(d)urban(a)

The Spaces We Can Never Occupy, The Ones We Can Never Return

This morning the news programs were all covering a particularly horrifying story - a video leaked this week that was made last September where four white, male students at the University of the Free State demeaned five, older university black staff members, including making them down a whole bottle of beer, run a race, play rugby, and then kneel and eat a meat concoction that one of the men had urinated upon (unbeknownst to the "participants").  I have read translations of the video (the men were speaking in Afrikaans) and the men making it staged the events to simulate their perceived consequences of racially integrating the university's hostels (we would call them residence halls in the US).  One of the men even goes so far as to say they included more meat in the mixture because the "less advantaged" blacks needed it.  It was only during that term's semester that the University announced it would no longer maintain segregated housing for students.  The video is disgusting and, besides violating the dignity of the workers who were depicted, it sends a profound message of hate and racism that leaves me incapacitated to understand its enormity.  Journalists are embedding this story within larger considerations of how much change has really occurred between people of different races here with the founding of the "rainbow nation" democracy in 1994.  The video's intent was a hateful and threatening way of trying to reassert control over space - in this case the opening of space within a university's hostels - through unofficial channels.  Apartheid was an official method of controlling space with its policy to create "white cities, black homelands" and prevent the movement of blacks into urban areas unless they were defined as a specific kind of worker and had the proper documentation in which to enter those areas.  Even after fourteen years, I would wonder what it must be like to move within spaces that you were once told you didn't belong to and you were violently removed if you dared to occupy them.

This post was originally going to be just about this story, but something about the night and the quiet time I spent reading and trying to write today has turned my mind to thinking of spaces more personally.  There are quiet, everyday strategies we use to occupy or evade the spaces around us and there are so many that we can never return to, at least not in the same way.  I remember spending five days a week for an hour at a time in this tiny, windowless lunchroom at a store I worked in, listening to the  dual hum of two soda machines for ten months straight.  It was in that space that I would copy out poems from books and leave a space between each line and I would read and read and read the same poem and try to break it down into something I could understand, writing between the lines.  The spaces between the poem's lines were a way for me to control the meaning of the poem and the activity was a way for me to control the meaning of that space, which I loathed as it meant I was somewhere in the middle of my nine-hour shift working behind the photo or cosmetics counter of a generic drugstore.  I eventually walked out of the store and never returned, even to quit.  Now, however, when I return to Los Angeles to visit my family and I drive by that store, I think about how I can never return to that tiny room where a lot of my thoughts and hopes about where I would be in a few years time (away from there, finally away from Los Angeles - at least for a while) were engendered and I feel the loss of never being able to return to that space or moment.  Sometimes when I'm walking down certain streets there will be a spot that chokes me with the memories of everything that has happened there before.  I guess it's days like today that seeing and thinking of those memories occupying the same spaces can start to overwhelm - all of a sudden the landscape appears like a palimpsest that can never be scraped clean before the next action befalls it, or the next meaning is assigned.

Unrest in Umlazi as the Main Road Burns with Fires and Student Protest

The township that I have been spending two days during the week, Umlazi, has been the site of student rioting since Tuesday.  When R picked M and me up on Tuesday at 1:30pm we saw a lot of people gathered outside on the Mangosutho Buthelezi Higheway next to Mangosutho University of Technology, but it wasn't until later that night that I heard it was students protesting about the dearth of lecturers (the new semester started at the beginning of February), the dismissal of three Student Representative Council members, poor facilities, laboratories, and bus/transportation services.  Teaching at the university has stopped completely.

The situation grew worse today - the police arrested over one hundred students on the charges of public violence and malicious damage to property.  This was after the police fired rubber bullets on the crowds and the students responded by throwing rocks and bottles, and setting roadside debris and tires on fire in the middle of the highway.  The local informal trading posts and tuck shops along the road closed down when the police and students began fighting.  The police eventually closed the highway off.

Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to go to Umlazi to continue the sewing project but the television news reports haven't said whether the road has been opened.  Most of the reports attribute the student action to student members of the Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade.  This party, founded by Mangosutho Buthelezi for whom the University in Umlazi is named after, formed in Northern Kwa-Zulu in 1975.  It developed in South Africa after the apartheid government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress in South Africa.  Violence between the IFP and ANC occurred in the 1980s, even though they both ostensibly resisted the Apartheid government.  KwaZulu-Natal has always been the location for the largest concentration of IFP members, but its membership has waned over the past decade.

