Looking Back

Distance and time offer a unique perspective into an event. With them, what may not have been fully understandable at first can be better comprehended. Distance provides a framework for comparison, while time allows for a full digestion of details. Information overloaded gives way to information understood. It is still difficult to look back on my experience in South Africa. Some stretches seemed to drag on forever while other moments drifted away into memories almost before they had a chance to occur. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully digest what happened on that continent or how I have been changed these past two months. I doubt my skills as a writer can do justice to what I discovered. Nevertheless, I have to try.

Before I even left for Cape Town I thought I had a fairly good grasp of what the city was like and how I was to function within it. However, foreshadowing one of the lessons I would repeatedly learn at Grassroot Soccer, the more you plan for something, the less likely it is those plans will be realized. I found out, soon after stepping off the plane, that different people would see the city in whatever way they wished to view it. While the social and economic injustices screaming against an advancing industrial nation rang loud in my ears, they would most likely fall deaf on others. It would have been easy to ignore the poverty and destitution breeding beneath the surface and instead focus on the celebration of decadence and commercialism quickly entrenching itself within the heart of the city.

However, straying from the popular tourist locales the harsh reality of the city began to take shape. I had heard crime was rampant in Cape Town but without experiencing that first hand I would not have known how to handle it. My first week in the city, I was the victim of two attempted muggings on my walk home from work. Granted, both attempts were quite weak, they still left a bitter taste in my mouth. From then on my natural instinct became not to trust people I was unfamiliar with. Due to this I avoided other detrimental encounters with the street life. However, it made it more difficult to meet locals and truly learn about what life was like in South Africa.

That is not to say my apprehension made it impossible to get out and take in the country. I have never considered myself a risk-averse individual and, regardless of previous negative encounters, the city was ripe with opportunities. I could not have lived in Cape Town for two month without noticing and reflecting on the race relations forged from the fall of an oppressive Apartheid regime. In the United States it’s almost as if we try to ignore race and its place in our lives. Instead of referring to someone as “black” it seems more politically correct to refer to some other defining characteristic about them (their clothes or personality, for instance). In South Africa race is brought out into the open much more frequently. Calling people black, white, or colored is very much acceptable. I never fully got used to this. I found it both uncomfortable and divisive to use this type of language. However, there was something strangely liberating about bringing race into the forefront of conversation. South Africans don’t try to ignore race. Indeed they cannot, the legacy of apartheid has engrained that in their culture. It surrounds virtually every issue and public debate. Its reach is inescapable and depth unimaginable. Understanding the role I played in this context occupied much of my time. Sadly to say, two months is not nearly long enough to figure out that answer, just long enough to provide me with many more unanswerable questions.

I am not so bold as to propose my reasons for traveling to South Africa were entirely altruistic. While one of my motivations was certainly to help bridge the disturbing gap between the have and the have-nots, another was gaining relevant work experience. I think, for the most part I accomplished both of these goals, although the lessons learned in this endeavor are perhaps more lasting. Grassroot Soccer is a large international NGO and it was sometimes difficult to see how my own role played into the overall goal of the organization. All of my projects were very novel and innovative. What I was doing was sometimes so new that there was not any example to look to. For instance, I was responsible for creating and designing a “passport” to use in a youth street soccer league which hadn’t yet even been formalized. The passport would simultaneously monitor and evaluate the program participants while providing an incentive structure for them to perform well. I couldn’t find anything similar for comparison. It felt like I spent countless hours on these passports sometimes without seeing any tangible result. Even when tangible signs of progress began to take shape it was hard to see how they would somehow prevent kids from contracting HIV and AIDS. This “crisis of purpose” is one which seems to continually plague the service lifestyle, and one which I did not want interfering with my work. I brought the issue up to my supervisor and he was able to offer me some lasting advice about my role in South Africa. He told me that while right now it’s hard to see how what I’m doing is effective, in six months time I will be surprised by how far along these projects that I’ve started have gone. Time moves differently in the NGO community, especially the African NGO community. The long-term success of the project was clouded by my short-term frustration with the details. Once, I learned to accept this it was much easier dealing with temporary setbacks.

One lesson which seemed to continually repeat itself that the more we planned for something, the less likely it seemed those plans were followed. That is not to say that planning was unimportant; it was crucial for what we did. It just seemed that planning from our office in downtown Cape Town was sometimes out of touch with what was actually happening in the field. GRS is committed to promoting grassroots change but I felt they could have given more control over to the actual coaches on the ground. Throughout the work I did I would constantly ask for information and be referred to the Master Coaches or people at the grassroots level. If planning and organizational work was all going to be done from the downtown office I think information should at least be more transparent. However, that is no small task and much of what I did involved tacking that very issue. The unpredictability of working in Africa required an open mind and an understanding that, despite my best planning, there would be plenty of opportunities for my best efforts to go haywire; all that could be done was to simply take what was given and adapt.

I mentioned earlier that time seemed to move differently. The combination of working in Africa and for an NGO seemed to slow time down to below what would have been acceptable in America. I had expected this cultural difference but it was still difficult to get used to. While frustrating, it gave me time to forge my own projects and create jobs that I thought were useful. In retrospect, I could have taken better advantage of that freedom. I sometimes fell into the trap of only doing the task I was assigned without reaching out for anything new. However, as with anything there was a learning curve. Towards the end of my stay my boss left for the United States on business, leaving me essentially leaderless the final few weeks of my internship. I was left with vague guidelines as to how my projects should end up, but no clear structure as to how to get there. With this freedom I began to take more initiative with my projects and apply new approaches to where I believed GRS could use the most help. This was a lesson I wish I could have learned earlier and one which I attribute a majority of my success.

I can’t help but feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity I have had working for GRS in Cape Town. I want to thank them, the Gigot Center at Notre Dame, the other Microventuring interns, and all the support of my friends and family to make this summer successful. While I have grown and learnt much as an individual over these past few months, I know my growth is not yet complete and that the experiences and lessons I’ve learned will continue to shape me down the road. Just like the work I did in combating HIV and AIDS, it may be difficult now to see how South Africa has affected me overall, but with time that change will be clearer. My mission this summer was to give hope to those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. I may not have immediately seen the merits of my work, but I look forward to learning about them down the road. On that day I’ll smile and know that halfway around the globe my efforts are making a difference in some kid’s life.