(d)urban(a)

27 Hours in the Airport-Complex

The sunrise of my last morning in Urbana reminded me of so many other beautiful sunrises I have seen from my apartment there on the rare (usually contemplative) occasions I am awake at that time.  It is early morning here in Durban as I write this - 5:44am - but the sun has already risen and I am awake after about five hours of sleep.  My wakefulness is likely due to jet lag and my excitement to finally see the city in daylight but also partly due to the loud cries of hadada ibis from outside of my window.  The "hadada" part of their name refers to their loud call of "haa haa haa de dah" that sounds to me at this early hour like mocking.  Of course I can hardly blame them - my dreams were suffuse with everyday anxieties from Urbana and it seems ridiculous to me they still reach me thousands of miles away.

K dropped me off in Indianapolis about 10:30am (EST) and I entered the "airport-complex" - a vast network of airports, technical devices, quasi-private/quasi-public organizations providing services that range from shoe shines to security, and the individuals who move within the complex for work, pleasure, and countless other reasons.  After an event-less couple of hours of waiting, I boarded my flight to Atlanta and arrived with ample time to make my way to the international terminal where I would catch my next flight to Dakar, Senegal.

The international terminal buzzed with a different energy than the domestic terminals at Indy or Atlanta - it was a nervous, near-fearful energy encouraged by the public announcement warnings and the shallow glass displays that lined the concourse's walls.  The majority of these displays were entitled "BUYER BEWARE" and they teemed with "exotic" objects including animal parts (in some cases, even wholes), jewelry, and powdered or liquid concoctions.  The displays warned travelers not to partake in a particular kind of dangerous consumption while abroad - a consumption that suggests the piecemeal dismantlement of cultures that are at once attainable through the possession of a few totemic objects and at the same time radically "other" or incomprehensible.  To me these glass cases resembled the dusty dioramas I remember poring over as a child during a class visit to a natural history or cultural museum.

The nervous energy of the concourse seemed most perceptible at the currency exchange stands, whose large, lighted advertisements exploited fears of US travelers of being caught in an unspoiled, idyllic paradise without a means to sustain the paradise and their experience of it monetarily.  Other smaller and more officious warnings instilled fears of these same travelers being caught "out there" at the mercy of exchange rates and money-changers in unfamiliar territory.  Ironically enough, this particular stand in Atlanta offered an exchange rate for the Rand (South African currency unit) at 6.2 to the dollar while the rate in Johannesburg's airport offered R7 to the dollar. 

The eight-hour flight from Atlanta to Dakar was pleasant - the 767 was relatively empty and many of us were able to spread out into two or more seats and attempt odd bodily contortions in hopes of finding a few hours of sleep along the way.  We landed in Dakar about 5:20am local time but those of us continuing on to Johannesburg were not allowed to disembark.  It would have been nice to get a sense of what Dakar looked like - I was hoping the sun would rise before our takeoff or the ascent above the clouds - but I just saw lights intermittently scattered around the airport and the scrabbly vegetation next to the runway during our plane’s taxi.  During the hour we waited on the plane, airport/government officials entered to search our seats and bags and spray a “human-friendly” insecticide of some sort through the cabin that smelled sweet and heavy.

When we reached 10,000 feet during the next eight-hour leg of the flight it looked as though we were flying next to the stars themselves.  There were two especially bright ones in relative proximity to one another that stayed constant even while the others began to fade at the suggestion of dawn.  Seeing them made me wonder which stars they were and encouraged me to investigate stars visible from the Southern hemisphere after landing.  The sun rose blindingly bright above the clouds and I closed the window-shades so that I could sleep for a few more hours before landing.

After the quiet seclusion of the flights, the Johannesburg airport seemed to explode with confused interactions that ranged from the sweet (a cute little hound sniffed out a banana I had stowed in my bag – its caretaker confiscated it while several people pet the dog) to the inexplicable.  Because of the country’s high rate of unemployment (of which I hope to address in more detail in future posts), the international terminal teems with unofficial porters who insistently attempt to take charge of you and your luggage.  From what I was told these porters often offer help and then pressure you for a disproportionate amount of compensation later.  The Joburg airport was vast and – although much of it was under construction – enclosed its inhabitants within a giant cocoon of glass and steel.  During my wait for the last part of my travels within the airport complex (an hour flight from Joburg to Durban) I ate at “WIMPY,” a fast-food burger restaurant (the ketchup is so sweet here, its first ingredient is sugar!) and met J, about eight years younger than me but also traveling to South Africa to complete a semester at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. 

