Mariah Wood, Public Health and Development in South Africa, Spring 2013
Hiking in Stellenbosch
Our first month here in South Africa has been absolutely awesome. Stellenbosch is a beautiful town nestled in between mountains and in the heart of wine country. The rolling hills are covered in vineyards. We were at Stellenbosch University for two and a half weeks at the beginning of April. In that time we got to go hiking in the mountains, go to a rugby game, experience Cape Town, visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for over 20 years, visit the Cape of Good Hope (the most southwest point of South Africa), and much more. The students here are welcoming and South African culture in general feels very friendly and open.
Some of the most striking things about South Africa, however, would be invisible to us if we were only here doing tourist-type activities like the ones listed above. We have been able to visit different neighborhoods outside of the main university and downtown area, and these have a completely different feel to them. I am doing my service learning practicum in Kayamandi, a neighborhood 10 minutes from downtown and, unlike downtown Stellenbosch, inhabited almost entirely by black Africans. Many of the houses are little more than tin-roofed shacks. The community is very alive, and the kids at the crèche (daycare) at which I volunteer are rowdy and exuberant. The crèche, with 17 infants to four-year-olds under the care of one adult, is no more than a small room with some Legos for the kids to play with. It is facilitated by the NGO I work for to make sure young children are safe and off the streets while their parents are at work.
Kayamandi was a township during apartheid, which means the government mandated that Africans in the area could only live in this part of town. The results of mandated segregation are still very apparent, with inhabitants of Kayamandi facing higher levels of poverty, poor health, and violent crime than downtown Stellenbosch. I can explain this in word form, but it has been in seeing it for myself that I have begun to internalize and understand what inequality means. I feel convicted of the importance of working in a community different from one’s own, not to greatly impact that community so much as to learn from it and to prevent from forming the kind of prejudice that leads to division. This experience has made me think of my own community, Chicago, and the eerie similarities that exist between here and home. I want to take the service learning I am doing here and apply these lessons back home, to engage myself in my community of Evanston and not just in the bubble of Northwestern University.
This is just a snippet of all there is to learn from this beautiful, contradicting country. Soon I’ll update on our recent trip to Kruger National Park, Hamakuya, and Johannesburg.