and SMC student Jennafer McCabe with flowers
|
|
|
Worker at the Youth With a Vision Center presents Center Director Cynthia Nkosi
and SMC student Jennafer McCabe with flowers |
On a hill overlooking Johannesburg, South Africa’s sprawling city of nearly six million people, stands the Apartheid Museum where the horrors of one of the great inhumanities from the not so distant past live on.
The hilltop building is a somber concrete block with all the architectural charm of a bomb shelter. Its exterior is dwarfed by seven equally severe pillars rising high into the African sky, each engraved with one of the ambitious words that the new South Africa is pursuing: democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility, respect and freedom.
Each pillar is intended to remind visitors that, whatever political and racial schisms linger on in South Africa, those seven lofty goals remain firm.
|
|
SMC students working in a construction project at the
Youth with a Vision Center compound, near Dennilton, about 125 miles northeast of Johannesburg |
It’s 10,000 miles from the campus of Santa Monica College to this city nestled near the bottom of the African continent, but it was here in January where 28 SMC students pursuing majors as different as their backgrounds and led by faculty members Frank Dawson, professor of communication, and Nancy Grass Hemmert, professor of speech communication, came face-to-face with the disturbing mementos of the brutal racial laws that came close to tearing South Africa asunder.
As befits the troubled times it warns about, one gate to the Apartheid Museum admits only non-whites; the other is reserved exclusively for those of European ethnicity. Perhaps for the first time in their lives, the harsh reality of what South Africa was like less than two decades ago pummeled the SMC students with the mind-shattering ruthlessness of what government-mandated racial segregation could do.
The heartlessness of apartheid, a practice abandoned only as recently as February 1990, remains vivid and harsh within the walls of that Johannesburg hilltop structure whose principal goal is to shock. And it does.
Just inside the front door, visitors are greeted with a multitude of backlighted nooses hanging from the ceiling, each representing a political prisoner executed during apartheid’s grim and turbulent days. A stop here jolts the senses.
|
| Using a solar panel to boil water |
Elsewhere, the Apartheid Museum is full of moving displays charting the fate of the many South Africans—on both sides of the struggle—who played prominent roles in the eventual unraveling of apartheid. Through video, audio and careful detail, this place offers visitors a glimpse of the deep racial divisions that, to some degree, still haunt South Africa.
For most of the students, this first visit to a Third World country opened a door to reveal previously uncharted and unimagined vistas. Their journey brought them to a country they knew little about and their month-long study program turned out to be alluring, exotic and continually poignant.
While rapidly adapting to trivialities like crossing streets with traffic flowing in opposite directions, converting appliances to a different electric current, tasting obscure dishes, adjusting to a time zone 10 hours removed from their homes, etc., they found a culture full of surprises and wonder.
They began their South African educational experience lodged at the African Centre, a rather pleasant compound of bright bungalows some 15 miles from downtown Johannesburg. From here, they would set off to explore South Africa.
|
|
Student Jennifer Lorber chopping
vegetables with village cooks |
Teaching intercultural communication and broadcasting in the Rainbow Nation, Grass Hemmert and Dawson often found themselves lecturing on the bus while the students stared out the windows to the country rolling past. The eleven languages and multiple ethnic and tribal identities provided a rich context for Grass Hemmert to share with students how cultures develop and to provide tools for communicating cross culturally. Having taught intercultural communication for the past ten years, Grass Hemmert noted, “Delving into the cultures of South Africa with all its mystery, majesty, and sometimes misery provided a powerful backdrop for learning these important concepts. I am so impressed with how the students would hear about a concept or a theory in the morning and immediately apply it in the afternoon.”
The trip also proved an indispensable tool for Dawson, who has taught at SMC for 11 years, to demonstrate the different methods used by the broadcast media in foreign countries, especially when he led the group through an extensive and instructive tour of the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC), the media conglomerate most influential in dispensing both news and entertainment to this multi-cultural land.
