Doing a lot of writing. It would appear that 1000 words here and 2500 there and 3000 for that other thing plus blogging and bibliographies and emails and note-taking for essays and exam revision and keeping the contact list going is all adding up. When am I not in front of the computer working on something? When I’m sleeping, eating, or in lecture. And that’s about it. Research 'deadline' (soft deadline?) for township reports moved up a week; this is the part where one begins to panic. Talk to you all next week, at least when I burn through papers.

because july 25th in the states is not august 18th here...

since, clearly, i couldn't see the xfiles movie 'i want to believe' on friday night, as it is not out here until august 18th, i saw 'lust-caution' instead, which was a horrible decision on my part, but what can you do. at least the dinner beforehand was excellent because we were at rosebank. lust-caution is an award winner, so i thought it would be awesome. and it was! such 1940s class, such great cinematography and sparse, sharp screenwriting and beautiful costuming. it was great until the graphic, protracted rape scenes came along. don't take a date to it, whatever you do. it probably came out a while ago at home anyhow. ugh.

but back to the good stuff: "I was there because I knew, eventually, my heroes would get it on. And because I was totally enraptured by special agent Dana Scully."
-Rebecca Traister, writing at Salon about why she kept watching the show back in the day
we're all enraptured, definitely. ha, clyde bruckman even thought she was immortal! what young girl saw this show and did not want to grow up and be her?

in more relevant and scholarly news, i spent this morning slogging away at an IR/international law term paper, which is making me mentally twitchy in anticipation of law school. in a good way! it is nice to get a hint telling me that is the right direction, and being forced to do more than surface research / work for hours continuously for a class that is actually challenging...is a good hint.

testimony from work

police brutality in hillbrow (this is a neighborhood that is literally next door to braamfontein, when we take the bus to go grocery shopping each week we drive through it):

a nigerian who was trying to sell someone a tv from his electronics shop at 11am on a sunday was shot in the face with rubber bullets while the police performed some kind of unidentifiable raid on the sidewalk in front of his store. not only did he go blind and end up disfigured, but there is still a rubber bullet in his skull, which the hospital did not remove despite him paying the medical fees out of pocket. he didn't know they were rubber bullets, so he said, "at first i just lay down" [expecting to die].

i know about this because it was part of an interview i edited for work, don't worry, i wasn't an eyewitness or anything. be sure to bring this up when people are making the argument of "if anything goes wrong just call the cops, man, you can always trust them!" well, be a minority, and then you can't trust the cops. especially in a place like hillbrow. nigerians (and a variety other foreign nationals, or people originally from out of the country) are minorities here, even when their papers are in order, even when they are married to south africans and so are legally south african in terms of citizenship, even when they are part of the community and part of the economy, they are getting robbed and shot by the police. pretty much next door to our neighborhood.

not surprising that he wants to find a way to go back to nigeria now.

some observations

-people dress pretty sharp here, in a way that college kids do not generally (exceptions for the nyu supermodels). actually, there a lot of similarities between here and nyu (more on that another time) so us urban college students have an advantage when it comes to avoiding culture shock and homesickness.

-observations on courses: the engagement course is a bit of a crisis. some people are boycotting it at this point. the core course is off to a slow start due to guest lecturing that was largely disorganized. the literature class and the class on sovereignty and international law are both going VERY well though.

-we were sitting on the library lawn and a friend piped up, "high school in california, guys" which is exactly what this campus is like. even in the so-called winter. sixty degrees in the winter! perfect.

-newtown market theater has half-price tuesdays. i am usually a person who is not into drama and rarely sees plays even living in nyc with the student discount on tickets, but the drama scene here is amazing. we saw tenbush at the market theater earlier this week for about US$5, a great play and a great deal.

-apparently there is a bar in the middle of the central business district (cbd) that is on the 50th floor of a high rise, and, while this is an area that i would never, ever walk around or park outside in (think buildings that are bricked up at all the windows and doors because of squatters) the place is classy somehow. those of you know this city probably know there is no reason for us to go down there, so i'm a little surprised this bar even survived. good on it, though. maybe we'll go with someone who knows their way around. i bet the view is awesome.

