Tuesday, October 31, 2006

3 videos from South Africa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqRkGZMm620

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Ce25zRIBI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0so2yQrIk



vote for them!

Friday, October 20, 2006

sorted

Hi everyone out there!

I usually write after an experience, and try to make some sort of
sense of it...and right now I'm writing fully in the experience
itself- where my wallet got stolen last night. Thankfully I wasn't
mugged or anything, it was just taken out of my bag (which is done
here pretty regularly), but the consequence of this means that I'm
left without my atm cards or any cash...so when shit hits the fan and
I'm not sure what's going to happen, and I'm stressing out about it,
then I figured- hey, why not make this an "experience" and write home
about it!

And so, here I am, using my laptop at the internet cafe which I
negotiated to give me 200 free internet minutes because I have been
coming here so often for four months. In my pocket is all the money I
have right now- about $9, on loan from my friend because she needs the
money and is, unlike me, actually poor rather than temporarily poor
and inconvenienced. I've cancelled all my cards and nothing was taken
out, and I'm going to check and re-check 100 times, but I'm pretty
sure it was stolen. I now have to figure out how to get my parents to
transfer money from the US to someone's account here in South Africa.
There aren't any Western Unions here, so if anyone out there knows of
a good way to transfer money abroad, please please let me know!

In some ways, though this is a huge inconvenience and I am really
bummed out because I was supposed to leave for Knsyna today to do more
filming and photography, and so now that will be postponed until I can
figure out how to get money in my pocket. But, as with many
experiences in life- both good and bad- this has already been a
learning experience.

For one, maybe it's good to see how most South Africans live, with
little or no money around, safely in a bank account to be withdrawn at
my leisure. I have never here had to stress about funding when I see
and hear my friends stress about it very regularly, so much so that
they can't go out for meals or one is considering teaching in Korea
for a few years to make enough money for her parents to retire. Maybe
this will open my eyes to a more genuine reality for so many people
here, and all of this still with the knowledge and security in the
back of my mind that this will all work out in the end, and hey maybe
I'll lose a few pounds in the process bc I don't have enough money for
food!! (joking about this, I'll be able to eat plenty- there's a
beautiful term here, ubuntu, which translates to like people, unity,
people giving and sharing with each other, that I know I'll be fine)

I also learned a very very valuable lesson last night, one that I
can't say how important it was for me, to realize that, despite trying
to be an aware and conscious white woman here as far as race goes,
that I- as with everyone- don't always understand how race plays into
a situation, and how my actions can offend deeply. Let me explain:

I was out with my friends, Jazz and her sister. Though their last
name, Levenberg, sounds Jewish, they are two coloured sisters who I
have become very close to here (and who knows, being of mixed descent
there probably was some Jewish in them). I realized pretty quickly
that my wallet was missing from my bag, and we returned to the car.
Frantically I searched the car, under the seats, between the cushions,
in my bag, in my pants, and then felt Jazz's pockets to see if her
wallet was there. To me, checking her pockets was just double
checking, as I'd want her to do for me or for my bag, that somehow she
didn't overlook the wallet in her pocket. Obviously, she hadn't and
it wasn't there.

But for her, my actions meant something totally different. There we
were, friends going out together and all of a sudden, in front of all
these other people waiting to get into the club, I was what looked
like frisking my friend, a white woman searching a coloured woman in
front of all these other people. She thought that I thought maybe she
had stolen it - can you imagine accusing a friend of stealing a wallet
and then searching them for it? And I can say I've never seen the
look she gave me as she said "Can we do this somewhere else, you are
embarrassing me."

To me, I never would have though she took money or I wouldn't even
have thought about if she had checked my pockets. And that is my
ignorance, that is what it means I suppose to be white and not to
always be a suspect, to be suspect, even of and from your own friends,
because that is how it is in this country. Later, after she helped me
get to an internet cafe to stop the cards, we had one of the most
honest conversations I've had here in South Africa. I just hadn't
realized how deeply I had hurt her, how strong my actions were, how
they were beyond me and her as friends, but that they are loaded,
colored by the color of our skin. She told me that if we hadn't been
such close friends, if it were any other person, she would have left,
she would never have talked to me because of the way I treated her.
She told me of how her wallet, her computer, her poems, her phone,
even her only copy of her honors thesis- have all been stolen in this
country. That what she does when something happens is to remember she
has her life and her health, that many people around here are losing
those on a daily basis. That at the end of the day we need to keep
things in perspective, and that the person who took her and my stuff,
"his day will come." She told me of how being a coloured person here,
it made sense that the first thing she thought was that I concluded
that she had stolen it. And she told me that, this is what we do when
we grow up and when we have friends- I learn from her and she learns
from me, so that in the future, when a situation like that comes up
again, that I think about my actions, and their intended or
unintended, intentionally or unintentional consequences.