“The one thing I’ll never forget about South Africa is the volunteer work. I called my mother and told her I cannot go back to the United States without helping out in my own community. My eyes have grown.”—SMC Student Michelle Goldstein
|
| SMC student Alisa Allapach |
The group visited television film sets where soap operas are taped, listened to local reporters explain the often difficult hurdles of reporting local news and spent some time touring modern recording studios used by local musicians.
Says Dawson: “Examining the differences separating the broadcast media in the U.S. and South Africa gives the students a clear glimpse of the problems faced by those who disseminate information and who also have the responsibility of altering the attitude, way of thinking and perhaps even change the course that some nations will take.”
This trip was also reflective of the SMC study abroad program, a methodology highly respected by scholastic institutions because of the profound effect the trips have on the students’ personal, academic, social and political growth.
In addition to providing an increased cultural awareness, improving the likelihood of academic success and enhancing personal development, SMC’s study abroad programs have also proved beneficial because participating students invariably return home with a new awareness of the world.
|
|
Student Julian Lee carrying a wheelbarrow
while Austin Pick paints a windowsill |
While studies remained the primary focus of their stint in South Africa, the program also brought the students to the other side of the world to practice first-hand the ideals of global citizenship and sustainable living practices.
Visiting the Apartheid Museum proved to be but a prelude to witnessing the remnants of apartheid, a horror that became real during a visit to Soweto, the troubled township where the spark that led to years of violence and the downfall of apartheid was initially lit.
This Johannesburg suburb is deep in political and historical meaning, having served as the eye of the storm that brought down apartheid. Soweto remains one of the country’s most dynamic areas, but it’s also one of its poorest towns. The SMC group toured community projects like daycare centers, schools and clinics offering a glint of hope for its residents.
Among other things, they discovered that the name Soweto is not African. It’s an acronym of the words “South Western Township,” and that the place is as synonymous to the South African civil rights struggle as Selma, Alabama, is to the United States. South Africans like to say that Soweto is so influential that if it sneezes, the country catches a cold, and that the history of the country cannot be understood if taken outside the context of Soweto.
The township is actually two different worlds co-existing within blocks of one another and clearly marked by contrasting lifestyles. On one side there are well-kept homes with sprawling lawns and modern conveniences. On the other, there are shantytowns where poverty and squalor are a way of life.
Yet, Soweto boasts of being the only place in the world having a street where two Nobel Prize winners either lived or still reside: Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, the two larger-than-life icons of South African racial reform.
|
| Students assisting in the building project |
The SMC group dipped their toes in the turbulent pool of South African modern history with a tour of a humble Soweto house on Vilakazi Street, where Mandela and his first wife Evelyn lived during the early years of struggle. The house, a tiny brick structure that still bears the scars of a fire set by white undercover police while searching for Mandela in the 60’s, is two blocks away from the walled brick home that is Desmond Tutu’s current residence.
Mandela’s former home is a repository of valuable photographs and documents vividly illustrating the poverty that he endured.
Immediately after visiting the Mandela house, the class made its way to Pieterson Square, Soweto’s shiny park dominated by a museum honoring 13-year old Hector Pieterson, who became a symbol of resistance after he was shot dead by police in June 1976 during a peaceful protest against a proposed law mandating Afrikaans as the official language in schools.
|
| Meal time at the Center |
What history now calls the “Soweto Uprising” immediately ensued after Pieterson’s death. Dozens of government buildings, police vehicles and stores were torched. On the first day of rioting, more than 200 mostly teenaged protesters were killed and, within days, world opinion turned against the apartheid regime to inexorably link Soweto to resistance against the government’s racial policies.
Today, while many problems remain, Soweto is a rather pleasant place with a booming industry. Tourists are plentiful and the Pieterson Museum is one of the most visited sites in town.
Some students gathered near the line of shrubs at its entrance, a landmark pointing to the exact spot where Pieterson was shot some 300 yards away.
