Last days in Cape Town

I apologize for not writing in a while. Things have been busy here wrapping everything up. As most of you know, I get home on Friday! So, last week was my last week working at Brooklyn Chest hospital. The children had been practicing a performance for us on that last day. They danced and sang for us, it was so great. They were adorable. I left them with a few new soccer balls and frisbees with the hopes they keep running around even if I am not there every day after school with them. The children were upset when it was time for us to leave. Working at the TB hospital has been different than anything I have done before. I learned so much and hopefully made a difference for a few of those kids. It was definitely depressing at times to see such young kids going through more than I have in my life so far and probably more than I will ever have to go through.

While I was doing physical and health education with TB patients, here is what my other housemates were doing: Noah put a library into a high school that had nothing but empty shelves, now it has thousands of books. Lauren taught science lessons in a primary school that has no science curriculum. Claire did an art therapy program at the TB hospital. Mariah taught physical and health education to a group of 7th grade girls. Liz gave workshops to the teachers at a primary school on a variety of topics. Christopher implemented an after school reading program for his 7th grade class. Danielle organized all of the books in the library at a primary school as well as painted and cleaned the place up. Jesse implemented an English literacy program for men in a prison. David taught a life skills workshop also for men in a prison. And last but not least, Erin made a film with kids in an after school program as a way for them to portray life in their community and tell their stories.

I have said to my parents many times during the past few months that believe it or not this semester has probably made me more cynical than I expected. It is definitely a reality check going into these communities and realizing how much there is to be done and how little you can do. I quickly had to accept the fact that I was one person with few resources, no money, and limited time. This was frustrating and I can speak for almost everyone in my house. Some days we would come home from our various sites and just ask each other, "why are we even bothering?" But in addition to the negativity, frustrations, and disappointments about not being able to fix South Africa, the accomplishments I listed above are impressive and hopefully will give just one person a little more hope and inspiration to either improve their own life or improve their community.

South Africa has so much potential. Apartheid ended just 14 years ago and already such strides have been made. To their credit, things shouldn't be okay just yet. 14 years is nothing and Apartheid is a lot to come back from and a lot to forgive people for. I am confident that as time goes on, people will mend and races will blend again.

I will miss the beauty of this country and the unique way of life that people live here. I am sad to leave my housemates who I have grown closer to than I ever imagined possible. On the other hand, it will be nice to have a dryer, not have to grocery shop/cook for myself all the time, use Internet that does not go by megabytes (I STILL don't understand megabytes), and of course get back to my family and friends in one piece which my parents doubted at one time.

Many of us have been rehearsing on what to say when people back home ask "How was South Africa?" No one can think of an answer. "Good? Amazing? Different? Roller coaster? Interesting?" probably every adjective possible. I hope to be back one day as well as continue seeing other parts of the world. Hope you have all enjoyed reading my blog!

Table Mountain

Yesterday we took the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain. We had our weekly reflection session on top of the mountain. We had to bring an item that represented something positive from this semester. I brought a stone from the path up to Rhodes Memorial, which represented two of my favorite days here. One was hiking with David and Christopher when we got caught in the dark coming down from Devil's Peak and the other was when almost the entire group hiked Devil's Peak and everyone made it to the top. The scenery from Table Mountain is amazing as you will see in these pictures. You could see the new World Cup stadium from the top. South Africa is struggling to decide what to do with it now because of how expensive it is to keep it up. There is talk about demolishing it, which is sad because of how much money was invested to build it JUST for the World Cup. We got tickets to the USA vs. South Africa game at that stadium on Nov. 17th which I am psyched about!

Hospital Pics

I have one more week at the hospital. It is definitely going to be sad to leave these kids. Yesterday we brought plain white t-shirts for them to paint. They could not understand why we would ever ask them to PAINT on a new shirt. They all have very few clothes and most are old and torn. They were so excited to see we had bought them new t-shirts and became noticeably upset when we told them we were painting them. Some warmed up to the idea others just wanted a nice new clean shirt. I thought it was interesting because it is something we do all the time in the States but I did not even think about how they would react to this.