It's important, especially being white when I don't have to deal with
always been suspected, to remember the many privileges that the color
of my skin affords me. Even when my wallet is stolen and I have $9 in
my pocket, I know it will work out.

And I hope from this email that you see I dont want anyone to worry
because I'm safe and okay, but I did want to share with you how I'm
feeling in the moment (and I do feel better when I email everyone). I
will keep you updated about what happens, and I love everyone out
there.

The "Ho Bo" (kidding),

Maital

late breaking news

Hi everyone out there!

I usually write after an experience, and try to make some sort of
sense of it...and right now I'm writing fully in the experience
itself- where my wallet got stolen last night. Thankfully I wasn't
mugged or anything, it was just taken out of my bag (which is done
here pretty regularly), but the consequence of this means that I'm
left without my atm cards or any cash...so when shit hits the fan and
I'm not sure what's going to happen, and I'm stressing out about it,
then I figured- hey, why not make this an "experience" and write home
about it!

And so, here I am, using my laptop at the internet cafe which I
negotiated to give me 200 free internet minutes because I have been
coming here so often for four months. In my pocket is all the money I
have right now- about $9, on loan from my friend because she needs the
money and is, unlike me, actually poor rather than temporarily poor
and inconvenienced. I've cancelled all my cards and nothing was taken
out, and I'm going to check and re-check 100 times, but I'm pretty
sure it was stolen. I now have to figure out how to get my parents to
transfer money from the US to someone's account here in South Africa.
There aren't any Western Unions here, so if anyone out there knows of
a good way to transfer money abroad, please please let me know!

In some ways, though this is a huge inconvenience and I am really
bummed out because I was supposed to leave for Knsyna today to do more
filming and photography, and so now that will be postponed until I can
figure out how to get money in my pocket. But, as with many
experiences in life- both good and bad- this has already been a
learning experience.

For one, maybe it's good to see how most South Africans live, with
little or no money around, safely in a bank account to be withdrawn at
my leisure. I have never here had to stress about funding when I see
and hear my friends stress about it very regularly, so much so that
they can't go out for meals or one is considering teaching in Korea
for a few years to make enough money for her parents to retire. Maybe
this will open my eyes to a more genuine reality for so many people
here, and all of this still with the knowledge and security in the
back of my mind that this will all work out in the end, and hey maybe
I'll lose a few pounds in the process bc I don't have enough money for
food!! (joking about this, I'll be able to eat plenty- there's a
beautiful term here, ubuntu, which translates to like people, unity,
people giving and sharing with each other, that I know I'll be fine)

I also learned a very very valuable lesson last night, one that I
can't say how important it was for me, to realize that, despite trying
to be an aware and conscious white woman here as far as race goes,
that I- as with everyone- don't always understand how race plays into
a situation, and how my actions can offend deeply. Let me explain:

I was out with my friends, Jazz and her sister. Though their last
name, Levenberg, sounds Jewish, they are two coloured sisters who I
have become very close to here (and who knows, being of mixed descent
there probably was some Jewish in them). I realized pretty quickly
that my wallet was missing from my bag, and we returned to the car.
Frantically I searched the car, under the seats, between the cushions,
in my bag, in my pants, and then felt Jazz's pockets to see if her
wallet was there. To me, checking her pockets was just double
checking, as I'd want her to do for me or for my bag, that somehow she
didn't overlook the wallet in her pocket. Obviously, she hadn't and
it wasn't there.

But for her, my actions meant something totally different. There we
were, friends going out together and all of a sudden, in front of all
these other people waiting to get into the club, I was what looked
like frisking my friend, a white woman searching a coloured woman in
front of all these other people. She thought that I thought maybe she
had stolen it - can you imagine accusing a friend of stealing a wallet
and then searching them for it? And I can say I've never seen the
look she gave me as she said "Can we do this somewhere else, you are
embarrassing me."

