District 6...I mean 9

I guess I don’t have anything officially exciting to report, as there are no new developments at work and the past few weekends have been mostly spent relaxing and recuperating from an annoying cold. Even so, sometimes I can’t help but ramble...

We recently saw District 9, which I enjoyed (minus the deafening noise associated with endless shooting). For a violence-filled science fiction/action movie, it was actually quite thought provoking, and I found it particularly interesting to watch it in South Africa. For anyone who doesn’t know the movie, the central story is about a man who starts to turn alien (after he accidentally ingests some alien fluid) and his quest to at first redeem himself in human society and then fight back as society turns on him, with various lessons learned along the way. The interesting part is that the story is set in Johannesburg, where the alien ship landed years ago. People took it upon themselves to “take care of” the sick aliens they found inside the ship, which ultimately turned into fencing them off in their own restricted living area. The main character gets “infected” as he ventures out among the alien district (called District 9) with the mission of handing out eviction notices to all of the aliens, trying to force them to move off land that has become desirable to humans.

Though I don’t have to state the obvious in terms of the apartheid allusion, I’m guessing a lot of nuances of the comparison are unfortunately lost on many Americans. In fact, the title is reference to an area in Cape Town called “District 6.” This was a flourishing multiracial (though mostly non-white) community. However, this was very desirable land in the middle of the city, so in the 60s the apartheid government designated the area for whites only and forced everyone else living there to move. Over 60,000 people thus moved to the arid, uninviting land outside of the city called “Cape Flats,” where today’s expansive townships and informal settlements exist. Ironically, after the painful removal of so many people, the idea of building in this formerly flourishing but subsequently abandoned District 6 area became taboo, and even to this day it sits mostly empty and undeveloped. Hence the movie’s title of District 9 says a lot. When watching a movie with aliens involved, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the fantastical elements of science fiction – and thus it’s frightening to remember that pretty much the exact same thing occurred in real life with human beings.

The movie also makes reference to the xenophobia which has occurred in the South African townships of late (violence escalated last year), with people of all races angry about the aliens taking away their tax money, resources, etc. Xenophobia was especially prominent in the South African townships, with South Africans lashing out against their neighbors from other African countries. (The townships not only serve as home for numerous poor South Africans looking for employment in the cities, but also for lots of people from all over the African continent who have either chosen to leave their home countries in search of jobs or who had to leave for reasons linked to conflict – unofficial refugees, if you will.) Here, these foreigners are often targeted as South Africans fear they are taking away their jobs and money, and they are also often blamed for crime and the spread of disease. It’s sad to think how history indicates that human nature always involves pushing someone else to the bottom, be it non-whites, people of other nationalities, or aliens.

In total, I found the movie to be quite provocative. The allegory was so overt and included such candid portrayals of racial hierarchy and township life – yet it felt weird that the official purpose of bringing up these issues wasn’t to document them but rather to use them as a background for creating a make-believe story. It made me feel a little uncomfortable to watch the movie amongst South Africans, as I couldn’t imagine what you would be thinking if this was actually your country and your ancestors’ history, as opposed to a foreign history that you can remove yourself from. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that it was an interesting movie and I recommend it if you can deal with lots of modern day action movie violence.

In other news, my official boss, Monica (the head of the Department of Strategic Information and Technical Support), has just returned from maternity leave. With 3 days back in the office, we’ve already had numerous productive meetings and I feel I have a much better understanding and appreciation for the role of DSITS and particularly M&E (monitoring and evaluation; my assigned focus) within the grander m2m vision and mission. Turns out the DSITS team is pretty much entirely new (consisting of 2 Princeton Fellows, 1 Pfizer Fellow who just started, and one new M&E recruit who only joined in July as well, plus Monica), as the Department itself is very new and recently lost 2 people to standard employee turnover. Monica thus spent a lot of time debriefing us on the organization as a whole and DSITS in particular, which was incredibly useful. We are also doing some team-building exercises together. Such official “team-building” I’ve never really experienced, and I must admit it has always seemed like a bit of a fluffy idea to me. I mean, how hard can it be to work together without officially knowing everyone’s Myers-Briggs personality types? In retrospect though, I have enjoyed learning more about management and working together and I very much appreciate that Monica is really trying to listen to what people hope to accomplish and how they want to grow over the year. It’s comforting knowing she wants to help us each achieve our goals.

Taking aside the intellectual aspect of working at m2m, I am additionally learning a lot professionally about how to work in an organization – specifically, an organization that isn’t a University department or whose primary goal is not scientific research. m2m really is an incredible foundation and it’s very interesting to take part as it expands exponentially. And the people here are so great. Not only do they hail from countless backgrounds both culturally (South African, American, Canadian, Egyptian, Indian, Italian, British, Australian, German to name a few) and professionally (investment banking, medicine, show business/entertainment, non-profits, pharmaceuticals, etc.) but their work experiences have taken them all over the world – all in all combining for a very dynamic group of people which I’m really enjoying getting to know better.