Fall 2004 Story Contest - First Place
Coming Back Home
Jared Sacks
CIEE Cape Town Fall 2004
As the plane touched down on the runway, my keen eye peeked through the plane’s restricting window – I was revisiting what it had felt like to live here. In a sense, my sentiment was similar to what people generally identify as “culture shock”. However, it was more akin to a deep seeded connection that I had always carried with me. I am coming back home, I thought to myself, I missed you.
No, this was not Los Angeles, my home for the past 13 years; this was Cape Town, South Africa. I am what people often call an ex-South African, except I never felt that way. I always felt that South Africa was my real home to which I had always yearned for a return. Although I had never lived in Cape Town, - only in Johannesburg – this was a true homecoming. My juvenile eyes remembered the City and its surroundings with intricate detail. I felt nauseated as we passed the township shacks of Crossroads and Nyanga. Driving further, I recognized the University of Cape Town where I would be studying this semester - its extensive vines reaching up the older buildings, its pompous look of authority as it survey the deprived Cape Flats and its dominant position on one of the most picturesque mountains in the world. As I entered downtown Kapstaad, I enquired Quinton (the CIEE coordinator), “are those unfinished highway ramps still there? The one that was never finished and is suspended smack in the middle of downtown?” “Yes, they use them for movie stunts now…” I remembered so much visual images that had remained the same; yet so much underneath had also changed during the first 10 years of democracy.
So I came home. The first few weeks were exactly what I had always dreamed Cape Town would be like. But during those three weeks, I, nonetheless, did not feel completely at home. In fact, I still felt like a tourist as I was caught up visiting Cape Point, learning about the horrors on Robben Island, and kayaking with the whales.
Then the unforeseen ensued. I did not expect to become included, in fact enmeshed, in African culture. Yet, through my next five months living in Cape Town, I became as much a part of the Xhosa people as my white/privileged/Jewish background permitted. My friends, who were not international students nor, for the most part, university students, introduced me to how the other 90 percent of the population lives. I spent hours every week in the townships of Guguletu and Khayelitsha which are considered some of the most ramshackle and dangerous communities in the world. I attended many braais (barbeques) in these slums where we would talk, listen to Kwaito and African house music, and dance right in the middle of the potholed streets. I learned that no matter how hard I tried, I could not finish a Gatsby (the giant South African sandwich). I visited my friend’s families and tried to communicate with traditional people that did not know or refused to speak English. I took road trips throughout much of South Africa and stayed with friends’ families in the segregated townships of Mdantsane and about five others whose names I could never pronounce. I talked with other family members about their exile as ANC operatives in Tanzania and Mozambique. I even went to clubs and concerts where I was definitely the only white person who would set foot there. However, I was accepted as one of them despite the racism they receive as they try to embrace white culture.
With my heart enmeshed in this wonderful and intricate social structure, I had already fallen for South Africa; and then I met the kids. I began to volunteer at Baphumelele Children’s Home in the deprived township of Khayelitsha. The purity, the innocence, the love inside these orphaned children got me hooked: I went there almost every day. Maybe it was watching the little Babalo selflessly share, in fact offer, his bread roll despite his intense hunger. Or it could have been the bags under Sisi (sister) Gladys’ eyes after she worked 70 hours straight with no more than five or ten hours of sleep. The visit to Khayelitsha’s heartbreaking children’s cemetery definitely has something to with it; this is where Sisi Rosie, who runs Baphumelele, revealed her moral pangs about her babies who succumbed of AIDS’ wrath. However, my bond solidified around this one baby, Mesuli, who is the most magnificent child I have ever encountered. His smile could melt even the most prejudiced heart. I waited until the week before going back to America before I found out his HIV test results – everyone, including the doctors, were convinced that he was going to be positive. “Negative”, the doctor said. He was one of the lucky ones and, as a celebrated that day, I remembered who wasn’t: tiny sickly Thandi. She died of unknown reasons at the age of only two months. Despite the commonality of infant mortality in the South African townships, everyone was devastated. Thus, I returned to my other home with great apprehension with not a day going by when I did not reminisce looking over my photos satiated with eternal memories.
It is virtually impossible for me to relay the extent to which my experiences in South Africa changed my life. It uncovered what I was truly passionate about. With this passion, I have now (3 months later) embarked on a challenging project with other former Baphumelele volunteers. I have just recently founded the charity CHOSA – Children of South Africa – whose purpose is to support the most deprived orphans in South Africa through fundraising, education, adoption and by promoting an extensive volunteer network for Baphumelele and other orphanages in South Africa. As CHOSA embarks on this new mission, the South African native Mahatma Gandhi provides us with guidance: “If we are to have real peace, we must begin with the children.” They are not just our future hope but also the pillars of the present. They give us a reason to exist. Although this will be a difficult and trying course to follow – especially considering the general lack of concern for the African continent – coming back home has given me and my Baphumelele friends the love and ambition to make a difference.