After the quick flight into Durban I also met two other young Americans – S and H, two women from Portland who were traveling to a smaller, coastal town two hours from Durban as volunteers to help the local school establish an after-school program.  It was hard to have an impression of Durban since it was so dark when I arrived.  It is nearly 7am now and later today I will be going round to get a sense of the area – at least in terms of necessities (a laptop adaptor, a pay-as-you-go cell phone, and food for my kitchenette).  Also, at some point later it will be necessary for me to articulate in words why it is that I have come here to spend the next three months.  But first… perhaps I will try to sleep for another few hours.

Election News Around Here

I'm looking forward to reading news of Super Tuesday tomorrow in the US and the major news outlets here in SA have provided some coverage of the US election season - in fact, when I landed in the Johannesburg airport I was surprised to see the giant front-page headline devoted to news that Ted Kennedy had officially announced his support of Barack Obama.  However, another election has occupied much of the media's attention here.

Over the last week, reference to the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe and its upcoming elections has arisen in nearly every conversation I have had.  Bordering South Africa to the north, Zimbabwe has been in an economic spiral for the last seven years with most major news outlets attributing the current hard currency shortage and hyperinflation to President Mugabe's compulsory land redistribution policies beginning in 2000.  While the idea of the redistribution was altruistic - it was meant to reclaim land for indigenous Zimbabweans from the small minority of whites who possessed over 70% of land - the implementation of the program and the subsequent standstill in farming and mining has made the redistribution project a disaster.  The situation in Zimabwe has been so grim over the last seven years that the World Health Organization reports the average life span for Zimbabweans has halved - from 69 years in 2000 to 35 years today.  BBC News and CNN have been banned from filming and reporting in the country and the government has enforced strict suppression of the press and free speech.

Thousands of Zimbabweans are fleeing the country each day, many into South Africa with the Zimbabwe Civic Action Support Group, amongst other groups, estimating that about three million have fled to South Africa since 2000.  SA president Thabo Mbeki has attempted to mediate efforts in Zimbabwe, especially in regards to its upcoming elections, which are scheduled for March.  Charges of electoral rigging have already been waged against the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, led by President Mugabe, which has been the ruling political party since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.  Today, it was just reported that talks to unite the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change have collapsed, a failure that may ensure Mugabe's reelection next month. 

Mbeki's State of the Nation Address Today

I am spending the morning watching coverage of President Thabo Mbeki's State of the Nation Address, which is upcoming in about an hour.  Update to follow...

The address has been widely anticipated and speculated upon already, as it comes after recent setbacks to Mbeki's political standing here.  In December 2007, Mbeki lost the presidency of the African National Congress to Jacob Zuma (whom Mbeki had fired about a year and a half earlier from the post of deputy president of SA and a man who has faced scandals on a few fronts).  Also, there has been an ongoing electricity crisis that has threatened one of SA's largest industries here - gold mining.  Other issues citizens expect Mbeki to address include the future of the Scorpions, an elite investigating unit that may have been disbanded because of its independent pursuits of senior African National Congress figures, and - of course - housing, crime, unemployment, and health care / HIV-AIDS issues.

Looking Back: Mbeki's Address and the Debt of Memory

It has been about twenty-four hours after the address and I have still not digested the nuance of both the speech and its praises and critiques.  The full address has been printed online.  In rereading it after hearing its performance yesterday - I recognize that, while I may never be qualified to assess the accuracy or fairness of its accounts of past and contemporary events, issues, and organizations - the emphasis on memory and its connection to hope remains striking to me.  After recognizing and commemorating his mother, whom he constructs to represent "the rural masses of the Transkei," and several key anti-Apartheid activists and events in the past, Mbeki insists these guests "represen[t] both memory and hope" and "remin[d] us by their presence that ours is a task in a relay race of continuous rebirth so that the dream of a better life becomes a reality for all South Africans." 

