002

A Brave New World: CBB Cape Town students find inspiration in a nation in flux

Gerry Boyle Colby College

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Recommended Citation Boyle, Gerry (2002) "A Brave New World: CBB Cape Town students find inspiration in a nation in flux," Colby Magazine: Vol. 91 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine/vol91/iss1/8

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CBB Cape Town students find inspiration in a nation in flux

By Gerry Boyle 778 • Photos by Irvine Clements

; ou spend days interviewing, observing, scribbling in notebooks, ing squatter settlements. It carries with it still an abhorrent racist holding up a tape recorder. Later you pore over notebooks and legacy, yet African-American students who hive been to Cape tapes,Y sift the wheat from the journalistic chaff, search for that one To wn talk of fi nding for the fi rst time escape from the subtle moment, that single situation, that pearl-like utterance that captures racism of America. precisely the spirit of the subject, the place, the story. Cape To wn is a place where unquenchable optimism springs from Ifyou're writing about Cape To wn and the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin the violence and poverty of the racially segregated townships like program based in the city, there are too many choices. wildflowers after a forest fire. It's a city set like a jewel into a crown The lead could be Noah Lambie, a free-spirited Bowdoin junior, of roan-colored mountains that overlook white-sand beaches and hustling around a new schoolyard basketball court in a crime-ridden turquoise seas; yet in the downtown, glue-sniffing beggar children Cape To wn township where lay-ups are an enticement to keep kids sleep on the sidewalks like litters of puppies. When CBB students take out of gangs-and alive. to the townships for community service, they are venturi ng where Or it could be Zelda Jansen, the progra m's resident director, many white South Africans have never set foot even once. navigating the narrow lanes of a colored township and saying that "There isn't any such thing as 'life in Cape To wn,"' said even 15 years ago she never dreamed that the apartheid government Colby History Professor James We bb as he wound up his first would fa ll. "\Ne didn't even smell semester at the CBB center last democracy," she said. fall. "There's only life in Cape Or maybe Kristen Heim, a Cape Town Encounters To wn depending on the neigh­ Colby junior who, when she first borhood you live in and the racial Not all of the education in Cape To wn is planned. Much of arrived in race-based Cape To wn group you fa11 into." it comes in the form of unexpected and even serendipitous society, used her fingers to put encounters like these selected from the reporter's notebook: quotes around the term "colored," dministered by Bowdoin (as commonly used in South Africa. On a tour of Cape Point National Park. A the CBB London Center "Inmy fi rst host fa mily, they George Kleyn's knowledge of the Cape Peninsula is encyclope­ is by Colby and CBB Quito by said, 'After a couple of weeks the dic. A retired high school teacher, he turns a tour of the area Bates), the Cape To wn program quotes will come off,"' Heim said. into a lesson in botany, geology, history, civics. The Cape Point was conceived four years ago by a They did. National Park, he says, is home to hundreds of different species steering committee that included In Cape To wn, contrasts and of heather. The mountains in the region are "a botanist's para­ professors Randall Stakeman, a dise." Yet for all of its vastness and diversity, numbers are also contradictions abound. It's a Bowdoin Africanist; Catherine at the root of South Africa's problems, he says. Millions of people beautiful cosmopolitan city com­ Besteman, a Colby a nth ropolo­ have come from the north and east to the Cape Town region, but plete with a Ferrari dealership­ gist; and Charles ero, professor there are few natural resources or industries to support them. and the abject poverty of sprawl- of rhetoric, from Bates. Unlike the United States during its westward expansion, South Africa is hemmed in by oceans and poverty. "Where are people going to go?" he says, pausing from his recital of the Cape's attri­ butes. "This is the Third World. It's not just us." �

COLBY · WINTER 2002 I 13 outh Africa, then just fi,·e years into its post-apartheid have been folded into this swirling pol itical and social melange. life, offered tudents an opportunity to \\'itness history being The Cape To wn program differs from London and Quito CBB made. The �elson .\landela-inspired \'ictory over the apartheid programs, all fu nded by an ndrew \N. Mellon Foundation grant, government handed the people of outh Africa a country that in that it was expressly de igned to give CBB students exposure to \l"aS in some \l"a)' ra,·aged but in many \\'ays a blank canvas. Still all levels of South African society and to emphasize community racially segregated toda�· by custom and economics, if not by law, service. Students take courses taught by CBB faculty, who rotate the country face oYern·helming problems, including its moribund in and out of the program, and at the nearby niversity of Cape economy, rampant AIDS and endemic unemployment. But still, Town. Community service is tied to grassroots organizations it managed "the changeo,·er," a South Africans refer to the rather than foreign GOs, and students collaborate with, rather end of apartheid, ,,·ithout the ci,·il unrest that has wracked than oversee, those they assist. Zimbab\\'e and other parts of the continent. J'\o\\', for the fi rst "\\Te didn't want our students to in any way fe el that they time, outh African of all race are deciding what sort of country were saviors or messiahs going in to cure the problems of the the\' \\'i 11 create. little people of the world," Stakeman said. "We wanted them "It's like seeing the United rates right after the Constitution," to get the idea that they were just temporary laborers in the takeman said. "fa·erything in South frica is in Aux." same vineyards." Besteman, \\' ho \\' as to spend second semester in Cape Vineyards are an apt metaphor in a region where wine is big ... Town this year, sees the business. But the vineyards to which Stakeman refers are the political struggle of the teeming townsh ips of the Cape Flats, the area designated for 1980s replaced by an iden­ nonwhites in the days of apartheid government. tity struggle. "It's kind In Cape To wn, coloreds (the term for mixed-race South of edgy that wa�" she Africans) and blacks were forced to live in designated areas south said. "Nobody knows quite and east of the city. The world has heard of Soweto, outside where they fit." Johannesburg, where anti-apartheid riots broke out in the 1980s; i nee 1999, students from it may be less familiar with Cape To wn townships like Langa, the three Maine colleges Lavender Hill, Khayalitsha and Gugeletu. Tor does the world see the "informal settlements," the euphemism for the squatter communities that spring up in post-apartheid Cape To wn wherever there is Rat ground on which to erect a shack of tin or pallets. "It blew my mind to see that," said Jana Richardson, a Bowdoin junior. "I'm from i\1aine. That's one of the reasons I came (to Cape To wn]. Yo u don't have this kind of poverty in Maine. It's very humbling. It makes you thankful for every single thing you have." ln the townships, by comparison, residents don't have much. The townships are the size of cities with the fe el of shabby campgrounds. Khaya litsha, with its dirt lanes and small cinderblock houses, is home to an estimated 1.3-million people, all colored. Langa, the most established black township, is home to 70,000 people, many of them middle class. Langa has spazas, or

Previous: extenor mosaic fr om Guga S'Thebe, the com­ munity center m Langa township. To p: the CBB Center m the Cape To wn suburb of New/ands. where students take classes and congrega te. Above: The Cape Penin­ sula from Fa lse Bay. south of Cape To wn. The coastal city 1s surrounded by white-sand beaches that are flanked by mountains and ridges. Right: Hannah Arnold '03 and Sarah Dean ·03 exp/am charactenstics of marshland as part of an environmental science commu­ nity service program at Zen/da Park School in Lavender Hill To wnship.