-we have had potluck dinners four nights in a row (i think we had about seven courses last night?) and tonight someone is turning 20 so there are plans for sushi. and i hear papaya season is coming. excellent. as my inner foodie comes out more each week, i get increasingly obsessed with finding a way to get back to this country again next year or another time.

a moment for healthcare

if this doesn't bother you, i just don't know. sign that thing, put your names on that thing. public clinics are the refuge of millions of women in the us and by extension their families. not to mention it's in VIOLATION OF NEW YORK STATE LAW, apparently.

in local contrast: the "basic" student health insurance is so generous and inclusive here that i get a free pair of glasses, a free teeth cleaning, a few free fillings (if i were to need them), and free contraception of whatever kind, including brand name products rarely covered at home. i plan to take advantage of all of this, like any sane person. the nurse who came to explain the plan to us was emphasizing that we should get every last bit out of it, even if we were healthy, which is not something i've ever heard an insurance rep say at home.

i also would be able to get some free travel immunizations through this plan, if i hadn't paid out of pocket for them before i left. good to know.

number one thing: if you want a postcard or mail of some sort from here, please email me your address.

fun things: going to trancesky, going to candy bar, going to unplugged on seventh, going to oh! bar, and still being clearheaded enough to exchange Words with the creepy dude trying to pick up my friend with the line "i've never dated a white woman before". please.
the most exercise i get here is endless stairs and all this dancing.

food things: having recovery breakfast at nino's in rosebank, classic eggs and toast and a bit of tomato and mushrooms and some bacon and sausage. we go every week to nino's, we can't change our brunch habit, made cheap and so classy. they serve muffins on a dinner plate with powdered sugar and a parsley garnish, for christ sake. for dinner: chicken piccata, spinach salad, pasta, avocado and cheese and apple and pomegranate salad, vanilla custard, and a papaya. don't worry. there were a lot of us to eat it all.

an ironic thing: i've a friend who works here, and when they say "on the fringes of urban rejuvenation" it means the same as when someone says something like that in brooklyn. gentrification.

mundane things: enjoying the temperate weather. definitely not missing the new york summer and the sweaty mess it engenders. my kitchen lost power, so now i can't use the stove and the freezer bit of the fridge has melted into a puddle on the floor. this building has bootleg wiring/plumbing.

school things: we are almost halfway through the block three electives?! where has the time gone? while i would like to say these classes are hard, there's no point in lying. interesting, yes, and i've been making it to all the 8ams because they're interesting, but they're not hard. i suppose they might be if i was an extremely slow reader, due to sheer volume, but it's not too bad.

the staff of this program kicks ass, though. i know a few readers of this blog advise & teach students at home, and let me tell you, if the staff sticks around then next year's group will be in great hands. they are very resourceful, deal with problems quickly, and are full of good connections. this trip might be worth it for the connections alone.

1. this is a wonderful thing. 2. so is this.
3. happy slightly belated birthday nelson mandela!

wits theatre = excellent

because they put on insane student productions like CROCODILE TEARS, for only 10 rand (about US$1.20) which i saw this morning in lieu of going to work for extra hours since i worked a bunch at home last night. the description:

CROCODILE TEARS; Nunnery; 15 – 19 July; 10h30

In a time when we see, hear and speak no evil, Crocodile Tears prompts the audience , through satire, allegory and metaphors, to review and examine society and their role in a country. Five women deconstruct the female body so that the world can mend; directed by Tshepiso Konopi and composed by Mathew Macfarlan

it was amazing. four woman cast, big political commentary, one of the best shows about women's rights/human rights (they're interchangeable, really) that i've seen in a while. they were very physical with the audience: sitting with us, pointing at us, accusing us, congratulating us, sitting on our laps. (not mine, i was in the back row, but you get the picture.)

birthday party tonight. we're keeping it classy with chocolate cake and no-name generic boxed wine!

