Apartheid, Iowa, and the Aftermath: Reed and Ketsi’s Story

In this episode of The AFS Exchange, we share the incredible story of Reed Davis and Ketsi Meka, two friends separated by continents and decades. Ketsi, from South Africa, lived with Reed’s family in Iowa during 1982-83. After Ketsi returned to Apartheid South Africa, they lost touch despite Reed’s repeated efforts to reconnect.

Thirty years later, Reed headed to South Africa for work and ramped up his search for Ketsi. Spoiler alert: they finally reconnect and reflect on the years since Ketsi’s time in Iowa, leading to a creative project together.

Join us to hear about Ketsi’s year in the U.S., his experience moving from Apartheid South Africa to a predominantly white community in Iowa, and the culture shocks he endured after returning back home. This episode shows the lasting power of cultural exchange and how relationships formed can grow even stronger over time. Reed and Ketsi's story highlights how impactful these connections can be, even decades later.

Guests:
Reed Davis
Ketsi Meka

Study Abroad with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/study-abroad
Volunteer with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/volunteer
Host with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/host
Educator Resources: www.afsusa.org/educators
Contact us: podcast@afsusa.org

Transcript

Kate M.
Hello and welcome to The AFS Exchange. I'm your host, Kate Mulvihill. On this show, we delve into unique perspectives from members of our AFS family, providing insights that only international exchange experiences can offer.

In every episode, we open the door wide to welcome the voices of those whose lives have been profoundly impacted by AFS. This is a place to have conversations, or exchanges, with AFS host families, students, volunteers, and educators.

[Music]

Reed D.
And I've just always been like, Where's my brother? Like, where is he?

Kate M.
That’s the line that started the whole story that inspired this episode: the reconnection of an AFSer from South Africa and his American host brother, 30 years after their exchange. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of Apartheid in South Africa and the subsequent rebuilding. Who is lost? Is he found? We’ll get to that in this... kinda time-travely episode of The AFS Exchange.

Ketsi Meka from Johannesburg, South Africa, spent a year living with Reed Davis’s family in Iowa in 1982-1983. Living in a nearly exclusively white community in Iowa was very different for Ketsi, as a black man from predominantly black South Africa. He was used to being in the majority and now found himself in the minority.
However, there was another level to this. When Ketsi left South Africa, it was during Apartheid. So, while he was in the majority being black, he had significantly fewer rights than the white minority. Then he came to Iowa, where things were flipped. Regarding skin color, he was now in the minority, but he had, in theory, the same rights as any other person in the United States. He had the freedom to go where he wanted, when he wanted. Unlike his life in South Africa, there were no spaces legally off-limits to him because of his skin color.

There is a lot to cover in this story of Reed and Ketsi, so I don’t want to take up too much time with a history lesson of South Africa. In an episode last season, I covered Apartheid South Africa in more detail when I interviewed Dr. Mitch Besser, who was an AFSer there in 1971. But for a minute-long recap: Apartheid was a system of racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa that lasted from 1948 to 1994. It enforced strict separation between white and non-white people (blacks, coloreds, and Indians), severely limiting the rights and freedoms of anyone who wasn’t white. Non-whites had to live in separate areas, use different public facilities, and had limited access to good education and jobs. The government used harsh measures to maintain control and suppress opposition, leading to widespread human rights abuses. Over time, both internal resistance and international pressure helped bring Apartheid to an end. Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 was a key moment, leading to the first multiracial elections in 1994.

Whew, okay. So that’s the background of where Ketsi was coming from when he went to Iowa in 1982.

Ketsi spent a great year with Reed’s family, getting to know the U.S. and enjoying the new freedoms he found in this country. Then he went back to Apartheid South Africa. They stayed in touch a little bit via email, but after just a few years, Ketsi went incommunicado. Apartheid was ending, there were riots, it was all over the news in the U.S., and Reed and his family wanted to know if Ketsi was okay… but they couldn’t get ahold of him.