Their mood turned somber and pensive in Soweto, especially when visiting Motsoaledi, a poverty-ridden township nearby where they learned how a new daycare center thrives amidst violence, drugs and poverty.
|
|
Nelson Mandela’s home,
Soweto, South Africa |
Says Maria Rodriguez, a student from Los Angeles who plans to transfer to UCLA next year: “Motsoaledi touched me emotionally because it marked the strong difference between the township and Johannesburg in of terms housing, education and quality of life. Entering the shantytown we were greeted by a friendly and energetic tour guide, Eric, who explained how residents live and how they manage to survive a rather grim situation without electricity or running water.
“There’s no school in Motsoaledi, except for that new day-care center. The children were friendly but bashful. All through our visit, children asked us for money, but we were encouraged not to give them any because doing so will create a culture of dependency. The children were so sweet and adorable, despite the fact that they live in low-income housing and in deplorable conditions. What brought tears to my eyes was knowing that they were unaware what life is like outside that ghetto.”
Most of the students echoed Rodriguez’s feelings, a sentiment made stronger three days later when they traveled to the village of Dennilton, about 125 miles northeast of Johannesburg and barely a spot on most maps, where they would assist in a building project.
|
| On the street in Soweto |
Dennilton is dominated by a rolling landscape under vast skies and a topography that in places could pass for the Great Plains of the U.S.
The town isn’t much. There are some brick houses and a few agricultural outlets and the place is known for being unknown—except for the modern curse of HIV/AIDS.
Here, AIDS cases have soared to astronomical proportions. Some estimates put the infection rate as high as 40 percent, a shocking figure even in a continent where some 6,500 persons are said to die from the disease every day and where health experts speculate that more than 6,000 persons between the ages of 15 and 24 acquire the virus every week.
HIV/AIDS has ravaged the Dennilton area, shattering families where both parents have died, leaving children to survive on their own and to roam in gangs local authorities call “hyenas.”
Billboards around town, some in crude language, warn about the disease in various graphic terms.
On the outskirts of Dennilton, the Youth With a Vision Village is a tiny beacon of hope against innumerable odds. Next Aid, a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization working to develop solutions to the problems facing African children, sponsors it. One of the village’s goals is to provide sustainable, community-driven, environmental and socially empowering solutions to the AIDS orphan pandemic.
|
| Child in day care center, Soweto |
Cynthia Nkosi is the founder of the village. She and her husband Jabu currently provide food and shelter for 12 orphans in the small cluster of structures comprising the village. This is a sad, poverty-ridden place in need of practically everything: medicine, food, building supplies, construction equipment, farming tools, etc.
It’s evident that the Nkosis face an uphill battle in their efforts to better the community. Cynthia is a jovial, attractive woman who oversees the children while Jabu supervises construction in the compound made up of the earthen buildings with straw roofs typical of the province.
This is mostly a backward and primitive place where modern facilities are practically non-existent and life is harsh. The Nkosis hope to enlarge the village with eight additional buildings to shelter an additional 48 children.
The students came to lend a hand in painting buildings, patching walls and constructing benches for a planned park which will be the community’s focal point.
Currently nine structures stand in the Youth With a Vision compound, but plans are underway to erect a dining hall, nursery school, two additional child-care centers, a community center and a guesthouse to accommodate the growing needs of the needy and the orphans of the surrounding area.
|
|
SMC students visiting South African Broadcasting Company’s
news studios in Johannesburg, South Africa |
SMC students also put the finishing touches to the new dormitories by plastering and painting walls.
Youth With a Vision gives new meaning to the words “sustainable living.” Vegetable patches provide food for the residents, a solar panel is often used for cooking, chickens are plentiful and the only thing lacking is construction materials.
According to Grass Hemmert, “The day’s work was an ideal opportunity for American collegians to see first-hand the problems facing the Third World and to realize that sustainable living is possible, even under dire circumstances.”
|
| Student Sean Anderson on safari in Kruger National Park |
Chris Harnish, an American architect with a long history in Africa who volunteers his work in impoverished countries says that, although basic, the benches the students built are likely to stand for one hundred years, while adding that the project is a “premier example of sustainable housing, low-impact building techniques and renewable energy practices.”