We see this connection between the past in the form of memory - particularly memories of the physical sacrifice of bodies through death, internment, and segregation - and its connection to a hope and obligation (Mbeki uses the word "expectation") for the future appear in many places.  In an essay from The Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche explores the collective feeling of debt held by a group or culture towards past generations (particularly in terms of past physical sacrifices) and suggests that as time elapses, the perceived magnitude of this debt mushrooms to a proportion that no subsequent generation can ever resolve or "pay off."  For Nietzsche, the result of this is a sense of guilt that is endless.  If I'm remembering the tenor of his essay correctly - the production of this guilt sickens Nietzsche when he suggests this is how we might understand celebrations of the passion of Christ. 

In the case of South Africa and in this address, the question becomes how can any movement forward (that will likely always be riddled with problems, complications, nuances, critiques) ever be perceived to fully honor or "pay off" the number of lives lost to torture and the number of years activists spent repressed, banished, or imprisoned?  Of course the direction Mbeki has led the country toward and the direction that many people believe Jacob Zuma will lead the country in a year's time are likely to be radically different interpretations of how these memories of sacrifice should be fulfilled.

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There is much coverage of the address on the web, including the following from Roy Hartley, editor of The Times, who provides a humorous and irreverent summary of the address on his blog: 

Mbeki State of the Nation in four sentences:
"I’ve got Jacob Zuma and my mother watching, so have a little appreciation for the political minefield I’m about to walk through, okay?
We’re sorry we stuffed up the electricity thing but we are really, really, really trying to fix it by whatever means possible.
Things look pretty weird with the Police Commissioner on trial and the Scorpions boss suspended, but we are a resilient people that have been through a lot of weirdness before.
All the other promises to fix things and speed up the government made in previous speeches still stand, only this time, I’m going to kick ass because I only have a year or so before Jacob takes over … and you know what’s going to happen then."

"The best laid plans... often go awry"

This may be my last post for a while - last night someone broke through the locks on my apartment and took my laptop.  Thankfully I"m okay even though he/she was only a foot away from me.  Trying to take care of things here but I'm not sure if or when I'll have consistent access to a computer.

Pictures of Kwa Mashu Township

South African Coverage of the NIU Shooting

This is really a short note because the coverage here has been brief, but present.  When I returned home from the Midlands yesterday a national news program here on one of the SABCs (South African Broadcasting Channel) reported "another" shooting had occurred on a university campus in the United States.  When the footage visually indicated the shooting had occurred in Illinois without identifying the institution, I was understandably even more disconcerted because of the number of people I know affiliated with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Early coverage here has foregone providing specific details about the shooting and has focused on connecting it to other occurrences of recent shootings at US universities and colleges instead.  Preliminarily, this seems to be the angle that much international coverage of the event has used.

Several of my friends in Urbana-Champaign contacted me to inform me of the shooting and its affect upon them and the campus.  My thoughts continue to be with you.

Zamukuziphilisa Community Centre, Umbilo Temple, and Several New Projects For Me

This morning J, M, and I drove to an interior design firm to pick up a couple hundred fabric sample books the firm donated to CAS.  The sample books range in size and contain about twenty to thirty squares of high-quality, upholstery and decorator fabric in each one.  From Durban, we drove south to the Umlazi Township - the second-largest township in South Africa with a population of about 750,000 people in the area.  Decent living conditions and health care for many residents remains a challenge, although the area has had recent construction of more primary and secondary schools.

When we arrived there we dropped the fabric off at the Zamukuziphilisa Community Centre, a "self-help" sewing and beading center for women in the area.  I met the director of the center, Mrs. Gambushe, and we spoke about marketable sewing items we could make from the fabric in the books.  I will return to the center next Tuesday with M and we'll work with interested women on sewing things with the fabric.  Certainly we could make throw pillows or quilted blankets from the cloth, but if anyone else has any additional ideas, I welcome suggestions.  In the past I used fabric from sample books to make a lined, patchwork skirt as part of a larger collection I created for a fashion show I organized for a charity event held at Fais Do Do in Los Angeles (this was in 1999 when I was still in fashion school at LA Trade Tech - I can't believe it has almost been a decade!).  I plan to check some crafting sites online (like craftster.org) for additional ideas on things one can make out of smaller pieces of cloth.  In the sewing room at the center they have three industrial machines (Singers), one industrial overlock, about fifteen home sewing machines, and two home overlocks (or what the home sewing industry calls sergers).  I can't wait to get back to sewing on an industrial machine!  I will post pictures of the sewing room after I return next Tuesday.

