Maria on Perspective

Maria receiving her certificate at conclusion of Human Rights Training Weekend

There are some things I will always remember about Human Rights Weekend at Goedgedacht Olive Peace Grove, especially all the ways I learned about perspective.  There's something about floating in the water at the top of a mountain with a dramatic lack of light pollution, the night sky stretching out as far as you can see in every direction, ears submerged letting the muffled sounds of peeper frogs become familiar, and waiting for shooting stars that take up the whole sky and fade out slowly.  It makes you think about how your planet is just another rock floating around in THAT - that open space - around its own little, tiny (but gargantuan) ball of flaming gas... I could go on forever.  My wishes on shooting stars will never be the same again, and the ones I found myself making after a full weekend of human rights education with peers from all over the world, at the top of this mountain with my ears under water, were not as simple as most of the shooting star wishes I've ever made before.

Perspective.  I can't describe this night very well, and words won't do the weekend justice either, but there was one demonstration facilitated by our professor Vincent Williams, chairperson of Africa Unite, that I would like to share with others.  He asked for two volunteers to come to the middle of the room and stand back to back.  He was standing at the flip-chart that we had been staring at all weekend.  "Is the flip char in the front, or in the back?" he asked the two participants.  One answered, "in the front," and one answered "in the back."

Vincent Williamson Human Rights Training Weekend

This was a wonderful way to understand how and why people are different and see the world through their own personal lens, made up of position and life experiences - perspective.  We can be open enough to put ourselves in another person's place and understand why they think they way they do and why they are who they are are.  If someone comes up with a different answer, we can stop and think, "I wonder why they answered differently than I did.  Maybe I can stand beside them and see what I think of the flip-chart from over there.  If we can do this, then we can invite the person facing another direction to understand us.  "Do you want to stand by me and see where the flip-chart is from my point of view?"

In Marita's class we talked about how we are only capable of seeing one small part of our spherical world.  We stand at our single point of our sphere - whether that's the UConn part of the sphere, or the New England part, or the American part, or even the privileged part.  It is only when we are willing to step outside of our own comfort zones and understandings that we can start to see what it really means to empathize with and understand somebody else.  You don't have to be in a whole new place to do this, but Cape Town is the place that I really learned how to do this on a whole other level.  I'm really glad I'm here.