14 Open-mike nigh t in a small jazz club called Swingers, in Lans­ corner stores, an occasional a Colby junior, worked with downe To wnship in the Cape Flats. restaurant. It is relatively safe, a group of Langa high school The musicians include local luminaries and teenage admirers. and in contrast to townships students as they prepared for Guitarists Errol Dyers and his brother, Alvin, perform to raucous for like Lavender Hill, where applause and, after their set, the American visitor is invited over their matriculation exams, a ti me last year CBB students to the bar to meet them. Then the club owner, Joe Schaffers, says the test that wou lei determine could not do community ser­ something unexpected, exposing an unanticipated rift in the Cape their future education paths vice because gang wars made Town music world. "These musicians who say they were exiles and careers. "I think I've it dangerous for township from South Africa [before apartheid fell]." he says, leaning close learned more from them than students to stay after school. and jabbing his fi nger at the air. "They were not exiled. They ran they've learned from me," Machine-gun toting ga ngs, away." Schaffers then points to Errol Dyers and his bandmates. "I Meik lejohn said. love these guys," he says. "These are the guys who stayed." drugs, rape: those are the Students of Julie McGee, head 1 i nes that emanate from a Bowcloi n professor of a rt, places like Lavender Hill. On the fo ur-lane N2 highway between downtown Cape To wn and last semester organized and Yet CBB students have found Cape To wn International Airport. promoted a fi rst-ever a rt this community and others to The expressway slices through the townships and a squatter show in the township. It was be warm and welcoming and settlement near Bonteheuwel where residents use carts pulled by called "Homecoming" and ponies. It's a straight shot, and the Mercedeses and BMWs streak doing good works. was devoted to the work of past vans and slower cars. On one taxi trip, a high-performance At Zerilda Park, a drab artists living in the town­ BMW fl ashes past the squatter shacks. "What do the poor think box-shaped school surrounded ships. Students interviewed when they see someone in a car like that when they make so little by security fe nces, CBB stu­ each artist, some th rough money?" the driver, a man named Winston Adonis, is asked. dents last year made the Winston, who is colored, says the Mercedeses and BMWs Khosa-speaking translators, acquaintance of an inspiring show what is possible in the new South Africa. "I believe there and wrote their biographies community activist named is no situation so difficult that you can't get out of it," he says. in English. For students and Raymond Engelbrecht. Engel­ "It's the wanting. " McGee, it was an opportunity brecht grew up in Lavender to shine a light on artists whose Hill, excelled in school and work has been long hidden in Inside "South Africa 's Smallest Hotel. " sports and made it out. He had Vicky's Bed and Breakfast is in Khayalitsha, a sprawling town­ shadows ofpoverty. forged a successful career in ship that is home to 1.3-million people. It's a poor place, dirt "That's the great part insurance but a few years ago lanes and cinderblock houses, but there is a new industry here: a bout being here ...people came back to the community tourism. Europeans and other foreigners ride through in vans and are so thankful just to have where he grew up. "I received buses as guides recite the bleak history of apartheid South Africa. someone say, 'I believe in you. a calling," Engelbrecht said. Then the vans stop, and camera-toting tourists, most of them I'm interested. Te ll me about CBB students did, too. white, troop into shebeens, spazas [stores]-and Vicky Ntozini's your work,"' McGee said in little bed and breakfast. They arrived at Zerilcla her Cape To wn office where She is an energetic, avowed entrepreneur who endured patroni­ Park intending to help out paintings were stored prior to zation and ridicule as she got her business off the ground. Now at a daycare center. But sev­ the exhibit. "Because there's the comfortable little house with two small rooms is doing a eral CBB students, all musi­ not enough of that for black booming trade. "We had CNN in here. We had the BBC. Yo u name cians, brought their guitars it," Ntozini says. "Thanks to a tourist from America, we have a artists here." and dru ms to the school one Web site Uourney.digitalspace. net/vicky.html)." Students entered artists' afternoon and were greeted by homes interested and often a standing-room-only audi­ On Robben Island. emerged inspired. These after ence that included some very Macy Lubalo and Nhi Nhi Malgas say they work at the NY1/ all are painters and sculptors talented youngsters. And the Clinic in Guguletu, a township. They do HIV testing, they say, who produce art under the CBB students had an idea. the results running four out of five positive. "Every weekend we most difficultcir cumstances, bury people who die of AIDS," Malgas says matter-of-factly. Luba lo "We sent out a letter, it made some ti mes choosing colors nods in agreement. "Every week," she says, "one that you know. " the rounds," said Ben Griffin, based on their cost, but refus- now a Colby senior. The letter ing to consider art a luxury. asked parents and fr iends back in the U.S. for donations. Ultimately "They say that it's a gift they've been given and they must enough money was raised to buy guitars, drums, amps-equipment use it," said Colby's Heather Finn '03, who spent time with for a jazz combo-and to hire a music teacher. painter Alfred Budaza at his home studio in Philippi East. "It's As of last fa ll, the music program at Zerilda Park was going almost spiritual." strong, the jazz riffs wafting across the playgrounds after school. Yet because few township residents can affo rd to buy art, the "It's just a matter of knowing how you can make a difference," artists' works have been whisked away to white buyers in the city. Griffi n said, "and the kind of difference you can make." One township native and artist, Vuyile Cameron Voyiya, now Last sPmester alone, Heim and other students in \'lebb's employed by the South African National Gallery, said the CBB AIDS c0urse made a poignant documentary on Beautiful Gate, a effo rt-with buyers entering the townships from the white art tow1�shiphospice for babies born HIV-positive. Rachel Meiklejohn, world-gave the artists credibility in the eyes of their township

