It was a fair question — and my small band of a dozen travelers answered it many times during a week-long visit to Grahamstown in January.
It was a fair question — and my small band of a dozen travelers answered it many times during a week-long visit to Grahamstown in January.
Indeed, why would the students in a college journalism class spend half of their college winter break traveling to Grahamstown — and working when they got there — a trip that took them some over 13 000 km from home?
Simple. They wanted to meet the people of Grahamstown and tell their stories. I am happy to report that the mission was accomplished. And we all fell in love with Grahamstown and can’t wait to come back!
Before they headed here, the nine students in the class had been working for a free monthly newspaper and website I created in Syracuse, New York, focusing on the people, the problems and the successes of the South Side, a city neighborhood that’s just a few blocks from our campus.
The class also created videos about a dozen 'characters' they met in the neighborhood, everyday residents with interesting stories to tell. We thought it would be fun to go “global,” and test our theory that no matter where they live — no matter how far apart — people are more alike than different. So we came to Grahamstown.
Grahamstown is similar in size to Syracuse, and it is home to a sizeable university, too. We had an excellent contact here, a Syracuse resident (Jason Torreano) who had been an exchange student at Rhodes. (He fell in love with Grahamstown long before we did, and he’s been back a number of times, including the recent trip with us.)
We produced a set of videos here, just as we did in Syracuse, and put all of them together on a website. You can find our Grahamstown work right here on Grocott's Online too:
Our videos featured:
Besides enjoying these stories and sharpening our skills as storytellers in an unfamiliar and new place, we confirmed the fundamental truth we expected. As student Christine Mehta wrote for our website when we got home:
“In the end, we all have the same desires regardless of geography, race or language: security, freedom, education and friendship. I found, to my surprise, that two such very different places as Grahamstown’s township and Syracuse’s South Side have more in common than I could have ever suspected, and that reporting halfway across the world is much like reporting right here at home.”
We’d love to hear from you! Email me directly or leave a comment below or on our main project site. If you visit our site, you can “meet” the South Side residents we featured there. The site is in two “halves”: Your stories and ours. Have fun comparing the two.
Finally, we are looking for good ideas for our next visit. And when you see us there again, now you’ll know why we’re there. Perhaps the next story we do will be your idea — or even about you.