Reed D.
But we kept reaching out with emails. And we would get no response or, and the telephone numbers didn't work. And then we started getting weird responses back that were like, we felt like we're obviously letters written, like written by someone else. That wasn't him. Like either, someone would just write back like, hey, everything's great in South Africa, miss you, take care, it's so good to hear from you. And we're like, we heard there's fighting. There's riots. They're like what's going on, and it's in Johannesburg where you're from? And so we totally like lost contact.

Kate M.
Reed’s life continued… he became a photographer and moved to Los Angeles, before settling  in New York City. He would go to Africa for work, and all the while, Reed wondered what had become of Ketsi. In 2015,

Reed D.
And finally, I got a project to work on where I was shooting content for a travel website. And it was coming to Johannesburg in South Africa.
And I, like went on full mode like now, you know, back then when he left, we didn't have Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was no WhatsApp, there was none of those things. So now we're like, Okay, let's get online and do a hardcore search and try to find the family. Nothing, nothing came up, no leads, no Facebook, no anything.

And going and talking with my mom and dad, the one thing we found was, you know, we found his old work email address. And we found which was basically the only thing we had. So I wrote it, like a month before I was leaving, and I gotta, you know, return like no reply. Email is, you know, done. And I got so discouraged. And then the day before I left, I was just like, I don't know, I feel so bad. It's like, I'm going right to his city. And it's like, and here, it had been like 30 years.

Kate M.
Ahem. Okay. Spoiler alert: they do reconnect, but I’ll tell you about that later.
Right now, let’s officially meet Reed and Ketsi. We’ll hear about Ketsi’s reluctance to come to the U.S., his time in Iowa, and the differences between racism in South Africa and the United States. We’ll also discover how Reed and Ketsi finally reconnected after all those years and the creative project that this reunion inspired in Reed.

[Rewind sound]

Reed D.
Hey!

Ketsi M.  
Hello, my name is Ketsi Meka from South Africa. I'm based in Johannesburg.

Reed D.   
And I am Reed Davis, from New York City, we were the host family with Ketsi in the 80s.

Kate M.   
Ketsi, why did you decide to study abroad in the United States?

Ketsi M.    
It was fascinating. You know, like South Africa, it was going to a new country, to go and see what it would be like, and the new education, and see how the other students study.

Reed D.   
Yeah but you didn’t wanna come initially.

Ketsi M.   
Well, is that the thing I didn't even want to come, because I thought it was gonna be strange. I was even scared to come over there. I thought it was gonna be Whoa, you know, something else. And then I was convinced by some of my friends to say, No, it's good enough to go there.

Kate M.   
Why were you scared to come to the United States?

Ketsi M.    
I guess a different culture, you know, like, not knowing what it was going to be like, not knowing how the people were gonna receive me, and the language barrier, and, and so forth and so forth.

Kate M.
So when Ketsi is referring to the language barrier… His first language was Sotho, spelled S-O-T-H-O. Sotho is one of the official languages of South Africa… along with 11 other ones.
English is also an official language, but only about 10% of South Africans learn it as their first language. Most state business and commerce is conducted in English, and it is taught in schools from an early age. Still, Ketsi was nervous about speaking it on a day to day basis, where there wouldn’t be an opportunity to just switch back into Sotho like he would usually do in school when he didn’t understand something.

Ketsi M.   
So it was gonna be like, Wow, how do I go about this? I mean, I remember going to my sister and saying, How am I going to cope with this? Without even knowing what to say? She laughed at me. She said, You will make it, don't worry.

Kate M.   
I'm glad you had people behind you who pushed you to do this.

Ketsi M.   
Yeah. And it was a prestige, you know. It was a privilege if it could be in a program as well. But I didn't see it that way. I thought, No. It was good for them. Not for me.

Kate M.
So yeah, Ketsi wasn’t sold on the idea of participating in an exchange program. So… how did he end up doing it? Well he had a friend who was interested in coming to the U.S. with AFS. Ketsi accompanied him to the local AFS office, and just hung out in the room as his friend learned more about the program from the Director of AFS South Africa. She spotted Ketsi, and after she had finished speaking with his friend, she approached him.

