For the rest of my stay in Cape Town, I am living in a beautiful neighborhood called the Bo Kaap. It is an area that was sectioned off for “coloreds” during the Apartheid (which really meant anything other than “white” or “black”) and I’ve found the people, and life in general here to be just as vibrant as their brightly painted pretty little houses. The neighborhood itself is located on a sloping hillside and has incredible views of the city high-rises, streets of little shops, markets and restaurants, and the mountains in the distance. (In fact, I wake up to see Table Mountain from my bedroom window every morning!) It is mostly a muslim community, though the family I am staying with is Christian. But I still get to have the pleasure of hearing the calls to prayer on a regular basis!
My host mom is a local teacher, and I’ve done a bit of learning from her about the current stresses on the education system in South Africa. Though the schools are technically integrated, they are still highly segregated racially with economic disparities between them. School fees come out of parents’ pockets, even for public schools, so those who are less able to afford it are those who receive poorer education. Teachers’ wages (which are largely insufficient) depend on the money brought in from student fees, so there is a continually decreasing size in staffing, especially where they are most needed. There is also a buzz about “rights language” and how it has recently made for a disruptive and noncompliant student body. In general there is a lot of skepticism of any top-down legislation from school boards by both students and teachers (perhaps rightly so, considering South Africa’s violent political past). What it all comes down to, is a lot must be done in order for their education system to shape up.
We’ve also been learning a lot about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is of particular height in South Africa and in Capetown. Estimates of those affected are as high as 20% for the adult population in the country, so it is an issue of common knowledge and concern. We’ve been meeting with a bunch of local organizations aimed at bringing together and enabling HIV positive people in communities, and while it seems that a decent amount is being done on the local level, much controversy and complications surround the issue. There is still much denial of the epidemic by the government (and prominent government officials) which, on top of public denial and carelessness to take precautions, allows for the disease to become so prevalent in society.
For whatever reason you may want to give it, though, it is still incredibly baffling that essentially 1 in 5 adults is living with HIV here. While I know about social and historical trends that have made the population so vulnerable to the spread of the disease, I am still racking my brains trying to figure out how that statistic exists amongst my peers and my elders here and I just can’t come up with anything solid. HIV and AIDS just has an entirely different, and in many ways, an entirely normalized face here as opposed to the States. The good news is that for the most part, people don’t feel isolated, and they can come together and improve their health and their lives because of the disease. We visited a religiously active group in a township (of 800,000 people!) called Kayelitsha that beautifully put it: “I am living with HIV, Your God is still my God.” I have to say, their energy and spirit was certainly enough to lift me up!