achebe, housing, out on the town

to be fair, although i said in the last post we had no hot water in our building, i should add that the building itself and the little studio apartments we are living in are very nice, way nicer than what we expecting and probably way nicer than we actually need. example: we have free laundry because it is a pretty small building. bonus!

here's the windows in the notkitchen part. there are a lot of shelves and the desk you see there actually spans the width of the whole room. overall, a very good design.


headed to doors on marshall street tonight to listen to (probably) nineties music because culture is a bit behind here in terms of things coming out, especially music. example: i'd be shocked if they played something from in rainbows, but not at all surprised to hear the bends. ratz in melville is apparently even worse for old music, but they have good food there and half price stella on monday nights. to future visitors and tourists: melville is a deal, but never walk down those alleys and always pay someone to keep an eye on your car.

read an interview with chinua achebe this morning where he verbally smites people who won't take the time to understand the cultural and historical context of african literature and then presume to criticize or comment on it. it's their responsibility to do so, he argues, because he was forced to learn the context of western writers--like most kids (white and black, east and west) are expected to do at some point in formal schooling. a self-proclaimed protest writer, revolutionary and teacher, he nevertheless is branded as resentful for making comments like that. it never ceases to amaze me when white people get offended by having their own expectations suddenly applied to them by the Other. especially with something as trivial as saying you don't understand a book. we expect a lot of people, but can't expect the same of ourselves?

i'm not going to even start about the other article arguing that conrad's heart of darkness and achebe's things fall apart are making similar commentaries on colonialism, geez. we took that one down in class pretty quickly.

three parts:

1. brooklyn life: i am saddened to hear of two gay bashing incidents in prospect heights in june around the vicinity of pride weekend via the community board. one guy got sent to the doctor after getting assaulted on the train and another guy deftly avoided a physical confrontation after having some Words. i am pleased, though, to hear that folks in our neighborhood are retaliating, erm, countering this dynamic by having a gay night out at a local bar. i hope nobody gets sent to the hospital on the way home, though. apparently our community has enough bigots to stage THIS right on eastern parkway, for shame. hopefully it won't have a big turnout. unless there are free reggae shows.

2. joburg life: we have no hot water in our building, and i have no xfiles dvds (have been streaming things off of youku, which is such bad quality and so slow to load). hopefully tomorrow i can solve these problems with a trip to braamfontein shopping center and a visit to the office of the building manager.

3. academic life: i spent an hour of my time today listening to a totally specious argument that universal human rights and utilitarianism are diametrically opposed. yes, because we never combine these two belief systems in institutions called "prisons" and suspend rights from a group that we argue poses a threat to the rest of the society, a group commonly known as "convicted criminals" in order to ensure the civil and political rights of the rest of the society.

surely, we can all agree that the criminal justice system is problematic in a variety of ways, but it exists, no? instead this guy stood in front of us posing wildly unlikely hypothetical utilitarian moments, such as: what if smallpox got dumped in a city? how this would affect the right to freedom of association? (what? could that get any more abstract?) so many better examples, all of which actually exist in history, could have been dissected. better luck next time. it's a pity because the readings we have are quite interesting.

a relevant thing and several irrelevant things

1. comments should be working for people who don't want to login as well as those who do, but they're moderated, so don't panic if your comment doesn't show up instantly.
2. what the hell birds are singing on my roof at 3 am?
3. someone lent me six feet under dvds. this was a terrible sunday night idea. i have a new creepy tv show to be fascinated with. this is why i am not sleeping.
4. of course the ACLU is hiring full time paralegals in new york while i am thousands of miles away.
5. if you had told me a couple months ago i would be studying this via firsthand accounts for work i would not have believed it. damn.

out of episodes on these discs...so goodnight.

food. you knew there would be one about food.

food! it's the thing i would make a career of, if i had no other, more pressing interest in that respect.

