Day 6 From the Slave Lodge to acknowledgint our assertiveness - a very very powerful day in terms of thoughts, emotions and psyche
Hello everyone, thank you so much for reading our blogs and keeping up with our travels!
Today, we started our day by going to the Slave Lodge Museum. As one of the most impactful places I have ever visited, the museum touched on the forgotten history of what South Africa endured. Particularly, in an exhibit about the lives of a South African couple that was “banned” because they were mixed raced, there were the original letters written by their children that expressed the everyday activities of their children. However, each letter ended in an expression of longing for their family to be reunited once more. These letters made me think of my own family and how much I would miss them if I had been separated from them for an elongated period of time without knowing when they would return. Additionally, we were greeted and welcomed by students from a school in Cape Town. We exchanged a little bit of cultural norms from our two different places of residence, and I was fascinated by the fact that the students had many questions about things that seemed normal to us Poly students.
After spending some time learning in the Slave Lodge Museum, we were pleasantly surprised by a performance from a high school choir right outside the museum. They sang many songs all while smiling, dancing, and conducting themselves. Next, we spent some time in the nearby garden conversing with the Cape Town students some more and reflecting on our day.
Later, we met up with the iThuba and Leap High School students again and were able to further the connections we had begun yesterday. We started by participating in some icebreakers, particularly focused initially on noticing similarities and not just differences between the two groups. Afterwards, we split up into smaller groups and began discussing what activities should be implemented in the Ithuba program for students in sixth thru eighth grade in Langa; we presented these ideas back to the larger group afterwards.
Finally, we ended our day with our daily group discussion about some highlights of our day and asking some questions about one of our group members. The last thing we discussed was how we noticed that during our time with the Langa students, Poly students were particularly eager to take action and be assertive during our discussions while the Langa students were more hesitant. We took some time to reflect on the observation and through our discussion. As “outsiders” we came to realize that we can focus less on providing immediate solution and more on trying to be better active listeners, which may include silence in order to let the Langa students take charge in improving their own neighborhood.
