Emails from Taya Weiss

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Further to this thread about an atrocious crime in South Africa I thought I'd post the series of emails I received from Taya Weiss (here, here). Taya spent a year doing some very difficult but very important voluntary work in SA, her emailed accounts make for sobering and provokative reading.

There are 6 of them so let me post them all before you reply.

Posted with Taya's permission.

Gus

OutpatientsOnline.com

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16th August 2002

"If it is true, as Buddhist sages maintain, that
materialism coarsens the spirit and that life itself
is an illusion, Jo'burg is a fine place to pursue
enlightenment. Theft is so common that it's hardly
worth mentioning. Everyone knows someone who was
murdered. You either allow the danger to poison your
psyche and deaden your soul, or you learn to be brave,
and laugh at the prospect of your own annihilation.
Foreigners think we're nuts, coming back to a doomed
city on a damned continent, but there's something you
don't understand: it's boring where you are."

-Rian Malan, in "From Jo'burg to Jozi: Stories About
Africa's Infamous City", ed. Heidi Holland and Adam
Roberts.

Pilgrimage

Africa's highest summit rises to 19,345ft. above sea
level in northeastern Tanzania. Its equatorial
glaciers, along with those of Mt. Kenya to the north
and Mt. Stanley to the west, are the only ones on the
continent. Kilimanjaro was first climbed by Leipzig
geographer Hans Meyer with Austrian guide Ludwig
Purtscheller in 1889, shortly after Tanzania was
annexed by Germany. Since the mountain was now the
highest point in the German Empire, Meyer went ahead
with the usual colonial drill and named the topmost
peak on the crater rim Kaiser Wilhelm Spitz, in honor
of the German emperor. Thankfully, Tanzanian
independence in 1963 brought with it the more
inspiring name Uhuru Point (uhuru is Swahili for
freedom).

I decided to climb Kilimanjaro when I received a
last-minute invitation from a group climbing to raise
money and awareness to cure myositis, a rare
neuromuscular disease associated with muscular
dystrophy. The group of Americans from all over the
U.S. had two last-minute dropouts and needed to fill
the slots to keep the cost of the expedition down.
Incredibly, the dates of the climb dovetailed
perfectly with a workshop I was running in Nairobi for
the Institute of Security Studies, so my airfare to
and from Nairobi would be covered. Moved by the cause
and enticed by the affordable cost, my friend Eric and
I packed our South African Cape mohair socks, oiled
our boots, and set out for Moshi. We were hoping that
our high-altitude living situation (Joburg is at
5500ft.) would put us on equal footing with a climb
team that seemed as though had been in hard-core
training for the past year.

The Machame route, one of the more difficult on the
mountain and subject of a recent IMAX movie, takes six
days: about four up and two down. The climb starts in
high-altitude rainforest and traverses some of the
most beautiful landscapes on earth. Alpine rock
gardens, lava towers, and bright blue-green glaciers
adorn the mountain, a sacred place for those who live
in its shadow. The Chagga people have long been
converts to Christianity, but they continue to orient
church altars towards Kibo, the highest volcanic
summit.

Ancient places transcend the sum of their physical
attributes. The mountain is more than its trees,
rocks, the tinkling music of glassy lava shards under
tired feet. From the gren of giant ferns and the sweet
smell of trees rotting into ruch mud to the dead,
airless curves of the crater at its summit, I felt
myself unwittingly undertaking not just a climb, but a
pilgrimage. Kilimanjaro is older than ancestors,
beyond human time and suffering. Its spirit has a
voice that seemed to emanate simultaneously from deep
within and far outside of myself. As I took my first
steps into the rainforest, I found myself-skeptic
though I am-pausing and actually announcing out loud,
"I am here!" to whatever might have been listening. I
felt something stir. That day was supposed to require
seven hours of climbing to the first camp. Eric and I
did it in five, getting there at least an hour before
the next arrivals.

My initial euphoria and energy continued the following
day, and the day after that. I felt the fire in my
belly even while I was resting. My dreams at night
were vivid. They ranged from themes of sorrow and
redemption to one in which my brain mapped
multivariable functions for what felt like a lifetime
(I haven't studied Calculus since my freshman year in
college). Maybe it was the Diamox we were taking to
counteract the effects of altitude, or perhaps it was
simple exhaustion, but even my subconscious mind
participated fully in the journey.

The summit attempt is made in darkness by the glow of
headlamps, but our path was also illuminated by a full
moon hanging in the sky like a lantern I could have
bumped my head on. With only a few hours of sleep
between a twelve-hour day of hiking and a full night
of scrambling up 45-degree slopes covered with scree,
getting to the top is a labor of mental and desire and
a genetic crapshoot when it comes to altitude
sickness. Extremely fit individuals were felled by
pounding headaches, nausea, and the threat of cerebral
edema; unlikely heroes, fuelled by sheer willpower,
continued to put one foot in front of the other and
pass the masses of puking hangers-on in limbo between
summit and defeat.

I was lucky; my hands swelled to the size of fat
little sausage patties, but I never suffered even a
mild headache. Frustrated with the slow pace the
guides were setting (designed to accommodate the
weakest in the group), they finally agreed to let me
go ahead. With Monty Python's Lumberjack song playing
in my head for no apparent reason, I dug my toes into
loose popcorn rocks to the rhythm, breathing slowly,
and made it up the final scree to Stella Point on my
own.

From Stella Point it is a truly airless, spiritual
walk of about 200 meters to Uhuru peak. Glaciers were
below me, with green streaked icicles oozing down the
sides. The crater was huge, smooth, almost lithe in
its curves. The sky, lightening from sunrise streaks
of red and orange, evolved to a thin, pale, cloudless
blue. The summit is a dry, remote, forbidding place
where each step causes one to gasp through freezing
blue lips. Everyone is hypoxic at the top, deepening
emotion and heightening laughter for those who
maintain the consciousness to feel. Other, blank faces
stare out from balaclavas like so many oxygen-deprived
deer caught in headlights. As I approached the apex,
my greeting to the mountain-"I am here!" echoed back
to me.

In real life, we weather storms, endure pain, and grow
from our experiences, often without a clear path from
the lowest points to the highest. Summitting a great
mountain offers the opportunity to turn aching into
victory in a more controlled way. Waking and sleeping
in a sacred place for five days, I had been feeding my
demons into the metaphorical fire to motivate me on
the way up. Old, festering fears and doubts had been
incinerated like emotional garbage in the flames of my
ascent. It was only on reaching the highest point that
I felt the purifying effects of each step it took to
get there.

A day and a half later, my feet were swollen and
blistered from a final solo run down to the gate
(having lost quite a bit of weight, I was chasing an
imaginary In N Out cheeseburger that kept receding
around every corner). I lay exhausted under a tree as
hawkers waved "Just Did It" T-shirts and cold Cokes
from stands across the road. Back to the material
world, filled with noise and people and guards
carrying AK-47s, children playing in
impoverished-looking schoolyards, failed diplomacy,
food shortages, and the smells of real trash burning.
Uhuru peak had freed me from some important burdens I
hadn't realized I was carrying. I sent a mental thank
you back up the road behind me, but felt nothing this
time.

The Sacred and the Terrible

Nairobi, like Johannesburg, is a cosmopolitan African
city filled with dreamers from all over the continent
and endowed with a crime problem that has become
larger-than-life in travelers' circles. Unlike
Johannesburg, its location in a country that is
surrounded on all sides by serious conflict has lent
its crime an international mystique that seems to ride
into town on trucks laden with cheap guns from
Somalia.