Breaking Down in Umlazi

C picked me up around 7:45am so we could get M at the Palmer Street office and then pick up the last of the fabric sample books at the home decorator firm off Florida Road before heading out to sew in Umlazi.  Today was the day where I had asked the women in our nascent sewing collective to entrust all finished samples to me for a week so I could photograph them and begin making further contacts with local craft retailers here and emailing craft organizations in the United States.  I hadn't seen C since my first week in town, so it was nice to catch up with her and she was anxious to talk about the recent results in the US Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas. 

We were on the freeway to Umlazi by about 8:20am and it was a beautiful day but had already warmed to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  C noticed her '82 Honda's engine temperature indicator was nearly on the "H" so we pulled over on the side of the freeway as C quipped, "better let it cool off here than when we're in Umlazi."  When we exited the freeway and began driving on the Mangosothu main highway we passed by the technical university's campus easily - in fact, there was hardly any sign of the protests or fires that had raged there less than 24 hours ago.  Just as we were turning right off the highway onto the road towards the Zamu Community Centre, we heard a loud pop and smoke started pouring out of the driver's side of the hood (mind you, that means the right side over here).  The car started shaking and C pulled it off onto the shoulder of the small road and turned the car off.  We sat there in silence for a quick moment and then C announced that she was shaking.  She pulled her phone out, rolled up her window completely, looked around, and began trying to call J and others to figure out a way out of there.  I could tell she was scared and M looked nervous too.  I guess I couldn't understand at first - it was only a little after 9am in the broad daylight - how could we be in trouble stopping where we were?  Any time a minibus taxi filled with people or a man would walk by us, C would hide her phone and I guess we would all just sort of hold our breath.  M muttered C should be more careful about anyone seeing her phone and by then, I had started discreetly sending out text messages to J and others as well telling them about our situation.  M called Mrs. Gambushe's centre to tell her where we were stuck. 

After a little while J called us and arranged for a trusted tow truck driver she knew to head out towards us.  Just then a police car drove by and C waved wildly to flag them down.  At first they just waved back at her, as though it was a polite greeting they were merely exchanging, so she jumped out and ran up to their car.  Eventually, the three officers, all wearing bulletproof vests and with their guns prominently visible in their holsters, waited by the car with us until the tow truck driver finally arrived.  That whole time C had never opened her hood or tried to let on to passerbys besides the police that we needed assistance because she was sure that around there, especially if you're not from there, revealing that you're stranded is an invitation to get robbed instead of getting help.  The three of us squeezed into the front cab of the tow truck with the driver and eventually made it back to Palmer Street.

I'll be honest - I think because I knew the least firsthand about how dangerous Umlazi can be, I guess I didn't ever "freak out" or realize the full extent to how vulnerable a situation we were in.  We made it back fine - I was more worried about when and how we would be able to get the sewing samples and make it out to Umlazi again.  A was laughing at me because once we got back, when I pulled a chicken and mayo pie from a wrapper in my purse and started eating it.  He asked me if I ate when I was anxious and I just confessed I ate because I was usually always hungry when I was around pies or ice cream.  M and I finished a few emails and then I got a ride to Musgrave Shopping Centre from J and A, who were taking a break from welding, so that I could visit ABSA Bank to pay for admission for myself and M next Thursday for a Sewing and Knitting Craft Exposition.  We're going with Mrs. Gambushe to the event to "network" and get a sense of what the big craft businesses are up to in the area.  There will be demonstrations, products for sale, etc., all held on the giant meeting grounds of the Greyville Race Track in the city.  I ate a chocolate and nut dip cone at the Milky Lane ice cream shop in the mall after depositing our admission price and took a taxi home from Musgrave.  By the time I got home, I was ready for a nap - I had stayed up until 1:30 am last night working on some creative non-fiction writing and had let the time get the best of me.  I just woke up from my nap a little bit ago - I had been thinking about going dancing tonight on Florida Road - it's X's birthday tonight and I haven't seen her for three weeks, but I'm also tempted to stay in and watch Tsotsi on the television and just embroider or something quiet. 

