On a muggy day in March, 28 UW students stepped out of vans and into a boisterous parade planned in their honor. A marching band escorted them to a party where they were introduced to local dignitaries and entertained with joyous songs and dances for hours.
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| CHID major Mary Davis poses with children in a Johannesburg informal settlement. |
A scene from small town America? Not even close. The students were in Mabopane, South Africa, celebrating the final day of a quarter-long study abroad program. The celebration was just one of many unexpected and memorable moments during their stay in Africa.
"The trip was our first in South Africa, so we really didn't know what to expect," says James Clowes, associate director of the UW's Comparative History of Ideas (CHID) program, which offered the study abroad program. "There were many surprises along the way. It was an amazing trip."
Clowes was no newcomer to study abroad programs, having designed and taught CHID courses in Rome, Prague, and Berlin. But planning a program in South Africa was something different altogether.
"The whole point of CHID is to explore how all ideas are shaped by a specific historical context--how that context shapes how individuals as well as different cultures see the world," says Clowes. "I began to wonder how we could call ourselves Comparative History of Ideas if our programs were almost exclusively in Europe. I decided to look into possibilities in Africa."
Clowes made an exploratory trip to South Africa in 1998, during which he met "probably 100 people" in two weeks. Following up by email, he was able to design a program that combined lectures on multicultural education, discussions with South African students, individual research projects, and student-designed outreach projects linking K-12 schools in Seattle and South Africa.
The course began with six weeks in Cape Town but also included five other locations. Clowes led the trip with assistance from UW Professors Betty Schmitz and Ratnesh Nagda. Kimberly Beer, a graduate student in Leadership and Policy Studies, served as a teaching assistant.
Learning to Listen
Although participants had taken a course on South African history and politics before arriving in Cape Town, they quickly discovered that their narrow western perspective was inadequate for understanding the complex relationships between groups in South Africa. Lectures and assigned readings during the trip were helpful, but conversations with South Africans, through formal discussions and informal gatherings, added an important dimension.
Gordon Potter particularly recalls meeting with law students from the University of the Western Cape during the third week of the course. The students, who were "colored"--the term for South Africans who are neither white nor black, openly discussed how this status impacted their lives.
"Meeting with those students revealed a lot about the intricacies of race relations in South Africa," Potter recalls. "They related how being identified as colored has affected them. There's an ambiguity about their status in a society that seems to privilege only two racial categories, 'black' and 'white.' They don't know where they really stand. That got me thinking about how we as Americans view the seemingly straightforward and harmless categories of race. It set in motion a new perspective that was really useful for the rest of the trip."
"By listening without constantly relating everything to my own culture,
I learned a lot more. I really began to understand another perspective."
During that meeting and throughout the quarter, Clowes encouraged students to really listen to those they encountered before responding. It's a skill, he says, that requires some practice. "I really felt that we were going there mostly to listen," he says. "Americans need to be more humble. We need to recognize that we understand other cultures as little as we understand our own assumptions."
Mary Davis agrees. "When I was talking to people and they were telling me how things operate there, my first impulse was to say, 'No, that's the wrong way to do it. This is the right way.' I think that's a very American response. But it keeps you from learning. By listening without constantly relating everything to my own culture, I learned a lot more. I really began to understand another perspective."
Listening skills were particularly important for Anastacia Howell, who had requested a homestay for part of the trip. She thought it would be interesting to live with a South African family but was shocked to discover that she had been placed with an Afrikaans family with strong anti-African beliefs (see related story). "Their views were pretty much the opposite of my beliefs," says Howell, "but instead of becoming antagonistic and starting a debate, I listened to what the father had to say. In listening, I got a greater insight into his perspective. Although I still disagreed, I was able to understand where his ideas came from."
Linking Two Nations Through Their Children
As Howell discovered during her homestay, much of the education in a study abroad program takes place beyond the classroom. Clowes, recognizing this, assigned a project that required each student to make his or her own connections in South Africa. The students were asked to develop a link between Seattle-area schoolchildren and their counterparts in South Africa. The results ranged from email correspondence to art projects.
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| Through the work of UW undergraduates (in back row), these Cape Town students are now corresponding by email with students at a Bainbridge Island elementary school. Photo by Alana Moore. |
"The UW students made connections with Seattle schools before leaving for South Africa," explains Clowes. "When we got to Cape Town, I had a few contacts for them, but mostly they had to make their own connections and start a dialog with teachers and students. They had to deal with a variety of challenges, ranging from 'How do I get out to that region?' to 'How do I convince a school to be interested?'"
One student linked Seattle and South African schoolchildren as pen pals. Another had homeless students from both nations create masks that represent themselves, which she then combined to create a provocative mobile. One particularly ambitious link remains in the planning stages. Four UW students have identified schools in Seattle and South Africa with programs in peer mediation and conflict resolution; with the help of Christine Stickler of the Pipeline Project, they are scheduling a summit at which representatives from both countries can meet and share ideas. They are now seeking funding to bring the South African students to Seattle for the summit.
Tackling Difficult Questions
The UW students also wrote academic papers during their stay in South Africa. Davis, who had previously helped develop a curriculum for the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle, was intrigued by the multicultural curricula adopted by several South African schools and wrote a case study of three programs. Her research involved observing at each school for several days, volunteering as a helper in classrooms, and interviewing teachers and students.
"The schools are not as integrated as you'd think," she says. "The students at Cape Town High School, which was previously all white, are now mostly colored and black. The white kids are going to exclusive private schools and the black kids are commuting from the townships." Davis also profiled an all-black primary school in the middle of a township and another primary school that teaches con-currently in three languages: English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. "They learn their numbers that way, and they sing songs and learn stories in triplicate, often repeating the same song or story three times, once in each language," explains Davis.
For their papers, Potter and Matt Burnett chose to focus on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Potter focused on the role of sincerity in confessions in a public setting, and Burnett explored the concept of social forgiveness. "We have this idea of forgiveness--'You've done me wrong, I'll forgive you so we can continue to work together,'" says Burnett. "There's an interesting question of whether that can happen in social groups. Is it reasonable to expect that non-whites in South Africa should forgive? In the socio-political context of South Africa, and especially the TRC, is this kind of forgiveness possible? I am still struggling with these questions."
Tackling such questions, and discovering that there may no "right" answer, was an important lesson for many of the students. "I had no idea that Africa was so complex-that relative 'truths' could co-exist to such a degree," says Anastacia Howell. "But we saw cultures that live together and believe completely different things."
Such realizations, says Howell, have had an enduring impact. "This trip changed me," she says. "I find that the news affects me differently now. South Africa is not some distant place. Now my sphere is not just my family and friends and American culture. It's global."
[Related Stories]
Anastacia Howell describes her experience living with two South African families--one Afrikaner, the other with a history of involvement in the apartheid resistance--during CHID's South Africa program.
[Summer 1999- Table of Contents]