RIght and Privilege

Rae, the woman who owns the apartment I’m living in, came to Durban last week to make sure that everything was in order in the flat and the other house she rents here. She has been staying with me since Friday in the extra bedroom, and it has been really nice having someone around to spend time with!

On Saturday, after my run, I went to the beach for a few hours while Rae ran some errands. The ocean was absolutely BEAUTIFUL today, with rolling waves, one on top of another! I guess the waves were no good for surfing though, because there were no surfers in sight! And the water was very cold!!

On Sunday, I was heading out the door to go running a little before 8AM, and I ran into Agnes standing right outside my door! Agnes is the woman who cleans one of the other flats in the complex, and offered to clean my flat once a week for 80 rand (which equates to about $8.00). This is actually the second time that I’ve opened the door and she has been standing right outside! I don’t know if she knocks, and I just don’t hear, if she just stands outside and waits for me to open the door, or if it really is coincidence where both times she arrives right when I’m headed out. Rae stayed in the flat with Agnes while I went for my run.

After my run, I made breakfast, and had a chance to speak to Agnes a little. She asked me about how much it cost me to be trained as a social worker. Her daughter wants to go to school for social work, but Agnes was saying that it was just so expensive, was it worth the job? I explained to her that I love what I do, so in my mind that makes the degree worth it, and I was reminded of how blessed I am to have the job that I have. In college, I didn’t major in social work, or international health, or international relations, or program management. I majored in broadcast journalism and cultural anthropology. And while I really enjoyed what I was studying, my journalism and PR internships taught me that I wanted to do more than report the news. I wanted to go one step further from spreading awareness, and take some action, so I figured out a way to use the skills I gained from college in AIDS activism. It is important to remember what a luxury that is, for me to have been able to choose what I wanted to study, and then to still be able to choose an entire different career path. And I’m not the only one – most of my friends from college, and even high school, are pursuing a career off the beaten path of what their major set them up for. It may be normative for the circles I run in, in the States, but such flexibility is a privilege in South Africa.

The difference is evident even before children begin school, in school fees. Unlike the States, where if you pay taxes, you can send your child to any public school for “free,” South Africa requires school fees for public schooling at all levels, which makes it enormously difficult for many children to even begin attending school. There are amazing people working to eliminate school fees at the primary school level in South Africa, but what happens after that? Can you imagine never being able to go to school again after the 5th grade? I was in school for the next TWELVE YEARS. Just think about how different our lives would be if we had to become adults at age 12, because we could no longer go to school and needed to work to survive – or because we lost our parents to AIDS and needed to work to keep our brothers and sisters alive. I can’t even count the number of times growing up that I asked my mom if I could stay home from school, or how often my friends and I spoke about just being done with school and getting out in the real world. Rhona was telling me the other day about a little boy that is a refugee from Zimbabwe, and is currently staying at the Agape Orphanage, another site that Keep a Child Alive funds. She told me that all he wants to do is to go to school. How many 12 year olds in the States do you know who want to go to school? Agape was able to arrange for him to begin his schooling here, and they are currently working to ensure he is able to stay here, as a Zimbabwean refugee.

If you come from a family that can afford your school fees, the South African government permits you to go to school wherever you wish, unlike in the States where you attend the public school that is in your school district. There are three different types of schools in South Africa – public schools that are fully funded by the South African government (lowest school fees), Model C schools that are partially funded by the government (more expensive school fees), and private schools that receive no funding from the government (most expensive school fees). As is often the case in the States, the schools that are more expensive tend to have better programs for students, because parents can afford to contribute to the maintenance of the school, its facilities and programs. Schools in rural areas are subject to fewer resources and less financial support from parents, so their programming and facilities are more limited.

The limitation that I find most interesting is that students must decide in high school, what career they want to pursue. If you want to be a doctor, you need to take the necessary science courses in high school for a university to even accept you in the program. And when you begin applying to university, you cannot apply as “Undecided” and then spend the first two years of schooling changing your major five times (like I did) before you decide what you want to do. You apply to a specific program of study, like social work, you get your degree in social work, and you become a social worker. If you decide during your study that you want to study something else, you have to begin all over again (which I know is sometimes the case in the States depending on the university and what your degree is in). And often, even though degree programs in South Africa cost only a fraction of what they cost in the States, most people cannot afford to start over and study something different.

On Sunday afternoon, Rhona hosted an engagement party for her older son Brevin and his fiancé Diedre. It was the first time that both families had spent time together, and it was a lovely evening. There was so much love and joy at the gathering – and it felt so good to be a part of the family! The party also made me miss my own family terribly! At one point, I met Viola, one of Diedre’s cousins, who is 17 and a senior in high school. She had overheard me speaking to someone about majoring in journalism, and she asked me how I liked studying it, because that is one of the careers she is considering pursuing. I explained to her how I loved every minute of studying journalism, but it wasn’t directly related to what I am doing now. She was shocked, and she shared with me how much pressure it was to have to decide what she wanted to do for the rest of her life when she was applying for schools. And I thought I was under pressure with my college applications!

I often think about how different my life would be if I had applied to study piano or acting in college. I had the privilege then to choose “undecided.” I had the privilege to choose where I wanted to study “undecidedly.” And I had the privilege to choose what field I wanted to pursue whether or not it related to what I ended up studying. I believe that every human being has a right to an education. But what does that right stipulate exactly? Do you have the right to be educated up to a certain age? Do you have the right to a free education? Do you have the right to choose how you use your education? And why is education considered a privilege to so many people, when so many other people take it for granted? Every day I work hard to ensure people’s right to life, but what about the right to learn?