According to some students, the sight of orphans clinging to strangers who came from a part of the world full of amenities unknown here made all their efforts worthwhile.
Student Jasmine Hudson took notice of the children. “It’s one of the saddest things I have seen,” she says. “Those children, living in those conditions, broke my heart.”
Julian Lee, a second year student from Redondo Beach who changed his major from economics to communication after taking a class from Grass Hemmert, believes that the South Africa study abroad program proved that he made the right choice in changing majors.
|
|
In class with professor Frank Dawson at
Marc’s Camp on the edge of Kruger National Park |
“Economics was too rigid and didn’t offer the fulfillment I need to grow as a human being,” he says. “From the moment I set foot in this village, though, I knew that it was a special place. It made me realize how the world is different and yet so similar in many respects. No matter how rich, no matter how poor a country, the problems remain the same. Helping here may not matter much, and whatever I did to help may have been but a tiny contribution, but lending a hand made me feel like a wealthy man.”
A native of Brazil who moved to Indiana as a child, Lee hopes to transfer to the U.C. system sometime next year. He lives in Los Angeles and uses public transportation to commute to SMC after selling his car to pay for the South African study program.
After completing most of the painting and repairs in the Youth With a Vision project, the students were treated to a celebratory lunch consisting of roasted chicken and fresh vegetables from the communal patch. The orphans sang and danced to traditional Zulu melodies after the meal.
After Dennilton the group moved to a place so untypical of Africa that many compared it to an Asian movie set. This is a sprawling Buddhist complex run by the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist branch that came to South Africa in 1992 to build a seminary and temple near Bronkespruit in the country’s northeast. The resulting Nan Hua Buddhist retreat is considered one of the most important Buddhist centers on the continent.
|
|
SMC students Olga Lopez, Austin Pick
(white dress) and Travis Finfrock |
Here, the SMC students were briefed about the intricacies of the Buddhist faith and sampled vegetarian meals prepared in the sparkling temple kitchens by novice Buddhist nuns. The following morning they were led through the temple to learn about the strict regimen followed by Buddhists, both Asian and African, residing on the grounds.
An overnight stay at the seminary was followed by a four-hour drive northeast toward the Mozambique border to Marc’s Camp, a quaint safari lodge at the edge of Kruger National Park. Here, they attended classes on communication and sociology, listened to lectures focusing on the ecological problems plaguing South Africa and got a close look at the fabled South African fauna.
Many showed surprise to learn that Kruger is made up of a variety of landscapes and ecosystems that make the park seem like a different world.
The rivers crisscrossing Kruger National Park thrive with crocodiles and hippos and the savannah is dotted with trees favored by elephants, tsessebes, elands and nayala—a deer that congregates every morning to munch on the well-kept lawns in front of the lodge.
|
| University of Cape Town campus |
While at Marc’s Camp, the students and faculty lived in tree houses, were lulled to sleep by eerie jungle sounds and awakened at dawn by the noisy antics from a multitude of monkeys that like to romp in the trees.
Kruger is one of the world’s best protected ecological zones. Its rigid conservation policies and ease of access lure visitors from all over the world. The reserve is as large as Rhode Island and the SMC group traversed its roads viewing exotic animals while listening to detailed explanations from expert guides about African wildlife.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic events occurred when they stumbled on the uncanny sight of two of the deadliest snakes in the world, a five-foot long Mozambique spitting cobra engaged in a struggle with a puff adder of the same size. A group of mongoose stood on the sidelines waiting to challenge whichever snake survived the death struggle.
This was such a rare sight that even the guide, a veteran of more than 18 years’ experience in the bush, claimed to have never seen such thing.
The spitting cobra managed to kill the puff adder and was in the process of swallowing it when the mongoose scared it off and pounced on the dead puff adder.
From there, the astounded group continued its trek across the veldt’s typically flat terrain. The Lebombo Mountains, rising in the east near the Mozambique border less than 12 miles away, rose on the horizon.
|
| Resident of Capetown |
Most visitors come to Kruger to see the “Big Five” African animals: elephant, lion, rhinoceros, leopard and Cape buffalo. During their visit the students saw four of the five, missing only the leopard, a nocturnal cat known for its timidity.