I have been to Nairobi twice before. In fact, I seem
to return every four years on the nose. Nairobi
provided my first glimpse of Africa when I arrived to
teach in Western Kenya at the age of 17; exactly four
years later, I returned on a grant to research my
Harvard thesis on Kenya's constitutional reform
process just in time to witness the bombing of the
American embassy. Somehow it was exactly four years
later as I checked into the swank Holiday Inn on
Friday night and began to prepare for the ISS workshop
on Monday. I would be jointly presenting the results
of a survey we had done on attitudes towards firearms
and crime in the city. The local media had already
been stirred into a frenzy by some of the statistics:
87 percent of Nairobi residents worry about crime on a
regular basis, 74 percent think crime has gotten
worse, and one in ten people carry some form of
weapon.

Kenya is a place where I return to find myself both
older and younger at the same time. Four years is long
enough to map significant change, and Nairobi is far
enough from home to capture the essence of moments in
my personal history in self-contained capsules like
time bombs. They hit me like a sniper's bullets around
every corner; the street where a friend was robbed
while walking next to me in 1994, the matatu (shared
taxi) I took to my internship every day in 1998. The
girl who had just come of age, the college student,
and the 25-year-old coexist in a sort of time warp in
this quintessentially Third World city.

The matatus are my favorite part of Nairobi. Unlike
taxis in South Africa, which are known for their
internecine shooting violence but not for their
creative design, urban public transportation in Kenya
uses a full range of paint, decals, fake fur, and
purple lights. I was thrilled to see that the number
46 lovingly known as "The Death Machine" was still
plying the route between Lavington and the city
center. Other favorites are:

Hoo-bangin'
The Sacred Cow
Terrible
Da Boyz Don' Play
3-in-one Shoe Store
Usher
Al Sharpton
Kansas City
Jealousy Doesn't Pay
The Road to Jesus

Nairobi traffic, littered with these hot pink and
green ghetto-mobiles, is capable of moving even when
it seems impossibly packed into dusty streets with no
signals. The most minute spaces are used to their full
potential, keeping everyone inching along in a
lethargic but still living snake of diesel exhaust and
honking horns. This intricate, painstaking rush hour
process reflects Kenyan society and politics better
than any politician's strained metaphors about
development and democracy.

In a country that has been increasingly drained of
infrastructure and political freedom, and choked by
corruption, its people sustain a kind of life-force
energy that one is hard pressed to find even a city as
big and powerful as Johannesburg. Creativity allows
life to continue in the face of crippling poverty, 70
percent unemployment, and a largely ignored AIDS
problem. When large political spaces have been closed
off, it is the tiny gaps undetected by government and
police that allow movement to occur. Despite a
government so corrupt that all aid money has been
suspended for years because of mismanagement, the Road
to Jesus and the Death Machine continue to ferry
people to where they're going. In this poor but
spiritual place, the Sacred and the Terrible inch
along, side by side, trying not to run each other off
the road.

After a successful workshop and a series of interviews
for an upcoming paper, I went back to visit the
International Commission of Jurists where I had been
based in '98. Some of my old friends were still there,
and for some reason they didn't seem surprised to see
me. In fact, it turned out they had been saving my
mail.

-Taya

OutpatientsOnline.com

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21st October 2002

"When you carry a gun, you feel like you are a human
being."

-one of the Zimiseleni Boys, a group of youth between
12 and 16 years old in Kathorus, South Africa. Over 35
people a day die from firearm-related violence in this
area.

Parasites, Disease, and other Hazards of Life in North
America

In August, about four days after returning home to
Johannesburg from my adventures in East Africa, I had
to ask my friend Dave to pull over to the side of the
road in Melville, a few blocks from my house. The
well-dressed couple walking past clearly thought I was
a pathetic drunk as I hunched over the curb, painfully
ejecting dinner. Dave waited patiently and then drove
me the rest of the way home.

The week got worse, complete with high fevers and
continued digestion problems. My doctors tossed around
notions of malaria, typhoid -- even dengue fever. When
I passed out in another friend's car after having
blood drawn for tests, he promptly took me to his
house and put me on the fold out couch, where I
drifted in and out of consciousness for two days. My
blood test results showed that I had a dangerously low
white blood cell count, but the best conclusion as to
why was one doctor's diagnosis (and this is the
technical term for it): a "mystery tropical disease."

You don't really know a place until you've been so
sick there that you become acquainted with the inside
of an emergency room-or at least a doctor's office.
The medical facilities in South Africa, for those who
can afford private care, are high quality by "first
world" standards. Nonetheless, losing control of my
health made me so vulnerable that I was forced to rely
on a support system of friends and co-workers despite
my tendency for martyrdom. I was well taken care of,
but the insight I gained into other people's feelings
of vulnerability surpassed what I learned about my
own.

When I had a severe relapse exactly 30 days after my
first symptoms, I was convinced that whatever
"tropical" East African bug had been nesting in my
body was back for Round Two. Discussions about my
health became a map of people's opinions and fears
about larger matters. My South African friends said,
"See? The rest of Africa is dangerous. This is what
happens when you go north." Some suggested that I
could have caught it in Soweto, which was basically
like the rest of Africa. Some of my American friends
said, "See? This is what happens when you live in
Africa. The whole continent is disease-ridden."

After writhing in pain and being unable to eat
anything at all for four days in a row, I was finally
successfully diagnosed and treated for a bad case of
campylobacter bacteria. Checking the Center for
Disease Control web site, I found that this little
creature lives in uncooked or improperly handled
poultry. It is most commonly found in North America.

The Milky Way Moves North

On August 23rd, in between bouts of horrible illness,
I walked up the back stairs of the Time Square complex
in Yeoville. When I reached the second floor, I headed
for the Milky Way internet café, home of the R10 (one
dollar) per hour connection, the cheap coffee, the
inner city neo-Beatnik vibe, the outdoor balcony
overlooking the grungy park. A sign on the door said,
"The Milky Way has moved. Our new location is Shop 60,
The Zone, at the Rosebank Mall." I ran back down the
graffiti-covered stairwell, jumped into my car with
the urgency of a superhero on call, and headed north
to the swanky suburbs.

The new Milky Way has framed pictures of galaxies on
stark white walls. Clusters of all-new Pentium 4
computers with color monitors are scattered across a
room at least twice the size of the old location.
There is a bright red, brand spanking new espresso
machine behind the counter. Prices have more than
tripled, presumably to cover the higher overhead costs
of renting space in one of the most exclusive shopping
centers in the province. It's nothing short of
internet a la Starbucks.

Kids from Hillbrow and Yeoville don't have many
options on a Friday night. The Milky Way was started
in 1994 as a tiny grassroots operation to engage local
youth in learning about technology, with special
activities like Sunday outings for under-15's and free
Friday night internet access with live DJ's spinning
tunes for youth 15-21. "We want to continue with the
service, but the problem is to get the kids to
Rosebank," says owner Bruce Gillespie.

Getting the youth to the computers is not a minor
detail-it is the whole point. The Milky Way is no
longer serving its core constituency. Gillespie says
the move was "a blow to the kids," but claims the
business was no longer viable in Yeoville.

The real message is that as the inner city implodes
economically, demographically, and criminally, its
young inhabitants will be abandoned for relative
security to the north.

Mobility is power, something those who have it tend to
forget. The kids may know where Rosebank is, and they
may have the five or six rand to take two taxis to get
to the mall. But they won't make the journey, because
when they step into a world of four-star hotels and
designer shops, they will feel immediately that they
don't belong there. Without the kind of education and
outreach that the Milky Way used to provide to inner
city communities, another tenuous bridge across the
growing socio-economic gorge has gone up in flames.

That is the problem.

Sustainable Development, Joburg Style

The huge, internationally attended World Summit on
Sustainable Development rode into town at the
beginning of September for a week of high-level
conferencing about the environment and lowbrow
sideshows festooned with recycled plastic-bag art.
Delegates were housed in hotels in heavily gated
Sandton, where the proceedings were essentially
isolated from the outside world.

