the struggle

Day Ten
Some nuggets from the morning’s conversation revolving around how we might be more involved in social change where we live:

“There are ditches we slide into,” Andrew said, “like believing that if we do something, it has to happen for everyone. Instead, it might be better to ask: Where are the pockets where something can happen?”

Someone in our group mentioned that we gather strength from taking action together — we don’t have to do these hard things on our own — but I said that our need to do things as a group, to be in agreement with the people we relate to, can actually be a tripping stone. Many times, acts of resistance are done by individuals, not communities. And since countering power isn’t exactly a pleasurable activity, waiting for a whole group to take action together might be foolish, especially when our social circles often consist of the people with the power.

“The answers are not found in the voting booth,” Steve said. “It’s the day before election day and the day after that is our political act. We don’t need to keep giving our agency away. I want you to feel a bubbling of creativity inside your guts. The struggle is the struggle is the struggle, and it’s sacred. It’s fun. I’ve done my stints in jail, and it was fun.” He grinned. “We sang a lot.”

***

A few weeks back, when I announced on social media that I’d be traveling to South Africa, another cheesemaker who follows my YouTube channel, asked if we could meet up. He had some cheeses for me to sample, he said. When I rounded the corner and saw him standing there in the parking lot, it was like seeing an old friend.

We visited for well over an hour, and that conversation — making that connection with another cheesemaker, as well as the fact that he took the time to come see me — was one of the most special parts of the whole South Africa trip.

***

Remember how Iziko challenged us to see, judge, act? Well one thing I was seeing, or not seeing, rather, was that there were no white people doing manual labor. Everywhere we went, it was Black and brown people serving the food, mowing the yards, driving the buses, doing the street work.

Even at the convent, the nuns and office administrators were white while the people serving our food and vacuuming the halls and doing the gardening were Black.

***

We spent the afternoon debriefing up on Chapman’s Peak.

We were encouraged to write down events that stood out to us in the last couple weeks, as well as make note of the things we wanted to do when we returned to the States in order to link the two worlds and provide accountability for our future selves.

***

That evening we walked to a winery for supper.

Cape Town is loaded with vineyards and wineries. Weekend culture is climb a mountain, hit a beach, kick back at a winery.

I ordered* apps for our end of the table: breads, cheeses, and meats, as well as ostrich carpaccio, which is raw meat, thinly sliced, and absolutely delicious.

For dessert, I suggested our end of the table get one of everything and then share. 

Usually, restaurant desserts are a little meh, but every single one of the desserts was out-of-this-world delicious. Example, I am not normally a custard person but the panna cotta with passion fruit sauce? To die for. And the cheesecake with lemon curd — be still my beating heart.

We were the only group in the dining room, and we were jolly-loud, but after a white family of four was seated at another table, someone pointed out that the older gentleman kept turning around in his chair and shooting daggers at us. 

In South Africa, it was explained, Black people are considered boisterous and loud while white people are calm and quiet. (These stereotypes exists in the US, too, yes? Yes.) It didn’t matter that some of the white people in our group were louder than anybody in the restaurant, or that the topic at hand was a friendly theological debate, or that another white party had been seated in the same room and was whooping it up merrily. The fact that our group included some Black people meant that we were the problem. On his way out the door, the guy actually turned to our group, swore, and then snapped, “I hope you’re having a lovely evening,” before stomping out. So there you have it: a snapshot of apartheid’s afterlife in all its cheerful glory!

When we had entered the winery, I’d noticed some people were running along the paths, so on our walk home, I asked the guard at the vineyard entrance what time the gates opened in the morning and whether or not I might come run there. “Of course,” he said. “We open at five. Maybe I’ll join you!”

***

*One of the servers at the winery was white!

This same time, years previous: how we homeschool: Jen, the quotidian (11.25.19), the quotidian (11.26.18), in my kitchen: 7:35 a.m., the day before, a treat, Thanksgiving of 2012, Thanksgiving of 2011,