Yesterday we did another presentation at a school in Phillipi. The problem is that we’re at the mercy of the principals who typically want us to present to as many kids at one time as can physically fit in one room. I don’t know if it’s a time-saving thing or if the township schools are just so used to overcrowding that it now seems normal to them. It’s sad because these kids really deserve individual attention. It’s also hard to talk to them about ways to respect one another and take care of their pets when they are climbing all over each other and stepping on each other and pummeling each other to be able to see us.

A strange end to my time here - we got pigs. These great obese potbellied pet pigs. They were rescued from some petting farm or other. They’re grossly, enourmously overweight and of course so cute because of that. The idea was that we could get them and keep them here at the office and use them as Interactive Teachers when the kids from the local squatter camps come by for a soup day or an animal education discussion. So I went to get these pigs the other day from a tony vet’s office in Constantia (a tony suburb of Cape Town) where they were being kept. Because of some neglect they’d suffered they were wary of people, and we couldn’t get close enough to inject them with the tranquilizer we needed to get them in the back of the bakkie (pickup truck) to take them to Animal Rescue.  So we ended up chasing them about with a tranquilizer dart gun - a great big huge machine-gun-looking apparatus that the vet there uses to dart wildlife (he works in conservation). It was an amusing scene to the onlooker, I’m sure - five adults with a gun that looks like it came out of MEN IN BLACK chasing two knee-high rolling tubs of lard around a field. Fat as they are, they are fast and squeal loudly.

They are here now, though, sitting out back. Well, lying out back. We’re waiting for the tranquilizer to wear off. Then we’re going to try and re-acclimate them to people. And we’re going to put them on a diet. Their “test-run” will be tomorrow when we have a few people over to the office for a publicity-fundraiser tea. (They’re big on tea here.) The problem is that everyone will want to feed the pigs, so their diet will be off to a very bad start indeed.

Although, aren’t all diets that way?

Of course I will not miss seeing the suffering; though it’s strange to think that the United States is comparatively so suffering-free – it’s almost unfair, in a way. The most horrible thing happened the other day – something you wouldn’t see in the States. A man and his 3-year old daughter brought in a dog that belonged to his neighbor. You could tell he was once a stunningly beautiful dog - he looked exactly like a Golden Retriever, except that he was jet black. The man’s neighbor had had the dog in this condition for a MONTH and he hadn’t done anything and finally the neighbor took pity on the dog and brought him in. The dog’s front leg was completely mangled; his leg was swollen into the thickness of a cricket bat and ended about halfway down; there were a few folds of skin and sinew holding the remains of a paw on. It had been hit down by a car a month ago. It’s front leg was practically pancaked. It also had enough mange to turn part of its skin into elephant-like rough folds, and it’s bones were RAZOR sharp and jutting everywhere. It was in the most pathetic condition. There was a lot of discussion about what to do with it, because obviously it’s a cruelty case and we want to prosecute (not that the inept and overloaded South African courts will do anything, but it’s the principle of the thing) but you can’t just let the dog suffer until you can drag it to court. I wanted to euthanize him because he was obviously suffering horribly - he was listless and couldn’t stand and whimpered when anyone touched him. We tried to carry him to the mortuary so he wouldn’t have to walk, but that hurt him; even though he would have been within his doggy rights to bite me, he merely pressed his teeth lightly against my hand and yelped. You wish dogs could understand English or Xhosa or some language and hear some sort of apology or explanation. But we just euthanized him and told him that wonders awaited him in doggy heaven, which of course he could not understand.

I just wish there was less crime and poverty here - it’s much easier to prosecute when cruelty isn’t the backdrop of everyday life. We see a LOT of animals in HORRIBLE condition, but this one was the one dog I’ve ever felt like crying over.

We had some kids from the local squatter camps into the office yesterday. Well, all this week we’ve had them in, although Friday was the day that all the little gangstas chose to come in. (we were showing them around the vet office and doing nonviolence and humane education workshops and feeding them soup). (they’re all freezing and starving, nearly literally, so soup is a big draw.) But since yesterday was unofficially “gangsta day” (I think all the little soon-to-be-real-gangstas heard about the soup and came) the big kids where literally trampling the little ones in their rush to get soup, and then when we gave them bread and butter the big kids would punch the little ones in the head and grab their bread out of their hands. It was too bad, because it was about 1/3 gangsters and the rest were their younger siblings, little preschoolers.

Haha I’m making it sound worse than it is, the kids on Thursday were great and it was amazing to see them interact with the animals and with us. They were attentive and seemed to really care as much as they could at their age and considering their life circumstances.