As expected, Greenpeace howled that the Fat Cats of
government were "dining on the backs of the poor they
were meant to represent." Government officials
retorted that demonstrators were disrupting
well-intentioned events, thereby also treading on the
backs of the poor to further their own agenda. The
poor were busy collecting firewood and trying to make
a buck, and were unavailable for comment.

While the main talks were held in the safety of the
northern suburbs, some delegates were seen as far
south as Johannesburg itself, wandering around like
live bait with colourful nametags and ID badges
flapping around their necks. Many, mostly Americans,
were spotted at various malls, attempting to boost the
local economy by purchasing overpriced wooden
giraffes. Police were bussed in from all over the
country for the two-week event calendar, giving
Sandton residents (and Sandton residents only) a brief
taste of what it would be like to live in a community
where there was more than one police officer for every
thousand civilians.

On a Sunday night at ten, with the Summit in full
swing, I pulled up to a red light in my 1994 Opel
Kadett. The Melville intersection was deserted when
another car pulled up in the lane next to mine. As I
turned my head slowly, I saw the barrel of a gun and a
man getting out of the car, which happened to be a
very nice Audi sedan. Without thinking, I shifted into
gear and stepped on the gas, aiming for the on ramp to
the well-patrolled highway north. The would-be
hijackers' chase was brief and unsuccessful, and I got
away safely.

After the adrenaline wore off, I felt almost no
lasting fear. My most tangible emotion was annoyance,
that a bunch of well-dressed guys in a new car thought
it would be fun to dismantle my lifeline of
transportation for spare parts.

For better or for worse, I chuckled at the Americans
with their soapstone carvings and bead necklaces,
pitied the residents of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth
who spent two weeks without any police force at all,
and ignored the bullhorn rhetoric from both sides of
the development parade.

Instead of joining one of the various protest marches
the following weekend, I went to the opening of a new
community center in Riverlea (a poor mining
neighborhood with gang problems) and taught a group of
girls how to deliver a solid knee to the groin. Now
that's sustainable development.

(Go to www.impactsouthafrica.com for more information
about knees to the groin.)

Pelindaba

The research I'm engaged in through the Institute for
Security Studies has led me in some interesting and
unforeseen directions. As an affiliate of the Arms
Management Programme, I am writing about demand
factors that influence the availability and use of
small arms and light weapons in conflict and
post-conflict communities. As part of a practical
exercise in understanding the impact of guns, I was
sent with some of my colleagues (mostly late-20's to
early 30's black men) to a weapons training with the
South African commandos at Pelindaba, where the old
nuclear weapons program was once based.

As we pulled up in convoy to the dirt road entrance
marked "Defence Facility," everyone seemed to switch
into a different mindset. Guys who speak to each other
in Zulu or Xhosa when they're not speaking English
started yapping away in Afrikaans. There was a sense
that we were all about to enter a forbidden space, the
lair of the slain enemy. Some of the men in my group
had actively participated in armed struggle, just as
some of the officers there to train us had been
involved on the other side. When we got out of our
cars in an open field with targets lined up in the
distance, there was a nervous moment of silence.

Moments later, some of the researchers broke into a
dance, yipping sound effects and yelling about how the
bones of their comrades were probably fertilizing the
grass (unlikely, but the image was disturbing). The
mood was oddly cheerful as a few of the guys pointed
out the way the surrounding hills would prevent the
screams of apartheid-era torture victims from being
heard outside the valley. Possible acoustics were
discussed in a very matter of fact way, with the white
officers chiming in occasionally. The only awkwardness
was for those who didn't catch the banter in
Afrikaans, still apparently the de facto language of
the military.

I watched as crusty old defence veterans helped former
MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation)
sympathizers with the finer points of dismantling an
AK-47. We shot the AK-47s, AK-Ms, R5 assault rifles,
Skorpion automatic pistols, light machine guns, and a
variety of handguns. There was a sense of power about
the whole exercise, but also a jubilant, if unspoken,
celebration at the blatant crossing of boundaries that
were once inviolable. At the end of the day, almost
all of the cardboard targets had been reduced to a few
shreds.

When there was nothing left to aim at, we retired to
the commando headquarters where a braai (BBQ) was
being prepared. For several hours, policy researchers
on the ethical management of small arms and human
rights violations made small talk over beers with a
division of the military populated largely by serious
gun enthusiasts and former enforcers of apartheid.
Cigarettes were lit, laughs were shared, grilled meat
was scarfed down without the hassle of utensils. It
was dusk as our convoy rumbled back to the highway, a
strange silhouette against the new South African sky.

Solidarity

A few weeks ago, I was contracted as a dedicated
independent researcher to put together a five-day
training course for police on Violence Against Women
and Children. Given that there are twelve countries in
the SARPCCO region (Southern African Regional Police
Chiefs Cooperation Organization), all of which will be
using my course outline, training and instructor
manuals, and audiovisual materials, it was hard to pin
down exactly what the target audience would be. Urban
Johannesburg investigators? Illiterate, rural
Mozambican officers? To be safe, representatives from
all countries agreed to aim for the lowest common
denominator.

In a conference held for five days in Pretoria,
delegates from each country's police force sat through
demonstration modules and discussed course content.
For the most part they were an enlightened group,
accepting without argument that marital rape is
possible and that wife beating isn't justified by the
payment of lobola (bride-price). Controversies flared
over whether spanking children could be a crime,
whether a woman's consent could be withdrawn once an
act of intercourse was in progress, and whether
clothes or the lack thereof could be responsible for
sexual harassment.

Luckily, none of the participants had the time or
energy to demand final approval of the course content.
I'm wielding about as much power as one woman can over
regional police education, which means I haven't
gotten much sleep lately.

My recent work on gender-related issues has spanned
from workshops for academic researchers to
conversations with young guys in Soweto. All along the
spectrums of education, race, and income, I've noticed
that people hit the same kind of wall when it comes to
talking about everything from men hurting women to men
shooting each other.

Yesterday, Sunday, I spent the afternoon in a planning
session with a new Gender Equality Group in Kliptown
(a poverty-stricken "informal settlement" in the South
Western Township). An almost equal number of young men
as women showed up to talk about (or disagree with)
the group's mandate and objectives. Initially, the
room was very quiet as I asked people to tell me what
they thought of when I said "gender." By the end of an
hour, I could barely get in a word edgewise to
facilitate.

One young man asked, very candidly, what
gender-related problems had to do with him. He had
never had much of a problem with things like virginity
testing or sexual harassment, so how could he have a
role in engaging the issues? When people hit this
wall, I try to replace the term "gender" with another
identity word such as race, class, or location.

I said: "I'm white, and I've never had a problem with
race, so why should your problems as a black person be
my concern?" He immediately exclaimed, "Well, how can
we have equality if only the blacks sit around talking
about it? Just because you're white doesn't mean you
can ignore race." I nodded. The connection dawned.
"Okay," he said, "I'm already sitting at the table, so
let's work together."

Homecoming and Practicalities

The work that I've engaged in won't be finished at the
end of the year. But, it can wait for a visit home. On
December 12th I'm getting on a plane to London, then
another plane to Boston. I'll be arriving in Boston
Friday, December 13th, and staying in the US until
January 12th. From December 30th to January 10th I'll
be on the west coast. After that, it's back to Joburg
for at least six months. I would like to see as many
friends as I can while I'm stateside. There's nothing
like sharing experiences and catching up in person. In
Boston I'll be staying with my parents.
California is still up in the air, but I will have
email, so don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Yours, -Taya

OutpatientsOnline.com

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11th February 2003

"It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an
oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making
seminars with other oysters."

