Accomplishment: first week

I have made it through the first week of work! I don't even really know how to sum it all up, so I will do so in broad terms.

I started work on Tuesday. I got rather lost on the way to work (I got through most of the bad traffic, and then accidentally ended up on the freeway instead of turning onto the last road I needed to be on and ended up approximately back where I started), but still showed up close to on time because I had left super early. It took me about an hour to get there.... whereas now that I know where I'm going, it takes about 20 minutes. But I did make it, and I got to the office and met Ethel, the office manager. She took me around and introduced me to everyone who was there, and then called the IT call to set up my computer. I sit at the same sort of desk "complex" with two junior attorneys, one South African and one Zimbabwean -- and when the other two interns are there, we'll all be there too.

Anyway, the director, deputy director and intern coordinator were all out of town/the country, so two program attorneys had been assigned to be my "welcoming committee." I met with Nyasha first, who's an attorney on the HIV/AIDS program but mostly does gender and reproductive health work. I was exhausted and a bit overwhelmed from the driving experience, so when she asked me to tell her about myself, I think I babbled a little bit -- but she was really, really nice. She handed me off to Abeda, who's technically a consultant but does a lot of work for the organization and is working on starting up the disability rights program. We talked about that program a bit, and a potential case she was tracking down in Lesotho, and we set out some things for me to work on related to that.

Lloyd, another program officer, had said when I met him that he had work for me to do, but then he had left the office. So I started getting familiar with some of the disability rights materials (e.g. the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and doing some research on the health care system in Lesotho to put the potential case into context. Basically there was a deaf woman who was turned away at a clinic because they didn't have a sign language interpreter, and when she came back with her own interpreter, the doctor gave her sensitive/confidential health news through the interpreter that the interpreter had no legal right to know. Problem.

I hadn't brought lunch, so I asked the two junior attorneys (Caroline and Melody) what I should do, and Melody offered to go with me to the Rosebank Mall to get food, since she had to go to the bank anyway. So we drove over there (it's really close), and I went into Woolworths and got a chicken and mushroom pie, mmmmm, and in the process realized that I had actually been there before. When I was in Joburg last August, I'm almost positive that I went out to dinner with some people in the same center.

Anyway, when I got back from lunch, Lloyd was back, so I went in and met him properly. He asked me to talk about myself again, and I think I did a much better job the second time around -- having recovered from the drive in and woken up a little bit. He's working on a case in Swaziland related to the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and he asked me to do some comparative research on whether the US, the UK and/or India had ever found their own antiterrorism legislation to violate fundamental rights like freedom of speech or association.

So, I spent most of the week working on those two things. I drafted a list of questions for an interview with the potential client in Lesotho, and we're working on a sort of "road map" of disability-related issues that we can distribute to regional disability rights groups to make it easy for them to identify potentially actionable issues. I've also spent a lot of time fruitlessly searching for courts in the US, UK or India that care about freedom of speech when it comes to terrorism. There isn't a ton out there (it turns out courts are fairly happy to trample on fundamental freedoms when it comes to national security -- who would have guessed??), but I've found a few things that I've almost finished writing up in a memo for Lloyd.

Getting to and from work has gotten really easy. I know the routes now, although I still keep the GPS on as a comfort thing. I'm even getting to be a bit of a Joburg-type driver -- hard to describe exactly what that means, but it involves being impatient with cars that are turning and going around them, even if it means not quite staying in your lane all the time. I still do manage to get stressed out when I'm going somewhere new, as I discovered this morning when I went to pick Sandeep up from the Gautrain station in Rosebank. But it's getting easier.

Politically, there are some interesting things happening here. There's an art gallery about half a block from my office that has been showing an exhibit called "Hail to the Thief II," which is a satirical collection of art about corruption and power in South Africa. One of the paintings, called "The Spear," depicts Jacob Zuma (the president of South Africa) in a Soviet-era style propaganda poster, which his genitals hanging out. Er, see right.

The ruling ANC party was... not happy about it, but then things got worse. On Tuesday, two South Africans snuck into the gallery and defaced the painting. The weird thing is, they didn't know each other or coordinate it, but they showed up and acted at almost exactly the same time. In any case, it's brought all this attention to the painting, and the ANC has brought a lawsuit to try to force the gallery to take the painting down, claiming it violates Zuma's right to dignity. The gallery and the artist are, of course, claiming freedom of speech. The court postponed the case this week, and the ANC got angry and called on its members to march to the gallery and protest outside it on Tuesday. So, that will make getting to/from working interesting, since roads will be closed. It's also a very interesting -- and, quite frankly, a very typical -- South African political moment. The gallery has temporarily closed the exhibit for now, but I guess we'll see what happens in the end.