south africa: filled with delicious things for not a lot of money. let me show you some conversions. a bag of twelve tomatoes for US$.80, and eighteen eggs for US$3.80 (what? we like omelettes), and three papayas for US$2.75, and a bag of "soup mix" with seven raw vegetables and little white beans, big enough to last me for four meals for about US$4. a 12oz jar of garlic and ginger paste for US$1.25. a half pound of spinach for $1.50. a loaf of bread for $1.20. pretty much every three days we have an international house potluck in someone's room, and we eat like vegetarian royalty. in fact produce is such a deal i could probably be a vegan here more affordably than an omnivore in brooklyn, geez (that is if you don't do community supported agriculture, which our slice of brooklyn has).

speaking of food: the gentleman who organized our trip to kruger/tshulu/ha-makuya invited a friend and i back to do some "extreme bush cooking" for a group of anthropologists from uchicago who are coming out for one of his programs. although we are still arranging this informally, it appears that he is unfamiliar with paella or quinoa or millet cold in a salad, and has been trying to do things like make risotto or falafel for large groups over a campfire. from scratch. ambitious, yes...but possibly suicidal?

soon: bringing vegetarian paella
to the elephant families of kruger.

in any case i'd be grateful just to cook with venda women, the very same who built tshulu camp from the ground up, carrying water for mortar from the river. uphill. singing. they did this little by little, like my mother helped build her family's house in dubrovnik, back in the day. but without any electricity or plumbing or paved roads, right. now there's a full kitchen in tshulu with two fridges and a big industrial stove, all running on solar power, spewing forth happiness whenever guests arrive.

frame of reference: http://www.maplandia.com/south-africa/northern-province/
we were about 20km from the mozambican-south african-zimbabwean border intersection there.

this is the little girl who attached herself to my hand immediately on the first day at tryphinah's house in ha-makuya. coming from someone who is generally unnerved by small children: aww!

i don't have a lot of photos from the trip because of two reasons. 1) the things i wanted photos of eluded me (like the southern hemisphere stars) and 2) i resent having to take myself outside the interaction/make a photographic spectacle of people's homes when i'm traveling. (similar sentiments are why i did my AP art portfolio on abandoned factories and bridges in cleveland's industrial gutter.)

i let the photographer handle it and kept my camera in my bag for the majority of the time. when we get those images from him i'll put a few up for you guys, with credit of course. you'll get to see venda traditional dress. it's beautiful stuff.

as devendra would say, all my thoughts touch too much

between reading adam smith, chinua achebe, simon gikandi, and assorted international law for various block 3 courses, my head is spinning. this is the first time i have been surrounded exclusively by students and teachers who are primarily into human rights. i was walking back from lecture last night with a friend from uconn, and she said to me, "do you think if i told our lecturer (cathi albertyn from the required course) that i want to be her, that it would freak her out?" we laughed but it was funny because it was true. constantly thinking: how can i be more like these folks when school is over? how can i get to where they are (or a parallel place)?

we have four zimbabweans, one ghanaian, and americans from all over america; all of whom have done interesting volunteer work or internships. the zimbabweans especially are interesting because they have been on the ground for so much of what us americans were reading about before this trip, and they are constantly saying insightful things no matter what the class or the reading in question is.

i've made more connections in the last few weeks than i made in months back home. not sure why this is. maybe it's because this is a concentrated community in terms of lecturers and students with the same interests. maybe it's because our program director ayesha kajee is an extremely well traveled and well connected journalist and academic, and she's already set up some amazing things for us (same goes for her as for cathi albertyn!). maybe it's because there's a natural hospitality and openness here you just can't get in new york, despite the dynamic NGO, law, and non-profit communities the city boasts. maybe it's because here i feel compelled to go out more, since what constitutes home is a bit foreign anyhow.

i do miss brooklyn, though, if only for the freedom of moving around after dark, and for things being open late (past 5pm) and for the great public transit. culturally, it's not drastically different here in johannesburg, at least not among young people. there's no language barrier. even the accent is slight. we all listen to the same music and we go to similar bars and wear similar clothes and have the same social patterns and text message addictions. we all love facebook and myspace and instant messaging, and house parties and shopping and eating out and music videos. there's a lot in common to talk about.