COLBY · WINTER 2002 I 15 neighbors. In the past "it didn't seem to be a responsible job," Voyiya Living Color said. "(Residents] may feel artists are just playing around." But the show did more than just bring the outside art world to Langa. It also crossed township lines, drawn just as deeply When Leroy Gaines, an African-American student at Bowdoin, during apartheid as the line between white and non-white. I Iabit, decided to spend a semester at the CBB Cape Town Center, he expected that he and black South Africans would have race as race, economics and lack of transportation meant residents common ground. of Lavender Hill who attended the exhibit opening because Gaines, an Africana studies major from Holyoke, Mass., of their invo!Yement with the CBB center had never been to was mistaken. Langa. The Americans hop-and sometimes blunder-across "Coming from America and having this understanding of cultural divides. black people and global unity, I thought I would go there and "YVe haven't grown up here knowing that we can't," said we would be like, 'Hey, my brothers!' What happened is that we \Vebb, who is white and sometimes found himself describing were not the same. Yo u can't just assume that because you the townships to whites, lifelong South Africans who had never have the same color skin you have the same cultural traits." ventured there. "So we do it. And a lot of that is nai·ve. That That realization was one of many. doesn't mean it isn't successful." American students of color anticipate their Cape Town semes­ Nor does it mean the program sends students blithely into ter with excitement and some trepidation, wondering what it will be dangerous situations. In fa ct, one of the biggest expenses is the like to live in a society that was until a decade ago fundamentally cost of a taxi service called SafeCab. The company operates and officially racist. They find themselves in a world where race a fleet of Kombis, Volkswagen vans, that shuttle students to still is precisely delineated and a primary defining characteristic. and from the townships, to and from host fa milies' homes and Steve Jaboin, a Colby senior and a Haitian American, arrived downtown to pick up students who go out to Cape To wn's plentiful in Cape Town last year and knew immediately that he was in a restaurants and bars. different world. "My host family asked me what I was," he said. In fact, the CBB students are kept on what they say is a pretty "I was, like, 'What?' I thought, 'Wow."' tight leash. They're issued cell phones and told to keep the center Jaboin, who said he sometimes felt he had taken a time and host fa milies apprised of their whereabouts, and the rigorous machine back to the 1950s, said the experience made him more academic demands keep them at the CBB center or the University fully realize how far America has come. In South Africa people to a of Cape To wn much of the week. Last semester, some students large degree still are segregated by race in housing and economic complained about the workload, saying they wanted more time to and educational opportunities. Yet Jaboin and Gaines both felt explore Cape To wn and South Africa. an unexpected relief being in a country where race was frankly Srakeman, noting that he grew up in New York City, says he discussed and where blacks and coloreds, the label affixedto doesn't find Cape To wn especially dangerous for a large city. He people of Malay and other descents, make up the vast majority. maintains that many parental concernscome from misconceptions ·· 1 figured race would be something that was on my mind all about South Africa and the African continent in general. Indeed, the time," Gaines said back at Bowdoin. "But being in South for parents whose image of South Africa may date to the Soweto Africa, that was the first time I was in a community where black riots, the country may seem a threatening place. people were the majority. They were the politicians, the police "I can't tell you how many parents I've spoken to about officers. So in a way when I was there I felt my blackness wasn't that," Stakeman said. "If they're speaking to me they want to so pronounced as it is here, particularly being in Maine. When be reassured .... But they're only the tip of the iceberg. There I was there I was able to just walk around and not think about may be people who are saying, ' o way is my child going to race all the time." What both men felt was a respite from what they called the that program."' subtle racism of American society. Jaboin said he met some In fact, several students said that when they broached the idea South Africans who were rude by American mores, but he still of going to Cape To wn to their parents, the reaction was, "vVhy felt there was something refreshing about their honesty. In can't you just go to London?" One student said her fa ther drew up South Africa, he said, "race hasn't gone underground." a list of what she could and couldn't do in South Africa. Like all CBB students, he lived with host families from differ­ There is crime in the city, especially in the townships. Students ent backgrounds and felt his identity change as he moved from don't wander the townships at night, or alone during the day. world to world. Crossing the border to Namibia with a Haitian \i\Then they are in the townships, they're accompanied by friends passport, he was confronted by border guards who had never who live there or are dropped at a community-service destination. heard of Ha1t1 and were sure he was Kenyan. Living with a A tour taken by students includes a stop at the cross erected white host parent, he attended a church function in an affluent in Guguletu in memory of Amy Biehl, the American woman white suburb and introduced himself as the woman's son-and murdered by an anti-apartheid mob in l993. watched the eyebrows raise. "My identity was never the same two Biehl's fa mily publ icly forgave her killers, and CBB Cape To wn days 1n a row, " Jabo1n said. students, staff and faculty focus not on the violence that mars Ye t the openness with which South Africans confront race post-apartheid South Africa but on the optimism that spri ngs up as they rebuild their society was refreshing, he said. ·south in spite of it. Claire Cu no, a Bates junior, pointsout that Beautiful Africa was honest,· Jaboin said. "They haven't acquired the Gate, the hospice for children with AIDS, is a sad place, but she euphemisms of the ·isms.'· describes the devotion of those who work there as "humbling." Brendan Ferriter, a Bates junior who also worked at BeautifL: I

