Lecturer and students record acts of kindness in book

A social anthropology lecturer, together with students and ordinary South Africans, have “co-written” a book with stories about everyday acts of kindness that emerged during Covid-19.

Dr Jess Auerbach’s book, Archive of Kindness, was launched on 15 September 2021 by North-West University’s Optentia research entity at the Vanderbijlpark campus.

In an article in the Daily Maverick in April 2020 Auerbach, who joined the NWU later in 2020, explained how lockdown made her aware of how “micro kindness” was changing people and had the potential of changing South Africa.

According to background information about the book, she began documenting these ‘micro-kindnesses’. Later on, she tasked her students to record stories, collecting about 2000 contributions, some of which have been included in the book.

In the April 2020 article, she also mentioned some of the acts of kindness that were shared with her: “Take Amienabie– a widow in Mitchell’s Plain with two children, who didn’t have anything to give but her time. She sent her number into the world asking women who needed emotional support to contact her. And they have. And it has helped. Or Verona, a dietician from East London who is offering free consults on how to manage nutrition in this time.”

Auerbach said during an interview with Pippa Hudson, a radio presenter at CapeTalk on 14 September 2021 that because students could not write sit-down exams due to coronavirus, lecturers had to come up with other ideas to make sure that students were learning.

“I realised that the was a lot of negativity in my classroom, for an understandable reason and I decided that the impact that this archiving project had on me, just getting members of the public to send positive stories of the ways in which people have been holding one another up, had been quite significant [and could be applied in a teaching context],” she said.  

Auerbach said that instead of writing exams her students had to collect 50 stories of kindness from around the country.

Jessica Lingenfelder, one of the students, said that it was very interesting to work with Auerbach on the project. “When she told us that we have to do 50 stories about acts of kindness I was a bit nervous because that’s a lot of stories. But as we moved along it got easier,” she said. Jessica said that she was happy when she heard that six of her stories were selected for the book.

Thandiwe Twala, a social anthropology student reviewed the book. She said studying during Covid-19 was challenging. “The acts of kindness from other students and our lecturers reassured me that it may be challenging but it is definitely not impossible, she said.

Jethro Longwe, a Malawian graphic design and artist graduate of the Ruth Prowse School of Fine Art in Cape Town, illustrated the book.

“This book really found me because it took me back to my experiences of kindness when I was in Cape Town,” said Jethro.

Longwe said that the book took him back to when he was a student, and he was going through a breakup that had a negative impact on his studies. His lecturer noticed something was wrong and they had a conversation that lifted his spirit. The lecturer helped him both emotionally, physically and financially because Jethro was from a disadvantaged background.

 “I wanted to do these illustrations for this book because I wanted her [the lecturer] to know that, that little kindness she showed me is going to go a long way,” he said.

Professor Dumisani Moyo, the executive dean of the faculty of humanities at NWU, said, the opportunity to participate in the project “allowed them to graduate with the real-life experience of having contributed to the book.”

Archive of Kindness is available in hardcover at R475 and softcover at R375. It is published by BK Publishing.