Vivienne Dames, Cacadu’s top matric for 2013, is fiercely loyal to all things local – but this doesn't mean she is not setting her sights globally.
Vivienne Dames, Cacadu’s top matric for 2013, is fiercely loyal to all things local – but this doesn't mean she is not setting her sights globally.
Vivienne owes a lot to her scientific mom and environmentalist dad who shaped her into a ‘scientific hippie’ and to the excellent local government schools – Oatlands, VP and VG – that so deftly nurtured her academic talents; and to the strikingly diverse and largely unsullied biomes of Makana that helped inspire her mission to protect the more vulnerable parts of the planet. She is already hopelessly devoted to the local university she will enroll at in February this year – Rhodes.
But, her steadfast loyalty to all things local does not mean she is not aiming her sights globally: on her return flight from representing South Africa in the Intel Science and Engineering Expo in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2012, she had a life-changing 18-hour conversation with the Dean of Forestry and Environmental Sciences from Yale University, one of the top ten tertiary institutions in the world.
“She convinced me I could get a bursary for a postgraduate degree at Yale if I pulled off getting three firsts for my three majors at Rhodes,” Vivienne says.
Yale has a record low three-in-40 acceptance rate.
So, how do kids from public schools in little ol’ Grahamstown get to dream of punching in this weight division?
“I love VG,” she beams.
“My teachers made such a conscious effort to give me the best education – my science teachers were my role models. The headmaster, Warren Schmidt, promotes diligence and excellence in academics – he wants the best."
“VG is also a community – you get along with everyone, from every language and culture.”
Vivienne says that the annual Eskom Science Expos held locally, regionally and nationally every year were key to her academic development. In 2012, it was her work on biodegrading textile dye effluent to help clean up river systems using bacterial isolates that got her to Pittsburgh. She modelled a system for the industrial use of her idea and her efforts placed her third in the Environmental Management category.
I met incredible people: the president of Kenya at the time, Nobel laureates. I got to have an interview with Larry Page, one of the directors of Google. Life changing.”
“But, it was also the hardest experience of my life – it was practically an Honours project,” says Vivienne.
“More like a Masters project!” chips in her mom, Joanna, who was until last year the head of the Department of Microbiology at Rhodes.
Vivienne has always had a precocious talent. She remembers being little and going on microbiology field trips with her mom and “giving all the Rhodes students the answers”.
But, unlike some of her friends at Victoria Girls, she never applied for bursaries to attend Grahamstown’s prestigious private schools.
“A lot of my friends applied for the DSG and Kingswood scholarships – and next thing I turned around and they’d be gone. But, I had a huge loyalty to VG. It would have gone against all of the efforts of my teachers to have abandoned them – it would have been disrespectful to have left.”
How would she explain the perennial achievement gap between VG and Graeme?
“I think it might be a female thing!” she quips.
“I noticed throughout my schooling that Victoria Girls tries to get across the point that women should go out there and further their studies. VG has created opportunities, drive and motivation.
“I know girls who are going on to do incredible things – some are going to fashion school, some want to be magistrates, one wants to be president of Zimbabwe! In the past, because of that whole male, patriarchal thing, women weren’t in a position to dream this big.”
At Rhodes, she wants to major in zoology and botany and is deciding between geography and ichthyology for the third. “I won’t be caught dead doing microbiology – it has practically been my whole life since the womb,” she says, referring to her mom’s chosen discipline.
Why did she choose Rhodes? With the bursary she has received she could have attended any university in the country.
“The best university in the country is the one where you are comfortable going, where the courses that you personally want to take are the best courses. Rhodes has an excellent science faculty. The courses I want to do at Rhodes are top notch. To me, it’s the best university.
“I have been exposed to Rhodes for the majority of my life – if I ever had an inkling that Rhodes was not for me, I would have headed for the hills.
“One thing that VG taught me is that small is definitely the way to go. It has small classes compared with public school classes in bigger centres. The bigger they get, the harder it is to manage them. Rhodes is the smallest university in the country – but, this is a good thing because lecturers are focusing on much smaller classes.”
Vivienne picked up her ‘best in Cacadu’ certificate and trophy in an awards ceremony in East London on Tuesday night.
“They beam your picture up onto a slideshow and scream out your marks as if you were a heavyweight champion.
“I got a very showy trophy – I don’t know where on earth I’m going to put it, because it is very big,” she says displaying her charming, small-town disdain for pretension and bombast.
“I am not motivated by finance or which job is going to pay the most. Eventually, I would like to volunteer for Greenpeace in Indonesia.
“And I will be happy to come home to a shack in Transkei.”
