Alice's Story
"In the spring of 2015, I left the University of Miami to spend a semester in Cape Town. I knew the experience would be exciting and transformative. What I did not anticipate, however, was that I would return to Cape Town for a second semester through IES Abroad a year later, and stay for an additional eight months, traveling the country while working for a South African non-profit organization. I did not foresee that my time abroad would alter my trajectory so fundamentally that I find myself now applying for graduate study that will bring me back to South Africa in order to continue the community development work that I began during my semesters abroad. I certainly did not expect my experience in Cape Town to kick-start a stand-up comedy career that would lead me to perform for South African audiences throughout the city, explaining the cultural confusion I felt as an American living among them. I struggle to articulate how much study abroad changed everything for me fundamentally, without leaning on clichés, but I can say with sincerity that this experience helped me understand my place in the world, and set me on a new path in pursuit of international human rights work.
In addition to studying environmental science and geography from the point of view of the global South at the University of Cape Town, the internships I found abroad were the most meaningful aspects of my experience; they continue to inform my scholarship and the goals I have for the future. During my first semester in Cape Town, I worked at an NGO called Sonke Gender Justice. My work there was most research based–I looked into the country’s current HIV-prevention and gender equality educational programs in order to identify gaps, and then complied program proposals for the South African Department of Health. This work taught me primarily about the dire state of HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa, but also challenged me to approach this problem from different points of entry than I would have otherwise. For example, the organization often worked with young men, educating them about gender issues in order to target the roots of gender-based violence.
During my second semester in Cape Town, and for three months after my time at the University of Cape Town ended, I interned at Community Media Trust–another HIV-prevention NGO–which used a very different point of entry to tackle South Africa’s health problems. My work with Community Media Trust consisted of writing a forty-week curriculum that taught vulnerable young women life skills, ranging from how to open a bank account, to active listening, to performing a breast self-exam. The girls would meet weekly in clubs–led by a mentor from their communities–to learn these skills. The premise of the program was that when young women have social, economic, and cognitive assets, their likelihood of contracting HIV or becoming pregnant as a teenager is much lower. This work took me all around South Africa to recruit small community-based organizations and implement the curriculum in different communities.
Finally, my year in Cape Town was full of smaller, but equally meaningful interactions with the city and culture that I found myself immersed in. Study abroad creates an opportunity for students to experiment with parts of themselves that they might not feel able to in their everyday lives. Stand-up comedy had always been in the back of my mind as something I would like to try, but never would, because it made me too vulnerable. Living abroad inherently makes you vulnerable–it teaches you to embrace vulnerability. Sometimes, the result of this is discomfort. Sometimes, you find yourself performing for a packed house at Cape Town’s biggest comedy club because you stood up at that first open mic night. Experiences like this are what made study abroad such a meaningful and rich part of my life, and why I chose to return to the same city for a second semester.
Now, five months after leaving Cape Town, as I finish my senior year and apply to graduate school for urban planning, I continue to ask the questions-of others and myself–that were raised by my year in South Africa: How do we approach these huge, global problems, like HIV or gender-based violence, in a new way? What have we not tried? What would I do if I weren’t afraid to feel exposed? How could I live in my own city as though I only had one year to experience it? My education, work, and plans for the future have all become about seeking the answers to these questions, and prompting others to do the same. I could never have anticipated that study abroad would give me this new purpose."