To Port Elizabeth and Back Again 1

Prior to my involvement in this project, I had considered myself well-traveled and transculturally aware, worldly even. Most of my international interest had focused on Spain and Latin America, and frankly, I did not think of Africa as a place on which to focus. It’s not that I actively excluded Africa from my world exploration; it’s that it just did not occur to me to consider Africa as anything more than a site of international news. What this project has done for me (in addition to highlighting the fact that my self-perception about “me and the world” was not unusual, but actually and unfortunately somewhat expected given my upbringing, education, and general place in society) is to explode a sense of both connection and responsibility to a much wider world. It is not easy to break out of our European-American-centric frames if we are born into them, but this project and the people I have connected with as a result of it have opened up a million new possibilities for my world perspectives.

The following personal “revelation” entries from my travel blog (http://sbmhome.typepad.com/south_africa), written in March 2004 during my trip with my U.S. Sharing Cultures Project colleagues to visit our NMMU colleagues in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, are some of the beginnings of my exploration of the experience. The primary audience for the blog was my family and friends at home, but some of the entries also reflect the events and observations that have continued to impact the ways in which I now teach, live, and see and experience the world. Two other entries are also included in the "Political" node of this webtext.