Ketsi M.   
And she said to me, Why aren't you applying? And I said, No. I said, My mom's gonna kill me. I'm not going overseas or anything like that.
And this director was very kind. And she started saying to me, it's going to be a very good program for you, you can learn a lot, you understand, because this, this is going to remove all the barriers. Among the cultures, you know, you meet people of different cultures, like the Americans, and he, and she said, there are other kids from other countries as well, that are going to be there that you're going to meet. And I was thinking to myself, other kids from other countries?
And I said, Well, I'm gonna have to go now and convince my parents to say, will they allow me to go here, because it's another thing, you know, for them to accept that I can go and live overseas, they've never even thought about it, never even thought about it.

Kate M.
So Ketsi goes home, and tries to think about how to tell his parents.

Ketsi M.
But it was a tricky one. Then I went to speak to my sister, and my sister had heard of the program. And I say, this is what has happened. And I say, mom is not gonna let me go. And my sister says, Don't worry, I'll take care of it. I'll talk to mom.

Kate M.
Then, after his sister worked her magic, Ketsi went to talk to his mom.

Ketsi M.
Mom just looked at me and said, Oh, you want to go overseas? I said, Mom, it's school!

Kate M.
So Ketsi applies, has an in-home interview, and gets accepted to come to the U.S. with AFS…

Kate M.
And meanwhile, Reed is in Urbandale, Iowa… a city right outside of Des Moines.

Reed D.   
Basically with my family, I mean, it was a lot more straightforward. We, you know, I, I was in high school in Iowa in Urbandale. And I got to meet some of the foreign exchange students. And I just thought it was cool. And I had an interest for, like, you know, for cultures and things abroad. I think that was also encouraged by my family.  I know also, my mom and dad had liked the idea of having a large family. And they just wanted to welcome in more people, you know.
Okay. So basically, in our family, we were of Swedish, Norwegian, German and English sort of background. And so we thought, well, this might be cool. We might get a student from Norway, we might get someone from Europe from somewhere, because that was what we all sort of thought.
And we applied, you know, I feel like we had a small interview.. And then they came back to us with oh, we have someone from South Africa. And we were like, okay, like we didn't, we weren't upset about that, or had we just didn't have any feeling anyway, we assumed it'd be like, someone more from Europe. You know what I mean?

Kate M.
Right.

Reed D.
I remember, they sat me down to go like, well, we got the student from South Africa. And he seems really nice. And here's the application papers, and let's talk about this. And we talked about it. So we said yes. And we went up, we went forward with it.

Ketsi M.   
Explain to her, you were expecting something different from what you received.

Reed D.   
Well, no, it's just, you know, back then, we were in Iowa. And there was maybe two African American kids in our high school. We had no idea like, MTV was just starting, TV was just starting to get cable. You know, so your, your vision of the world was getting more broad, but yet it was just starting. So it was very interesting, because the minute we heard like, once we sat and talked about it, then we thought, Who is this person going to be that comes off the plane? Like, is he going to be in a grass skirt with like, a bone in his nose and like, these things. We just were like, he's African. Like, what's, what's he going to be like? Because he like, Is he from the village, like from the bush? Or is he going to be like… Like, we had no idea what to expect.
And in the 80s, there were a lot of sanctions with South Africa. So like, we didn't know much, I didn't know much about South Africa, he didn't know much about America, because there was not, things were cut off, you know, like, information was cut off, and they were not shared.
So the thing was, he gets off the plane, and he comes to see us, and we're like, Oh, my gosh, here's this guy who speaks this, like British English. He's like, he's taken ballroom dancing. He's so well mannered. So nice. So we were just like, Okay, this is just fine. It just knocked all of the other ideas out of our head.
I often think about that initial perspective. It's like, you know, with the way things go, the more that was one of the things I appreciate with like AFS is because, you know, it broadened my mind to other cultures, other people, other parts of the world that I had no clue.

Ketsi M.   
You know, because at the time of the program at the school that I attended, which is a school that you attended, Urbandale. There were four other exchange students. But they were all Scandinavian. For whatever reason, we bonded and became friends. And then obviously, Reed was exposed to it. Because they visited me a lot. Our house was a stopover house. They all came to visit, from time to time. It was a fun house.