-Stephen King, On Writing

Homecoming Part II

This year, my birthday fell on a Tuesday in
Johannesburg. Feeling bold about having returned from
my trip to the US to a place that still feels like
home, I decided to throw a party. The purpose of the
gathering was also a housewarming; within three days
of coming home my landlords gave notice that they were
selling the property and I had to move. Within two
weeks I was unpacked in my huge but noisy flat in
Killarney, several blocks away from the US Consulate
and the onramp to the M1 North highway.

My guest list looked something like this:

1. As many friends from the Kliptown informal
settlement as could fit into their shared minibus
2. Skydivers from the Johannesburg Skydiving Club
where I've jumped in the last year, white and mostly
well-off
3. Colleagues from the Institute for Security Studies
4. Colleagues from People Opposing Women Abuse
5. The Melville greengrocer I buy veggies from
6. A Harvard friend doing her Ph.D. research in Joburg
for the year and her roommate, an Associated Press
reporter recently returned from a harrowing arrest in
Zimbabwe
7. The security staff of the building I now call home

The invitation was for "Tuesday at Taya's", and called
interested parties to shirk their usual weekday
routines in favor of good food, free beer, and an
opportunity to huck water balloons in the general
direction of the consulate across the street "just to
see what they'll do". It was BYO Missile Defense
Shield, and since most people didn't want to test
American aggression, no water balloons were actually
tossed.

What did happen was a low-key yet, for me, momentous
occasion. Friends I've made here in the last year came
together for one of the unlikeliest gatherings I've
seen in South Africa. I felt privileged to have
friends from the township as guests in my home, since
they have hosted and fed me more times than I can
count. The security guards (who are black) initially
refused to let them come up to my flat in utter denial
that they were as much invitees as the various white
couples they hadn't questioned.

When I eventually coaxed one guard into coming in for
a beer, he seemed to relax, but maintained a look of
distinct disbelief at the scene. At that moment, a few
young Kliptown guys were teaching a Chinese social
worker from Hong Kong how to do gumboots dancing as
the Melville greengrocer talked politics with a POWA
volunteer and her accountant husband. Later, as people
were leaving, he asked if I had another beer for him.
I lied and said no, keeping in mind that I preferred
him to be lucid enough to do his job. He said, "You
see? This is what happens when you have black people
over. They eat, they drink all your beer, and the next
thing you know, they're gone!"

Homecoming Part I

I got off the plane in Boston on Friday, December 13th
exhausted but happy. It was cold and grey, but still
familiar, and I was relieved to find that I didn't
turn into a pumpkin or immediately lose all sense of
global perspective upon touching down on American
soil. My secret fear of being questioned by
Ashcroft-appointed security personnel because of the
stamps in my passport turned out to be overblown, and
I rolled my suitcase out to meet my mom at the baggage
claim curb.

After putting my bag in the boot-wait, trunk-I
hesitated before walking to the right side of the car
to get in. So far, so good. It wasn't until we got to
the busy Storrow Drive that the real fear and
alienation set in. Seeing oncoming traffic on the
"wrong" side of the road, I started yelling and almost
got us into an accident. Boston was the city where I
was born, grew up, and learned how to drive, but it
was as though someone was holding a giant mirror up in
front of everything. I was through the looking glass
and it was all the more strange since it was supposed
to be home turf. The only positive outcome of my
inability to readjust to the roads was a curiously
energetic parental chauffeur service rendering it
unnecessary for me to drive a family car.

Boston and New York were easy to visit because they
don't feel like home. I had recurring dreams about
oncoming traffic, but there was minimal culture shock
and no regret about the life I've chosen as compared
to the one my east-coast peers are leading. As always,
it helped that it was the dead of winter and got dark
by 3pm every day. Yet most of my longings in these
places were material; although I had truly missed the
cupcakes from my favorite bakery in Belmont and the
bagels from H&H in New York, I felt nothing deeper
calling to me. I was on vacation.

California was a different story. The life one leaves
behind is the most difficult to return to, even for a
short visit. The first place I willingly chose as a
home after getting my degree still resonated with the
memories I left there on my way to South Africa. Some
of this mental debris, like the work I found
unfulfilling and the ludicrous cost of living, hit me
with affirmation that I've ventured into a less
predictable but more rewarding life. Others, like
friendships rooted in shared personal history and my
buried sense of belonging, struck a sore place and
presented unwanted pop-up maps of my emotional
landscape, complete with cost-benefit analyses of my
choices. I reveled in dinner gatherings with old
friends, sipped coffee in my favorite park, and ate
life-changing sushi.

My awareness of the courage required to exist between
worlds is only tangible while traveling between them.
The day before leaving the U.S. everything seemed
wobbly and surreal; the Starbucks that has taken up
residence in what used to be a Friendly's restaurant
near my parents' house in suburban Boston looked to me
as though it could beam into space at any second. It
is incredibly liberating to bear witness to this
impermanent sense of place. The act of traveling is a
spiritual declaration of freedom. It requires
sacrifice but rewards the brave with the perspective
that home is truly "a moveable feast", a lunchbox to
be packed on a life journey.

Cricket: It's Not Just a Noisy Insect Anymore

The ICC Cricket World Cup has descended on South
Africa with a kind of fervor I usually reserve for
games with some semblance of pacing. There are certain
triggers that make me feel like I have giant stars and
stripes tattooed all over my face, and one of them is
cricket fever. In my American ignorance, what I know
about this distinctly un-American game can be summed
up easily: it can actually go on for days without end
and seems to feature at least some commentary about
how to grow the grass on the field for maximum team
performance. "One-day cricket" is about as fast
moving as it gets.

Nonetheless, the World Cup kicked off on Saturday
night with a big ceremony featuring speeches by the
likes of President Thabo Mbeki and performances by
everyone from Dave Matthews to a troupe of dancing
zebra puppets. South Africa narrowly lost its first
game against the "Windies", or West Indian team, but
morale is still high and talk of a new era in African
sports is afoot.

The South African equivalents of Superbowl commercials
frequently feature a dusty township team of young
black kids engaged in an earnest game of cricket. The
winning team breaks into African-style dance with the
community joining in jubilantly. These shots are
usually spliced into footage from actual cricket
games, which feature predominantly white players and a
corresponding white male crowd. The gap between the
present and future of the game is only as surmountable
as race-based cultural differences in South Africa:
which is to say no one really knows what is possible.

In the meantime, as one of my favorite cartoon
characters from a strip called "Madam and Eve" said:
"No matter what, I can support a sport that has tea
breaks".

Starting Over

Every New Year brings with it reflection and
resolutions. At the end of 2002 I paused to take stock
of the twelve months behind me. It was one of the
first opportunities I've had to consider the wisdom
and outcome of my decision to sell what little I owned
and move to, as Rian Malan so aptly puts it, "a doomed
city on a damned continent". I encountered both
support and opposition to the idea when I started
talking to people about it late in 2001, but I got the
general sense that everyone thought I had a touch of
madness. Madness aside, I did have plenty of
self-doubt about jetting off to work on difficult
issues for no pay in a place where I had no history,
no connections, no family, and basically no support
system.

The great (sometimes even terrible) thing about real
dreams is that you can't stop a person who has found
one so important they feel they have nothing to lose.
My dream was to take my skills and my passion for
issues that are larger-than-life in South Africa
(violence against women and children, HIV/Aids,
conflict resolution) and see what I could do by
sharing my privilege instead of using it to make
money. My journey took me all the way across the
United States and into the Southern Hemisphere.

While here, I have struggled to live within my means
but have found fulfillment in leaving behind the
constraints of what I thought I needed to be happy. A
good friend of mine termed my change in mindset and
life direction a "secular conversion". There is, of
course, no need to travel halfway around the world to
change your spiritual or vocational landscape, but for
me it made sense. I studied African History at Harvard
and had lived and worked in Kenya and traveled all
over the eastern part of Africa. I was drawn to the
idea of Johannesburg because it is in the vanguard of
nonprofit work for the entire continent. A
cosmopolitan city with a unique economic and social
identity, it matched my mood both in the way people
here nonchalantly live on the edge and the way a
search for social justice is interwoven into the
fabric of everyday life.