While at Marc’s Camp, Dawson and Grass Hemmert lectured in a hut, often with inquisitive monkeys looking in.
Most students considered Kruger the highlight of the trip.
According to Katrina Walker, a second year communication major from Los Angeles, “This was an incredible experience, something I never thought I would do. The entire stay at the camp seemed like a dream. I never imagined that I would stay in a tree house and see all those exotic animals up close, animals that in L.A. you see only in the zoo. Being in that camp, in Africa, made me feel like I was really in tune with nature and everything around me. I felt very close to the earth.
“I particularly liked how the guides gave us much information about the animals and the natural aspect of the African wilderness while teaching me things I would never have known otherwise. They explained very clearly everything about the circle of life.”
During the last evening of their visit the students were treated to a native dance recital by nearby villagers who came to the camp to chant and dance to the hypnotic rhythm of tribal drums in the glow of a campfire. It was here when a member of their group was chosen as induna, or chief of the visiting group. He, in turn, was coaxed to challenge the induna of the native group for supremacy. The visitor was asked to pick three “wives” from the co-eds who, in turn, had to dance with the three wives of the village chief. During this ceremony the students learned that the average dowry for a wife generally is 13 cows, and that only villagers who own large herds engage in the ancient practice of polygamy.
|
| Resident of Capetown |
Visiting a native village was an eye-popping experience. Called kraal, the Zulu settlements near Marc’s Camp consist of a cattle enclosure ringed by huts surrounding the induna’s main house, which traditionally is roomier than the rest. The floors are made of cow dung mixed with mud and pounded into a hardened surface. A single window filters in the harsh African sun.
Domestic chores, such as grinding corn or weaving, are the exclusive domain of females, while males tend to the cows or goats that provide milk and meat. It’s a rugged life in an unforgiving land.
After leaving Marc’s Camp, the group stopped at Blyde River Canyon in the province of Mpumalanga, an inland region where the savannahs of the high veldt roll onto plains. Mpumalanga holds some of the most spectacular scenery in South Africa.
Some students likened the Blyde River Canyon to “Arizona’s Grand Canyon with trees.” This 16-mile long natural marvel was carved by its roaring river millennia ago and is considered to be the most spectacular natural sight in South Africa.
Here, the wonders of the country unfold in a panorama that stuns the senses. The canyon is a rugged wonderwork of nature as craggy as it’s beautiful, with billowing clouds and the sun casting eerie shadows on the canyon walls as the thundering river roars far below.
Most of the students were in a pensive mood during the bus ride to Johannesburg where they boarded a commuter flight to Cape Town. Cape Town, known as “The Mother City,” is a lively, colorful place with 3.1 million inhabitants plus uncounted millions living in its outskirts. It has touches of Amsterdam and London, giving it a singular flavor unlike any other city in Africa.
|
| In class with professor Nancy Grass Hemmert at the University of Cape Town |
Its residents are called Capetonians and are a mixture of races and cultures. The city has everything: culture, music, distinctive architecture, nightlife, museums and a blend of lifestyles that permeate its liberal outlook. Its closest counterpart in North America would be New Orleans; in Europe, Marseilles.
But despite its beauty and exotic flair, Cape Town seethes with problems. In its Cape Flats section, where most poor Capetonians live, full racial harmony remains a dream. The city is also plagued by atrocious economic, health and social dilemmas. It, too, is undergoing an epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and the level of drug-related crimes, even in its most livable districts, is astounding.
Most students approached the city with a sense of wonder. An orientation tour the morning after their arrival took them through local landmarks such as the Iziko Castle of Good Hope, South Africa’s oldest structure, dating back to the 15th century when it serve as a fort to protect the harbor. Today, the castle is a museum housing relics from Cape Town’s colonial era.
|
| A traditional Zulu dance |
Later they walked around the Company Garden, a leafy expanse in the heart of Cape Town, first cultivated in 1652 to provide ships with fresh vegetables and supplies. In the center of the garden stands a pear tree planted in the 1600’s and believed to be the oldest cultivated tree in Africa.
