Rules of the Game

If you are wondering, "didn't we already do this?" Yes - I did travel with my school in Latin America, thank you for reading my blog.

8 countries and 3 years of an undergraduate degree later, we have grown up....

Hola, from South Africa. Study abroad number 2.
I will not be faithfully sending an update email because they take forever to write and the audience participation declines when you receive 6 emails a semester from people who are all over seas and want to tell you about it. Well, I am abroad and still want to tell you about it, so here are my rules:

I will not write about finding myself.
I will not write about saving Africa.
I am well aware that Africa is not a country.
I do not want to move to Africa.

I will not be objective.
If you assume you can feel a pull to the left, it will in fact be a white American's interpretation from time spent in the margins, learning from the oppressed.
"I will explicitly be writing with one bias - a preferential option for the poor."
Finally, all of this writing will be done while NOT wearing a safari vest and in fierce loyalty to Latin America.

Arm Your Voice

Banksy

"You're collapsible - you break down and build up fast."
Favorite compliment

"You're never here, never present."
Most common critique


After years exiled in suburbia, I went to college to leave - to play the system and consequently gain exposure to all that I could absorb. Eight countries and three years of an undergraduate degree later, here I am, writing from Southern Africa, compliments of Furman University. Why would I stay in Greenville, South Carolina when I could take the same class in Southern Africa?

I surrender to a state of carpe annum because it is the only way I can justify my education. It is how I convince myself not to leave it all behind and just start doing some form of tangible work - building a school, monitoring elections, coordinating logistics for a safe house. When my American passport can stop bullets and bombs I need an impressive reason to play with ideas.

I consciously choose to fight back by paying tuition to learn about poverty. Each year, class, and country makes me more dangerous, more informed. Surely it is a crime to consume knowledge and not take a side! We should all be branded radicals after exposure to an education from the margins. After learning from the oppressed, neutrality should no longer be a viable option; there should be a burden to provoke the status quo. Systemic oppression can only be maintained through ignorance, dependent on apathetic consumption. So, why not ask who is making our clothes or preparing our food?

Each textbook is a weapon. I feel more powerful with each new idea and speaker. I can feel the momentum building as we imagine a different, just world. I use my privilege to "arm my voice" with words, not weapons. I continue to stay in the tower of academia in honor my brothers and sisters disappeared from their classrooms for wanting a liberating pedagogy. In honor of them, I refuse to play ideological dress up. I will not put on and take off ideas as they become fashionable. If students living under repressive governments are dying for what they believe in, I will justify every opinion I proscribe.



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Textbooks used in-country are the following:
The Invisible Cure
Sickness and Wealth
Mandela's Children

In addition, we have a course reader with excerpts from books such as:
White Man's Burden
The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients