AfriKa-not just a Collection at American Apparel

To all young travelers looking for enlightenment, perspective, or maybe just a lay in the the "Global South" i give you some preemptive advise to avoid the transitional "culture shock"--stop in Plettenberh Bay, South Africa on your way home. It's a dream destination for those who enjoy whipping their asses with gold flacked toilet paper and use their designer cameras to photograph the less fortunate on "township tours." It's a place where the first and third worlds collide and where words like "tolerate" and "seperate" are commonplace in describing their interaction with each other. From their multi-million rand homes mostly vacationing families can see the destitute villages just down the hill, and eye soar, interupting the near perfect view of the Bay. Houses with those high-tech binoculars set on tripods like a telescope point towards the ocean with the hopes of maybe spotting the occasional whale or dolphin, never orientated backwards to get a closer look at the poverty and despair so near. DiSPARITY at its finest. see where i'm going?

I spent my time in two different neighborhoods each with its own set of roofs--one with roofs made of green tile and the other with roofs made of sheet medal and plastic. I always new where i was because of what song subconsciously began to hum--"little boxes on the hill side....", i was near the green roofs. The various writings of Tupac Shakur-- i was in the townships. It's amazing that out of most of the squatter shacks come sounds systems that one would think would exceed the cost of the timber and sheet metal it takes to build the entire structure. I swear if Alicia Keys wrote a song where she explicitly addressed the stigma of HIV/AIDS she would end the pandemic.

I spent my days in Kurland village, a township established the 1970's to by the government to maintain voting power, shadowing a home-based care worker who worked with patients with HIV/AIS, TB and other ailments. We were conducting a survey on the NGO we were working with in order to have accurate numbers of time spent with different category patients so that they could increase funding. I pricked fingers and checked blood pressure, watched as my care worker cleaned feces off of the dead and bathed the dying. I saw hunger and sickness, poor and poorer...until 3 o'clock.

Then i headed into The River Club where i was living with a white single mother who upon giving us a tour of Plett in her BMW informed us that "People really just like their own kind." We ate steak and potatoes and were reintroduced to so many of the comforts that were distantly familiar--hot showers, a pantry, the english language... We would sit around the dinner table at night and tell stories from our days in the townships and my host-mother would respond with, "It's amazing that all of this goes on in my backyard--i had no idea." Ignorance. Misunderstanding. Judgement. Prejudice.

Hotels in the shape of sailboats and water spick-its supporting 20 families. Conversations of literature and travel and wondering if there will be dinner. Bank statements and government grants. Like a haunting tip-toe you can hear the pitter patter of rich, poor, rich poor... side by side yet on different sides of the body. Polarized. Marginalized. Unrealized.

this whole Citizen Cope thing wasn't really intentional but the pattern of misunderstanding made it easier for each side to justify itself, in a way that can be represented through a chain reaction of self-defense.

Im sitting in my NYC hostel semi-thankful for the KFC and ignorance i saw in South Africa. time square isn't as shocking as it would have been. tbc....