2003 will be different, another starting over. I've
moved into a spacious flat in a building where I'm no
longer either in the ghetto or living like a serf in a
one-room cottage on someone else's property. I'm more
willing to find a balance between living like a
poverty-stricken monk and a full-fledged yuppie,
especially in the interests of my stress level and my
health. Most importantly, though, I'm deeply engaged
in the fulfilling work I once thought was only
available to the independently wealthy or the
unusually lucky. (The best way to start someone
brainstorming about what they really want is to say,
"If you won the lottery and had all the money in the
world, what would you do tomorrow?" Realizing I
couldn't wait that long, I went ahead and did it
anyway.) I had to step over the edge to find my work,
commit to it, and take a stab at making a living at
it, but there's no going back now.

Question of the Month: How Long Will I Stay?

I'm still planning my life a year at a time, and I
plan to stay until the end of 2003. The Institute for
Security Studies has hired me as a research consultant
on gun and violence issues, and there is an exciting
project in the works to start a program of my own
teaching self-defense. My biggest motivation is that
I've built a life where I am relevant and effective to
the issues I care about, which was my dream when I set
out from San Francisco in December of 2001. Last year
was incredible, but often difficult. I lost most of my
possessions in the first half and almost gave up on my
health in the second. The rewards of those sacrifices
are still in the pipeline; I've only just laid the
foundation for what I will learn and accomplish in the
months ahead.

Happy in Johannesburg,

-Taya

OutpatientsOnline.com

[gus 1]

25th March 2003

"This will be an unjustifiable war and because it is
unjustifiable it is immoral. And if it is immoral, in
my view, it is also evil."

-South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu

"A war is a war. It's a brutal thing."

-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

A Passport at War

Last Thursday morning as the Uh.S.-led war against
Iraq began, I walked into my office at the Institute
for Security Studies to joking calls of, "Hey,
Warmonger!" and laughing threats to string me up by my
toenails to make an example of American arrogance. I
laughed and sat down at my desk, fired up my computer,
and checked the news. The troops were going in, Bush
was making stern-sounding speeches about defending the
American people and disarming Saddam Hussein, and the
much of the rest of the world was looking on with
self-described "disgust, helplessness, and anger."

I am relatively cynical about American influence
abroad. In 1998 I was conducting research for my
Harvard thesis in Kenya when the American embassy in
Nairobi was bombed. Hundreds of Kenyans were injured
and many blinded by shards of flying glass from the
explosion, but the U.S. was initially ambivalent about
providing aid to the victims of the blast. Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright downplayed the news that
officials in Washington had repeatedly denied the
Ambassador's requests to move the embassy from its
insecure location downtown (news that indicated most
Kenyan casualties could have been prevented). I
watched as the FBI forbade rescue efforts from
proceeding, sealing the area off as a crime scene even
as some Kenyans died beneath the rubble. Witnessing
the aftermath made me aware that American freedom and
democracy were fragile. I woke up to the harsh reality
that human life has little value in power politics (I
also lost an American colleague in the bombing), but
my underlying belief in my society remained intact.

Regardless of whether one sees this war as being
driven by a just cause or by an out-of-touch American
military juggernaut, most agree that it is changing
America's presence in the international community. As
an American living abroad, I feel alienated when I see
signs proclaiming "America-UK-Israel is Axis of Evil",
but I am also sharply conscious of how far away I am
from the domestic politics of war and protest. As I
let the magnitude of the new global situation settle
in, I struggle with a combination of anger, fear, and
homesickness. I recognize that the deepest sense of
home I have is for the U.S., the deepest sense of
identity is as an American, and that the foundations
of home and identity are suddenly in question as the
war unfolds.

Thursday afternoon I went to my bank to deposit a
check. The only form of identification they accept
from foreigners is a passport, so I turned over my
eagle-embossed passport along with the signed check.
In the background, television monitors aimed at the
people waiting in line were tuned to war news instead
of the usual Nedbank propaganda. The teller looked
down at my passport, looked up at me, and said loudly,
"Well, well, well, we have an American in the bank!"
She went on to inform her fellow tellers, and in the
process ended up announcing to everyone there that I
held an American passport. Waving it around from
behind her bullet-proof glass, she yelled, "Why are
you bombing Iraq?"

I pointed out that I myself was nowhere near Iraq,
even going so far as to say that I didn't vote for the
guy who single-handedly ordered the war. She continued
to argue, saying that Bush was a madman and that most
Americans must support him since he is the president.
As soon as my transaction was finished, I made a
beeline for the exit. South African banks have double
doors at the entry and exit; you enter the first door
and have to wait for it to close before the next door
opens. A man followed me into the "holding area"
between the two doors, and in the few seconds we spent
there leaned over and said quietly, "I should kill you
so you Americans can see how it feels to see civilians
dying for nothing." The next door opened and I ran
out, breathing through a dizzy sense of unreality as
the man disappeared around a corner. I stopped to tell
a security guard what had happened and then left. As I
drove the final stretch to my house in Killarney, I
passed the U.S. Consulate where protesters have been
camped out 24 hours a day. I managed a feeble "hoot
for peace" as I passed them, and heard others hooting
through the night from my living room several blocks
away.

Africa at the Margins

The official South African position has consistently
been against the war. President Thabo Mbeki sees it as
a "blow to multilateralism", and his view is shared by
many African leaders. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on
Friday that the attack on Iraq was an "immoral" war in
which America was abusing its power, and Nelson
Mandela has openly lambasted both President Bush and
Prime Minister Blair for their failure to use
diplomacy instead of force. The United States has
closed its embassies in South Africa, Nigeria, and
Kenya, citing security issues.

The African perspective on war incorporates concerns
about the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD), which depends on support from the G8 to work
towards poverty alleviation and economic development
on the continent. With Europe and the United States in
the heat of a political standoff over the war, aid to
Africa is again on the back burner of the world's
leadership. Many countries are allegedly withholding
planned aid to African countries in case it is needed
"more urgently" in Iraq for humanitarian relief.
Meanwhile, more than 400 African workers have fled
Iraq for Jordan, fearing for their lives. The
International Organization for Migration reports that
African workers crossing the border are largely of
Sudanese origin, with some Somalis and Chadians. There
are refugee camps being set up, but for this small
group caught between a war and a hard place, the
prospects are bleak.

U.S. and British Diplomats say that South Africa's
stance on the war may be less important than its
stance on Zimbabwe when it comes to funding
development. With African criticism of the United
States' aggression comes the inevitable charge that
South Africa and the African Union have done nothing
to curtail the violence and instability in Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe (or "Mad Bob" as he is known around
these parts) is terrorizing his opposition and
preventing food production that is causing famine in
the entire Southern African region. South Africa's
lukewarm embrace of and refusal to interfere with the
violent and destabilizing Zimbabwean leadership has
made many South Africans and others in the region
furious at the inaction. Unfortunately, Mad Bob and
the rest of the African continent will become more and
more marginalized as the world's attention turns to
Iraq.

For more information on Zimbabwe, go to
www.zwnews.com.

Reconciliation vs. Justice

Last Friday, March 21, was Human Rights Day in South
Africa. It was also the day the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) handed its final
report to President Thabo Mbeki. The TRC embodies one
of the biggest political compromises ever made.
Designed to allow an investigation of who did what to
whom during the apartheid era, it allowed amnesty in
exchange for information. The objectives were to
educate the nation about what happened during what
some call "state-sponsored terrorism", but more
importantly, to allow a healing process through the
sharing of stories.