One of the white people who works at the center was bemoaning the fate of these kids and said that these kids didn’t ask for their lives and didn’t stand a chance - which I agree with … but then she hit me with, “all people with HIV should be forcibly sterilized by the government!”

ummmm …. so, where do you even START with a statement like that?

This morning she seemed a lot happier and accepted my offer of a cup of coffee , apologizing for being upset yesterday. She explained that 2 girls who had left this house a few days ago had left her a Thank-You letter and flowers. By the time she received the note, it had been opened by our landlords. They also harshly questioned her about WHY she had been left a letter and flowers.

I realized that accepting a cup of coffee from me came with intricate social details that I never really think about.

I went to the Apartheid Museum in Joburg a few weeks ago. They set up the space chronologically very well - the darker rooms were during the 1970’s and 1980’s gradually emerging into windowed displays of Mandela and the end of apartheid. I left feeling uplifted and hopeful, with the museum’s slogan - Apartheid is just where it belongs, in a museum - ringing in my ears. But then I remembered the exhibit on ”Life Under Apartheid.” It contained photo after photo of the racial divide, including a section on black servants in white homes.

Fourteen years after Mandela was elected, that particular part of “Life Under Apartheid” ISN’T only in a museum. It still very much exists, as does the master-servant mentality.

Having servants in the States is so different from having servants here. For starters, it is incredibly gauche to use the word “servant” at all. The older generation likes to project an almost altruistic motive on the people who nanny their children and clean their house, and say things about their maids like “Oh, she helps me so much with the house work!” The younger generation tends to affect friendship with the servants, having small talks with them, saying “hello” and “thank you.” My guess is that this occurs because in a supposedly egalitarian society such as the United States, where equality is not only in vogue but in the Constitution, we can’t bear the thought of a master-servant relationship.

I think that’s as it should be - to  be a maid or a nanny is a job, a career, and should be treated as such by all parties. Here, however, the domestic workers are all black or coloured and the people employing them are all white, and the employers seem regard them with slight suspicion at best and airs of ownership towards the servants at worst.

For the girls to leave Hazel flowers and for me to whip up another cup of coffee is an American cultural sentiment - guilt over having a relationship that lends itself to inequality, perhaps; and just general friendliness. I don’t know that that is understood here. Hazel says that the landlords question her when she seems to close to the tenents - asking her “What did you say to them!?” and “What do you want from them?!”

I wonder if within certain demographics in South Africa, servants should be “seen and not heard.” Or, perhaps, anyone who is not white should be seen and not heard? Or, after apartheid, maybe the idea is that people who are not white must be at least seen, in the name of equality, in white areas. But to hear someone is to grant that person an equal status as the hearer … is South Africa ready for that?

We do a puppet show for the younger kids. The main characters are a girl called Thandi, her friend whose name I forget, and her dog named Spotty, who also has a friend with a name I forget. The basic plot line of the puppet show is that Thandi and her friend work together to take good care of Spotty and his friend, and everyone treats each other nicely and respects one another, etc. The idea behind the idea behind the puppet show is to try and ingrain the idea of nonviolent problem-solving amongst township youngsters, especially when it comes to the care of their pets. It’s a lot of fun for me to do the puppets, and the kids dance around to our song at the end of the puppet show.

The dancing is normally quite cute, but on this particular day there were about 200 5-year-olds in one small cement classroom. It was quite a sight to see them all filing in, this never-ending-line of miniature people … kind of like that scene in the one Monty Python movie where the Catholic sends some of his kids away and the line of disowned Catholic kids files along for the entirety of the three-minute song “Every Sperm is Great.”

The problem with 200 kids dancing at once in a small room is the space and the noise. The kids were standing on each other, dancing on tables, standing on chairs, thrashing around raucously, kind of like a kindergarten bar fight. It made me nervous but the teachers seemed to be used to it and smiled benevolently and clapped along. It was every kid for himself, though I saw a few had fallen by the wayside - they had their hands over their ears and were scowling at their peers. You could just tell that the scowlers were headed for a career as librarians.

Most of the schools had far fewer children in the classrooms for our presentation. They were all cute as buttons and looked like they were lapping up the puppet show and the presentation afterwards. I do the puppet show, but Junior does the presentation for the little kids as they’re in Xhosa (the native language; when we do older classrooms they are in English). All I know how to say in Xhosa is “good day, thank you, turn right” and a few other phrases, none of which are useful for a humane education puppet show. (And yes, it is a problem when, giving directions, I can only remember how to say “turn right” and not “turn left.” We come near to getting lost when I am navigating the bakkie.)