Reed D.   
I mean, I was interested in the foreign exchange program. So that's how we got started, you know, with, but I'll say also, I became the president of the AFS Club in high school. And so then it was, like, I managed, we did the meetings every month, we did outreach to other schools. So like, we had other exchange students who were like in other parts of Iowa, who are coming to Des Moines to visit and, you know, some of the kids got sent to farms out in the middle of nowhere, and so it was like, it was an opportunity we found to reach out. And they could come see, even though it wasn't that big of a city, it was a city to come to Des Moines, and see what Des Moines, Iowa was like.

Kate M.
I asked Reed and Ketsi what the high school was like at the time…

Reed D.   
I mean, it was basically white, yeah.

Ketsi M.
Just white.

Ketsi M.   
I remember for the first time in my life, I was intimidated by the fact that there's so many white people. I've never seen so many white people in my life.
 
Reed D.   
And that's what's amazing to me. That's so incredible. Is that, here comes this South African guy from Soweto.

Ketsi M.
Yes.

Reed D.
He's only living around other Africans and other black people.

Ketsi M.
Yes.

Reed D.
You were saying the only other white person you knew was your pastor.

Ketsi M.   
My priest. I didn't see him as white because he spoke my language. And he was there for many years, you know what I'm saying? And then, but then when I came to Iowa, and for the first time, I'm a minority. Whereas I come from a country where I was a majority. And it was intimidating. And I was looking at them. And I was so scared. It was amazing. But I overcame it. Because that kindness. The family was very kind. And I assimilated nicely.

Reed D.   
Yeah, you did. You did. I mean, only later on in life when I came here. Do I get that feeling of like, Oh, wow, okay.

Ketsi M.
I’m a minority.

Reed D.
Yeah. It's a very human feeling. It feels like you’re a part of the world. Yeah. You know, it's like we're all human beings.

Kate M.
Something that stood out to Reed…

Reed D.   
Everybody wanted to touch his hair.

Ketsi M.   
Well, I don't have hair anymore. But anyway, they said, What does it feel like to have that kind of hair? It was weird. Hair, it should just be hair.

Kate M.
Ketsi shared with me about an interaction he had during his time in Iowa. He was outside of town, visiting a more rural part of the state- Reed and his family weren’t there. So Ketsi was hanging out with some acquaintances, in a group setting. He was sharing with them about South Africa, telling them about his life, learning about their lives, etc. And the whole time, Ketsi noticed that there was this one guy- not a teenager, an adult man- who was pretty quiet and just kind of looking at him curiously. Not in a scary way, just in a confusing way. At the end of their time together, the guy goes up to Ketsi and tells him that he had previously been a member of the Klu Klux Klan, and that this interaction with Ketsi was the first time he was really interacting with a black person.

Ketsi M.
This is why we need to have a program like AFS. Because the thing that made him to be prejudiced is because he has never interacted with people who are different from him. He's never known what they’re like. Now he's met them. He's spoken to one for the first time, and his eyes opened up, which is amazing. You understand? People of different color or whatever, they’re the same as he is. Same aspirations, same hopes, same fears, you understand what I'm saying? So it was nice.

Kate M.
Ketsi noticed some differences between the racism he dealt with in South Africa, and what he would see and hear about in the U.S.

Ketsi M.   
I'm from South Africa, where that discrimination was just open. It was the law of the land.
 
Kate M.
And, as he says, that there was less violence committed by individuals or hate groups towards people of color- blacks, coloreds, or indians. However, in the United States, where race-based discrimination is against the law, there are still individuals and hate groups, such as the KKK, who commit acts of violence.

[Studio audience sounds]

Kate M.
There is a great clip from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah from 2022 that is called South African Racism vs. American Racism. It’s about 3 minutes long and you can find it on Youtube. Trevor Noah is a comedian and writer from Johannesburg, South Africa, who has spoken a lot over the years about his experience as a “colored” person, defined as someone with one white parent and one black one.
I will read part of what he says here, but I do encourage you to check it out though, as his comedic timing adds a lot.