The compromise was the offer of amnesty. Some of the
atrocities committed by the apartheid security
apparatus have now been aired, but victims and
survivors who participated by telling their painful
stories have seen no compensation or justice.
Perpetrators of gross human rights violations have
been set free while victims continue to struggle with
old wounds, economic, physical, and emotional. A local
newspaper described one woman's experience with the
Commission:

"In addition to her describing in graphic detail how
her husband was tortured by the then Venda security
police, her story was convincing because she had an
exhibit - her husband, sitting helplessly on a
wheelchair.The man became mentally and physically
disabled after he was brutalised by the police. He was
arrested for assisting ANC "terrorists" and severely
tortured. During the torture, the man soiled his pants
and the police forced him to eat his faeces, the
commission heard. The woman spoke of the agony of
having to look after a man who is unable to be a man,
who is a vegetable."

The perpetrators of this torture have been granted
amnesty and are currently working in the new South
African police force. Some victims fear that
reparations from the government, an alternative to
traditional justice, will fade into the realm of
"unrealistic" solutions the way the American
government now refuses to entertain the idea of
reparations for slavery. As reconciliation takes it
course, justice means different things to different
people. The question is whether the amnesty for those
who did participate in the TRC and the freedom from
prosecution of high-level leaders and politicians who
didn't, worked. Despite the many failings of the
Commission, most South Africans say it was a
(qualified) success. The sacrifice of great things to
avoid war infuses politics here, as far from the
current American rhetoric as Joburg is from San
Francisco.

The full text of the TRC report can be found at
http://www.gov.za/reports/2003/trc/index.html.

For Bagels, Burritos, and Old Friends

For some reason, this war has brought on a bout of
homesickness unlike any I have ever experienced. Maybe
it's a combination of how long I've been living away
and the alienation of war politics, but it mostly
manifests itself as a craving for serious Mexican
food. I dream of fresh salsa, hot tortilla chips, big
fat burritos from the Mission district in San
Francisco. Occasionally these cravings are interrupted
by thoughts of real toasted bagels with tomato and
cream cheese in the morning. I close my eyes and
remember how it feels not to speak with a strange
accent, and how there are places in the world where I
can order a glass of water ("wadder") and have the
server understand me. On Sunday I'll think about the
bulk of the New York Times and brunch with old
friends. I'm still happy where I am and with the huge
flood of incredible work I'm doing, but it's good to
know my ties to home are still rooted somewhere
beneath the surface.

-Taya

OutpatientsOnline.com

[gus 1]

24th April 2003

"This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and
shocking proportions. The conflict has cost more lives
than any other since World War II and the death toll
from all the recent wars in the Balkans doesn't even
come close."

-George Rupp, president of the International Rescue
Committee, speaking about the current conflict in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

DRC at a Glance:

Duration of conflict: 4.5 years
Related deaths since 1998: 4.7 million
Years since last general election: 43
Outside countries involved militarily: at least 5
Documented atrocities confirmed by the UN so far:
rape, murder, deliberate maiming, torture, forced
cannibalism, child recruitment into militias.

Other Wars

I have stopped turning on the television news and
started reading more press outside of the mainstream.
Escaping incessant coverage of one war and its
aftermath only leads to a gruesome kind of variety:
the world is full of sideshow conflicts. Many of them
rage in Africa, under the radar of international
coverage or even humanitarian aid. It becomes
difficult when living, as Rian Malan has written, in
"a doomed city on a damned continent", not to see the
rhetoric of the Iraq war from all sides as somehow
hypocritical by omission.

The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has
claimed 4.7 million lives since it started in 1998. UN
investigations into reports of atrocities in Eastern
Congo have found that rebels against Mobutu Sese Seko
killed and ate Pygmies, a small tribe of about 600,000
native to the area, on a significant scale. Prisoners
were forced to eat pieces of their own bodies while
others were forced to eat their comrades' flesh. As
early as 1996, government troops sent to subdue rebel
forces in the east systematically raped women and
girls in villages along the way with impunity.
Civilian men were indiscriminately killed and maimed.
Years later, the militias and militaries involved are
many, and they are all accused of war crimes
regardless of their affiliation.

Although a political settlement among the various
warring factions was just signed in Sun City, South
Africa, it is not the first push for peace. Other
recent tries have ended in failure, and the country's
acting president did not even attend this latest
signing. Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Namibia
have all had troops involved in the conflict. Rwanda,
threatened by the continued existence of Hutu militia
in Congo, is unapologetically talking about jumping
back in before the ink in Sun City has had a chance to
dry. Guns outlast peace agreements.

In 1976, Robert Mugabe said, "Our votes must go
together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall
have, shall have been the product of the gun." He was
certainly right that votes and guns often go hand in
hand, which is probably the only reason he still
retains power in Zimbabwe in 2003. As the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change grows stronger, his
tactics are becoming more brutal. In South Africa, we
hear reports of political opponents' torture by
electric shock, widespread rape, and six million
people condemned to starvation. The man credited with
freeing Zimbabwe from colonial oppression has turned
his own revolution on its head: now he is the villain
in the crosshairs. While the world's gaze is
transfixed elsewhere, a true grassroots struggle for
democracy is at war with an aging but very violent
soldier fighting for glory that has long since passed.


Every day in South Africa 600 people die of Aids. The
ANC government's minister of health, Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang, refers publicly to "HIV and Aids"
but never to "HIV/Aids" because she still refuses to
acknowledge the connection between the virus and the
disease. Instead of providing the cheap and available
medication that could help people survive and live
without stigma, the government talks about the
medicinal uses of olive oil and the importance of diet
while the death toll continues to rise.

Zackie Achmat, the head of the well-organized
Treatment Action Campaign, is something akin to this
war's revolutionary leader. Openly HIV-positive, he
refuses to take anti-retrovirals on principle until
they are available free through the national health
system. He was locked up seven times by the old regime
for fighting apartheid, but he is prepared to go back
to jail under the watchful eye of the ANC government
if that's what it takes to help Aids sufferers. Of
this irony, he says, "it's like fighting against your
own parents." Ignorance is a powerful weapon, but so
is courage.

Last year I lost a friend in battle. She had been
trying to get out of a bad relationship for about five
years. One day after months of counseling she went to
the magistrate's court in downtown Johannesburg and
braved the jeering clerks. She walked out with a
protection order against the man who had been
physically and sexually abusing her since one week
after their first date. The next day, he went to the
poverty-stricken area where she had taken shelter.
There were no security guards, no fences, no gates,
and no streetlights to illuminate his approach. He
walked right up and shot her, again and again. She
died. The police have not arrested him. I quit
counseling survivors of domestic violence and rape and
started training police. This war is quiet, with no
discernible beginning and no visible end.

Two American visitors came to Joburg last week, an old
Harvard friend who has just finished 27 months in the
Peace Corps in Zambia and one of his colleagues. On
our way to dinner, a car started dangerously
tailgating me down a narrow street. As soon as I
could, I pulled over to let the car pass. Instead, the
driver pulled up next to me. Inside the car was a
white male driver, and closest to my window his wife
held a baby of perhaps three years on her lap with no
seatbelt. The man, in a clear-cut case of road rage,
began yelling and accusing me of driving dangerously
when he had a baby in the car. I had no idea what he
was talking about so I did the respectable thing and
tried to de-escalate by putting my hands in full view
and remaining silent. When he was finished, I said
simply, "I'm sorry, now please move on." He responded:
"I'll decide when to move on, you stupid bitch. The
next time I'll take you out of that car and give you a
good hiding."

His baby started to cry and his wife looked straight
ahead as if in a trance. My de-escalation techniques
slipped as I told him not to speak to me that way.
Hearing my accent, he ordered my humble car full of
American idealists to "piss off back to our own
country" (and a few other things that don't bear
repeating). We ended up having a nice dinner anyway.

