This blog post was written by 2015 South Africa participant, Felicity Palma. Felicity is a multimedia artist, international women’s rights advocate, and young breast cancer survivor. Using digital photography and videography, her storytelling projects aim to create a space for women’s experiences and voices to be witnessed and heard. To see more of her work, visit: https://www.felicitypalma.com 

November 5th, 2015. I arrived in Cape Town admittedly naïve to the great contradictions I would witness here. Apartheid may have ended 20 years ago, but the sense of a city divided by wealth and poverty, white and black, remains as strong as ever. After decades of enforced segregation, the remnants of Apartheid are permanently carved into the city’s urban form, “the physical legacy of a plan that was calculatedly designed to separate poor blacks from rich whites,” as Oliver Wainwright so aptly described. The city center, named the World Design Capital of 2014, is bourgey, affluent, so very white. I hardly knew I was in Africa. After a 25 minute drive, I would arrive in Nyanga each day, startled by the very obvious physical barriers that lay between the township and my sweet little Sea Point bubble – highways, railroads, rivers, golf courses, power stations, a sewage treatment plant.

Courtesy of Felicity Palma

For two weeks at our volunteer placement, my role was to document all of the wonderful work the organization did for and with their community. An organization built by the community, for the community, the stories shared by the women and men who work there are ones shrouded in violence, illness, and tragedy, yet ultimately are ones of resilience and purpose.

Although our program came to an end, my time in Cape Town had only just begun. I stayed on for an extra few weeks to pursue my own photography project which explores both the internal and external forces that inform a young woman’s experience while dealing with a disease such as cancer. Serendipitously during my volunteer placement, I connected with a vivacious, entrancing young woman who worked as a sex educator who had survived cervical cancer and is living with HIV. I was humbled and honored when Pelisa invited me to spend a day with her family in her township Mfuleni.

The locals were mostly friendly, more in awe than anything to see an umlungu (white person) walking around their township. I met a handful of her friends; shared a “blush” [hard cider] with her brother’s girlfriend; enjoyed a braai [South African barbecue] right there off the street; photographed and spoke with locals; talked about everything from Madiba, God, what it means to be a man in Xhosa culture, to sexual experimentation and curiosities with her and her best friend. I met her entire family and taught her daughter how to use my camera. It was a full and exhausting day, but damn: as a young woman diagnosed first with HIV and then cervical cancer, and so much hardship before, after, and in between, Pelisa sees nothing more than the beauty in everything and embraces life with such grace and spirit. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone love their children with such intensity as she does. It was gorgeous and beautiful and above all else, such a privilege to connect with her and hold space for her story.

Courtesy of Felicity Palma

We spent over 12 hours together comparing and contrasting our cancer stories, our personal hardships and insecurities, our dreams, wants, desires. What emerged from that day was one resounding theme: We all want to be seen. But perhaps to be seen, we must also take the time to really “see” someone else. No matter how different our stories may be, when we open our eyes and open our hearts, we can always find the ties that bind us.

A huge and deep thank you to A Fresh Chapter and Pink Link for opening this door for me.

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