How Daniel From The Congo Stole My Heart

by Cat Wyard (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection South Africa

At 18, I hadn’t yet come across the term ‘white saviour’, and definitely hadn’t yet been forced to examine my own privilege. As a White Western Woman (hereon known as WWW), I felt that I could neatly combine my love of travel with my desire to do good in the world. I could use my teaching skills honed over exactly zero years of experience and show the local township schools how to do it better. I could get drunk, go sky diving, climb mountains, and at the same time transform the lives of poor African children, all in 3 months. This WWW was going to have the experience of a lifetime! In those first few days, our group of 12 volunteers (all of us extremely white and extremely western) excitedly planned our surfing trips to Muisenberg, the nearby surfers’ haven, researched the best nightlife in Cape Town, and learned some basic Xhosa words which would undoubtedly be all we needed for three months in a non-English speaking school. Then we visited Masiphumelele - the township where we volunteered – for the first time. As you are already probably guessing, reader, the contrast between our cushty set-up in our Gap Year house and Masi was enormous in every predictable way. The levels of violent crime were scarily high, the residents were mostly living in unstable tin-roofed shacks. Class sizes at Ukhanyo School were unmanageable (who can control 42 kids?!) and the children ate 80s rave-coloured food (think hot-pink baloney and sunset-orange drinks). For this naïve WWW, I had thought that when the apartheid ended all those years ago, South Africa had transformed into a utopia of racial equality. Each day our minibus would pick us from outside our electronic gates and take us down the one-road entrance to Masi, a type of gated community of its own except that its boundaries weren’t for keeping its residents safe. It was made clear to me, as a WWW, that I shouldn’t flash any expensive gadgets, or go wandering in the township outside of the designated safe school area. The classroom teacher I was assigned to taught me more about the challenges these kids were facing than any gap-year briefing I ever received. I learned about children being abused, parents struggling with alcohol addition, high rates of HIV infection and overwhelming poverty meaning at least half the class weren't eating enough. It was hard to hear, and hard to know I couldn't really help. I loved all of the kids in my class, but of course I had my favourite. Daniel was a Congolese refugee, who despite being 4 years older than his classmates, and at least a foot taller, had been placed in first grade to catch up on the curriculum. He was my trusty aide, a leader amongst his peers. While they teased him for being an outsider, he would try and enforce good behaviour and break up the endless fights that started whenever WWW was left in charge. One day after school, Daniel wanted to take me to his home where he lived with his mother and sister. I knew it wasn’t in line with our ‘safety’ briefing, but how could I turn down the chance to learn a little more about my favourite pupils’ life? I walked the dusty streets with trepidation, expecting an attacker around every corner. Of course, it was utterly anticlimactic and I spent about 10 minutes being shown around his home and meeting his sister, before returning to my group. Through that unlikely friendship, I reflected for the first time on exactly how unfair my WWW privilege was. I could parachute into Daniel’s life for a few months, learn about hardship, and then return to the safety net of life in the UK. For him, like all the other children in that school, life would be a battle against the odds to gain any of what I took for granted. I ugly-cried when those three months ended. I ugly-cried for my 42 surrogate children who I loved with my whole heart, and I ugly-cried for the change I wasn’t able to make, and the privilege of being able to even cry about it in the first place.