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Two Worlds Photography and public health. Poor and privileged. Shantell Bingham ’11 crosses the line.

From the Fall 2015 issue of EHS Magazine

Above: Cousins talk through the fence at their home in Khayelitsha, one of the poorest areas in Cape Town, South Africa. Shantell took this photo on a research trip this past summer. Photo Credit: Sanjay Suchak, U.Va. Communications Office

Shantell Bingham ’11

Shantell Bingham ’11 started making photographs only three years ago when she signed up for a social documentary class at the University of Virginia. Of course, just because someone enrolls in a social documentary class at a prestigious university doesn’t necessarily mean they develop the gumption to wander beyond the privileged parts of twon, to take pictures of stranges, to immerse themselves in communities very unlike their own. But Shantell did all of these things, and the photos she brought back to class inspired some of her classmates to take courage and get to know another side of Charlottesville.

One of six children, Shantell was raised by a single mother under financial circumstances that ranged from low-income to upper middle class. She describes her life experience so far as “transitional,” passing from one community and economic class to the next. “I think I’m one of those people that’s lucky enough to have lived both worlds in one lifetime,” she says.

She has a few tricks, she says, for introducing herself to a new community that she wants to document: strike up a conversation – start with the kids playing in the street. In her experience, children in low-income communities are always playing outside because they don’t have access to after-school programs. Engaging with (but never photographing without permission) the children often leads to conversations with their mothers. Shantell always brings pictures back to the people she photographs. Otherwise, she says, “I think it’s very damaging. You really are just taking. You take it and you leave and they never see anything – I don’t like that.”

Shantell is not a photography major; she received her B.A. in global health studies this past spring, and is now halfway through her master’s in public health at U.Va.’s School of Medicine. Her artistic and academic sides absolutely feed and inform each other. Her knowledge of both fields has especially reinforced for her the importance of human connection in photography and public health alike.

Shantell’s thirst for human connection and a close community like the one she knew at Episcopal led her to become deeply and creatively involved in the local Charlottesville community and beyond. Since enrolling at U.Va., she has coached youth soccer and mentored refugee children, staffed health clinics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, participated in art therapy nights as a member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, and is now using grant money from her Dalai Lama Fellowship to drive a community garden initiative for residents of the low-income neighborhood of Westhaven. She has taken a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural approach to her art, research, and social work. And she has wildly reimagined what it can mean to be a college student today.

Shantell believes that her fully engaged approach started with her success at EHS, where she grew into her roles as a track and field star, Head Cheerleader, Head Waiter, and Senior Monitor. “Feeling like I had agency and power, and being inspired to actually change and be a leader of change in the EHS community, was the foundation for me being able to think outside the box at U.Va. and to come up with what I think are innovative approaches to research.”

In the past two years, Shantell has made two trips to South Africa to study barriers to educational access among South African teenagers living in rural black townships just outside of Cape Town, in some cases using participatory photography as a tool by putting cameras in the hands of local teens. On the first of these trips, she met Monwabisi, a field guide for the group from U.Va., and his wife, Nokubonga – central figures in the photo essay Shantell shares with EHS magazine.

A Visit to Nokubonga

Photos and words by Shantell Bingham ’11

A Visit to Nokubonga
They were the glue that held this small neighborhood together in one of the largest and fastest growing informal settlements in the world.

I had picked them out in the Spur grocery store the morning of the visit. They were a white bunch with bright yellow accents and strong green steams. I twirled them around in my hand and watched the golden petals dance in the sunlight as we drove into Town Two, Khayelitsha – a township in Western Cape, South Africa. I chose these flowers because they reminded me of Nokubonga. Her golden yellow skin and motherly presence always radiated warmth. I had been a student studying abroad in the University of Virginia’s Public Health Field School when I first met her. She was the wife of our main field guide and Town Two site coordinator, Monwabisi.

Together Nokubonga and Monwabisi, or Monwa, were a central force in their community. Through Monwa’s church, they brought people together, be it for praise, food, social enterprises, health, or education. In their own ways, they were the glue that held this small neighborhood together in one of the largest and fastest growing informal settlements in the world. It is estimated that Khayelitsha is currently home to approximately 400,000 people located on 14.9 square miles of land. The creation of Khayelitsha, or “New Home” in Xhosa, began in 1983 during the Apartheid era as part the city’s segregating zoning policies and in an effort to house Cape Town’s Black African labor force. These policies effectively made Cape Town’s city center White while creating a Coloured and Black periphery. The fall of the Apartheid regime did not bring an end to segregated townships. Instead Khayelitsha has continued to grow as prospects of a brighter future fill the country.

Riding down the N2, the main highway along South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, we saw the slums of the Cape Flats unfold as we traveled deeper into Khayelitsha’s core. I could feel anxiety fill my stomach and make its way down to my legs. I’d never been to Khayelitsha Cemetery before, and now I would accompany Monwa and his family to visit Nokubonga where they had laid her to rest. She had died almost six months before in December of 2014, and her absence still weighed heavily on Monwa and the children. Nokubonga had become a word we rarely spoke for fear of provoking immediate pain and sorrow. So when Monwa asked if I would like to visit her grave, I was grateful but surprised.

Khayelitsha Cemetery expanded on for miles. I sat quietly as Monwa maneuvered his small car through the sea of graveyard blocks. The cemetery seemed to present itself as a testament to the many lives lost from the HIV/AIDS epidemic that spanned from the early 1990s well into the 2000s. In 2012, it was estimated that 6.1 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, contributing to a prevalence rate of approximately 18 percent – among the highest in the world. However, HIV/AIDS isn’t the only culprit amassing deaths in the Cape.

I could feel anxiety fill my stomach and make its way down to my legs.

I thought of Nokubonga as I laid eyes upon her sandy plot marked by a wooden cross. She had died of a heart attack weeks after giving birth to her seventh child, Khanam, “God Send.” Her death represented one of many chronic illness fatalities, ranging from hypertension to diabetes, due to lack of health education or adequate healthcare access. Although much has improved in healthcare access for Black and Coloured South Africans since the fall of Apartheid, much work remains; a South African has a life expectancy of only 57 years.

I slowly dropped to my knees and began to dig a hole with my hands. Monwa followed suit by grabbing a PVC pipe that lay nearby and feverishly chopping away at the ground. The sand was still damp with rain from the night before as we placed the strong green stems into the hole. The sight of the golden flowers blooming out of the sand looked odd, and we both knew they would soon perish along with Nokubonga’s wooden grave marker. I took out my camera and began to snap photographs. If the family can’t afford a permanent gravestone, then these photographs will be her marker even years after her spot is replaced.