Grand-Pa Hoofpynpoeiers After a Long Day

I was awakened by a text message this morning around 7:30 am, which reminded me of one of the most distinctive cultural differences between my life here and the one I lead in Urbana:  the people I work with, and most people in general in Durban, get up early for work.  The people I work with would never think it was too early to call or message me at 7am.  This has been a definite adjustment to my usual work/sleep patterns.  Today I was at the Killie Campbell Africana Library doing more research and found am amazing report from ten years ago that I can use to connect to the programs advocated for "Bantu" Education that I posted about a week ago.  As recently as a decade ago, the SA government expressed an interest in "exploiting" culture (the actual word used in the report) in national and global markets in order to improve the economy. 

In the afternoon I stopped by Musgrave Centre to buy supplies for my research trip on Saturday:  I bought another memory card for my digital camera, batteries for my digital audio recorder, and a big box of Grand-Pa Hoofpynpoeiers (in English:  Grand-Pa Headache Powder).  The air pressure today has been wreaking havoc with my head - it finally started raining an hour ago - so I needed to buy some headache medicine.  Headache powder is popular here - my friend K in Urbana first introduced it to me - and it works faster than ingesting a pill.  The powder comes in a little folded wax-paper packet and you either mix it with water or just chuck it all in your mouth and swallow it down quickly.

Two variables regarding Saturday's trip were happily cleared up today:  first, we confirmed that our group will stay a second week in Nelspruit (Mpumalanga province).  The first week, then, will be the "Democracy" workshop with the Parliamentary Millennium Project and the second, less funded/more "grassroots" week will be the "History" workshop with only Create Africa South sponsoring the workshop.  Also, my contact in South Africa's Parliament confirmed to me that when we finally meet on Saturday she can bring me past reports/paperwork related to their end of the project's collaboration and also DVDS of footage recorded during the first three workshops from this year.  This is wonderful news for me - having the project coordinator from Parliament furnishing materials helps remove part of the "guesswork" from my research and will ensure I can analyze the motivations for the Parliamentary Millennium Quilt Project beyond the small blurb on their website. 

Below I've included my most recent formulation of what my research will lead to in terms of my dissertation.  For now its focus excludes the research I have been doing on economic craft programs for "marginalized" groups - something that I will continue to examine, but that may have to form another project besides my dissertation.

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I am currently in Durban, South Africa conducting fieldwork in the area (participant observation and interviews) and archival research at the Killie Campbell Africana Library (University of KwaZulu-Natal).  My dissertation is in its prewriting/research stage and I will submit a complete prospectus draft to my advisor in late March.  It was imperative for me to begin field research before completing my prospectus so I can ethically attend to the interview subjects and local environment in which I have situated myself over the next few months.  My dissertation, “Crafting Democratic Participation:  Amazwi Abesifazane, South Africa’s Parliamentary Millennium Project, and Craft Literacy,” examines cloth production workshops Create Africa South (CAS) sponsors for South African women to compose embroidered cloths that recount past history and present conceptions of democracy.  CAS began these weeklong craft workshops, entitled “Amazwi Abesifazane” (“Voices of Women”), in 2000 to collect personal histories from women, a majority of whom are considered marginalized because they are “Black” or “Coloured,” informal laborers, or possess little alphabetic literacy.  During the workshop each participant composes an oral narrative and embroidered panel that depicts the themes explored in her narrative.  CAS then takes the woman’s photograph and frames these three components together for exhibition within South Africa, internationally, and online.  Over the past year, CAS has collaborated with the Parliament of South Africa’s Millennium Project (PMP), which has prompted a shift in the cloths’ subjects from recounting history to representing conceptions of democracy.  When the PMP has collected cloths from women in all nine provinces of South Africa, they will be exhibited and discussed in Parliament.
During my time here, I will participate in three workshops that will form the central case studies for my dissertation.  The first, funded and led by PMP organizers, will be held in the Mpumalanga province (scheduled from March 17-21 in Nelspruit) with a democracy focus and the second will be funded and led by CAS organizers and occur in the same province the following week with a broader history focus.  The third workshop will be held here in the metropolitan Durban area in April – it is one that I have been in the process of coordinating since arriving here through contacts I have established in the Indian community and it will be a workshop with a group of ethnic Indian women in the area.  If successful, this last workshop would foster the production of the first South African Indian history cloths for the Amazwi archive.  I will revisit Durban, Cape Town, and Nelspruit during the Spring 2009 term to trace the impact of these workshops and the cloths upon the participants involved (including workshop participants, CAS organizers, and PMP coordinators), as well as their larger dissemination to local, governmental, national, and international audiences.  Returning in person will be vital for me to reestablish and interview the personal contacts I have made while I have been here, as issues of language, context, and technological access prohibit me from completing follow up from a distance.  I may still face difficulty in relocating some workshop participants, as informal settlement residents often lack stable housing and employment options.

