Signposts

The house I rent has a long narrow outdoor space in the back. More like an alleyway than a patio or backyard, the walls are painted a warm bright orange. There are many cracks and plastered over bits.

An obscure lion fountain hangs off the wall and the other side is adorned with untamed plants and herbs.

Steph @ Orange Wall

I love this awkward and vibrant space.

Sitting in the confines of the orange concrete, everything is beautiful to me.

The sky looks bluer against the citrus hue,

barbed wire and neighbours’ metal roofs somehow look romantic.

Every person who sits against that wall is transformed into a stunning caricature of themselves, their uniqueness drawn out by that orange. I’ve taken to photographing my guests there.

Somehow, that wall, in my small rented home in the Southernmost bit of Africa, acts as a bridge for me.

In that space, (in the words of Mark Helprin), the world deepens and becomes art.

***

Memory:

It is a cool night in the Malawian spring. Like most evenings, I’m in a guarded, walled compound in a low-density suburb called Area 3.

With nowhere to go and little to do, my ex and I decide to watch a movie. Our pick? The last king of Scotland; a film about Idi Amin and the horrors that this charismatic and terrifying character propagated in Uganda.

The scenery of the film looks so much like Malawi. Lush greenery, big smiles, a dreamlike quality of light… against this backdrop, the film narrates incomprehensible horrors.

At the end of the film, I stand up, stunned.

Unable to integrate what I had just seen, I stared into nowhere before walking out into the cool rain that was beginning to fall.

I stood outside sobbing, cold and wet in the dark, not being able to make sense of anything and not understanding how I could continue to be shocked by the injustices of the world. The film didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know from reading history and yet it still clawed at my insides.

I thrust my hand into the pocket of the hot pink sweater I took from my sister’s closest before leaving Canada a year earlier.

I felt a small mass of soft fabric. Pulling it out for examination, I found a fake red coronation style flower.

Somehow, in that moment, that flower was the most beautiful item I had ever seen.

My breathing slowed as I stared at the strange object in my hand. 

Suddenly, I saw hope and beauty as I stood on the soil of one of the plundered continent’s poorest countries.  The blood red cloth flower seemed like a small offering, a reminder that there is beauty in the oddest of places.

***

Present:

Since leaving the life I had in Canada a year and a half ago, I’m not sure if I have ceased to feel stripped and unsure of myself. I’m constantly puzzled by the world I have discovered.

As cliché as it sounds, the more I live, the smaller I feel. 

Last night, I stood in the little walled-in alleyway behind my house and stared up at the stars framed by the orange wall. It was as though I was shrinking and the sky was growing at the same time. Its vastness kept seeming bigger - beautifully and dizzyingly so and I, like Alice in Wonderland, rapidly shrinking after drinking some magical potion.

Moving to South Africa has been an exciting and shocking experience. I have yet to wrap my mind around my transition from living in one of the world’s poorest countries to the world’s most unequal country.

***

I have an open loft space in my home that I use as a studio and office. One day while walking down the steep stairs from the loft, I saw a larger-than-life outline of a woman on the wall. She had unruly hair and wide hips emphasized by harem pants.

Who is that?

I actually like her.

Everything seems to have so much texture these days. Although not always comfortable, I am realizing that I am living the life that I’ve always wanted.

My journey feels akin to a constant arrival.

I’ve been so caught up in my awe and bewilderment of the continent that is fostering me that I have failed to realize that I am exactly where I have wanted to be:  

In a house with a cracked orange wall.

A red cloth coronation in my pocket.

Followed by the shadow of an unruly woman who I actually like.

I carry these knick-knacks, turn them over, and cross them as hopeful bridges. Awkward little signposts that remind me of the beautiful and privileged journey that I’m living. 

Hanging out @ orange wall

Directionless Travel

It was the Easter long-weekend and I was itching to get away.

I had a car, a map, some pocket money and no idea where to go or what to do.

I called three friends, who indicated that they too wanted to get away.

I told them to pack a bag and we agreed on a pick up time. 

The four of us then crammed into my small car, and decided to drive North. 

The trip served to be exactly what I needed.

Driving North towards Namibia

In the car and ready to go!

Steph, Allison, myself and Marina - Citrusdale

The first day we arrived in Citrusdale, a small-ish town that has citrus farming as their main industry. We stayed in a lovely lodge in a citrus grove.

Stopping for a peach

Fruit Stand

Fruit stand

Every day contained some sort of sweet offering in the form of an 

adventure. Our first day, we stumbled across hotsprings and soaked in the soothing warmth of the water.

Hotsprings

The next day we drove to Algeria (yes the area is actually called Algeria due to its similar appearance to the former French colony!) and took a stunning day hike to a waterfall and mountain lookout.