16 8 >N TER C2 Mduba at Homecoming, a firs t-ever art exhibit held in Langa township in Cape To wn with the assistance of CBB Cape To wn students and Bowdoin professor Julie McGee. Right: Chris Reigeluth '03 and Kristen Heim '03, are shown with high school students they worked with in Langa. At ten is Eric Dilima, who works as a liaison between the CBB program and the township schools.

Gate, talked about the "positive aura" there. "I fe el a lot of love familyon outings, to parties. During a stint with a conservative white and caring in the place," Fe rriter said. host fa mily whose sons were into hip-hop music, he heard his host ot that the CBB program produces pol itical Pollyannas. mother remark upon seeing a white man panhandling: "For someone vVebb's course on AIDS in South Africa (which included a panel to be white and poor, they must have really tried to fa il." discussion by national experts, including the country's minister of To an American, that's jarring. To a South African, that's health) took a hard look at the reality of the situation, especially simply true. the fa llback sh ift from prevention to treatment. Besteman poi nts Jaboin worked in the basketball program in Lavender I lill and to the fr ustration of black South Africans, who thought the fe lt both fu lfilled and an impostor, he said. "I never volunteered pol itical struggle of the 1980s wou ld bring relief from crushing before," he admitted. "The program has made me think a lot poverty. "There's a sense that apartheid ended and white people about the idea of community service. Tt started me thinking a lot got to keep everything," she said. about my relationship to the world." Yes, the economic problems facing the country a re overwhelming. That, of course, is the idea, not only of CBB Cape To wn AIDS looms like an ever-present Crim Reaper. Improvements in but of a liberal arts education-to distort what had been your housing and sanitation don't keep pace with mounting unemployment world view. To shake your foundations and make you reconsider and the declining South African currency, the rand. your beliefs. "A nd then there are these incredible people like Raymond In CBB Cape Town there's a whole lot of shaking going on. [Engelbrecht, in Lavender Hill] who are dedicating their \/\!hatis this place with a brutal past and a heroic leader' I low can lives toward trying to change so many criminals and saints circumstances in their com­ South Africa Diary live side by side? vVith all of its munities," vVebb said. "It's a problems, how can one of South phenomenal place." Colby, Bates and Bowdoin students at the CBB Cape 1own Africa's most distinguish ing CBB students and faculty a Iike Center share their thoughts and experiences in an online characteristics be optimism' describe Cape Town and South journal. On November 16, Dana Kramer, Bowdoin '03, \Vhy don't the impoverished Africa as emotionally uplifting posted this dispatch as she prepared to leave South Africa. masses rise up and smash the and naturally beautiful. Students The rest of Kramer's entry, and others, can be found online Ferrari dealership' How many chafe under security constraints, at www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/win02/capetown/. township children have never been to the beach? \iVhy are we with some renting cars and travel­ I crm 't even imagine how going home to , ew )�rk is going to ing to I amibia, Botswana, even fe el. Unreal, unco111fortable, and it 711ight take a while to regain so fortunate in this country) ln Zanzibar. Last semester several equilibrium, re-acljust to the right side of the road, 71/0ther� the age of C and worldwide students bought surfboards and cooking (to which I 11111st add, hooray) , communicating only with coverage, why don't we know took to the waves. And many Americans, returning to what might be a ve1y di.ffe1·ent place than more about it' students, like Colby senior Steve the A111erica I left, where I'll be s111ro1mded by whatever patriotic " lot of the students felt Jaboin, made fast friends of host ::,ea!my commypersons have recent61 come down with; also, having more confused at the end of families. "It was really fabulous. to give brief accounts of 111y experience here over and over again, the program than at the begin­ They go camping, canoeing. which I'll be glad to share, but which I ca nnot imagine summing ning," Besteman said. "They Everything was an adventure. I up well over one cup of coffee or to one of 711)' parents'fr iends in came home with more questions was their child," he said. pm:>ing. It has been shocking and wonderful, and has af ectedf 111e to reAect on, more open-minded­ A Haitian America n, Jaboin in ways J would not even know how to describe. ness about confronting problems accompanied his colored host in their own country." (i:

COLBY • WINTER 2002 J 17