While I cannot make direct claims about the workshops that will serve as my case studies before their occurrence, I can situate them within the core concepts of democratic participation and craft literacy that I draw from the field of Rhetoric and Composition.  My dissertation contributes to the field’s scholarship on the constitution of democratic citizens, democratic participation, and the link of citizenship and participation to literate practices.  I productively challenge and further this tradition of scholarship to consider how neoliberal globalization, in its privatization of services through NGOs and expansion of inequalities, influence the construction of particular forms of citizenship and participation in the “Global South.”  Specifically, I consider how the execution of these local workshops, the sewing activities they foster (which may conventionally be considered pre- or non-political), and the circulation of cloths function as forms of democratic participation within a global network of rhetorical exchange.  By observing and participating in the workshops, I can consider how participants identify themselves and how workshop coordinators communicate constitutive discourses that, as Barbara Cruikshank argues, “contribute to solidifying what is possible to think, say, do, and be democratically.”   I anticipate my experience with three different versions of the cloth production workshop – particularly in their differences in governmental and NGO coordination, racial and ethnic identifications, and subject focus – will contribute to a nuanced analysis of the core concepts of democratic participation and craft literacy that I explore.

When I analyze the composition of the cloths as a literate modality – I consider them as a form of “craft literacy” and reference key, past critical definitions of the concept, including Eric Havelock’s identification of “craft literacy” as a moment “in which the public inscription is composed as a source of referral for officials”  and Jonathan Moyo’s use of the term to refer to the design of bureaucratic structures.   At the same time, I expand the term to consider the material/visual/haptic literate practices of a craft literacy that draws upon handicraft traditions as a modality of literate expression.  Havelock’s understanding of craft literacy may account for the CAS/PMP collaboration – where the cloths are seemingly produced as direct referrals to Parliament officials - but the second and third workshops evade this strict conception, with their lack of a direct conduit to official or bureaucratic networks.  Ultimately, I identify craft literacy as a form of democratic participation, but one that may problematically be opened up primarily for citizens of the “global South.”  In the sections on craft literacy and the conclusion of my dissertation, I will work through this claim when I relate the CAS cloths to forms of democratic craft production that have originated in the United States, including the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Clothesline Project, which have functioned within public networks of rhetoric to influence popular and governmental response to human rights issues.

Dejection After the Storm: Feeling the Effects of Tropical Cyclone Jokwe

The tropical cyclone Jokwe that suddenly mushroomed into a Category 3 hurricane on Monday has devastated coastal areas of Mozambique, killed at least  eight people, and destroyed nearly 20,000 homes.  The storm we got here in Durban last night was intense, but merely the climatological fringes of Jokwe.  Heavy rain in an area that has a shoddy and unequal housing, electricity, and water infrastructure can be absolutely destructive.  It rained heavily last night - so much so that many homes, buildings, and slums in the area were flooded.  My apartment and my landlady's house rests on the entabeni, or "top of the mountain" in the city's area so we didn't suffer from any flooding, just a few leaks here and there.  However, when I went to the office this morning, the front walkway was submerged under five inches of water.  Even worse, rain poured through the roof and water damaged our only computer, monitor, and the power strips on the ground.  We're hoping that a few days of drying out may restore the computer, but I'm not really expecting much at this point.  Parts of CAS' extensive database of each cloth's image, transcribed narrative (in original language and English translation), and crafter's photograph could very well be lost.  I don't really know.  The archive room that holds the primary Amazwi cloths, hard copies of the narratives, and our supplies for the workshop that begins Saturday remained dry - thankfully.

Since there wasn't much we could do there (M had already swept out the water by the time I got there at 8:30), we went out to Umlazi (C had her car "fixed" so she drove us) to sew with Mrs. Gambushe and the women at the center.  They didn't have electricity for the last three days so they had been unable to work on a lot of sewing, although "Mo" is nearly done with a large quilt - she is just finishing the binding.  Much of the roads in Umlazi were covered in mud and waste that washed down from the storm and most of the shacks had flooded and people were still trying to sweep and bucket water out when we drove through the area around 9am.  While we were at the center I tried to take my best "catalog" photographs of some of our finished samples so that I can create a "marketing" package around them and start shopping them around to local and international craft sellers/stores.  I took a break from sewing to watch two roosters and a hen that were outside of the center.  After we got back into the city, C dropped M back at the office and she was going to drop me at home so I could work on some writing I need to finish before I leave Saturday.  Except C's car broke down.  Again.  It was the same problem - a burst water tube because her engine overheated.  Luckily we were near Davenport Center, a relatively safe shopping area where I could catch a quick bus back to my house.

I'll be honest - the rain flooding the office, no electricity at the center, the car breaking down again today - it can all just start to feel too demanding.  Beyond figuring out how to function with the limited resources of what you have to work with, you have to start focusing too much on what all of a sudden you don't have to work with, and start questioning whether anything will work at all.  I understand the economic constraints of the organization - it's a local NGO that performs a very specific function so it doesn't receive a lot of funding, but they stretch and apply that funding to the basic areas where it's needed - but when these unknown constraints and problems seemingly come out of nowhere and feel like they keep coming, it absolutely frustrates me.
 

 

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Update about local storm damage from SABCnews.com:

Durban roads, train services affected by floods

March 12, 2008, 17:30
The south of Durban was badly flooded after last night's heavy rains. Train services and roads were severely affected.

Police and emergency workers rescued a number of people after water levels rose during a heavy downpour. The weather bureau says 200mm of rain fell in some parts of the province.

Several areas around Durban were hit hard by the flash floods. Merebank, in the Durban South basin, and Umlazi, were the worst affected. The roads were badly flooded, and several cars were submerged. Other roads were closed after mudslides.

Residents warn that if nothing is done about the drainage system in the area, the flooding will occur again. Train services around Durban were also severely affected by last night's rains. Officials say cables were destroyed, and other train routes were flooded.

Crafting Distinctions

I took this photo this morning at the Sewing, Knitting & Crafts Workshop I attended with Mrs. Gambushe and M on the grounds of the Greyville Race Track.  So, I have to admit - this egg has been making me giggle since I saw it earlier today.  It is so... fanciful.  I guess it's just not my style and not what I think of when I imagine craft projects I want to complete.  I received a few kind emails and a comment yesterday after I wrote about the storm and I just wanted to put things in context.  This morning at the office, we attempted to start up the computer and although the fan appears to be working, the computer isn't communicating any signal to either of the monitors we tried it with.  We think it very well may be done for.  But it was still possible to have a really great day, in part because of who I got to spend it with.  Even after the big storm - which nearly destroyed two oil refineries in the area and caused several raw sewage pipes to burst and pollute the Isipingo River - the busy pace of the city continues and most everything seems like business as usual again.  As much as one moment can feel overwhelming, a little sleep and a strategically placed egg can remind me how much possibility there is for humor during most moments.

The craft fair today was definitely aimed for consumers - primarily women - rather than those who hope to earn an income producing handicrafts.  Most of the items on sale were all mass-produced:  crafting magazines and booklets, patterns and kits (ranging from mosaic to embroidery), and specific crafting supplies (beads, scrapbooking paper, etc).  I bought a large skein of natural cotton embroidery floss to start a whitework embroidery project I have been imagining for a while, but besides that find, I did not get a sense that I would meet anyone there who was working towards craft sustainability projects such as the one Mrs. Gambushe and I have been trying to develop.  When I walked by the exhibition for "Foilart" and was accosted by Tracey, the exhibitor, who informed me that "everyone was doing it," I actually asked her, "really, everyone is doing it?"  She seemed a little taken aback.  I guess I had a hard time believing that vague assurances of peer pressure would actually persuade me to "do Foilart." 

Jokes aside, it seems to me there are several core distinctions between the sustainable crafts market and the consumer crafts market.  The two of which were most salient to me today are the rhetorics of "uplift" and the concept of time/labor.  There was hardly any mention of uplift or moral improvement by engaging in craftwork today - and this is something that is virtually inextricable from discussions about (both internal and external to the crafting collectives) and the marketing of sustainable craft products.  The assumption today was that attendees engaged in various recreational craft activities for their own sake, so any impetus to justify or identify motivations was absent.  Also, there was hardly any mention of time or labor involvement today -for example, the demonstration I observed on Jacobean embroidery and its history didn't even acknowledge the hundreds of hours of handwork most of the pieces they were displaying actually require.  When I have been working at the Z-Centre in Umlazi, at several points I have reverted to using hand sewing (for applique or to finish a hem) or recommending it for certain points in quilt construction because handwork can be more precise and less visible, but I have hardly fully considered the issue of what the time taken to do this means in terms of its relationship to the value the object assumes.