Later in the afternoon, J and I visited the Umbilo Temple, which is in Mayville, a suburb close to where I am staying in Glenwood.  It is hard for me to use the word "suburb" to describe Mayville because the connotations I associate with that word evoke mental images of white picket fences and comfortable, family houses.  Mayville contains a large informal settlement with shack houses that cover the hillside and few water pumps and toilet areas that the residents are forced to share.  At the end of January, a local newspaper published the horrible news of a baby in Mayville who died from a rat bite he received in his shack.  Further down Bellair Road from these shacks, the third iteration of Umbilo Temple stands, nestled amongst green trees in the hillside.  The first Umbilo Temple was established in 1875 and was the first Hindu Temple in Africa.  Because of the expansion of Bellair Road, the national government under Apartheid forced the temple's move.  The first temple is submerged by dirt underneath the freeway because the road construction workers could not break the stone of the temple.  The temple's style and decoration represents traditions of temple styles found in Southern India, with the exception of a smaller shrine influenced by Northern Indian style.  The temple complex consists of a large courtyard area filled with trees, marigold bushes, and one smaller temple next to the central one.  I have included a picture of the smaller temple, which is the "Mother's Temple" and its purpose is to honor women.  The other picture comes from within an area of the larger temple - these deities represent the planets in our solar system, with the Sun in the center. 
We visited with the caretaker of the temple who explained its purpose and meaning for the community and invited us back to the Fire Walking Festival on March 30th (which I'm looking forward to).  After we told him about CAS he also told us to return Saturday morning to collect some cloth that has been donated to the temple that he would like to reach women sewers affiliated with CAS.  Also, by chance, we met his colleague E who leads a senior citizen's group for Indians in the area - he invited us to speak to the group (he said it is mostly women) at their community center on March 5th about CAS's cloth production projects.  M and I will attend and show them examples of the cloths women have made and talk about how they construct personal histories of South Africa.  After our presentation we will invite anyone interested in making a memory cloth and arrange a time for a workshop.  J said she will look into funding for this, as their convention is to give each person who produces a cloth a token of R120.  If members of the group are interested in participating, this would mean the first cloths that CAS will collect to represent the Indian perspective of South African history!  Especially since this group is older, many may remember or want to recount their experience under Apartheid, including past forced relocations and the riots and police violence that occurred along Bellair Road where the Temple is located.

The apprehensions I had yesterday about my involvement with CAS and my lack of a "critical distance" (something I've never particularly cultivated anyway) went out the window for me today.  I came here with a background in sewing/garment production and writing and I'd just as soon apply it.  So while I'm completing my dissertation prospectus and collecting research (using the CAS and Univ. of KZN archives and eventually conducting formal interviews), I've also committed myself to work on the following projects:

• Parliament Millennium Programme/Amaswi Abesifazane "What Does Democracy Mean to Me?" Project (one-week workshop in March in a Northern Province)
• Zamkuziphilisia Sewing Project (once a week in Umlazi)
• Umbilo Indian Community Center Senior Group Presentation (March 5th and possible workshop to follow)
• Proposal/Grant Writing (M and I are going to try to work on proposal/grantwriting to apply to some new funding sources for CAS projects)
  