all that said, though, i can't think of a single american nineteen year old boy who's as thoughtful and intelligent and articulate as the wits boys of similar age i have met in the program. (yes, small sample, just an observation.) are young white males in american universities thinking about critical race theory and development economics? even more unlikely, how many of them are starting conversations about these topics with their female peers?

we are probably fortunate, however, to have in the program this year a group of people who are not misogynistic or racist and by nature pretty thoughtful and considerate. it has led to good class discussion, even during the awkward first week.

storytelling

In the interest of summarizing a lot of strange things that have happened in the last two weeks, here’s a list:

first thing an afrikaaner said to me: a cab driver told me, “you don’t take any nonsense, do you?” after I resorted to getting my own things out of his backseat as we waited for him to get off his phone.

first thing out of the airport: a fake porter tries to steal a cart of our luggage as we wait for cabs at the curb. thankfully he is not successful.

first thing that happened on the road: Johannesburg’s highway entrances are blocked off because Zimbabweans are rioting at the embassy.

first thing on the news radio: the Johannesburg metro police have gone on strike, as of the day we arrived…because it’s not dangerous enough as is.

first meal upon arrival: was the Hotel Devonshire buffet, too delicious to handle, also the first time in several years I’ve eaten beef and not felt immediately ill after. Also involved things like custard, guava juice, and goat milk feta.

first night of sleep: very jetlagged, woke up at four am to rearrange things in my luggage and watch sesame street in zulu on SABC 1

first linguistic confusion: ‘just now’ or ‘now’ actually means later, ‘now now’ means much later, and ‘later’ means a whole different time of the day.

first south African roadtrip: we were headed to ha-makuya in the northern province with a four hour delay in the morning because our drivers a) got lost coming from Wits to the Devonshire (they are three minutes apart), b) got more lost and then got separated from one another and c) one of them locked his keys in the car just before nine am. We were scheduled to leave at six am. Finally on the N1 north, our driver takes a wrong turn and misses the exit to Polokwane, whereupon the program director unleashes her fury on the confused fellow. On the way, we get pulled over three times and get one speeding ticket.

first meal in hamakuya: cooked by amazing, resilient Venda grandmas and aunties and a manager named Shadrack; it involved more feta cheese, and homegrown tomatoes.

first party in the country: drinking amarula and “miner’s beer” at shingwedzi camp in kruger national park and trying to figure out the southern hemisphere’s sky/watching the equivalent of MTV

first dinner party I threw in the country: included six courses, at least one of which is curry. The more things change the more they stay the same!

first time doing laundry: was in a bathroom sink by hand, at tshulu camp ha-makuya, in the dark, with hand soap instead of washing powder, while listening to a horde of screaming baboons just outside.

first night out the town: began with a group TV appearance on the SABC 2 show African Views (the episode was produced by a former IHRE student) and ended with a trip with ten other people to an old folks bar, a gay bar, and a trance club called Monaco.

classes and work

course schedule:

block 3
african literature and human rights
state sovereignty and human rights
human rights: perspectives from the disciplines (required core course)
engagement in human rights internship course

block 4
psychosocial perspectives on human rights
culture and human rights
human rights: perspectives from the disciplines, continued
engagement in human rights internship course, continued

work
i am interning at the university of witwatersrand forced migration studies programme (www.migration.org.za) under the supervision of jean pierre misago (from burundi) and dr. loren landau (from the usa).

i will be assisting with fieldwork, writing and research for a study of current xenophobic violence in south africa. the FMSP is affiliated with lawyers for human rights, which also is having a staff member work on the xenophobia project, along with another fellow student of mine. needless to say, i am extremely lucky and pleased to have been given this placement!

first off

hello readers from:

http://web.mac.com/zdravo/the_hour_is_here/south_africa_travel_notes/south_africa_travel_notes.html

sorry to be out of touch for so long!

please bookmark this page for actual updating, since blogger is a thing the university allows access too.