The road to Algeria

Hiking in Cedarburg

Hiking in Cedarburg

Oliphants River

Steph @ Waterfall

We stopped to switch drivers, still in our bathing suits. Feeling freer than I have in a long time, we got out and did an impromptu dance on the side of the road.

Sometimes you just need to get out and dance while switching drivers...

We then drove further North and then East to the ocean.

We saw seals and incredible ancient cave paintings.

A seal!

Cave Paintings

Dusky Cape Town pulled us back days later. The city slowly approached, the shadow-like deep blue mountain ranges unapologetically announcing the city.

Despite being disappointed that the vacation was over, I had the sense that I was coming back to a fairy-tale place. The Mother City continues to pull me to her and I have no choice but to allow her to wrap herself around me. 

Cape Town and her mountains in the distance

Public Policy as LOVE (?)

I am taking 3 courses this semester: Public policy, Public management and Comparative social policy in Africa.

I am quite enjoying learning about the theoretical underpinnings of public policy and administration. Although I have been asked many times why I have chosen to study HERE, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.  South Africa is a world of things in one country:

• A relatively new inclusive democracy.
• A regional superpower.
• A developing country with highly developed areas.
• Steeped in history.
• A huge success story AND facing insurmountable challenges and shortcomings.
• A dynamic political space bourn out of years of struggle.
• Much more!

Cape Town boasts a fabulous University to study public policy and administration against this backdrop.

Sitting in class a few weeks ago, our stand-in professor (our regular one was in Kenya monitoring the elections), said something odd. We were debating if the public policy cycle theory can actually be applied to the real world.

The case in point was the South African Government’s response to HIV/AIDS.

The professor took us through the era of AIDS denialism and the shift towards acknowledging and better addressing the issue.

Mangosuthu Buthelez

He told of us his experience working under Prince Mangosuthu Buthelez, the Chairman of the Zululand District House of Traditional Leaders, the traditional Prime Minister of the Zulunation and leader of South Africa’s opposition Inkatha Freedom Party. Mangosuthu Buthelez lost 2 children within a few months of each other to AIDS related illness. Despite incredible stigma, fear and political pressure, he decided to go public with their sero-status in efforts to change government policy.

He even broke with Zulu tradition and allowed himself to be filmed by the BBC walking in the graveyard where his children were buried. He did this in hopes of raising awareness and turning the tide on a critical, unaddressed issue in South Africa at the time when people were dying in droves.

‘So you see…’ the professor concluded, 'public policy isn’t just about theory, or politics, or the myriad of other things that we so often focus of as students or practitioners'.

PUBLIC POLICY IS ABOUT LOVE.

I took a sharp breath and suppressed a chuckle.

POLICY and LOVE never go together in the same sentence!

How could he not know that? He has worked extensively in British and South African politics and studied at Oxford.

After a few moments, I become aware of my cynicism.

Over the past year or two, I have found myself becoming increasingly jaded, especially in Malawi where I was surrounded by extreme poverty and suffering in my daily life.

Studying domestic and international politics, reading the news and seeing challenges has oftentimes left me wondering, in the words of my late friend, Joan Anne Nolan, who wrote during the post-apartheid transition:

‘Do you ever think that the world will be whole? I feel such a loss because of the tattered & ragged edges of our souls. The world is too harsh & I wish for an innocence that really does not feel corrosive pain...’

On my best days I aim to see opportunity in challenge and appreciate the small beautiful gems that life has to offer in hopes that I can affect positive change in my own, small way. My worse days do not need mentioning. 

The teacher’s words help me to situate myself and check my pessimism.

If it’s all bad, why am I working and studying in the field?

Isn’t love the reason why I chose to study policy and administration in the first place?

My underlying belief is that bureaucracies (domestic and international) at their best can be vehicles for supporting and elevating people.

That public policy can be a mechanism towards supporting and upholding humanity.

If that’s not love, then what is?

Big questions on a big day

'Be the change that you wish to see in the world.' - Gandhi 

Today is International Women’s Day.

As a woman, a sister to a sister and a brother, a daughter to a mother and a father, a feminist, an advocate for women’s rights and someone who loves women and men, today is very important to me.

I feel incredible joy that I have had the opportunity to receive an education in two previously male-dominated fields, business and now public policy. I’ve had access to meaningful work and volunteer opportunities. I spent most of my twenties living in places where I could walk or bike around at any hour of the day or night safely.

I’ve enjoyed living and traveling alone and doing pretty much whatever I darn-well-please. 

My parents don’t care if I choose to have a partner or bear them grandchildren.

I don’t even consider my gender when getting into the driver’s seat of a car or casting a ballot.

A lot of the world doesn’t live this way. 

Even my grandmothers didn’t enjoy all of the freedoms that I do today.

I’m not saying that these privileges aren’t also things that every woman deserves or that I have never faced gender discrimination.

What I am saying is that I feel grateful for these privileges in light of our global context.