[Applause]

Kate M./Trevor Noah
“I think the biggest difference between racism in America and racism in South Africa is, I find that South African racism is and was a lot more blatant, and so there's more of an acknowledgement of it as an idea. And I always say to people, I know it's strange to say this, but I often think that was the greatest gift the Apartheid government gave us is that it was there, it was happening to you, it wasn't hidden. Do you know what I mean? So you would just like, "We don't want this." People would fight, "Stop this Apartheid, it's racism." And then the government would be like, "Yes, of course it is racism. That's what we're doing to you. The Blacks must not do this."
But then what happened in America is, you know, you hit that period where they started changing things. I don't know if it was around Nixon and they were like, "Oh, we've gotta be silent about this." And then it wasn't blatant anymore. And so I've always thought that's a terrible thing to do to people because now people have to be like detectives of their own racism, they have to figure it out. You know what I mean?
So let me give you an example. In South Africa, the government would just say, "Black cannot live in these areas. You're Black, you don't live here." Now you know. I'm Black, I don't live here. I don't like it, but I don't live here. You get what I'm saying?
But then in America, you'd be like, "Can I get a home loan?" And they'd be like, "Mm, no." And you'd be like, "Why"? And they'd be like, "Oh…" Then you'd be like, "Why can't I?" And then you just start realizing, like, "Wow, how come the Black people all seem to only be able to get houses in these areas, but not in these areas and these school districts are better? How come the money is going here? How come? How come?" Do you get what I'm saying? And I know it sounds strange to say, but I think there's something liberating about fighting an obvious enemy as opposed to one that you have to prove exists. That's probably the biggest difference.”

[Applause]

Kate M.
So. We’ll come back to this. But, I now want to fast forward in time a bit. It’s the mid 80s in Iowa, and at the end of his year, Ketsi returns to South Africa. In the early 90s, Apartheid ended. Throughout these years, Reed has been trying to get in touch with Ketsi, to no avail.
It is now 2015, Reed is about to go to Johannesburg, South Africa for a work trip, and has really been trying to contact Ketsi. Of all the places in the world Reed has traveled, he now has the opportunity to work in Ketsi’s backyard, and he can’t even connect with him to say hello. He tried social media, he tried Googling, he tried a work email address from the late 80s, and got an automatic bounceback because the address was no longer in use.

Reed D.
And then the day before I left, I was just like, I don't know, I feel so bad. It's like, I'm going right to his city. And it's like, and here, it has been 30 years, right? 30 years. And I just said, Mom, I don't know, I just let me write one more email. And I'll just play around with the name, I'll do whatever.
I sent an email and as chance has it, he went into the old job and applied that week for a new job. And they said at the job, they said, Hey, we looked back in the system, you have an old email address, should we just turn it on? Or do you want to make a new one, and he's like, just turn it on. So they turned it on. And the day before I left that same email I had sent to his work that didn't go through before, went right through. And as I get on the plane, I get an email from him that says, Oh, my gosh, it's you. It's me. I'm coming to, you know, Johannesburg. And then we made arrangements to meet right as I was getting on the plane. But I had a two day layover in Dubai. So it gave us time to like, write more and then get telephone numbers and try to talk. And we worked out a plan.

And when I got here to Johannesburg, when we met up, I had a driver take me to the Apartheid Museum. He met me at the Apartheid museum. And it was funny because I said, you know, I have two tickets. Do you want to go into the Apartheid museum? And he's like, No, I lifted, I don't even want to go in there. He said, You Reed you go in there and you learn something. You see what I went through during those 30 years that you know, that we were not in connection. And then we had the most beautiful day. I met his wife, his kids.

Kesti M.
And my whole family.

Kate M.
That’s incredible. That timing, that timing is just so fortuitous.

Reed D.   
Yeah. And that's what just kind of blew me away.

Kate M.
So during this reunion, of course, they got to talking about their year together in Iowa, and about life since. There were many things that Reed was not aware of, or didn’t understand about Ketsi’s experience during his time in the Iowa. Also, things that Ketsi only realized in highsight. He had known a freedom in the U.S. that was taken away from him as soon as he got back to South Africa.

Reed D.
So it's an awfully big shift.