It is fun to do the puppet shows and it seems as though the kids really pay attention - shows of any kind do capture small childrens’ attention. But I always wonder what these kids go home to once they leave school. They’re all in their little uniforms, looking spic and span and studious … but even in classrooms a few years older than the kindergarteners there is a conspicuous lack of attendence. (Pardon my spelling.) From other work I’ve done in the townships you know that their home situations often aren’t ideal by any means - even when they have a functional family they have the state of the shack to deal with. I don’t know if the kids can process the “humane treatment of animals” part of our presentation, since they’re so young and have so many other things to deal with. I think that’s why the presentation incorporates the idea of nonviolent problem-solving and working together - in the hope that some of it sticks, and that even just once, one person or one animal has a pleasant moment at the hands of one of these kids.

Yesterday we parked on a soccer field next to a school. It was a very rudimentary soccer field, of course - a couple of poles for goals, and an uneven ground scattered with broken glass and made of sand, dirt, and scrubby bush in different places. The kids seemed fine with it, they were all dressed in their little school uniforms and kicking a ball all over the place. We normally wouldn’t have parked on their field, (we were supposed to drive around to the front of the school) but the road was blocked off by a throng of people and a police vehicle standing around a dead body. Figures.

Junior and Howard started gabbing away in Xhosa to the person who lived in the shack across the road from the school (and the body). I tried to catch a few words by Xhosa is one of the most ridiculously-hard-to-understand languages for a romance-language speaker to understand, so I soon gave up and let the babel turn into a gentle thrumming and clicking around my head. I watched the children playing soccer and complimented a passer-by’s shoes (nice black flats) and watched a scrawny black puppy in a shopping bag waiting to be given de-worming paste by Howard or Junior (or myself).

We treated the puppy, an old man’s three dogs, and a few other animals that I don’t remember in the middle of the soccer field. The kids seemed to be at recess forever, or maybe school was let out early, I don’t know. Some of them stopped kicking the soccer ball and watched us with curiosity. We gave out pamphlets to them about proper care of die hund (”the dog” in Afrikaans). Every once and a while I took a glance over at the body, covered by a baby-blue blanket. I could see a hand sticking out underneath it.

The body belonged to a man who had, according to the mob surrounding it, been a thief, a robber, and a murderer. That morning, a group of people - some of whom perhaps had known someone the man had murdered - decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. They found him walking along the street in front of the school earlier in the morning, cornered him, and began beating him furiously. This attracted more and more people and a mob of stone-pelters and people with sticks formed. They beat him until he was nearly dead, until one member of the mob had come back from the gas station with enough petrol to douse his body with. They lit him on fire and burned him the rest of his way to death.

When Howard and Junior translated this story for me, I was basically … aghast? Confused/afraid/disgusted? Something like that. By the time our mobile vet clinic had arrived at the school, the murdered thief and murderer had been dead for an hour or so. Someone had thrown the baby-blue blanket over the body. The police were standing around with the mob. No one seemed to be unduly upset, least of all the police. All I could think of to say was, “Is that … even LEGAL!??!?!”

Sort of a stupid, ditzy thing to say. Of COURSE it’s not legal. It’s murder. Duh. I knew this, but the police were standing there in what seemed to me to be a rather la-di-dah fashion considering someone had just been beaten and burned to death in front of children walking to school. It was hard for my sheltered American mind to comprehend. It really should be hard for any mind to comprehend, but there is brutality that occurs daily in front of people who live in township environments … so perhaps they learn to block it out. As necessity. The way I block out a slight headache.

Towards the end of the day a woman came carrying a mongrel dog towards the truck. The woman gave it to us. It wasn’t hers and she didn’t want it, she said. She’d been having to feed it. Please take it away. So we did. It had the perked-up ears of a German Shepherd, the appealing eyes of a Labrador Retriever, the small, lithe body of a terrier and the genetic make-up of perhaps 20 different dog breeds. A “township dog” or a “pavement special” as they call them here. A true mongrel, underfed and flea-ridden and oh-so-helpless and friendly.

The problem with these dogs is that for every 100 of them, there are 2 decent homes for them. So you have to put them down. No-kill shelters really aren’t a viable option in a country where the government can’t even alleviate all of the humans’ suffering, let alone the animals’. Howard apologized to me - they think that, as a female and as an American, I can’t handle the euthanasia of a young, healthy, cute dog or any of the other realities of South Africa.

They’re kinda right. I kinda can’t. I kinda know I should. But I just don’t have the stomach for watching a dog be put to sleep more than once a week, and I’d already seen a sick 4-week-old puppy be euthanized. I suggested to Howard that maybe this dog could just … live at the animal hospital, back at the office. The hospital already has a few cats that we end up feeding. Why not a dog? Howard said, “ok, we’ll see.” I know what that means … that means they’ll drop me off at the minibus station, wait till I’m out of eyesight, and then put the dog to sleep. It’s a small gesture of consideration, but in a place, time, and country with so few gestures of consideration even for people who deserve them and need them more than I do, I appreciate it.

