Just about up to date with South Africa!

August 12, 2013

The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians Conference was an intense 4 days of about 70 together at a conference type center near the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The Circle is nearly 25 years old and was founded by Mercy Amba Oduyoye who will turn 80 years old in October.

The schedule was very tight as paper after paper was presented to the assembled women with time for questions after each panel.  A panel consisted usually of four to five women who had papers on similar subjects.  For instance:  Gender, Religion Health and (Single) Women.  Different perspectives on different issues facing single women in differing countries were presented.

There were a total of thirteen panels and only two of them were run concurrently.  It was overload for myself and so I took several opportunities to enjoy space to myself in the room that I shared with one of the assistants at the conference. 

I also enjoyed the wide eyes that greeted me when the women would ask where I am from.  My standard answer has become “I am an American in mission in South Sudan.”  It is of course the South Sudan part that gets the wide-eyed reaction/response.  It appears to me that the global community has not done a good job of helping people understand that there are now two countries where one used to be.  Sudan and South Sudan.  I spent quite a lot of time educating people on the split, how long South Sudan has been independent and what are the challenges that each country is facing. 

The Circle has many books in publication now.  I learned that much of the production of the academic literature has taken place after the once-every-five-years meetings.  The Executive Committees would meet to create a framework and a topic for papers, then invite members to write papers that were then included in a published book for the Circle and also for readership beyond the Circle.  The books that were offered for sale this year included several that deal with HIV/AIDS, a very relevant and high focus issue in Africa today.  In fact in one of the panels, Gender, Health, HIV and Aids (Part Two) one of the Circle Women, Pauline Wanjiru Njiru, presented a paper that shared the plight of grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren in the era of HIV at Mai Mahiu, Kenya.  The said that these grandmothers are having to learn to be mothers again and they are facing stigma in light of this because the generation of daughters that they had finished raising have died from HIV/AIDS.  They are facing a lack of resources and are, in their own impoverishment, trying to care for the children of their dead children.

It was a difficult Conference in terms of the subject matter that was presented, in terms of the honesty that was present, and in terms of frank talk of the challenges that we as women face; both in Africa and beyond.  There were also times of celebration, joy, deep solidarity, despair, weariness and satisfaction that we are on this journey with sisters that understand one another.

I had time to reflect on troubled places in the world.  A lot of the troubledness has to do with colonialization, in whatever form it happens to present itself in.  Colonialization can be like a rose; a rose by any other name is still a rose.  OR, if it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, chances are that it is a rat.

In Belfast the deep societal divisions are caused by the choking relationship between Protestants and Catholics.  The root of this chasm goes back several centuries to the time that England allotted Irish land for plantations to Protestants from Scotland.  These Protestant Scots immigrated to Catholic Ireland and there has been upheaval ever since on the island of Ireland. 

In South Sudan there are deep tribal divisions.  My students in Malakal have told me that it was the British that stirred up the animosity between the tribes.  Apparently before the British and Egyptians colonized Sudan the tribes lived in relative peace (something like the situation in Palestine when previous to the creation of the Jewish State of Israel the Muslims and Christians and also the Jews who were present lived peacefully side by side).  The British created the idea of markings for each tribe and carried this out in such a way that the markings are still used, although the practice is dying out.  This is good in that they present health risks when they are performed. 

The United States and South Africa have both experienced deep racial divides between blacks and whites.  Another way to put this is that the divides are between black Africans and those who are from white European backgrounds.  When I heard about the story of colonialization in South Africa (and I am quite sure that I still have much to learn to be fully correct in my assessment) I understood that first the Dutch came, then the English, and somewhere in the mix came the French and the Germans.  When I have an Afrikaner (Dutch heritage) complain that only the black South Africans are able to find jobs I do not have much sympathy.  Who colonized whom?  Who was here first folks?  From my vantage it continues to be the black South Africans in servitude to the white European South Africans.  I’m not seeing too many South Africans of European background serving as maids and gardeners here.

In Soweto there was a Catholic Church that gave refuge to the black South Africans during apartheid.  I was so strongly reminded of Ebenezer Baptist and America’s own Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the army of unnamed women who were the backbone of our own Civil Rights Movement.  And then we could speak of/think of/cry many tears for the American Indians who have been displaced from THEIR land and cultures and languages by the very same white European colonists who created apartheid in South Africa.

I only began to under colonization, and this in an extremely rudimentary way, years ago at the beginning of my global life at a Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI) store in the Seattle area.  I was looking for an adaptor to take to Europe.  I still didn’t understand the difference between convertors (that change the electric current from the American 120 to the rest-of-the-world 220) and adaptors that are used to make the plugs on appliances fit the electric outlets of various countries.  I asked the clerk at the store why an adaptor that would work in England also worked in Hong Kong when they were at opposite ends of the world.  I heard my first, “colonization” at that moment.  And thus the education began….

When I was in the Philippines during my time in China I was surprised to find out that Spanish was no longer the language there.  I also found out that English was the language of access.  To education.  To medical services.  To anything that was necessary for a decent standard of living.  English was the language of the oppressor.  Granted Spain had been the first oppressor, but around the world the primary language of the oppressor is English.  Having said that, Arabic, French, German, and I am sure others, are also languages of oppressors.

I learned during my Europe year in 2006 that in a foreign country I needed to go to the best hotel in order to find someone that spoke English when I needed help.  The shopkeepers generally did not have that level of education. 

I also learned in the Philippines that there is a Filipino language!  Tagalot.  Then English.  Then if a student, or anyone else I suppose, still has a desire to learn more languages they can go for Spanish. 

Language and schooling is yet another issue.  I finally understood during my time in Khartoum why it is that missionary parents usually choose to put their children in schools for children of foreign parents, or to homeschool them.  If a missionary child in Khartoum had gone to a local school they would have been taught in Arabic.  Upon returning to their home country at whatever future date that child would be at a great disadvantage and also would not be on track with the curriculum that would be necessary to go on for higher education in her or his own home country.  I have heard of children who were not well enough grounded in any language to be able to progress well in studies.  Something to think about.

Blessings,

Debbie