Students from Kearsarge Arts Theatre and the Masiphumelele primary school have fun getting to know each other. Photo courtesy Dan Perkins.
“We got off the bus in Soweto having just come from Johannesburg. The extreme poverty was obvious. We walked through a shantytown, one home after another, no bigger than this office (nine by 12 feet),” says Dick Hage, vice president for student affairs. “Outside of the stadium we heard our group being announced. We held hands and ran single file through a crowd of South Africans that parted like the Red Sea as we made our way into the stadium. Everyone was cheering and clapping, it was amazing. You couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement of the moment.”
The gathering at Orlando Stadium on Youth Day in South Africa commemorated the 1976 slaying of a young black boy involved in a protest march during apartheid, explains Dan Perkins, professor of music. It was day two on the performance/educational tour of South Africa that he and Trish Lindberg, professor of education, coordinated last June for the PSU Choir Council, the M.Ed. Arts and Culture Institute, the cast of the Kearsarge Arts Theatre (KAT) production A You and Me World, PSU faculty and administrators, KAT parents and friends.
“It was an exhilarating experience to perform, but it was also a bit intimidating,” says Perkins. “It was a dusty parking lot, no pavement. The stadium was packed, and we were 74 white Americans, wearing khakis and t-shirts with flags from all over the world, arriving in an air-conditioned bus to perform before a crowd of 10,000 black South Africans. Not everyone was thrilled we were there, but our presence was powerful.”
And what an event it was, says Lindberg. “We were all so excited and in a heightened sense of awareness that this truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us.”
The excitement of the day, and the enthusiasm of the people, was echoed throughout their South African journey. As with any trip to a foreign country, it was an opportunity to experience a different culture and see the sights. South Africa offered much of both and the group participated in a broad range of activities: safari in Kruger National Park, visiting Shangana Traditional Village, bungee jumping off a bridge 216 meters high, visiting an ostrich farm where some actually rode ostriches, the historic post office tree in Mossel Bay, the Cape of Good Hope and, of course, sampling new foods.
But the trip was also about learning through sharing, as they did during the performance on Youth Day. The group also performed in churches, schools, villages and community centers, singing a collection of African-American spirituals, South African freedom songs in Zulu, contemporary American performance pieces and selections from A You and Me World“South African children have an openness and freedom to express joy that I don’t see in the U.S.,” says Perkins. “They have an inner light.” Perkins describes one of the most profound moments for him during the trip—performing at Masiphumalele informal settlement. “We had raised money for this township at our send-off concert, so it was powerful to actually be there. We shared a concert with the high school and middle school choirs. The primary school wasn’t on our list, but I really wanted to include them. Our tour guide said it wasn’t on the schedule and we didn’t have time, but I walked across the street and everybody followed.
“The children were just coming out of class into an open air courtyard,” Perkins continues. “They had probably never seen that many white people before. We started singing a Zulu piece and spontaneously, immediately we were surrounded by them. They sang in harmony with us, moving and clapping. I didn’t want to leave.”
Later that day Camille Lively, senior theatre arts major, wrote in her journal: “How can I put this experience into words? The informal concert in the church was fun … exchanging songs on this trip has always been fun and this was no exception … we went to the schoolyard and played with the kids and sang, and they sang … oh their faces. Their faces were so sweet. What I learned most—not only about these people, but all people—was that appearances and stereotypes are so deceiving. So very deceiving. These people live in shacks. Many of them don’t know when their next meal will be and many of the children are parentless, but these people are happy and they are constantly celebrating. Celebrating through music and dance and games. They laugh constantly and enjoy and live in every moment. … We could stand to learn a few things from them.”
“This was part of our enlightenment,” says Perkins. “The first thing that came to mind when we visited the school with no books or desks was, ‘What can we do to help?’ How arrogant of me to assume they need help. We learned a great deal about our own attitudes and ideas about race, poverty and international relations. Our white South African tour coordinator, Pieter Myburgh, was a former policeman who lost his job when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. His perspective was somewhat different than our black South African bus drivers and tour guides, and this helped us form our own views. As Pieter said to me one day, ‘We can do this ourselves, at our own pace. We don’t need America to show us how. It may not be the same way America did it, but we will get there.’”
For KAT cast member Emily Parkinson (age 13) it was a life-changing trip. “It was hard to see people with so little food, opportunity and money, but so much talent,” she says. “It made me realize that they lead what they consider to be normal lives, and that they could never imagine having all the ‘extras’ we have here.”
As much as the PSU and KAT students were touched by their various experiences, so too were many South Africans. Lindberg reflected on a particularly memorable moment. “After one of the performances of A You and Me World, an elderly white man approached me with tears in his eyes. … He said, ‘You know, I lived through apartheid and we have come a long way. But thank you for showing us how far we still need to come.’”
It has been 10 years since apartheid ended in South Africa. A lot has changed in the last decade, and the country will continue to evolve. Lindberg says the trip was planned from the beginning as a joint effort to expose students and children to a culture very different from their own.
Support for this rich cultural exchange came from PSU Graduate Studies and Community Outreach; Dennise Maslakowski, associate vice president for graduate studies; and John and Carol Thompson, founders of the Masiphumalele Corporation to assist the South African township of the same name.
The learning continues as a result of a chance meeting with a talented soprano. Perkins says, “She is very gifted and would like to continue vocal study, but doesn’t have access to that opportunity. We are working diligently to find a way to get her voice lessons and for her to be able to apply to an opera program at the university in Cape Town.”
It is clear these Americans learned what Nelson Mandela already knew: “My country is rich in minerals and gems that lie beneath the soil, but I have always known that its greatest wealth is its people, finer and truer than the purest diamonds.”—MBH