Nowhere in the Middle

I went back out to Pietermaritzburg today with J to help V (whom I met last Friday) set up a computer so she could access and finish her dissertation (it's due in two months time).  Her computer, a PC purchased in 1997, had finally given out and she had the only copy of her dissertation stored in a WordPerfect 8 (a program also from 1997) file on a 3.5 floppy.  After two visits to a nearby internet cafe (to download a printer driver and Open Office to read WordPerfect), we were able to get the newer computer to be able to open her document and print it when she needs to bring a copy into her adviser.  I guess the computer situation, visiting the old Durban courthouse yesterday where a city's history in photographic prints are stored in a crumbling archive organized in no clear or communicable fashion, and the repeated warnings on the television and the newspapers of the current electricity crisis and impending water crisis makes me wonder at what point is a person, a city, an infrastructure overwhelmed?  I know I find the first two instances unsatisfactory from my position because I have become accustomed to fully functional computers/operating systems and Library of Congress subject headings.  But concern over the last instance, especially the way the media is covering the topic and Eskom's very real, random "load shedding"  (planned rolling blackouts to prevent overwhelming the grid), is not isolated to me.  And the concern is not just isolated to the power and water systems:  the everyday includes concerns about crime, the unemployment rate (estimated at 25%), HIV/AIDS, the future of the government, and tenuous race/gender/class relationships.

There are two books next to me right now:  At Risk:  Writing On and Over the Edge of South Africa, an edited collection of twelve narratives united by the idea that "living with risk is now part of everyday South African Life" and Globalisation & New Identities:  A View From the Middle, an edited collection of essays united by a perspective of globalization and identity "from a middle-income country with the largest economy in Africa" - a viewpoint that "enables the authors to offer a unique perspective that hovers midway between the optimism of some high-flying northern academics and the despair associated with the depths of afro-pessimism."  Are these two viewpoints - one of risk and one of the middle - reconcilable or can they even be in conversation with one another?  I have such a hard time understanding how the editors can confuse "middle" for statistical mean.  Middle suggests a situation that is in-between - not at the beginning or end or lowest or high point.  But South Africa is both low and high, rather than middle, especially speaking specifically in terms of income, as the editors of Globalisation & New Identities do.  In the 2004 United Nations Development Programme Report, South Africa is listed as the country with the seventh highest Gini coefficient (the principal measure of income equality) in the world, with only six small (also African) countries ahead of it.  I don't know how to view South Africa other than through an understanding of the inextricable connections between neoliberal economic policy, racism, and violence that produce an ever-widening gulf between a small high and a vast low.  To reject this middle viewpoint, then, what does it mean for anyone - a visitor, a citizen, an infrastructure, and an entire country to function/write/work/live within a paradigm of risk? 

The Little Travellers of the Hillcrest AIDS Centre

Located outside of central Durban, The Hillcrest AIDS Centre is a "faith-based ministry" addressing the local impact of HIV/AIDS "in a practical and holistic way.  The mission of the organisation is and always has been to show unconditional love in a practical way to all infected and affected by HIV/AIDS."  Until I got here, I hadn't realized the specific ways stigma towards those with HIV/AIDS manifests itself in South Africa, particularly when perceptions of stigma make those possibly infected/infected avoid activities that Hillcrest or I would identify as "practical ways" to attend to the disease and complications relating to it (such as getting tested or beginning a course of anti-retroviral treatments).  The Durban Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of photographs, garments, and craft items created by some of the Centre's members and I got to see the display earlier this week.  The Little Traveller (pictured here in a photograph I have used from Hillcrest's website without explicit permission) has become an iconic craft object for Hillcrest - each traveler comes with a "passport" and the traveler is attached to a safety pin so whoever it travels to can attach it to their clothes, bag, etc.  They sell here for R15 (just a little over $2 US) for the basic travelers but the project has expanded to include other kinds of travelers and information relating to them (on t-shirts and a DVD).  They loosely resemble small versions of some more traditional Zulu dolls I have seen (at least in the use of dark fabric in combination with different colored beads to accentuate features of the doll's body).  Each traveler is unique and some specialty travelers include Rastas, Zulu warriors, and Sangomas (this is a Zulu shaman/medicine man).  The proceeds from the travelers and the other craft projects produced at Hillcrest's craft collective go to fund several projects at the centre, including HIV/AIDS Counseling, Nursing Services and Home-Based Care, Horticultural Production and Nutrition and Nutrition Education, and contributing to School Fees for children in the area.  I'm really interested in this idea of the traveler and how the Hillcrest AIDS Centre crafters have connected the concept of HIV/AIDS to the global movement of people.