i am here because...

Each day, I seem to place a few more pieces where they belong as I continue the process of realizing why I am here. Yesterday, it came in the form of paying R30 (the equivalent of about $3) for 53 minutes that had me convinced that I am here for the sole purpose of connecting with my family history. I returned to my leaky-eyed self in the middle of a play about journeying through stories of loss and memory and displacement, and was painfully reminded of my relative lack of connection to and knowledge about an entire half of my own family. Those tears, coupled with a particular email I received last week from my uncle about the possibility of my paternal great grandfather having lived here in Cape Town, was enough for me to decide that I’m here to belatedly connect with my dad through piecing together patchwork stories of his – and my – family history. (And remind me again why I had to come just about as far away from home as possible to do that?) But that’s another story for another day…

Today, it was an upsetting moment I had in the lagging space that comes while waiting for a mini-bus taxi to fill up in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s biggest township. I realized, or perhaps articulated in a way that I had not been able to up until now, that I think I came here hoping to be proven wrong about the world and all the painful realities it holds. I had been telling myself that maybe, just maybe, I would learn a new way for a society to exist – one that actively engages with the realities of its past and works to move through them towards the creation of a just, healthy, safe space for everyone involved. In a word, I guess I was looking for hope.

I’m in no way saying that there isn’t good work going on here. There is, by all means, and I know that so much more remains out there to be discovered. But in all honesty, I’m starting to be convinced that things just aren’t that different here when it comes to the ways that injustice and inequity operate.

I say this tentatively. I hesitate because I don’t quite feel like I’ve been here long enough to make any sort of authoritative statement about “the way South Africa works.” (That said, there may always be an element of walking on eggshells when making this sort of sweeping generalization as a foreigner.) But more so, I hesitate because, in beginning to admit defeat, I feel like I’m giving up on something I had both hoped with all my heart would be true, and also known in my heart never would.

I also make this statement with certain traces of guilt and naïveté. I admit guilt because I have been working very hard at convincing myself that I arrived here without preconceptions of what I would find; without a need to impose the paradigms through which I see the world on this version of it. I claim naïveté because one might think I would know better than to hope for anything different than those paradigms I already know, especially given my consistently spouting analysis of the interconnected nature of structural injustice, oppression, power, privilege, all that intellectual speak.

These hesitations reflect a process that has begun to delicately and gently wake me up; one that is not ready to dramatically scream at me that the world is really just made up of different incarnations of the same shit everywhere, even if I’m starting to believe that’s the truth.

I see it in the way that the white South African woman I met on the plane – who, it is important to note, is only coming back for a visit and has decided to “raise her kids somewhere safer” – fiercely cautions me not to take public transportation anywhere in this country. She very obviously claims every reason in the books other than the fact that I will undoubtedly be the only white person on board.

I see it in the way that the white director of a recent Cape Town street theater festival, despite being incredibly well intentioned in his efforts to “bring art to the people”, answers the question of why there were no black South Africans involved in designing the shows. “They just didn’t answer the call for submissions,” he explains. “I put out three separate calls, and the only people who responded were white gay men!”

I see it the way that my neighbor, who is a white gay man, tramples all over the deep offense that many people take to the incredibly racist and insensitive theme of this year’s Cape Town Pride Festival, brushing off such concerns because they come from whiners without valid reason to be upset. (And I see it in the ways that the queer community – no, the multiple queer communities are burdened with the same plague of racial divisions and the pain they cause.)

And these are just the subtle ways I see it playing out – intellectualizing, rationalizing, unnamed fear. The bigger, more glaring structural things, those have to be another story for another day…

of mangos and triangles

Mangos have always been a source of comfort for me. They seem to follow me: dried mangos stashed in the basket on the kitchen counter at home were a staple growing up; giant jugs of mango nectar (occasionally dropped on the floor and wasted) was consistently the drink of choice at late-night Mosaic staff meetings; the monthly San Francisco women’s party called Mango began to allow me glimpses into an intriguing new world; when in season, I packed my backpack in high school with fresh mangos and serrated knives wrapped in paper towels and rubber bands, to be enjoyed during lunch (or fifth period) in the park. And -- call it coincidence or call it subconsciously seeking out comfort -- my newest coffee shop gig is at a sweet little spot called Mango Ginger. So maybe, despite all the urgency I was spouting to run away from home for a while, I can’t get too far away after all.

Triangles, on the other hand, are somewhat of a new phenomenon in my life. The bulk of my days lately have been spent in the office of a Cape Town NGO called Triangle Project. (No capitalized ‘The’, an omission over which the anal copy-editor in me has a minor identity crisis, as I’ve been so well trained to include it without fail in grant applications for The Mosaic Project.) Triangle -- www.triangle.org.za for whoever’s interested -- is a place that resembles Mosaic in more than their (almost) parallel names. It is a community that has slowly begun to adopt me -- but not without my pretty constant solicitation.

I am currently working on a project on lesbian sexual health and HIV/AIDS that has given me some sense of purpose, manufactured as it may be, over these last few weeks. I am doing research and will lead a workshop in a couple weeks with an exchange program that brings together young lesbian-identified women from Sweden and South Africa to share their experiences and (theoretically) turn them into aspiring little activists. Lofty goals, I suppose, but I’ve also been trying to get over this strange cover of cynicism I seem to have adopted and let the idealist I’ve really always been show through. We’ll see how that one goes...

So here I go, attempting to bridge an old and familiar fruit with a new and foreign shape. I've never so much been one to do things the conventional way, so here's to a new spin on mixing apples and oranges.

But in all honesty, as much as I ramble about the theoretical and poetic meanings of all that I'm doing, nothing feels like it has changed too much. I've moved to a new city... and that sort of feels like the long and short of it. Things really are falling into place in a way I never could have expected, and it's been quite an excercise for me not to fight it. My mama says it has all been relatively painless because I'm 'growing up'. I think it's because I needed to do what I'm doing, and now and I'm doing it, and it's working. Hmm... maybe just different ways of saying the same thing, as tends to happen with me and my mother as we navigate this whole 'growing up' thing. But that's another story for another day...