From here, they proceeded to Bo-Kaap, the Muslim quarter, full of brightly painted houses where they saw a historic Koran in the oldest mosque in South Africa where they were briefed on the riveting history of Muslims (or Cape Malays, as they are called) who were brought here as slaves. The haunting call of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from atop a bright minaret added a counterpoint to the sound of traffic from the streets.
The students and teachers lived for more than two weeks in dormitories built in 1928 at the University of Cape Town, an elegant campus on top of a hill, where Dawson and Grass Hemmert lectured in a vintage hall that once served as a reception hall for visiting dignitaries.
The students experienced university life in a foreign country while gaining considerable knowledge about South Africa.
There were additional sidetrips to places like the Cape of Good Hope, the promontory that’s the southeastern-most geographical point in Africa. They also visited The Boulders, an African penguin rookery, where they saw the fragile line separating these magnificent birds from extinction.
|
| Fog rolling over a suburb of Cape Town |
A group went on an excursion to dive with the fabled white sharks of South Africa. Others visited the open-air markets of the city’s Greenpoint area and Greenmarket Square—a park facing the balcony of Government House, where Nelson Mandela gave his first public speech after being released from prison. There was also an excursion to Robben Island, the prison where many of the anti-Apartheid activists were held on flimsy charges. Later, there was a long hike to Tabletop Mountain, Cape Town’s iconic and majestic landmark.
While most mornings were spent in class, afternoons were generally set aside for community work in Khayelitsha, an impoverished township about 14 miles southeast of Cape Town.
There are two types of townships in South Africa: informal and formal. The former are made up of tiny brick homes with corrugated tin roofs. The latter are composed entirely of shacks built from whatever available material can be slapped together with anything the residents can find. These are horrendous, unsanitary, ramshackle, fly-ridden structures that most visitors find appalling.
Khayelitsha, an informal township, is the largest black ghetto in sub-Saharan Africa—home to an estimated 1.2 million impoverished residents living in abysmal conditions.
Working with a program founded by Hope Worldwide, a humanitarian organization devoted to improved living conditions in South Africa, the students volunteered in daycare centers, AIDS counseling clinics and experienced life in an “informal” South African township.
|
| Long Street in downtown Cape Town |
More than four days of lectures and classes were held in the shantytown where they saw first-hand the plight and desperation of Khayelitsha residents. The students were separated into two groups, with Grass Hemmert leading one, while Dawson—who was making his fourth visit to South Africa and was escorting his second study group—took the other.
For most students Khayelisha was a jarring experience, especially when they toured the threadbare facilities of places such as Vivian Zilo’s Khayelitsha Soup Kitchen, a community help center run by Zilo who, with the help of World International and a local group called the Workforce Group, feeds up to 200 persons daily in her rather primitive facility.
“It’s a constant struggle,” says Zilo, recounting once again the appallingly high incidents of HIV/AIDS in her township. She and her family of seven live in a tiny house that doubles as community meeting point, food distribution center and AIDS clinic.
The students sat through an AIDS support group meeting and were particularly touched by an AIDS-stricken infant sleeping soundly on the concrete floor while flies hovered over her face. Most of the adults around her were afflicted with HIV or AIDS.
“The American students can make a big difference,” says Zilo, adding that she hopes that word of her plight will spread in the U.S. “These students are seeing how we live and I pray that they will be networking for us. It’s through them that I hope the world will know we exist. Any help we receive as a result from their visit will mean much to us. We are so happy they are here.”
Zilo founded the Iliso Care Society to help HIV/AIDS victims. Presently, she also feeds homeless and orphans.
|
| Children of Khayelitsha |
For Thomas Melburn, a first-year film student, who received a partial grant to travel with the study abroad program, South Africa—and Khayelitsha in particular—was a trip of self-discovery.