Kate M.
One story that Reed now looks back upon differently…

Reed D.   
We were all at home in Des Moines. And he said to my dad, he said, you know, can I take the bike out and ride the bike around the neighborhood? And dad's like, yeah, go right ahead and have fun. But then I remember Dad said to you, he said, but be careful, because you know, you drive on the opposite side of the street in South Africa, don't you? So he's like, just don't get hit by a car, you know, just be careful. And he was like, ah, dad, you know, I'll be fine. So he took the bike out, and he was gone for like, an hour, hour and a half. And he comes back, and we're all sitting in the living room. And he walks in just beaming ear to ear, like smiling. He's like, Oh, my goodness, you can go anywhere here. I can go anywhere I want. And we all looked at him like he was stupid. We went like, Yeah, this is America. That's what you do. Here. You go anywhere you want. Like, what's what I don't like that we didn't need. We didn't even understand. We didn't even know.

Ketsi M.    
Because where I come from, there were places that I couldn't go to.

Reed D.
But then even when you were pushed out? The people who were waiting for the black bus. They just looked at him to be like, You're crazy. What did you just try to do? Are you stupid?

Ketsi M.
I still had the American mentality.

Kate M.
Right where anyone can get on any bus. They can pay the fare. It's just a bus. Yeah.

Ketsi M.
Yeah. No. What are you trying to do? Wow.  Yeah. It was hurtful. And, you know, really badly, because I was not expecting that. I didn't know when he got out of his seat, this driver,  where he was going. Maybe he was going to fix a mirror or something. In the meantime, he was pushing me out of the bus.
And I've just come from the freedom of the United States.

Reed D. 
You can ride your bike anywhere.

Ketsi M. 
I can ride my bike anywhere. The legal restrictions, I could do. Whatever I wanted to do. It was really hard. When I came back, I must tell you, that is really, really hard to say. Now, these restrictions, some of which I was not aware of before I left.

Kate M.
So yeah, during this reconnection, Reed began to see experiences that happened when Ketsi was living with his family from a completely different angle.

Reed D.
And you learn from each other. like him telling me the bike story. We never thought that was a big deal. We just thought, you can ride the bike anywhere you want to go. Just do it. You know, because it was just natural for us to think that way.
We just didn't, we didn't quite comprehend. You know, and it wasn't like, it wasn't like he came to us like a formal teacher. I mean, he was a teacher, he came to us in a much more personal way that we got to know each other, instead of like, He came to give us a lecture on what it's like in South Africa. But we more or less got to know each other. And as the relationship and as our, you know, our brotherhood, developed, we still keep learning more from each other.

Kate M.
So, perhaps at this point, dear podcast listener, you are thinking that this is a pretty unique story. I mean, yes, all AFS stories are unique. That’s why we’re on the 4th season of this podcast. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of AFS stories to tell.
But… the whole thing about Ketsi having lived like, four different lives at this point. Pre-Iowa, Iowa, Post-Iowa with the knowledge of how things are elsewhere, and then post-Apartheid South Africa. Also, the reconnection story, after many attempts on Reed’s part to get in touch. While not unheard of in today’s age of social media and google and whatsapp, it’s pretty uncommon.
Anyway, Reed wanted to share this whole story as well. He’s a photographer, but he also had some experience with film from when he was younger. His family always had a video camera around- one of the big, over-the-shoulder ones- that everyone would use. Filming pretend interviews, just playing around, capturing day to day stuff. And they kept a lot of these tapes! Shortly after Reed got back from that first trip to South Africa, his mom was going through old things and found tapes with recordings from Ketsi’s year.

Reed D.
She's like, Oh, look what I found. And here's you and Ketsi in high school here. And I just went, Oh, my gosh, you know, what this, like, makes such an amazing story. And I felt the need to just start filming some of the things that went on with, you know, with us in relation back to when he was there, into what had happened. I think so many things had happened to him that we just weren't even aware of.

Kate M.
So, Reed decided- with Ketsi’s collaboration, of course- to make a documentary about their story. So, over the past few years…

Reed D.
I've just been working to film with Ketsi. And, and we've been, you know, going through and talking a lot about our different situations. And I think, back in that time, we were young, you know, we were much younger, and I don't think we really quite understood everything that was happening. You know, you take it in, and you kind of go with it.