I forgot all about the man and his rage until I was
trying to get to sleep that night. Eyes wide open in
my bed in the dark, I was afraid and I was angry. I
pictured the man taking out his anger on his wife and
child as he had with me and I felt helpless. I
pictured him trying to drag me out of my car and give
me a good hiding. The war against fear, intimidation,
and hate is a very personal one, and I tune into it
daily.

The Bank Story Part II: Power and Protection

Six days after a Nedbank teller flashed my American
passport around a bank branch and announced my
presence to a somewhat hostile lunchtime crowd, I
chaired a seminar at the Institute for Security
Studies on violence against children. Several people
from the American embassy showed up to participate and
apparently enjoyed it enough to stay afterwards for
the lunch. One of my colleagues was telling the bank
story with half a mouthful of meat pie when one of the
embassy staff overheard it. The following day I
received a call about the incident and found myself on
the phone with the American regional security officer.
(They really liked the seminar! I thought.) The
officer asked me to come in and make a statement, but
I was ambivalent. Did I really want the United States
as an entity to be getting involved in one little
incident at the bank? I was over it, wasn't I?

The US embassy is in Pretoria. I craned my neck
checking street numbers to make sure I was headed in
the right direction. There was no need to fear missing
it, though: it takes up an entire city block and looks
like a serious military installation, or a downed
invader spacecraft. There is a huge wall around the
perimeter, police vehicles stationed at every corner,
and strange looking antennae protruding into the sky.
Across the street, the Embassy of Mali occupies a
charming colonial house with a gate that was swinging
half open next to a snoozing guard. The contrast made
me feel queasy. The US block exudes a sense of
imperial power and brute strength, with its flag
sticking out over the blank walls and the anti-tank
embankments around the outside. Why did it have to be
so walled in? Because someone blew up the last embassy
I visited in Nairobi.

It took me half an hour to get through security at the
gate. After I had finally been given clearance to
enter the compound, I imagined the Darth Vader theme
song playing as I walked up a steep stone ramp, past a
mirrored outside wall, and finally to the imposing
doors of the building itself. I turned over my
passport to a uniformed officer and got a badge, then
waited for my escort. The structure that houses
America's official presence in South Africa is like a
self-contained village. Familiar accents float by as
groups of people chat in open spaces, hallways, and a
large café area. The meeting itself was rather
uneventful: I didn't know the teller's name, nor did I
want specific reprisals against her. I just wanted
someone to make it clear to the bank that customer
privacy must be respected. I was assured that my great
country would, in no uncertain terms, open up a good
old-fashioned can of whoop-ass on the Nedbank
corporate headquarters. I was dismissed.

As I gathered my things at security, I noticed that my
hands were shaking. I suddenly felt the protection of
the powerful in a very personal way-even allowed
myself a sense of relief that I am considered
important enough to be worthy of regional security
attention. But there was also a vague undercurrent of
unpleasantness about the whole affair. I thought of
the guard sleeping on Mali's side of the street.
Perhaps it was the guilt of being officially counted,
and held accountable, in the "for us" column when I
know there are innocents in the "against us" ledger
who don't really belong there. (I wondered if my
mother, an American who was born in Beirut, would have
been afforded the same kind of sympathy. I doubted
it.) Maybe it was a feeling of helplessness that even
and perhaps especially the most idealistic Americans
are targets of hate. I struggle, sometimes blindly,
against the idea of a world where war dictates
identity and fear is more powerful than peace.

Coming of age, again, in Africa

As I write this, I'm at the Stanley Hotel in central
Nairobi, Kenya. I'm here for a week doing preliminary
work on a project I'm heading for the ISS examining
the demand side of the gun market in Kenya. It has
always been a dream of mine to stay at the Stanley, a
distinguished old colonial relic ("since 1902") that
was frequented by the likes of Hemingway, Denys Finch
Hatton, Edward Prince of Wales, and even Clark Gable.
Kenya's first locally brewed beer was served in the
bar here in 1923. My first time in Kenya in 1994, when
I was teaching in a community school in the rural
Western province, I lived in a mud hut frequented by
chickens and sometimes a very loud rooster. Delicacies
such as live termites were served in my hut, but
rather unceremoniously out of an old coffee can.

I remember taking the night bus from Kakamega to
Nairobi for the day with a fellow teacher back then.
Neither of us had showered or seen a mirror in weeks
when we rolled into the Stanley to splurge on
breakfast. First, we snuck upstairs to the first floor
restaurant bathrooms and marveled at the marble as we
washed up in the sinks. (A maid happened in, but we
asked her nicely in Swahili to please not kick us out
and she just laughed.) Afterwards, we headed down to
the Thorn Tree Café and stuffed our faces with
waffles, and our bags with extra food for our host
families and souvenir napkins and silverware for our
villages. I can admit this now because I've become
so-well, legitimate-a well-scrubbed paying guest with
a suitcase full of respectable clothes.

For old times' sake, I still always pack a flashlight,
travel towel, mosquito net, and knife just in case.
And not in vain, as it turns out. I needed them during
the one unexpected night I had to spend at a different
hotel en route to the Stanley, a rowdy brothel with no
linens and an overly enthusiastic nocturnal clientele.
I can't seem to outgrow adventure around here.

OutpatientsOnline.com

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2nd July 2003

"Faith is the daring of the soul to go further than it
can see."

-Elle Botha's kitchen refrigerator magnet

"We did not travel this road to become a nation of
hijackers. We did not travel this road to become a
nation of women and child abusers. We did not travel
this road to become corrupt."

-Desmond Tutu on post-apartheid South Africa. At
Walter Sisulu's funeral, Orlando Stadium, Soweto. May
17, 2003

Open Door, Blue Sky

She was a skydiver. On Sunday, June 22nd, 2003, Elna
Botha of Melville, Johannesurg, struggled to open her
reserve parachute until about 100 feet above the
ground. She hit the ground very hard and died on
impact. Elle was one of my best friends. I was
standing on the ground looking up at the sky when it
happened. I saw her cut away her malfunctioning main
parachute, and watched that canopy as it drifted down.
When I looked back up for the standard white reserve,
the sky was empty.

Three people went to the scene where she died. Eric,
the Chief Instructor, and Deon, the Duty Instructor,
were required to be there. I was there on behalf of a
third instructor who was several beers to the wind
within five minutes of the incident. I cannot describe
what I saw, and even if I could I wouldn't want to
share it. What I witnessed was the naked truth of
human fragility, and the truth of that particular time
and place belongs only to the three of us who were
there. Late afternoon sun glowed through opaque clouds
on the horizon. The wind had died and the air was
still. The ground was as solid as it has always been:
without remorse, uncaring, beyond moralizing.

After helping the police and coroners and arranging
for someone to call the family, I remembered that her
two dogs would have to be fed. Friends offered to
accompany me to her house so that I could drive her
car back and then get a ride home. The first thing we
did was to call the security company on the sign
outside the gate. We wanted to avoid being shot as
intruders by armed response if we tripped an alarm.
Life suddenly seemed cheap again in Johannesburg.

The dogs seemed as though they knew. The house was
just as she had left it, and I refused to contemplate
the finality of her absence. From 3pm when she hit the
ground until 7:30pm when I finally arrived home to my
own empty flat, I was in efficiency mode, a place of
necessity. I didn't shed a tear. My fingers had
swelled slightly with the pressure of keeping in the
horror, as though my skin could barely contain the
enormity of what I had seen. When it was safe to let
the grief out, there were torrents.

The grief is selfish, now that the anger has run its
course. It is a lonely kind of sadness. Others mourn
the Elle they knew. I also mourn the pictures of death
I carry with me, pictures that have aged me in
intangible ways. A crumpled white canopy, just out of
its container, shrouding part of her like an angel's
wing. I have to accept that Elle's body was not the
definition of her being. My friend's spirit had long
gone from that dry, desolate spot in the veldt where
the pieces of her lay silent.

