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By Victoria Bourne

Dignity. Humanity. Awareness. Those were the guiding sentiments shared by people in Khayelitsha, South Africa, where graduate researcher Melissa Miller-Felton conducted fieldwork last spring in a township burdened by overcrowding, poor sanitation and government neglect.

“Their first goal is to just be viewed as human,” Miller-Felton said. “People talked about that a lot.”

Miller-Felton, a licensed clinical social worker, Navy veteran and doctoral candidate in international studies, has worked as a Storymodelers research assistant at (VMASC) since August 2022. She’s also an adjunct instructor in Women’s and Gender Studies at ��������.

The applies computational and engineering methods to map and analyze human systems, generating data to better understand global challenges.

The study was part of a larger project intended to document women’s experiences of safety and security in one section of Khayelitsha, a historically Black township near Cape Town.

Women who live there collaborated with the research, sharing their insights about how residents innovate to define and improvise their security in a place where outsiders are often unwelcome. Miller-Felton hopes the women will co-author research articles that will amplify the issues in their community.

“One of my ethical stances is to try to get as close as possible to telling a whole story,” Miller-Felton said. “By inviting them to pick up the camera and show us these places, it helps us better understand their experience.”

Khayelitsha, one of South Africa’s largest and fastest-growing townships, was established in the 1980s under apartheid. Since then, the population has ballooned — a 2011 census noted a population of nearly 400,000 people but unofficial estimates are much higher, ranging from 1.4 million to 2.5 million.

At least half the residents live in informal dwellings, or shacks, with limited running water. Communal toilets and broken sewer lines are common, often maintained and repaired by community volunteers.

“There’s so much hustle and bustle, but it’s almost as if they’re on an island of their own,” Miller-Felton said. “There’s a big sense of community because they know no one’s coming to help.”

Crime is commonplace.

Miller-Felton, who specializes in trauma and substance abuse and works in the psychiatric emergency response unit for Sentara Healthcare, tapped into her skills as a social worker to connect with women in Khayelitsha.

Her training also provided a lens to look beyond surface impressions.

Discarded alcohol bottles and scattered trash might catch an outsider’s eye, but Miller-Felton recognized them as signs of deeper struggles — coping mechanisms shaped by years of government neglect and economic hardship. In the section of Khayelitsha where the study was conducted, Miller-Felton said poverty leads some to make hard choices. Women must take extra precautions to be safe.

“We were really trying to understand something that was difficult for them to put into words because it was such an intrinsic part of their daily routine,” Miller-Felton said, describing decisions like where to conceal a cell phone or where to seek refuge or solace.

She learned safety was a spiritual element for the women, noting that some cited prayer as a ritual that lessened anxiety. There is little trust in the police, their houses or other structures meant to provide safety, she added.

Miller-Felton guided the women as they collected interviews and documented their surroundings through photos, capturing everyday images like bicycle locks securing shelters and churches that symbolized spiritual safety.

“Overwhelmingly, they took pictures of each other: ‘Together, we feel safe, we walk together,’” Miller-Felton said, quoting some participants. “That was something so unexpected.”

She saw women reclaiming public spaces, raising their voices in song, and celebrating small, hard-won moments of joy amid daily challenges.

Miller-Felton’s dissertation is based on her fieldwork in Khayelitsha. She struggles with the idea of painting the community as a violent, unsafe place. “That is part of it. And I have to tell that because I have to document where the research leads me if I’m to be objective,” she said.

“But personally, I want people to know there’s also joy.”