I really gotta start toughening up, though. I can, I just don’t want to. It’s a question of compromising the empathy that I have been afforded from my priviledged life for the reality that I must adopt around people who have not had my privileged life. I can’t decide if I NEED to lose the feeling I have for people and animals who suffer, or if it is a good thing to keep, even though it can be painful.

But I digress.

Anyways, I was waiting for a minibus to get to a little strip of road a few kilometers from my house. There’s a coffee shop there. It’s not Starbucks, but it’s as close as I’ve come to one in this country. Finally a minibus passed. I hailed it like a true New Yorker hails a cab - and you don’t even have to hail these things because as I said, they practically beg or force you to ride in them. I just hail them for kicks and giggles - maybe because it’s in my genes to hail cabs (my mother is from New York).

But the minibus sailed right on past me. And another, and another. It was most curious. They weren’t full - as I said, according to the driver and the energetic pair of vocal chords that call people to ride in them, they are NEVER full - and they clearly saw me, I was practically standing in the middle of the road. I was bemused, befuddled, etc. Especially when they pulled over not 20 metres ahead of me and picked someone else up.

I don’t know why it happened, but I wonder if it has anything to do with the anti-foreigner sentiment in Cape Town right now (well, in most of South Africa). I’m sure you’ve read about it in the news - apparently, TIME magazine said something about a civil war in South Africa? I don’t know that it’s that bad, but it’s quite scary and quite sad, even though I am not affected by it because of my priviledged position as a white, (comparatively) wealthy, American student in a white, wealthy area.

There’s so much I could say about the situation here now … but all I will say is that it makes me so sad to see this country which I have grown to love so much be hurting so badly. It is also strange to be so personally unaffected by the situation when people just like me in the townships live with so many things like this violence and xenophobia every day. The violence hasn’t turned towards foreigners in general yet - it is more so against Zimbabwean refugees and such - but I wonder if it will. Things like this can escalate in a day, or never.

I found it strange to be passed by minibus after minibus. I can’t say it’s because I’m a foreigner although I don’t have any other explanation right now (I am clearly a foreigner because although I look and have come to act like I could be a white South African, white South Africans NEVER ride minibuses, it’s only foreign students … I was told this is because we are not savvy enough to fear them).

It’s a strange place to be, with people SO similar yet SO different and SO divided; with distinctions and divisions being created and re-constructed and de-constructed daily. Maybe it’s a part of living in a country that is still figuring out who it is, or a country that has experienced so much turmoil in such a recent past.

When I first got here, I was looking for a place to volunteer - I did a lot of volunteering in the States and I missed it. I joined an organization that, coincidentally, advocated for refugee rights (this was before any of the xenophobic violence that is occurring now) (though South Africa has a history of xenophobia, many claim). I was looking somewhere else as well - something with less of a political bent to do as well, and I stumbled across the Animal Rescue Organization’s website. I called them up and they agreed to take me on as an intern.

Animal charities in the States are some of the cushiest places you can volunteer - as a general rule they are generously funded by ladies named Mitzy and their Toy Poodles, named Moofy. That’s a stereotype and I don’t mean it harshly - it is WONDERFUL that Mitzy and Moofy exist and are so kind as to fund these worthy organizations. I merely offer up that stereotype to show the stark contrast of working with animal charities here in South Africa. They are not well-funded because, as the first part of this entry probably showed, there are so, so many human tragedies and causes that the government and the citizens are struggling desperately to address. Human needs must come first, of course, but it is very hard for me to see animals fall by the wayside. So I started working here and I’ve learned a lot so far and hope to keep on learning. It certainly isn’t as cushy as the animal charities in the States where I’ve worked before, but it’s a good reminder of how fortunate I am and how much a few good people working hard - the guys that I work with - can do for a few mangy, waggy-tailed strays. It’s alleviating suffering just a tiny bit, and if that’s all we can do then so be it, it’s better than nothing. The really cool thing about the organization - which I would like to see more of in animal charities in the States - is its strong human component. They are focused on the people they are providing for - many of the people to which ARO provides vet care depend upon their dogs for hunting and guarding, their cats to keep rats (rampant in the townships, big suckers too) out of the shack, and so on. It also uses humane education in township schools as a vehicle for discussing nonviolence and conflict resolution and the importance of environmental responsibility.

So … that’s it in a nutshell, right now. I’m really excited for the rest of this summer, even though it’s Cape Town’s winter and it promises to rain buckets for most of it.