English Major Spends Semester in South Africa
by Natalie Stigall

Junior Kristen Woszczynski lives her life according to her favorite quote by Henry David Thoreau: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” A double major in writing and international studies, Woszczynski spent spring semester of 2007 at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

As a literature minor, Woszczynski took two third-year literature electives, which she equated with American senior-year courses. But these courses – Travel and Translation: Writing Africa and War and Civil Life: Literary Evaluations – were intended for South African students, Woszczynski said, unlike the rest of her courses, which were reserved for international students. Covering material from Shakespeare to Graham Greene to Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, the courses were both challenging, interesting, and beneficial in the end.

“It’s particularly interesting to hear South African students’ opinions on various writers’ books about Africa – on every issue from race relations to colonialism to the presence of aid workers,” she said. “It’s just a neat way to get another perspective that I probably wouldn’t hear in a literature class back home.”

And whether she was traveling with friends, tutoring English in a nearby township or attending literature classes geared toward South African students, Woszczynski experienced much to write home about. Although she was not enrolled in any writing classes while in South Africa, Woszczynski said she tried to write in her journal every night, eager to record her experiences and return to them later.

“I’m so often overwhelmed by life here that I just try to get it down on paper as it happens,” she said. “I’m trying to record all the details and the conversations that will slip away if I don’t write them down, but from experience, I know I need some time to process my semester here before I try to write creatively about it.” Woszczynski hopes to focus on her writing this fall, when she will be taking an independent study on travel writing with English professor Margaret McMullan.

Woszczynski is not unfamiliar with travel, having studied at Harlaxton Manor – UE’s campus in England – in fall 2005 and visiting 10 different countries during this time, including Italy, France, and Morocco. In comparing the two experiences, Woszczynski cited ease of travel, social issues, and safety concerns as major differences.

Though she did travel in South Africa – for example, visiting Lesotho over spring break – Woszczynski said trains were not completely safe, plane tickets were expensive, and rape, racism, and crime were problems South Africa struggles with. The two experiences, she said, are impossible to truly compare.
“My feelings about South Africa are much more nuanced than the exhilaration I felt at Harlaxton,”
Woszczynski said. “For me, Harlaxton was about self-discovery, independence, and maturity. It was such an empowering semester. South Africa is quite the opposite – I get scared sometimes, and I have more confusion than clarity, more questions about the country and about myself than I have answers.”
In fact, Woszczynski said her favorite memory of South Africa is volunteering as an English tutor in the small, poor township of Kayamandi, a far cry from the developed, predominantly white, Afrikaans-speaking town where she studied. Working with these children and witnessing this economic disparity and injustice, she said, opened her eyes as a person and a writer.

“It’s the kind of shock I think you need as a writer – to be jerked out of your comfort zone so you stop settling for easy answers and start asking the hard questions,” Woszczynski said. In the end, Woszczynski said a semester abroad will improve both a writer’s craft and humanity. She called the experience “humbling yet empowering” and said writers will find ample insight into different people and different ways of life, as she did.

“I can’t imagine how different my writing and my perspective on life would be if I hadn’t chosen to study abroad,” Woszczynski said. “I’ll never forget the people I’ve met and the places I’ve seen. They’ve become some of the characters and the settings in my writing, and the lessons they’ve taught me are invaluable as a student, a writer and a human being.”