Capetown, and all that THAT entails.

Our epic journey down the Garden Route has culminated in arrival in Capetown. En route, we hit Tsitsikamma National Park (and an afternoon hike along coastal cliffs that ended at a waterfall with a deep pool at its base that merged directly with the ocean - a view that kept you turning, trying to figure out which side to take in first); Swellendam (coinciding with
the finals of the rubgy World Cup - at 10pm, when South Africa won we were a mile and a half outside of town, but heard a roar rise simultaneously out of the bars and households and carry on for a solid hour - punctuated by horns and sirens and yelling); Cape Agulhas (the southernmost tip of Africa, where the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean swirl together. We screamed poetry off of these rocks, to be carried in both directions around the world.)

Lining the aisles of highway in to Capetown, the township stretches out - a writhing mass of human existence all on top of itself, each little space punctuated by a tiny house of corrugated tin , cardboard, and old scrap wood - but inevitably brightly colored and oddly vibrant. The township is broken up by the 18 blocks of continuous graveyard that expands at an exponential rate as the AIDS crisis swallows up these communities.

There is just something about South Africa. This country has such palpable, powerful, and recent history that it sneaks its way inside you and that part in everyone that questions the status quo is strengthened by the active way that people here question justice and what is right and the direction of their future. We have spent the last two days working with our students in the townships - at day care centers (creches), soup kitchens, and participating in community workshops. The creches dot the township - one every few blocks, filled with the burgeoning population of preschoolers whose tiny adorable faces sickeningly represent the blatant lack of family planning and the generation that will grow up to the tradition of funerals every Saturday morning, domestic violence, and drug abuse.

Nelson Mandela has a powerful quote that reads something like: "people are just people, a product of the environment they grow up in". This quote has been on repeat in my head the last few days as I have been at the same creche - helping out a teacher who has no assistant with a class of 42 four year olds. Think of the last four year old you talked to. What did they know? What had they seen in their few years? What had they absorbed in their sponge-like manner of gathering knowledge about the world?

In the morning, driving into the township, I saw a man going after another man's head with a shovel. The second man was defending himself with a pitchfork, and the wife was trying to separate the two. In the afternoon, working at the creche, I saw one child grab another's head and try to run with him into a wall. I saw a child trip another and then kick him in the stomach the way you might see on an episode of Cops. I also saw a child immensely proud of his ability to write numbers all the way up to a hundred, another who - after shoving a second child out of the way to read a book - was passionately interested in naming all the creatures in the ocean and finding out what made each one of them unique. These children are just children - and they receive the benefit of a parent or a sister or an uncle who loves them the way any other child would, and they get the violence of living in a violent place. They are so complicated at four years old.

I was sickened by the neon orange plastic breath of children after snack time - when each of them pulled out their bags of chips and their candy, cookies, lollipops and sugared drinks. Toothy smiles of four year olds with teeth blackened and rotting at the edges. But its cheaper here to buy a bag of chips than it is to buy a piece of fruit.

Why is that? Who is profiting off of this population of young children who need to eat? I look at the labels. Nestle. Kraft. Coca Cola.

Its been a long time since I hit a really emotional place with poverty. I did yesterday. So much of the "white" response to townships is to assume that these people are backwards, uneducated about nutrition or hygiene or child care, sadly incapable of loving or teaching their children. And yet, these generations speak Afrikaans - the "language of the oppressor". It is a gruesome reminder in every day speech that people were forcibly removed not that long ago from the societies that they were historically a part of, and forced into an environment like this one. And then we swoop in, the charitable heroes on the job, ready to pity, to educate, to cluck knowingly at the ineptitude of a group of people, living in such horrendous conditions, politely shocked that they can't, or won't, or don't know how to change their situation. And yet we know so little about why they're there, about what knowledge people had that has since been lost. A group of people chopped off from their roots. I've written about it before.

Yesterday afternoon, however, we crammed into one room of the organization Generation for Change. 15 or so high school kids from the township join us. As the afternoon progresses, they give performance after performance - hip hop dancing, singing, dramas. We respond with our usual perfected version of "Lean on Me" and quite a few helpless glances when asked to respond. (We did rise to the challenge however, performances out of nowhere, and a rather remarkable rendition of our national anthem). This group, Generation for Change, is a group of high schoolers from the township who decided that they are the only ones who can make things better for themselves. They run an after school program for the young people of the community - and high schoolers teach the kids around them - hip hop, singing, poetry, drama. They help to facilitate workshops on drug abuse, on how to get a job. They start soccer teams. As they sing "Change/ its something that we have to do/ now or never/ for worse or for better". To them, there's little choice. This is the struggle.

Dynamic. Inspired. Local. Oddly aching, for knowing what one's struggle is - for launching wholeheartedly and completely into it. And yet, for the first time in awhile, a lot of self-reassurance that this local action idea works. We can all struggle in our own struggles, and be in solidarity with each other.

So thats where we are.