So, that was my first week. Sandeep is here now, which will likely change things quite a lot. He's another of the American interns at my NGO, and he's also living in the house. Becs, the house owner, is moving out next weekend. Lots of changes afoot, just when I'm settling into a routine! Ah, well.

I still haven't taken any pictures. Every time my room gets organized, something happens and it gets messy again. And it's honestly so incredibly freezing at night that the last thing I want to do is organize my room and walk around the house taking pictures. I mostly just want to curl up in my bed and try (and fail) to stay warm. Ugh, the southern hemisphere.

First triumph

Aha! Well, I am in Johannesburg. Have been for four days, actually. It doesn't feel so much like a huge adventure, since it's just South Africa. Well, "just" South Africa. Maybe that takes some explaining in and of itself -- first of all, I lived here for a cumulative 9-10 months from 2007-2008 (in two separate stints), although that was in Cape Town. And second of all, Johannesburg really is not a shock to the system in the same way that a lot of places in the developing world are. There are pretty much all the modern amenities I'm used to at home, at least in the part of the city I'm staying in. You sort of have to go looking for the different parts of South Africa, or else things all seem very civilized and whitewashed.

So, I haven't really been having things happen where my first thought is, "I must run and write in my blog about that!" Part of that, to be fair, is because I literally slept the first 20 hours I was here. I didn't sleep at all on the flight here (14 hours), although I watched a LOT of movies -- so when I arrived, I chatted a bit with the girl who owns the house, and then I crashed quite hard. I slept from around 12pm through to 9:30am the next morning... not quite without waking up, but certainly without getting up and doing anything productive.

When I got up at 9:30 on Saturday, I thought I had cleverly tricked jet lag. I went with Rebecca (the British PhD student who owns the house), the other Rebecca (another British PhD student living in the house) and one of their friends, Kate, to breakfast. Yes, our party was Rebecca, Rebecca, Kate and Katie. The breakfast place was in this very upscale nook, and the food was very good. I got savory french toast with haloumi and pesto cherry tomatoes. Who even knew there was such a thing as savory french toast? It didn't really taste like french toast, but it was delicious. Rebecca also took me to a nearby shopping center to get some essentials like bed sheets. Then we all came back to the house (which is referred to as "Stafford," after the street that it's on), and they all did homework and I.... took a nap. DON'T JUDGE ME.

As it turned out, while I was sleeping on Friday night, one of their friends had moved into the spare room until the next American arrives. Imagine my surprise to wake up to a new person in the house. The guy is the ex-manager at their local bar, and is actually quite cool now that I've gotten a chance to talk to him. I think his name is Johannes, although Rebecca's South African-influenced British accent gives me some trouble when it comes to South African things I'm familiar with hearing in a pure South African accent. Rebecca's lived here for 8 years, so her accent's not really pure British anymore, but it's not South African either, so when she says things that I'm used to hearing in one or the other, I get a little... muddled. But anyway.

We ordered Indian food for dinner (delivery! oh, how I love delivery!) and watched early episodes of House on Rebecca's laptop. Obviously the internet here is too slow to stream or download TV, but she had gotten the DVDs from somewhere.

Sunday I... slept until 3pm. Oops. I guess jet lag wasn't quite done with me. I didn't have any food in the house, so I sort of whiled away the hours until Rebecca showed up, at which point I sort of plaintively asked, "If I want to eat... what should I do?" She was going to Spar (a grocery store) to get lunch for the cleaning lady who comes on Mondays, so I went with her and got a classically South African meal of.. a frozen pizza. Go big or go home, what can I say? I tried to go to bed at a reasonable time, but that wasn't happening, so I ended up sort of tossing and turning all night. I did get up at one point and edit and submit a paper for publication at about 3am, so that was.... something.

I had previously decided that my first day of work was going to be Tuesday, so I could get the car on Monday and practice driving around a bit on a day that was NOT my first day in the country. It turns out that was a really, really good decision. The car was delivered this morning. The other two American interns (both arriving later) and I are renting from a place called "Rent-a-Wreck," although their official name is Apex. They are super-cheap, although everyone seems to hate them. I was reluctant, but they are so cheap. I was dreading the car showing up, sort of expecting a giant hulking mass of metal, but... it's not that bad? It's an old Mazda automatic, and yes, it's a bit of a wreck. The whole car kind of vibrates when you drive, and the steering wheel is dreadfully stiff, and the acceleration is absolute crap, but.... well, it runs. I signed all the forms and things, and then sort of steeled myself for my first drive.

