Taylor's lessons learned on the weekend, at her internship, and in her travels

I didn’t have many expectations for Human Rights Weekend, but it was definitely unlike any experience I’ve had before.  We stayed in really nice rooms overlooking the rest of the farm, and got to spend every night looking at the Milky Way and shooting stars because the sky was so clear! The food was amazing, and I think we all agreed that the bread was the best we’d ever had.  While I was anxious at first to work with the people who came from the organization Africa Unite, it was really interesting to get to know people with backgrounds so different from my own. Many of the participants grew up in some of the townships we work in, so it was really eye-opening to meet more people who really live in and experience the communities.  I learned a lot from Vincent and from the other participants, and it was exciting because I just recently changed my major to human rights, and finally got to start learning!

While many aspects of the weekend were informative and exciting, a concern of mine was the lack of conversation surrounding women’s rights and gender-based violence.  More than half of the participants were women, and yet we spent barely any time talking about their personal experiences and the issue of women’s rights in South Africa and the United States. We spent a lot of time talking about human rights in general, refugees, and specific human rights violations in various countries, but didn’t ever go in depth talking about women. This bothered me because I felt that some of the women were being interrupted by the men in the group as well, and that some did not have a chance to share their input, especially when we split up to do group work.  This was concerning, as ignoring the perspectives of women and other marginalized groups of people is how the problems facing them escalate, especially in countries where the society is very patriarchal overall. Gender-based violence and women’s rights are important topics to me and ones I wish to learn more about, so I just wish we dedicated more time to them.

Getting back into internships was exciting this week, as I got to spend time with Maddy in the Speech Department, helping out a few students in Grade R (kindergarten) and Grade 1 classes.  The students were all so sweet and it was especially really fulfilling to get positive reactions from the non-verbal students. It felt good to know I was directly improving someone’s day and to see the results right away! Another fun thing was that on Monday morning, our minibus taxi driver asked Sara, Maddy, and Karen where we worked and what time we got out in the afternoon, but we didn’t think much of it at the time. Later that afternoon, we were walking down the road to our usual minibus stop and we saw the same minibus and driver coming out of his way to pick us up! It was such a nice thing to do, because he was definitely going off his normal route and picked us up just because he knew how hard it was to find a minibus going towards Cape Town in the afternoon. He was so friendly and talked to us the whole way home, then said if we ever needed a ride to just let him know. In comparison to some other minibus drivers, this is extremely rare, as they are often polite and recognize you, but usually just drive their normal route each day. This was such an unexpected act of kindness, and brightened our whole day and week. And of course, we found out that the driver’s name is Vernon. J