The Gift of Travel: Identity and Freedom
After a long five weeks in South Africa, I return to New Jersey for a short respite at home before I return to Boston for co-op. I do not come back empty handed – I carry with me some posters and a wooden elephant for my new apartment, jewelry for myself, my sisters and friends, Johannesburg brewed coffee for my father, a colorful glass jar for my mother, and a new wallet.
Along with respite comes reflection, as I mentally sift through my cultural experiences with both frustration and excitement: the former emotion for the simple encounters which fade from memory and the later for the larger elements of my experiences which will incorporate into my being.
What has changed above all is my realization that movement is freedom. I once read on a Black travel blog this past week that: “without movement, there is no life.” I believe the context of stumbling upon this statement is essential. Through the historical oppression of Black communities and the heaviness manifestations of racial inequity impart on humanity, at many times in this trip I felt the gripping nature of the struggle. In Langa Cape Town where community members live in abject poverty with limited access to basic services, inhabiting small dormitory style homes designed in the apartheid regime for single males and workers in the city — not families. In Khayelitsha where youth resort to gang violence and homemade life-threatening drugs as an escape from reality and coping mechanism for barriers in life. In Flamingo Crescent, an upgraded informal settlement that has been reorganized through the help of an NGOs influence but high unemployment rates of 95% keep people in poverty and away from dignity. At Westlake Primary School where teachers put their all into supporting a Black student populus in a town of backyard shack-dwellers and space where instability is a constant in many student’s lives. At a sanitation march where Khayelitsha residents occupied the city center, marching to City Hall with Ndifuna Ukwazi, a social justice group that organizes around access to sanitation and proper flush toilets rather than chemical ones as a means of reducing disease and restoring simple human dignity.
Through these and many instances of the struggle I see the connections between the local and global experiences that plague Black people residing in historically contested spaces. It means I must continue my fight back in Boston and on campus dedicated to causes of injustices and the right to live as a Black person; but it also means I must take care of myself. These issues are large and sometimes seem insurmountable. A lesson that stuck with me from my experiences in Ferguson is the importance of approaching social justice less like a marathon and more like a continued practice of faith: something I return to and chip away at, determining a piece to make a considerable impact on. A lifetime of work cannot undo centuries of slavery and the spatial, economic, and psychological impact of redlining and Jim Crow in the U.S context. Sometimes the most dignifying changes can be the smallest interventions. Amidst my intention of working in the field of urban health as a physician and researcher, my goals have not changed but a new lense set on the impact of spatial changes, displacement and physical segregation for example, on health outcomes has become more salient to me.
Considering mobility, I’ve been able to experience first hand the freedom that travel grants. It’s a freedom to personhood and mobility that is important in the Black community where often times systemic forces prepare you for only a portion of the vast world and prevent Black people from occupying many spaces. Through travel I feel free and open to change the world, inspired to continue the pursuit of many cultures and find who I am outside and within the context of being Black in America.
Arriving with little fear, I leave only with lessons and a dedication to expanding representation in study abroad and bringing Black students on campus to the richness of travel as a form of identity making. There are many lessons I leave with. For one, the right to a home is more than the physical structure but a representation of the social structures, employment and leisure, and access overall, better linking spaces of home and work. Justice in the post-apartheid context is both constructing local economies in the far flung Black communities that have been designed away from the city center but also having Black Africans reclaim and inhabit the city center. It is a right to security and access to public space without purchase or class based exclusion from participation. It is a right to security, community justice, cultural identity and economic growth.
Although I am not sure I’ll be on a study abroad again during my time at Northeastern given my academic schedule, I am open to creating my own travel experiences enriched in pure discovery and historical inquiry, using my free time to dig deeper into this new love of mine. For those who attend this trip or a different study abroad program I can only urge you to engage in consistent daily reflection and writing through a personal journal. My notes from the trip are soft reminders of experiences and thought-provoking moments. And I leave with the essence of my favorite moments yet – out late at a Jazz bar listening to a tribute band in Johannesburg dedicated to Nigerian activist Fela Kuti. At the Cape of Good hope looking off into the ocean, wistful and ready for change. At the top of Table Mountain, eyes open, smiling, and truly free.