I've driven a lot of miles in South Africa, though never by myself, and never this close to my arrival in the country. Oh, and never really in the city. So I was terrified. I started small, just heading to the shopping center again to get some more essential things (clothes hangers, a hair dryer) and go food shopping. On the way there, I managed to hit something. I have no idea what -- the back of my car ran into something while I was driving, and I nearly flipped out. It wasn't anything like, moving or alive, but it flipped me out. But I got to the shopping center, and got out of the car and did my shopping, and when I got back to the car, I realized that the cigarette charger wasn't working. I had specifically requested that they check to make sure it was working, because I got a GPS before I left the US, and the only way to charge it is in the car, through the cigarette charger. So I called the company up, and they told me to come in.

I was like, oh, shit. I had no idea where in the city they were, and I didn't really want to drive anymore. But needs must -- so I plugged their address into the GPS and headed out. It was really stressful, and the GPS did a lot of reeeecalculating, and I got honked at a lot, and there are a lot of surprise one-way streets in downtown Johannesburg that are quite unpleasant, but I didn't die, and I didn't hit anything else... big. So that's a win, right?

When I got to the shop, they fixed the cigarette charger, I got the insurance situation figured out (finally!), and I was sent on my way. There was a dicey situation where the friendly gentleman from the company tried to give me driving directions that sent me the wrong way on a one-way street, but pedestrians standing by stopped me and got me through without dying. Again, there was a LOT of recalculating on the way home -- the streets are all multiple lanes in each direction, and since the GPS can't tell me audibly what my next move is going to be, I never know which lane I need to be in. So when it tells me, "turn left," I don't know if I need to turn left into the near left lane or the far left lane, and if I get it wrong and then I need to turn again in 300 meters, catastrophe ensues and I end up driving around and around in circles.

Needless to say, I was very relieved when I recognized the streets and realized I was almost home.

I will take and post pictures just as soon as I'm unpacked and my room is neat enough to be worth taking pictures of. Tomorrow is my first day of work, so I will hopefully have fun things to report soon.

Pre-departure scramble

Hello to followers old and new! Last year, I kept an online blog all summer of my experience on a summer human rights fellowship in Kampala, Uganda, and I understand it got very popular in some circles.... so, here I am again, a year later and about to set out on another great adventure (funded by my very generous law school). I know more law than ever -- though I still know pretty much nothing -- and I am heading back to where I think I really belong: South Africa.

I lived in Cape Town for about 10 months from 2007-2008, though it was in two short stints rather than all together. Except for a brief visit to Johannesburg last August, I haven't been back to South Africa in four years, and I am excited! As much as I love Cape Town, I am going to Johannesburg this summer because... well, because it's where the jobs are. In one sense, I'm not all that excited about it as a location, because Joburg is kind of just a city. On the other hand, it's really different from Cape Town, has a very different history (colonial, apartheid-er, and post-apartheid), very different racial and ethnic makeup, etc., so I think it will be a fascinating study of contrasts if nothing else.

I am working for an NGO that does human rights litigation throughout southern Africa. They have a number of district programs, but the two I've expressed interest in are their HIV/AIDS program and their international criminal law program. Their international criminal law program just won a case in South Africa that will force the South African police to investigate Zimbabwean officials living in SA who committed crimes against humanity (including torture -- it's being referred to in the media as the "Zimbabwe torture case") in Zimbabwe, in accordance with South Africa's international and domestic criminal law obligations. Exciting stuff!

That said, I am laughably unprepared to leave. It's currently Friday. Well, it's actually almost 3am on Saturday morning, but we'll call it Friday. I leave Gainesville on Tuesday, spend a night in New York, and fly out for Joburg on Wednesday morning. I still have to.... clean all my clothes, figure out what I'm actually taking overseas, buy all the necessities like a new toothbrush and enough of my sensitive teeth toothpaste to last me the summer, etc. I was in such a rush to clear out of my apartment and to get everything out of the way of my subletter that I drastically and tragically over-packed coming home from Philadelphia, so clearly I need to do some paring down....:

That's all I've got for now. Just wanted to set this blog up while I was thinking about it and had the time.

Oh, one final note about the blog title. First of all, Johannesburg is known as the "City of Gold" -- because of its historical connection with South African gold mining. And it's going to be a winter in said city of gold because, sadly, South Africa is in the southern hemisphere... which means that May-August is the dead of winter. No summer for Katie in 2012. The sacrifices we make...