To me, I never would have though she took money or I wouldn't even
have thought about if she had checked my pockets. And that is my
ignorance, that is what it means I suppose to be white and not to
always be a suspect, to be suspect, even of and from your own friends,
because that is how it is in this country. Later, after she helped me
get to an internet cafe to stop the cards, we had one of the most
honest conversations I've had here in South Africa. I just hadn't
realized how deeply I had hurt her, how strong my actions were, how
they were beyond me and her as friends, but that they are loaded,
colored by the color of our skin. She told me that if we hadn't been
such close friends, if it were any other person, she would have left,
she would never have talked to me because of the way I treated her.
She told me of how her wallet, her computer, her poems, her phone,
even her only copy of her honors thesis- have all been stolen in this
country. That what she does when something happens is to remember she
has her life and her health, that many people around here are losing
those on a daily basis. That at the end of the day we need to keep
things in perspective, and that the person who took her and my stuff,
"his day will come." She told me of how being a coloured person here,
it made sense that the first thing she thought was that I concluded
that she had stolen it. And she told me that, this is what we do when
we grow up and when we have friends- I learn from her and she learns
from me, so that in the future, when a situation like that comes up
again, that I think about my actions, and their intended or
unintended, intentionally or unintentional consequences.

It's important, especially being white when I don't have to deal with
always been suspected, to remember the many privileges that the color
of my skin affords me. Even when my wallet is stolen and I have $9 in
my pocket, I know it will work out.

And I hope from this email that you see I dont want anyone to worry
because I'm safe and okay, but I did want to share with you how I'm
feeling in the moment (and I do feel better when I email everyone). I
will keep you updated about what happens, and I love everyone out
there.

The "Ho Bo" (kidding),

Maital

a random but beautiful weekend

October 12 (wow, I still cannot believe it is October)

Salaam to everyone out there! (note: Salaam is actually Arabic, but since there are many Muslims here in Cape Town, particularly amongst the coloured (of mixed descent, but this is a whole nother store) community people greet each other in Arabic sometimes too)...It's been yet another beautiful, challenging, unexpected, creative, thought provoking week here in South Africa.

This past weekend I was in Darling, a small farming town about 45 minutes away from Cape Town, where most of the milk and fruit juices in the area come from. In Darling, as in many of the small rural towns of the Western Cape, still 12 years after the end of apartheid, the racial divisions and segregation remain. In fact, they cleared follow the railroad lines, with one side with its brick houses, and the other side the non-whites houses. Now, also as is characteristic and definitive of South Africa, even the non-whites themselves are segregated, with the coloureds (as I said, they are basically multi-racial) on one side of the road in smaller brick houses, and on the other side of the road the blacks live. The black area in Darling used to look like many other townships around here- shacks with planks of wood and iron for walls and roofs. But today, they are amongst the "fortunate" who have received gov't housing, a one room square house. Becuase the community's live in segregation, there is not much inter-mixing and getting to know one another, and so many stereotypes and prejudices persist, amongst whites and non-whites, amongst blacks and coloureds, and even amongst each other (it never ceases to amaze me how we as humans try to label and box ourselves, and how rather than celebrating difference we exploit and destruct bc of them).

The reason that I was in Darling, though, was exactly because of these divisions, because my friend's theater company- Mothertongue: a collective of women's artists- was putting on a play to start bridging these divides. Essentially, there were no professional actors- only older women in the community- black and coloured women bc they couldn't recruit a white woman from the area. These women interviewed each other and others in the community about their experiences growing up in Darling, what their dreams are for the town, and then composed three skits, which were all performed at Mom Patience's house (a form of site specific theater, where the play takes place not in a theater but in that particular place for a reason): in the first, the "white" housewife (played by Aunt Ivy, a coloured woman who wore a blonde wig and spoke in falsetto, waving her hands around) who is supposed to be "liberal" saying that her made is a "nice African woman" right before she yells at her; the second skit involves two domestic worker- one coloured who did the cooking and the other black who did the cleaning, and showed how there is even a hierarchy amongst the non-whites, with the coloured woman bossing the black woman around; and the third a coloured teacher whose mother-in-law resents because she speaks English as her mothertongue rather than Afrikaans, and whose student comes in asking for money for "tik" - another (yet another) huge problem here in South Africa, aka crystal meth. After the skits the audience members walk around to the different women reciting their stories, their monologues all at different parts around the house. Audiences can also go into the living room where there is a display of art the women made, and then a film installation that I helped them put together about their dreams for Darling. The show ends with the women coming together singing

Strong women of Africa
Women of Africa
We will keep Africa strong.

