My first year is nearly finished. It's really flown by, and if I've learned nothing else, its that I'm not the blogger I thought I was. Sorry about my very erratic blogging nature.
I'm leaving on the 27th to come back to the States for holiday/work. I'll be back in Namibia on the 7th of August. Let me know if anyone wants any souvenirs or needs me to do any courier work or anything.
This most recent group has given me a lot to think about. Three people from this group ended up going home early (one week early on a three week trip with no refunds) because it just wasn't what they expected. I'm really not clear on what they didn't like. Its not like we were sleeping in cock-roach infested mud huts with marauding cannibals around or anything. They made the decision to leave when we were staying in a decent hostel in Cape Town doing things like seeing Robben Island, hanging out at the V&A Waterfront and taking the cable car up Table Mountain. Its not clear to me what the problem was.
But I do have inklings. While I do lead groups of North Americans on trips around Nambia/South Africa, I consider myself to be someone who works in the education field, not tourism. The organization I work for has a social justice mission. In my mind, my job is help people open their eyes to poverty, oppression, human rights abuses, etc, view them critically, examine their own lives and the connections between their life and the lives of the people they are meeting and take some sort of action. One of the signatures of the organisation I work for is the reflection sessions. The participants are encouraged to reflect on the experiences they had and discuss their thoughts as a group. This should help them move beyond guilt, to a feeling of empowerment from which action can take place. Guilt and pity are not particularly useful emotions. But a feeling of connection, understanding and empowerment to take action can make a difference.
Many in this group of students couldn't seem to get beyond their feeling of entitlement. "But I paid $4500 for this trip! I have a right to stay in a fancy hotel."(not an actual quote, more of a sentiment) But this one is an actual quote and going down in my book of all time favourites, "I came here to learn about poor Africans, not live like one!" (This while staying in a very comfortable house with hot water, electricity, wireless internet...) One thing I learned about myself during this trip, is that when I've thought about privilege before, its always been in a context of completely unearned. Particularly when I look at my life. I was born into a financially stable, supportive middle class family in the midwest of the United States which valued education and hard work, and included the benefit of free tuition to a top-ranked university. What did I do in my life to earn all these benefits? I was born there. Sure, one might argue, I had to study hard in high school to be admitted to college, I had to study hard in college to graduate ... but yeah, really, I was born super lucky. So, for me, privilege is a concept I can relate to a lot. When I see people living in the informal settlements in Cape Town, I see very little separating me from them. Who would I be if I was born there? What if I was born without a family to give me values? What if I was born with a family that valued my physical beauty above all else to make sure I could attract a rich husband to provide for all of us? Would I have "risen above" all this and decided that I actually valued education, found money somewhere, found a decent school somewhere, found someplace safe and quiet to study, studied hard, and gotten a scholarship to university? Maybe. But it would have been a totally different game than the one I played. That's the way I see my privilege.
So, many of the participants on this program had parents or grandparents that had immigrated to the United States and had worked hard so that their daughter or granddaughter could attend this small private college. They felt a strong sense of entitlement with their social status, and saw little reason for learning about people in other situations. I realized that their life story was so different from mine, that I quickly felt that I was in no place to speak about privilege with them. I sort of gave up. In hindsight, there was certainly a lot more commonality there than I recognized. I think I felt a certain sense of "white guilt" and felt "who am I to comment on the Latino experience in LA?" Maybe they have earned the right to pretend like there is no poverty in South-Central.
But then I heard comments like, "I know about poverty. I grew up in Bangladesh. My father started 3 orphanages to help the poor. I don't need to be here cause I already know about poverty." Um, yeah. But did you ever think critically about where poverty comes from? Or where wealth comes from? Or why their exists such massive gaps between rich and poor within one country, or even one city? Did you ever wonder why your father is starting orphanages, and why you are not living in one?
I'm not sure what the participants on this travel seminar got out of it, particularly the 3 that left early. They saw some lions, an elephant, and lots of zebras. They met some people who participated in South Africa's liberation struggle and have been trying to figure out where their youth went ever since and what to do positively with their adulthood. They met some Americans who have all the answers to Namibia's development problems and just need the government of Namibia to see the light and implement their solutions. They saw some crazy large bugs, and learned that Amarula tastes great. Did they get anything else out of the trip? I don't know.
I learned that I don't think I will ever get stale in this job. It will never become "same old, same old". I will always learn more and be challenged more. But I also see why the job tends to have a high burn out rate.
See you soon!
