In Cape Town, coloreds (the term for mixed-race South Africans) and blacks were forced to live in designated areas south and east of the city. The world has heard of Soweto, outside Johannesburg, where anti-apartheid riots broke out in the 1980s; it may be less familiar with Cape Town townships like Langa, Lavender Hill, Khayalitsha and Gugeletu. Nor does the world see the "informal settlements," the euphemism for the squatter communities that spring up in post-apartheid Cape Town wherever there is flat ground on which to erect a shack of tin or pallets.

Chris Reigeluth '03 and Kristen Heim '03, are shown with high school students they worked with in Langa. At left is Eric Dilima, who works as a liason between the CBB program and the township schools.

"It blew my mind to see that," said Jana Richardson, a Bowdoin junior. "I'm from Maine. That's one of the reasons I came [to Cape Town]. You don't have this kind of poverty in Maine. It's very humbling. It makes you thankful for every single thing you have."

In the townships, by comparison, residents don't have much. The townships are the size of cities with the feel of shabby campgrounds. Khayalitsha, with its dirt lanes and small cinderblock houses, is home to an estimated 1.3-million people, all colored. Langa, the most established black township, is home to 70,000 people, many of them middle class. Langa has spazas, or corner stores, an occasional restaurant. It is relatively safe, and in contrast to townships like Lavender Hill, where for a time last year CBB students could not do community service because gang wars made it dangerous for township students to stay after school.

Machine-gun toting gangs, drugs, rape: those are the headlines that emanate from places like Lavender Hill. Yet CBB students have found this community and others to be warm and welcoming and doing good works.

At Zerilda Park, a drab box-shaped school surrounded by security fences, CBB students last year made the acquaintance of an inspiring community activist named Raymond Engelbrecht. Engelbrecht grew up in Lavender Hill, excelled in school and sports and made it out. He had forged a successful career in insurance but a few years ago came back to the community where he grew up. "I received a calling," Engelbrecht said. CBB students did, too.

They arrived at Zerilda Park intending to help out at a daycare center. But several CBB students, all musicians, brought their guitars and drums to the school one afternoon and were greeted by a standing-room-only audience that included some very talented youngsters. And the CBB students had an idea.

"We sent out a letter, it made the rounds," said Ben Griffin, now a Colby senior. The letter asked parents and friends back in the U.S. for donations. Ultimately enough money was raised to buy guitars, drums, amps--equipment for a jazz combo--and to hire a music teacher.

As of last fall, the music program at Zerilda Park was going strong, the jazz riffs wafting across the playgrounds after school. "It's just a matter of knowing how you can make a difference," Griffin said, "and the kind of difference you can make."

Last semester alone, Heim and other students in Webb's AIDS course made a poignant documentary on Beautiful Gate, a township hospice for babies born HIV-positive. Rachel Meiklejohn, a Colby junior, worked with a group of Langa high school students as they prepared for their matriculation exams, the test that would determine their future education paths and careers. "I think I've learned more from them than they've learned from me," Meiklejohn said.

Students of Julie McGee, a Bowdoin professor of art, last semester organized and promoted a first-ever art show in the township. It was called "Homecoming" and was devoted to the work of artists living in the townships. Students interviewed each artist, some through Khosa-speaking translators, and wrote their biographies in English. For students and McGee, it was an opportunity to shine a light on artists whose work has been long hidden in shadows of poverty.

"That's the great part about being here . . . people are so thankful just to have someone say, 'I believe in you. I'm interested. Tell me about your work,'" McGee said in her Cape Town office where paintings were stored prior to the exhibit. "Because there's not enough of that for black artists here."

Students entered artists' homes interested and often emerged inspired. These after all are painters and sculptors who produce art under the most difficult circumstances, sometimes choosing colors based on their cost, but refusing to consider art a luxury. "They say that it's a gift they've been given and they must use it," said Colby's Heather Finn '03, who spent time with painter Alfred Budaza at his home studio in Philippi East. "It's almost spiritual."

Yet because few township residents can afford to buy art, the artists' works have been whisked away to white buyers in the city. One township native and artist, Vuyile Cameron Voyiya, now employed by the South African National Gallery, said the CBB effort--with buyers entering the townships from the white art world--gave the artists credibility in the eyes of their township neighbors. In the past "it didn't seem to be a responsible job," Voyiya said. "[Residents] may feel artists are just playing around."

But the show did more than just bring the outside art world to Langa. It also crossed township lines, drawn just as deeply during apartheid as the line between white and non-white. Habit, race, economics and lack of transportation meant residents of Lavender Hill who attended the exhibit opening because of their involvement with the CBB center had never been to Langa. The Americans hop--and sometimes blunder--across cultural divides.

"We haven't grown up here knowing that we can't," said Webb, who is white and sometimes found himself describing the townships to whites, lifelong South Africans who had never ventured there. "So we do it. And a lot of that is naïve. That doesn't mean it isn't successful."

Nor does it mean the program sends students blithely into dangerous situations. In fact, one of the biggest expenses is the cost of a taxi service called SafeCab. The company operates a fleet of Kombis, Volkswagen vans, that shuttle students to and from the townships, to and from host families' homes and downtown to pick up students who go out to Cape Town's plentiful restaurants and bars.