Kate M.
And actually, when I interviewed the two of them, they were sitting next to each other in Ketsi’s home in South Africa! Reed was there to capture more footage.

Reed D.
It's, it's been growing, and I'm in sort of a shooting phase with some editing, like getting the story together and tight and understanding, I think is a big topic to try to understand. And it's a big topic to try to comprehend, the personal human relationship between us and what was going on then and what was going on, like, what was going on here, what was going on in the States. I guess my main intention is to have it come across, not in a way that is historical, necessarily, but in a human way that is, people can look at now and move forward with, you know, and say I can get I understand those feelings, I understand those thoughts, I understand that thing, you know, and look towards hopefully, getting the dial a little closer to all of us seeing each other and respecting each other more. And, you know, learning to acknowledge and you know, love one another.

Kate M.
Reed doesn’t know how big this project will be. But he hopes it can teach people, including Ketsi’s children, about what life was like for their dad.

Reed D.    
One thing, even at the least, that I thought of with this project, as well, is that it's interesting how much South Africa has even changed since, you know, since those times and when we were talking in one instance, it's like, he's like, it's like, you know, my kids, they don't understand what I went through. No, like, his kids are of a whole different modern generation, that, like, they have no clue that he had to have paperwork to be out of his. It's not like, it's sort of like it was, you know, it ended and it was like, Okay, done by America, came in with, you know, suddenly sanctions lifted. American TV was here. In fact, the first time I came here, everyone was like, Empire, Empire, you watching empire, you know? And it's like, I'm like, What do you guys do you watch Empire down here, like, you know, like, they were immediately caught up with American culture.
While, I'm not saying they weren't taught about history. I'm saying it wasn't necessarily as real as that was your dad? That history was your dad. It wasn't like your great, great, great grandfather, that was your dad.

Ketsi M.
Very close.

Reed D.
You know, it's like, and to have, like, such a rapid, you know, change in the way things are just seems like documenting some of these stories. Just seems important to have, you know, for someone to even just dig up and go, what this happened, and that happened, and you know.

Kate M.
Absolutely.

Reed D.
So I feel like it's one of the reasons why I'm so glad you're doing this here today, too. Because it's like, you know, it's an interesting part of history and more personally ours, but like, in the way the world was in the 80s.
It's a hard thing to really know unless you were there. You know, you can ask all kinds of questions like, Well, why did they do that? Why didn't they do this? But there were things put in place that that you can't even explain or understand that made things the way they were. And, you know, our goal was to try to make them better. You know, like everyone's, like every generation's goal is to hopefully make something better for the next generation.

Kate M.
So I'm so glad that you can reconnect it and that, you know, Reed you're working on this documentary, be it for just your families, or be it for the Cannes Film Festival, you know, I don't know. But whatever scope it takes, this is a very important story to share. So thank you also, for letting me into this story so that I can share with the listeners of the podcast, thank you.

[Music]

Kate M.
Whew, what a story! This truly demonstrates the power of intercultural exchange… and not just in the moment, on program… but the impact of intercultural exchange plus time. Reed and Ketsi’s relationship was significant during Ketsi's stay in Iowa, but it deepened even further after decades had passed, allowing Ketsi to reflect on his experiences. And of course, the stark contrast of returning to Apartheid South Africa after experiencing certain freedoms in the United States is another layer to this whole story. Thank you, to Reed and Ketsi for sharing this with me! Also, if you want to check out Reed’s incredible photography work, head to reeddavisphotography.com.
And, as always, if you’re interested in welcoming a student from another part of the world into your home- like Reed’s parents did- head to afsusa.org/host.

Kate M.
Thank you for listening to The AFS Exchange! I’m Kate Mulvihill. Let us know what you thought of this episode by sending a message to podcast@afsusa.org. You can also rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe there as well so you don’t miss any episodes in this 4th season.
This podcast was created by Kate Mulvihill. Social media by Julie Ball and Nina Gaulin. Special thanks to Candace O’Malley.