“I’ve been thinking about Khayelitsha for about a week and still can’t put into words what draws me there,” he says. “I seem to find myself in a different mental state when I’m there. It’s very humbling, to watch all those who have AIDS. It’s not necessarily culture shock. It’s something that’s very difficult to explain. I think everyone in our group was shocked when they first saw the township.”
That “shock” soon was replaced with empathy.
According to Michelle Goldstein, “the one thing I’ll never forget about South Africa is the volunteer work we did in Dennilton and in Khayelitsha. The best experience here wasn’t the shopping, clubbing or the amazing restaurants where we ate. We didn’t come here for that. What makes it worthwhile is to see the smiles and love in the beautiful faces of the children. I called my mother and told her that I cannot go back to the United States without helping out in my own community. My eyes have grown.
“It’s quite sad that I had to leave my own country to realize that there’s tremendous poverty and suffering in my own country as well. I’ll never be the same.”
|
| Children of Khayelitsha |
Frank Dawson agrees. “By spending some time in this impoverished township, I think the students have gained a greater understanding of the delicate balance of resources that people outside the U.S. depend on to survive,” he says. “I believe that they will no longer take for granted the great resources that are readily available in our country. I also feel that this program will impress upon them the reality that whatever they do with their own lives has a definite impact on people throughout the world. They have gained a much greater sense of responsibility, and when they read or hear the news they’ll be able to put a face to the less fortunate who live where resources are lacking. They most certainly will have a greater understanding of what global citizenship means, that we are all a world community—and that people everywhere are not much different.”
Nancy Grass Hemmert was impressed by the growth some students showed during the study program. “It’s been fascinating to see so much maturity happening in such a short time,” she says.
“Several students have begun to reassess life in the U.S., recognizing that we have similar problems of poverty and racism in our own country. In many ways, the problems of Kayelitsha are not dissimilar to those in Los Angeles, and some students have posed a difficult question. They ask: ‘If this is a Third World country, what does that make Los Angeles?’ Several want to go home and start a club on campus to support Hope Worldwide and begin looking at the issues caused by poverty.”
|
| Entertaining children at a daycare center in Khayelitsha |
For student Jennafer McCabe, the South Africa study abroad program seemed surreal and she claims that her life will never be the same.
“I couldn’t forget South Africa even if I wanted to,” she says. “It would be easy to go home and tuck it in the back of my mind. But I won’t. I have a little pin that I’ll keep with me for a long time. It’s the South African flag and I plan to carry it everywhere, on the visor of my car, or pinned to my blouse, or in my purse. That pin will be a constant reminder of the sad things I saw here, the sounds I heard here and the poverty that bowled me over. It’ll also remind me that, when I go home, it’ll be hard to complain about things that really don’t matter much.”
“The day’s work was an ideal opportunity for American collegians to see first-hand the problems facing the third world and to realize that sustainable living is possible, even under dire circumstances.” — Nancy Grass Hemmert, SMC Professor of Speech Communication
For an Easy, Affordable Move into American Culture…
Santa Monica College is #1 in transfers to UCLA and the University of California. Many international students choose Santa Monica College to begin their college careers because of SMC’s transfer success, high quality teaching, and low cost.
Intensive ESL at Santa Monica College will help you make real progress in college. This program offers a strong plan to help students improve their skills in speaking, reading, listening, and writing English. For admission requirements and more information, you can contact SMC’s International Education Center on the main campus, or call (310) 434-4217. For information on the web, go to www.smc.edu/international.
SPEAK / READ / LISTEN / WRITE
20 hours a week of English instruction in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Classes are provided at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. This is the best program to help you improve your TOEFL scores in a short time! Students can begin the academic program at Santa Monica College from any level. Classes begin June 16, 2008. Tuition is $1,500.
“Coming to a new country, it’s better to start small… SMC really helped! Intensive ESL is like a little community—you spend a lot of time with other students and the teachers are right there taking care of you!”
— Galina Inzhakova, transfer student to UCLA