In about a week I will be on my way to Cape Town, South Africa for a twelve-week internship. This internship, along with a 25-page paper, will fill my field experience requirement for James Madison College at MSU.
My internship is with an urban agriculture and environmental action association called Abalimi Bezekhaya. (Abalimi means "the Planters" in Xhosa) Abalimi operates in the socio-economically neglected townships like the surrounding areas on the Cape Flats near Cape Town. This association assists individuals, groups and community based organizations to initiate and maintain permanent organic food growing and nature conservation projects as the basis for sustainable lifestyles, self-help job creation, poverty alleviation and environmental renewal.
Anyway, I will be “blogging” while I am in South Africa, and the purpose is two-fold. Mainly, it is for school and to apply what I have learned from my two majors (keep reading if you want to hear more about those little gems) to my experience in Cape Town. Secondly, I would like to think that it could benefit you and (perhaps. hopefully?) me. I find it difficult to communicate to people what I am doing in school and why. Partially because I don’t know what I’m doing, and partially because I don’t know why I am doing it. Maybe this summer will help…
James Madison is the residential college of… well, I am not exactly sure to tell you the truth. I have heard rumors that it is a business college or a political science college, but students and professors generally scoff at these imposed definitions and then continue to talk about how superior JMC is compared to the rest of the university (no offense).*
The James Madison website states that it is a college of “sophisticated multidisciplinary programs in the social sciences founded on a model of liberal education.” This description is about as obscure as my majors, which are: 1) Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and 2) Comparative Cultures and Politics. The first involves studying theories and works from the classic ole dead guys like Socrates, Plato, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Locke, etc. It is your typical political studies class, more or less. Adding my second major, CCP, was one of the most ridiculous life choices I have ever made. There are rumors that this major is easy. I honestly thought the classes were going to be a general consensus of, “Hey, let’s travel the world and having good times!” This was not the case. This major must have been created with the intention of abusing the sanity of future students. First of all, it is built on a series of made up words. But more importantly, the subject mater consists of mind-bottling concepts such as globalization, cultural relativism, nativism, hegemony, knowledge production/epistemology, and the general deconstruction of everything that you think you know… but it turns out that you don’t actually know anything.
As you may have guessed, my majors have a tendency to conflict with each other and leave me even more confused about government, America and globalization, and life in general. My first major favors the way of the Western World, the second criticizes it. I am using the word “criticizes” here because I can’t think of a stronger word and I don’t want to swear. Everywhere I look I see imperialism. Even in Disney movies. Why is everything so tainted now? Whyyyy??
So here I am, a typical 20-year-old kid with big ideas from having a couple years in college under my belt but with no real experience, ready to take on the world. This will be my first trip outside of the US (except for Canada) and I am realz excited to set out on this adventure. I don’t really have any expectations and I’m hoping that this will allow for the best possible experience while exploring the homeland.
Props if you made it through that whole post. I doubt my parents will even read this. And I apologize, my posts won’t usually be this longwinded/scattered!
*just to clarify, I do not think that I am better than you