After the craft fair, the three of us walked back into the city centre, stopped for some mutton curry pies along the way, and then purchased some beads and embroidery floss that had come in for our upcoming workshops (the wholesalers didn't receive their shipment of white floss until yesterday).  Something must have been in the air today because it seemed like several men on the street were teasing us or catcalling (fortunately, not in a way that was uncomfortable or intimidating) - in the many times M and I have been running errands this hadn't happened before, so I told Mrs. G that all the guys must be crazy for her.  M and I stayed at the office late today trying to finish arrangements for the second workshop and I finally got home a little before 6pm.  Today was the first fall day I have felt since being here - for the first time the sky was overcast and the temperature was cool and in the 70s all day.  It was a nice change not to have to worry about getting suntoasted. 

Off to Mpumulanga (15 March - 30 March)

M, Mrs. G, and I will be in the Mpumalanga Province for the next two weeks to conduct two workshops for Create Africa South's Amazwi Abesifazane project.  The first, held in Nelspruit from 15 - 20 March will be in conjunction with the South Africa Parliamentary Millennium Project and cloth production will focus on contemporary concepts of democracy for women participants.  The second, likely to be held in a rural area outside of Nelspruit from 25-29 March, will only be conducted by the three of us and cloth production will focus on history and experience. 

Over the Easter weekend I will be staying at the Gecko bushpacker's hostel - yay vacation! - just outside of Hazyview near Kruger National Park.  If you need to contact me for any emergency, the location information there is:  SABIE ROAD PLOT S 13; P.O. BOX 753  HAZYVIEW  1242; TEL.: 013 – 737 8140; FAX: 086 – 631 7143; EMAIL: [email protected]

I have decided to leave my laptop here in Durban - I imagine I will be able to find some internet cafes for access in Nelspruit, for at least the first week to check email and maybe quickly update current events.  Otherwise, I'll write about the trip after my return, during my last few weeks here in Durban.

I hope everyone enjoys the seasonal change... whether it is into Spring or Fall, the two seasons I love the most for the way they whisper both of promise and reflection.  I'll be thinking of my family on Easter and missing our egg-cracking championship.

Dispatch from Hazyview

I'm writing from the Bushpacker's Lodge in Hazyview where I have been since Friday, taking some time off to visit the lowveld and Kruger National Park over the holiday weekend.  The area is absolutely beautiful - the mountains, waterfalls, and canyons are astonishing - and I saw the "Big 5" today as well as so many other amazing animals (including impalas, tortoises, antelope) inside Kruger until it began to storm this afternoon. 

The first workshop with CAS and PMP was held in Hazyview and gathered women from rural areas throughout the Mpumalanga province.  It concluded Thursday at noon and all 51 participants completed cloths.  CAS' solo workshop begins on Tuesday in the nearby township of Muhushu - we'll be staying with one of the participants, D, in her home close to the building (I believe it is a schoolhouse) that will house the workshop.  D mentioned that even more than the 60 participants we can accomodate would like to participate if possible.  We conclude on the 29th, but couldn't get a flight from Nelspruit to Durban until the 31st so by that evening I will have complete internet access once again.  I will also be able to upload my photographs then and begin posting some selected images (by the end of the trip, I should have about 2.5 gigabytes worth of photos, not to mention the hours of video I have already shot).  I will also begin transcribing my "fieldnotes" and can start commenting on my initial impressions regarding the two workshops.  I can say already that the first workshop was at once exciting, thoughtful, and frustrating. 

Back to Durban... a return to reliable Internet access and potable, running water!

I returned from my stay in Mahushu this afternoon - we were all happy to be back in Durban and to have access to clean, potable, running water (I wish I were exaggerating).  The conditions in a rural township are difficult - access to clean water is not easy, especially if you don't own a car to carry it longer distances.  It is nice to have access to the Internet again!  I'm anxiously awaiting to hear when the Zimbabwe Election Commission will call the election from Saturday (as time passes, international critics more and more suspect a rigged election in favor of Mugabe may be announced) and I was happy to read that the UCLA Bruins made it to the Final Four (here's hoping they convert this year - although Memphis looks fierce!  I've got my fingers crossed for a UCLA/KU Final Game lineup). 

