Today we arrived at a campsite south of Cape Town overlooking the ocean.
I can’t believe that Antarctica’s just over there!
We have students from Roosevelt, Isilimela, and Bellville all here.
One of the rules: Only speak English. “Don’t exclude each other with your language.” Bellville kids are more fluent in Afrikaans and Isilimela kids more fluent in IsiXhosa but they’re very mindful of how your preferred languages can cut others out.
The students are working in groups equally mixed among the schools. They’re reflecting on things like honesty, humility, acceptance, responsibility. It’s really something.
PS - the trees on the horizon are called blue gum trees. They’re everywhere and so beautiful. In the ocean, humpback whales are swimming and feeding 🐋
Saturday
Today… we beached.
It was windy as heck. Sand everywhere. Lots of energy and hilarity. Plus sweet blue popsicles.
The students got in groups and created human sculptures and chants illustrating concepts like communication, acceptance, and respect.
“Shoshaloza” is a traditional and extraordinarily catchy South African song that is teaching me something about music.
Here, music is not about songs with a start and an end. It’s not about separate musical instruments. It’s about voice and body and flow.
We’ve broken out into bouts of “Shoshaloza” not to perform it but to be become music through it.
It’s the best way I can explain it right now.
The lyrics are simple and repeat. It’s a Zulu and Ndebele song of encouragement in hard times, created by miners many years ago, sung by Nelson Mandela to get through prison on Robben Island, and now sung at sporting events throughout the country:
“Go, keep moving
Go on and board the train
From the mountain down in South Africa
Keep moving, run away
Go on and board the train
From the mountain down in South Africa”
This whole experience, for our students, has been… a lot.
They are tired and they feel a lot of pressure.
They’ve done their Isilimela home stays in an all-black neighborhood and are staying with very different families, this time attached to the mostly white, Afrikaans-speaking Bellville school, for the next few nights.
The American visitors in this program serve as an unofficial bridge between the students from Isilimela, in Langa, and the students in suburban Bellville.
These school populations share a city but never meaningfully interact.
Not to mention: Just 32 years ago, their hanging out together would have been illegal.
The Roosevelt students are really sharp and notice so many intricate differences between these school cultures. Including ones that still keep them apart, that make Roosevelt students feel like they need to work all the harder to get them to connect with each other.
The good news: Everyone just being here is a dang miracle, and that miracle is doing its work.
Hour by hour, question by question, smile by smile… more people are letting their guard down, and we’re all feeling the results.
Sunday
Today the camp retreat ended with a longstanding Hands for a Bridge tradition.
Each student shares a big takeaway from their experience as they’re handed a pice of string.
A web of string connecting everyone forms, and after everyone’s spoken, the teachers (here it’s the fabulous Kate Plesha) ask them to pull on the string, feel that tension, and understand the power they can channel to make good change in the world based on the very human wisdom they’ve learned here together.
At the end, the teachers cut the string into pieces and everyone gets up and moves around, tying the pieces on each other’s wrists.
We closed the retreat with a giant group pic. Onward, HFB!
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