|
|
By Andrew Meeker
Larchmont, New York
Geography, Environmental Studies
After Mac: Youth Programs Coordinator at Project for Pride in Living in Minneapolis
View his pictures from Capetown, South Africa
While I was in Cape Town, South Africa,
with the Globalization and the Natural
Environment program, a few friends
and I rented an old Toyota Corolla and
learned to drive manual and on the
opposite side of the road. Then we
drove north to Namibia, navigating the
vast and diverse deserts of the world’s
second least populated country. Toward
the end of our trip, we drove from
the coastal city Swakopmund through
the Namib-Naukluft Desert to the
Sossusvlei sand dunes. We drove along
bumpy dirt roads, taking it slow and
losing our hubcaps along the way. In the
late afternoon, the scrub desert transformed
into jagged mountains covered
in long, green, flowing grass, stretching on forever.
During my study away, I did an independent research project on refugee identity. Specifically, I was looking at refugee identity in Zimbabweans’ experience in Cape Town. Being an outsider, I was very aware of my intrusion in a foreign world. I was hearing the Zimbabweans’ stories of being outsiders in a foreign land, and having a very different experience than me. It struck me how the interaction between a person’s identity and the place in which they live has a substantial influence on the privileges, limitations, oppression, access, and prejudice the person experiences in that place.
I worked with a refugee activist group called People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP). One morning at the Department of Home Affairs, I was chatting with a Zimbabwean asylum seeker who said, “We are just a spectacle to you.” I was taken aback by how direct he was, but also by the pertinence of his observation. Although this is not necessarily problematic, it was difficult to reconcile my desire to make positive change with my being an outsider. I think
my experience in South Africa cemented
my desire to “think globally, act locally.”
Travel is important to gain a global perspective,
but I wish to “be the change
I wish to see in the world” in my own
home.
|
