This dialogue was one of the most educational experiences of my life and I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to visit and learn about South Africa in the manner that I did. The nature of our trip gave me the opportunity to have a more intimate and realistic experience in South Africa that I could have on any tourism tour. I appreciated that this program gave us enough time to get to know and have some familiarity with the neighborhoods in which we were staying and to every point think about our impact and relationship to those around us. Having local guides at every location allowed us to hear perspectives and experiences that I could have never learned or understood without being there physically and talking to people. Most of all, the ability to form relationships with people like Sibu and Nikita who were willing to share their experiences with us allowed me to form a connection with this country that is much more meaningful than anything I could read in a textbook.
One of the greatest lessons I want to take from this experience is humbleness. There is so much of the world that I have seen and do not know or understand. There are people in so many places striving for many different things and almost all of them are good. Before having the opportunity to really speak to people living in extreme poverty, I think some part of me was always reducing their experiences to tragedy. And I don't want to undermine the legitimacy of the struggles they face, but I also now realize that those communities and the people who reside there are much more complex than their economic situation, and they have ways of living, learning and understanding the world that provide something unique and important to those around them. The world is such a big place that it is so easy to generalize places and cultures, but the complexity of individual lives in so many different places always amazes me.
One thing that I also want to work on after this trip is to look for solutions and ways to relate to people before looking for ways to criticize. I think it is a very common problem in activist circles that our desire to seem knowledgeable and be performative undermines our ability to affect change. I do think that I have missed opportunities to have important conversations with people because it is difficult for me to get past what I view as mistakes in language or problematic views to relate to people and form understanding relationships. I often scoff at the criticism of the left that says we can sometimes be too elitist to relate to average people and have the conversations that promote understanding. I still am very skeptical of asking people who are already oppressed to do the additional labor of educating those around them. Still, as someone who is getting ready to go into academics - arguably the most elitist field that exists, I think I need to be very conscious about making an effort to give people the benefit of the doubt and to focus on understanding. I truly do believe that most people are good people and are well-intentioned, and that conversations are the number one tool that we have to affect change in the world. That is something that I really need to hold on as I delve further into educational opportunities that most people will never have the privilege of experiencing. I want to make sure I hold on to what I learned on this trip - that my formal education doesn't hold any superiority to what people everyday are learning through lived experiences. At the end of the day, I hope that even though I am going into academics, I am going to continue to find ways to learn from the world around me and not only textbooks.
One of the greatest lessons I want to take from this experience is humbleness. There is so much of the world that I have seen and do not know or understand. There are people in so many places striving for many different things and almost all of them are good. Before having the opportunity to really speak to people living in extreme poverty, I think some part of me was always reducing their experiences to tragedy. And I don't want to undermine the legitimacy of the struggles they face, but I also now realize that those communities and the people who reside there are much more complex than their economic situation, and they have ways of living, learning and understanding the world that provide something unique and important to those around them. The world is such a big place that it is so easy to generalize places and cultures, but the complexity of individual lives in so many different places always amazes me.
One thing that I also want to work on after this trip is to look for solutions and ways to relate to people before looking for ways to criticize. I think it is a very common problem in activist circles that our desire to seem knowledgeable and be performative undermines our ability to affect change. I do think that I have missed opportunities to have important conversations with people because it is difficult for me to get past what I view as mistakes in language or problematic views to relate to people and form understanding relationships. I often scoff at the criticism of the left that says we can sometimes be too elitist to relate to average people and have the conversations that promote understanding. I still am very skeptical of asking people who are already oppressed to do the additional labor of educating those around them. Still, as someone who is getting ready to go into academics - arguably the most elitist field that exists, I think I need to be very conscious about making an effort to give people the benefit of the doubt and to focus on understanding. I truly do believe that most people are good people and are well-intentioned, and that conversations are the number one tool that we have to affect change in the world. That is something that I really need to hold on as I delve further into educational opportunities that most people will never have the privilege of experiencing. I want to make sure I hold on to what I learned on this trip - that my formal education doesn't hold any superiority to what people everyday are learning through lived experiences. At the end of the day, I hope that even though I am going into academics, I am going to continue to find ways to learn from the world around me and not only textbooks.
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