Elle Botha: she lived not just to subsist, but to grow
and transform herself and those around her. She died
in flight, doing what she loved. I grieve, not for her
soul that has gone from here, but for the laughter,
companionship, shared pasta dinners, and hot cups of
lemon ginger tea that I will miss. I sometimes try to
wish that I hadn't seen what I did, but I can't. I
felt love for my friend even in the prosaic vigil of
being at that place with police tape and orange cones
and vans and men with badges. I was there to honor her
death.

Chasing Justice

On a quiet Sunday morning in May, I was fast asleep
and diligently adhering to Operation Sleep In and Have
a Day Off. The phone by my bed interrupted the peace
at 7:30am, and within five minutes I was in my car
starting what would be a very long week. A friend
(we'll call her "M") had been assaulted in the middle
of the night by her ex-boyfriend. I knew them both
fairly well, but hadn't seen it coming. I was angry.
Through my morning grogginess on the phone, I heard
her saying, "I thought I was better than this."

One eye was swollen shut and black, making half her
face into a darkened mask. He had punched her
repeatedly and then kicked her when she was on the
ground, injuring her shoulder. There was blood crusted
in her hair where the back of her head hit the floor,
and she was shaking in the early winter cold. The
police had been called, and we waited for the officer
to arrive and take a statement. Minutes passed. We
called again. The voice at the other end of the line
said someone was on the way.

The female officer arrived in civilian clothes and sat
down with us. She was unprepared to open a docket or
take a statement. Instead, she gave a brief lecture on
how, if we managed to get a protection order, we
should be careful of whom we got to serve the order on
the assailant. "Our blacks," she said, "believe that
it is okay in their culture to beat women." With those
few words, she invalidated the experience of the white
survivor sitting in front of her (beaten by a white
man). The facts sitting at the table that morning
seemed not to change her opinion.

The treatment wasn't much better at the hospital. M
got decent medical care, X rays of her head and
shoulders, and a doctor who initially refused to fill
out the legal form documenting injuries. Eventually
(encouraged by my harsh words when I took him aside to
explain his duty) he took pen to paper, but said he
was unqualified to determine what had caused the
injuries. He wrote only that he detected a smell of
alcohol on the victim. I took photographs of the
wounds with the policewoman's camera and made a mental
note to get a second doctor's opinion on the causes of
injury.

I drove M home to her parents' house after the hours
of paperwork and medico-legal ordeals. They were
horrified at how she looked. By the end of the day, I
started to realize how scary it was for me to be
helping someone through this process yet again. An
angry ex-boyfriend shot my last client after being
served with a protection order. I wasn't sure I was
ready to be jumping back in, especially with someone I
cared about as a personal friend.

Sometimes, though, there is no choice but to be there.
By Tuesday she was ready to go to court. The long line
outside Room 22 would have made for days of waiting if
I hadn't pushed my way to the front. I was dressed in
a suit and didn't openly state that I wasn't a lawyer:
anything to get M what she needed. We joked that I
should just buy myself a black robe and pose as a
magistrate. The real magistrate granted the temporary
protection order and a final hearing date, but refused
to attach a suspended warrant of arrest. It took three
tries to get the wording on the order correct. No one
at the court would tell us who was responsible for
serving the order on M's assailant.

Two days later I found myself in a patrol car heading
for his house. The police had offered to be my backup,
but refused to serve the order themselves. I wasn't
sure whether to laugh or cry as I clutched the form he
had to sign and stood at the door with two uniformed
officers behind me. He wasn't home. The following day,
I called in a favor from a friend at police
headquarters and had him threaten the officers with
disciplinary action unless they served the order
within the day. I got a full salute the next time I
entered the station.

Three weeks after that, I sat in a small office with
M, the assailant, and his lawyer. Also present were
the assailant's sister, a witness on M's behalf, and a
senior magistrate. M's hands were sweating so much
that water poured from them whenever she unclenched
her fists. The air was heavy with tension. The
circulation of the photographs, my chat with his
lawyer, and M's statement that she had had enough of
courts swayed the magistrate beyond argument. I was
proud to be her advocate and her friend as we left
with warrant of arrest in hand.

Why is justice such a difficult chase? I wish that no
one needed me to bully police, attempt to serve
protection orders myself, yell at medical
professionals, and push to the front of the line.
Still, I do it because I can.

IMPACT South Africa

Perhaps because I have seen so many women at the
crisis end of the trauma cycle, it has been my dream
for the last year to offer people and communities
something other than crisis management. I have been
working to start an Impact self-defense and
empowerment program (also known in the US as Model
Mugging) in Johannesburg. I took my first Impact/Model
Mugging class when I was 19 years old and went on to
complete several advanced classes on weapons and
multiple assailants. In 1996, a New York Times article
documented my successful use of the physical
techniques while on assignment as a Let's Go travel
writer in Jordan.

This month, after a lot of planning and leaps of
faith, the dream became a reality. Lynn Auerbach,
executive director of Impact Boston
(www.impactboston.com), flew in with a total of three
instructors to live in my flat for nearly five weeks
and help me launch IMPACT South Africa. Instructors
Jim Watson, Robin Colodzin, and Rufus Royal
volunteered their time to be here.

Raymond Phillips, a South African who teaches
kickboxing professionally, has trained as my male
instructor and partner. IMPACT is unique because the
male instructor wears a full suit of padded armor that
students can practice hitting full force. Both Raymond
and I completed nearly 100 hours of instructor and
fight training, a complement to over a week of
training I did in Boston in December. Our classes this
month included women, children, and teens in the
townships, inner city, and suburbs.

Physical self-defense is only part of the equation.
IMPACT focuses on the mental and emotional aspects of
boundary setting, relationships, and self-esteem. We
offer a new way of perceiving what our rights are in
the world and how to exercise them with safety and
awareness. The class is safe, non-judgmental, and
non-competitive, and can be part of the healing
process for survivors of violence.

Johannesburg is a place of fear for most people who
live here. It's not just the epidemic levels of child
abuse, rape, hate crimes, and murder; it's the way we
are all afraid to stop the car at intersections after
dark because hijackers could be lurking out of sight.
It's the way guns are used out of proportion to the
force necessary to snatch cell phones, wallets,
jackets, grocery bags. It's the way houses have high
walls, spiked gates, armed response guards, and
informal shacks have nothing but deadly hot coals to
heat the winter air. Most Joburg residents are
survivors of some kind of violence, even if only the
violence of living in perpetual fear.

Empowerment is not the denial of that fear, but a more
aware way of using it. Throughout the month of June,
we set out to teach and transform the way people think
about defending themselves. We watched as 16-17 year
old girls in Soweto started to use their voices,
articulating their histories and fears and finding the
power to claim their future. We watched as 10-year-old
children in the impoverished mining community of
Riverlea discovered that they have a right to be safe.
We witnessed lesbians who face the threat of hate
crimes in the inner city claiming their right as full
citizens of this country. We listened as professors at
a major university voiced their renewed intention to
work together for gender equality in higher education.


I believe that IMPACT South Africa is going to change
the way entire communities define fear, safety, and
empowerment. I hope to grow it as an organization
until I can hand it over to a South African director
as a lasting initiative. Until then, I will continue
learning and growing into the person I want to be:
someone who can create a safe bridge for those willing
to cross to the other side of pain.

With great faith,
-Taya

OutpatientsOnline.com

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That's all of them, a lot of text I know but well worth reading.

Gus

OutpatientsOnline.com

[GiaKrembs 0]

WOW, what an amazing and brave woman. Here's to Taya!!!

Raddest ho this side of Jersey #1 - rest in peace brother
Beth lost her cherry and I missed it
.... you want access to it, but you don't want to break it.