After spending three days with these women, who welcomed me into their homes and into their lives, the song rang even more true in my ears- these women raised the white families, their own families, struggled against apartheid and yet have seen little results in the past 12 years- their children are still dying, or high on drugs, or being raped, or getting HIV. It is so unfair, and in the face of despair and what I would imagine hopelessness, these women came together to put on a show to share their stories with one another and with the community. In the process they became friends when they otherwise would not have had the occasion to enter each other's homes.

For me, there were so many things that were amazing about the weekend. First, I didn't mention this above- but the show wasn't done in English- it was done in whatever language the women spoke at home, meaning that in the same skit there was Xhosa (the black language of the area), Afrikans (the white and coloured language), and English (also white and coloured). So even though I didn't understand what the women were saying, it still made me think, I still could understand the emotions, the pain. It also was so exciting to be a part of "theater for change" or "community theater"- there's something beautiful about the drama here, that it is truly about social issues, which is what I want to continue making films about, raising awareness, bringing people together. And finally, I only realized this after I left, but at some point, rather than just documenting the plays, I myself became part of the show in a sense, part of the performance. Partly because I actually did help put together the film installation, but mostly because I realized I too am there, a woman artist whose background and skin color have affected my life and even why I was there in Darling that weekend. The director of the show said something similar to me, one of the best complements I could have gotten, that I wasn't intrusive with the camera (imagine though, the plays were put on in this small house with its small rooms where the audience can touch the actors, sometimes even have to move out of their way), and that the women were able to flow and talk about their experiences even with me there. At one point, I was filming one of the women's monologue, no one else had yet come into the room, and she continued speaking from her heart, cryed from her heart, and then when other audience members came in, made them cry, all while I was filming her story, which by the way I had no idea what it was since it was in Africaans (though I do admit I'm able now to understand a good amount of conversation, funny how when I first came to SA I thought of Afrikaans as an ugly, oppressor language and how now I am picking it up since I hear it a lot from my friends).

It was a beautiful weekend, yet another that affirms my desire to be involved creatively in projects like this, where you can see the difference in front of your face, as we all- the women involved in the show- white, black, coloured, South African, American, and Belgian- sat together, some of us crying, sharing how powerful and empowering the experience was for us. I took many photos of the weekend and will post those as well.

After an intense but good time at Darling, I went on a two day break with my friend Jazz, who was also part of the show and played the teacher. We drove up the West Coast into a small town- one that made Darling look like a bustline metropolis- where my mentor Jonathan has a vacation home. Did I mention already it was a small, small town, where the highways becomes gravel for the last 4 kms before the town, where there are no restaurants or even taverns open at night! It was good to remember what quietness sounds like. What I certainly was not expecting was in this quiet town to have yet another learning experience. We met Mx, the man who gave us the key to the house, who lives in the township and does contruction work on Jonathan's house. Within 15 minutes he invited us to his house for a delicious braai (bar-b-que). Mx also dj's apparently because he had an amazing sound system in his little house where he played befuckt (Africaans for really freaking cool) music, dance music, reggae music, music I LOVE. He also showed us his bonsai trees that he grows in his backyard, his birds that he keeps. But it was his music that stood out. In a town where there is NOTHING to do, he throws jolls (parties) every once in a while. He explained that his dream was to open a community center where kids can do sports and they can have parties where he would dj because there is nothing to do in this town...and when there is nothing to do, and people become bored, and children don't have after-school activities, then people turn to drinking, or tik. So really, for him, he loves music and he loves to dj, but he particularly wants to give the kids something to do besides drink from the age of 10. As I sat talking with him, listening to his stories and his dreams, and considered where he grew up and what crap he has had to face in his life, I couldn't help but feel that I was in the presence of a wise man. I told him so and, laughing to himself, he said "I am still learning to be wise."

True, I thought, becoming wise is a life-long journey, and in these moments I have had here in South Africa, I feel I am collecting pieces of wisdom, hoping they will somehow fit together now and especially when I return to life back in the US.

Much love to everyone and I will let you know as soon as I post my pictures!

Maital