I need to relax tonight - unpack and sleep in, but I'm looking forward to writing about the two workshops, the people I've met, and the cloths and stories I've learned about over the past couple of weeks.  For now, I've posted four of my favorite pictures from the last couple weeks.  They include an African elephant crossing the road at Kruger Park, a scenic shot of Blyde River Canyon, a moment during our Mahushu workshop, and M braaing on the last day of our Mahushu workshop outside of the creche/preschool where all of our events took place.

Countdown To My Return

Today I met M at the office for the first time since we've been back from our cloth workshop trip.  Yesterday was her first day back at the office - she and I both contracted minor bacterial infections either from ingesting contaminated food or water during our trip and she had to see the doctor on Wednesday.  Luckily, a nurse practitioner prescribed ciprofloxacin "just in case" during my travel consultation prior to my departure and I started taking it late Sunday night when my stomach cramping became severe.  I was surprised at how rapidly I felt better and I was never completely debilitated so I feel pretty happy about the entire situation.   In the office we did a little work on the Mahushu cloths produced during the second week workshop - just arranging them on individual white foam boards and placing the printed photograph of each participant with her cloth.  Although I took images of the cloths through each stage of production, I will photograph the final cloths from each workshop after we press them on Monday.

Today we mostly discussed what I'll be doing for the next three weeks until I leave.  I'm mostly excited about returning, although I will miss the landscape here and the friends and work I feel like I've barely just started getting to know.  I'm really happy to return to Urbana and visit with my friends there before everyone scatters for the summer (myself included... I feel as though I'll be wandering until late August when the semester begins).  Also, the University of Illinois American Indian Studies Program and Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory are organizing a really fascinating symposium, "Decolonizations" scheduled a few days after my return.  I'll be honest - it has been some time since I've been in a roomful of "academics" so I'll be interested to see how I will react to discussion of topics very close to what I have been researching here (questions of subalternity, agency, and indigeneity) but in "academese"."  I'm reminded of Arjun Appadurai's introduction to Globalization (2001) where he identifies and bemoans the rift between the everyday activities of grassroots globalization activists (such as those operating in indigenous NGOs like the one I've been working with the past few months) and the language and conceptual models promoted by academics.  He argues for necessary collaboration to traverse this rift; this is certainly an argument I have relied upon to justify to myself and academic audiences my particular research methodology.

Today we scheduled some deadlines and appointments to start moving towards reaching conclusiveness over the next few weeks.  Tomorrow, M and I (and M's twin sister, whom I am super-excited to finally meet) will go to uShaka Marineworld, partly to indulge in my need to occasionally be a tourist here (they have a snorkel lagoon I may splurge on! Also, they have dolphins performing tricks to 80s music!), but primarily to see the Umcebo Trust shop there - it's a non-profit organization that sponsors craft production for people with "special needs."  I continue to be interested in craft production economic schemes that target "special needs" producers (particularly in how this target is defined and how these producers are recruited).  By Wednesday, M and I need to complete three distinct funding proposal projects we have started, which includes completing the update of CAS's Amazwi project basic materials (mission statement, project flow, budget, etc.) that we include with each particular proposal.  On Thursday we finally return to Umlazi to work with Mrs. G at the sewing center.  She stopped by the office today and we discussed a proposal she is working on to have her products considered for sale by the tourism industry of Reunion Island.  I'll be writing the materials for her and creating a CD that catalogs the products she would like to be considered for sale.  I'll complete those documents by the following Monday so that we can submit everything by the 15th.

Finally, next Friday I'll be returning to KwaMashu to reconnect with Z, the a/v coordinator for the  community center.  I'll be teaching a section of Writing With Video in the fall at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Z and I have decided to collaborate so that my students in the class can interact and exchange videos with videographers and documentary-makers in KwaMashu.  I'm really excited about the collaboration (although I'm anticipating technological and time difference difficulties) - I've always emphasized the exploration of global issues through local situations in video production (a medium I feel is especially suited for capturing "the local").  I'm actually "virtually" presenting a paper about teaching the global through the local in video production in New Orleans this weekend.  Thanks to my colleague and friend Patrick Berry, who is presenting the paper for me at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication.  I'm sorry to miss out on the grillades and grits there.