Viva, Youth, Viva! Viva, jika-ma-jika, Viva!

Hello All,
This weekend i went to Freedom Park in Pretoria with the volunteers from the Youth Centre ( which, of course I had approved leave from my PC supervisor). While i was waiting for the combi ( taxi) to pick me up, I tried to take some pictures of my village..

This is my street!



This is the tar road!

Freedom Park is a memorial to the Freedom Fighters and the Anti-Apartheid movement. The park was hosting an event for Youth Day, a South African holiday. There were over 100 youth there, mostly bused in from surrounding villages and townships near Pretoria. Of course, me and the other PCV were the only white people at the event.

The event centered around discussions of how the Youth can move forward with the ideas of freedom and a non-racist, non-sexist country that there forefathers gave their lives to help secure. The youth in South Africa today are viewed very negatively by the older generations... they are referred to as "born-frees" and seen as being politically apathetic and taking for granted the freedom previous generations won for them. It is something that has confronted us volunteers since the moment we arrived in South Africa, and it is very difficult to deal with. Many adults in SA view the youth as trouble makers, as being lazy, stubborn, and naughty. Since Apartheid ended and the government sought to have equality for all, many policies on child's rights came into effect. Many older generations blame these new laws protecting the rights of the child for the problems among the youth, because they feel like they are unable to discipline their children without being accused of child abuse. .. since the old ( and still used) method of discipline is violence. Their beef is that the youth abuses their rights without knowing their responsibilities. Corporal punishment is still a HUGE problem in schools, and the older generations have not been taught how to discipline children and youth in healthy ways without resulting to violence, so its a big issue and Im doing a really kak ( Afrikaans for shit!) job of explaining the problem because it is sooo big and so complicated.. Mainly what I want to say is that its not solely the youth that is the problem, there are issues on both sides to contribute to the violence, delinquency, and risky sexual behavior among the youth. And there are a ton of really amazing, really motivated youth who want to make a difference in this country and who are doing what they can, against many, many odds and little support to do just that.

The discussions were long and they went two hours over lunch, so after a while we all had a difficult time paying attention over the noises our stomachs were making. But when it was over and we had all eaten, they played house music, which is very popular in South Africa and is always blaring at all hours of the day across the country, and cleared some space for people to dance. The popular style of dance for black South Africans is called jiveing, or jika-ma-jika. Its really awesome and I've been trying to learn so that I'll have some new dance moves for Lauren's wedding. So after a brief dance lesson from my friend and a second of hesitation, i entered the dance floor and began to show off my moves.... everyone went insane and started yelling and cheering me on! They were soooo surprised to see a white person dancing with them in their style. They formed a circle around me and people on the outskirts ran over to see the Leghoa ( white person) dance. They started dancing with me, and we were all laughing and hollering and hootin! You could feel all this racial tension melt away.. it was such an incredible experience and i wish you could have been there to see it. Luckily, we got it on video and Ill try and post it to the blog. As we were all leaving the park, many of the girls came up to me, giving my hugs and shaking my hand, and telling me that I could really dance! haha ...its hard to explain what it felt like, but my first jiving experience is something I'll never forget.

Me at Freedom Park!