Now on to what this means for me today, on International Women’s Day. I believe that today is important, not just as a day on it’s own, but as a time to start reflecting and dialoguing on where we have come from, where we are and where we hope to go.

I say ‘we’ both in the collective sense and in the sense that ‘we’ are a world full of individuals. I believe that we too often make the marginalization of women and girls something that ‘someone else' does without first critically examining the role that each of us individually plays in a global system of gendered inequality.

 

Like many people living in South Africa, I have been thinking a lot about gender-based violence these past weeks. There have been two very high-profile femicide cases this month in South Africa. One involved a famous South African Olympic Athlete fatally shooting his girlfriend. The other was a gruesome gang-rape murder of a 17 year-old girl.

These two murders have pushed the issue of gender based violence in South Africa to the front of every newspaper, to the ‘breaking news’ on every newscast, and onto everyone’s lips – talk show hosts, university professors, discussion groups, the President in his State of the Nation Address… you get the picture.

Despite recent attention, gender based violence is not a new issue in South Africa. Every 6 seconds a rape is reported and every day, 3 women are murdered by her intimate partner. (South African Medical Research Council, 2012)

Despite being constantly on my mind, I have been hesitant to write about gender issues in a country where I am a foreigner.

I struggle with how gender inequality in the developing world is often portrayed and wonder if we often lose sight of the crux of the issue?

Patriarchy somehow becomes something that exists somewhere else, gender-based violence something that happens ‘over there’ and by ‘someone else’.  We don’t often critically examine how we interact with these systems in our own lives.

Here is an excerpt from a recent article in the Toronto star. While rightly covering an important and serious issue, I wonder what the writer was attempting with her sensationalism and finger-pointing.

‘As a woman in South Africa, you worry when you leave your house and you worry when you get home. You are never safe.

It is a violent, macho, testosterone-fuelled place. I visited for two weeks eight years ago and don’t want to go back. One bed-and-breakfast host pulled out a gun and another pulled out a giant knife. The hair on the back of my neck was in constant electric shock- mode. I felt safer in Pakistan.

What’s most worrying about South Africa’s violence to women is the general acceptance of it. Men are not ashamed of beating and raping women. Most husbands think that’s their right. And many women agree.’

Either way, Steenkamp’s gruesome story fits into the country’s damning narrative of men killing women. And in the court of social conscience, it provides yet another opportunity for South Africans to examine their misogyny.’

Not to diminish the writer’s experience, but does a 2-week visit to a country give an outsider the expertise to boil an issue down in the ‘court of social conscience’ to a country being full of misogynists?

I agree that gender based violence is a major issue that requires significant attention, but wonder what the international portrayal of a place as scary and woman-hating aims to accomplish?

Every day, week and month I spend here unveils more complexity in what previously seemed straight-forward issues to me.

Instead of focusing on gender based violence and the marginalization of women and girls as something that happens ‘in Africa’, ‘in THAT neighbourhood’ or ‘next door’, I think we need to take a deeper look at the issue instead of ‘other-izing’ it.

Protest against GBV at UCT

A few weeks ago I attended a protest at the University of Cape Town. Thousands of people attended, classes were cancelled and the vice-chancellor, professors and students took to the podium.

The vice chancellor caught me off guard.

He challenged us to question what we were protesting and to start by examining ourselves. To start by examining how we with our thoughts, actions and words play into a system of patriarchy.

This is much more difficult to do than to raise a fist against a monstrous perpetrator.

Horrendous inequalities between men and women exist all over the globe, in different ways and with varied severities.  Marginalization of women and girls exists in the very fabric of our societies and affects us all. So why do we so rarely examine our own actions and how they perpetrate an unacceptable status quo?

For me, International Women’s day provides us with a starting point to do this.

What about my actions?

I have engaged in small talk with other women and men about how a woman is dressed ‘too’ revealingly.

I have remained silent when others use condescending language towards women, or the word ‘rape’ to describe what happens on the sports field.

I have doubted myself and other women’s thoughts and abilities and normalized behaviours that are not acceptable.

I’ve silenced other women and undermined their experiences.

Although I have a significant amount of privilege, I don’t always use my voice.

I’ve blamed others without first exploring my role.

What I have done is not ok, even if society says so.

Today, I pledge to try to be better.

I believe that perpetrators of gender based violence and femicide SHOULD be held to account.  Issues should be discussed, debated and put in the news. Movements of individuals standing up against issues affecting women are powerful and I fully support them.

Within this, lets also try to do something powerful within ourselves:

Let us consider our love for each other, our love for women, our love for ourselves. And if we do indeed have that love, as I believe is natural in humans, let’s take a look at our actions.

How might we perpetuate a system that marginalizes over half of the world’s population and how we can interrupt it?

Let’s commit to doing better for the women we love and women around the world. And let’s start with ourselves.