African Sunrise

Hospital Update

I have a new focus for my capstone project at the TB hospital. The teacher is allowing me to teach a health class the last hour of the day. The first theme I decided to do is conflict resolution. Today was my first lesson and there are definitely challenges. First of all, the language barrier is frustrating. I have kids that can translate from English to Afrikaans but I do not have kids that can translate from English to Xhosa unfortunately. Those are the two languages that the children at the school speak. So the lesson was going well as I went through the steps to resolving conflicts and each child made a poster of these steps to hang in their ward and refer to. At the end I had them pair up to role play conflict scenarios and then show how they could resolve it. I assumed the scenarios would be somewhere along the lines of arguing over a toy or accusing someone of not playing fairly. Well, there were three skits. The first was about a drug deal, the second was about robbing someone on the street with a gun, and the third was about robbing a store with guns. The way they were resolved was either by punching someone in the face or shooting them .................for some reason I feel like they missed the point. The teacher just laughed and said "well this is South Africa for you!" There is always tomorrow I suppose :)

Cape Point

Saturday we went to the Cape Point. The attractions there include African penguins, baboons, and beautiful scenery! We have to drive through the mountains to get there and at one point we pulled over to watch a baboon put on quite the show for us. He was sitting on top of a lady's car while she was in there. Her husband could not get into the car because if he opened the door, the baboon might go into the car as well. Another man pulled over to take pictures of this, leaving his car windows open. The baboon then scurried across the street and hopped into his vacant car. He was even in the driver's seat with his hands on the wheel at one point. We watched this go on for about 15 minutes and got some pretty funny pictures of it.

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking

The video below about gender inequality was shown in my Poverty and Development class today and I thought it was really well done. It is just 3 minutes, check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg

Hermanus

Saturday we took a trip to Hermanus, about 2 hours away from Cape Town. It is a great place for whale watching, which is why we went. We saw a few of them, but didn't get close enough for pictures. The scenery was beautiful!

TB Hospital

Everything at the hospital has been going well. At times it can be depressing to go but I have become close with many of the children and they look forward to us coming in everyday. We have done several art projects with them such as painting, drawing, stringing cheerios to make necklaces, decorating cookies, and making collages. We have also been playing soccer and frisbee with them and other games such as relay races and tag games to get them running around. Yesterday when we arrived, one of the girls ran up to me saying that she had a dream about me. She dreamt that I took her home for the weekend and we went to the beach and she said it was the most wonderful weekend she has ever had, which was really sweet. Later in the afternoon, I was speaking with a 13 year old boy outside of the ward. He asked me if I had a mother and a father, I said that I did and asked if he did. He replied "Neither". He then took a stick from the ground and lightly sketched "2003" on his arm implying the year that they died. When I asked how, he sketched "HIV" on his arm. He then told me he was HIV positive. Because of the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, people keep their status very private. I definitely feel like I am building relationships and trust with the kids if he feels comfortable enough to tell me this, which was the only silver lining in that conversation with him. Four of the girls in the ward are being discharged today, which is very exciting! They have all been here at least 6 months if not longer. Their beds will be filled with new patients tomorrow because there is such a long waiting list for this hospital. The girls are excited to go home to their families but I think it can also be stressful because they have to go back to their school after such a long period. The teacher in the school told them the other day that "once their school finds out they have been in a TB hospital, everything that goes wrong in the school will be their fault, so they have to be prepared for that". Again, this is due to the stigma that is attached to having TB and another reason why one's HIV status and other diseases such as TB are kept so private.

Wine Tasting

Saturday, we drove out to Stellenbosch which is about 45 minutes outside of Cape Town, for a wine tasting and tour. They explained how they made the wine as well as let us taste several different kinds which of course was the best part. We then had a picnic on the property, it was such a beautiful day! There were also some adorable dogs there!

Addo Elephant Park and Scotia National Park

After a few days in Jeffery's Bay, which is a beachy surfer town, we got to Port Elizabeth. We went on a safari in Addo Elephant Park as well as Scotia National Park. It was absolutely amazing. We saw four out of the big five animals with the exception of the leopard. We got so close to all the animals in our open aired jeep, we even had the excitement of being charged by a rhino!

The Bungee Jump

For our Spring Break, six of us took a backpackers bus from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth stopping in 3 other towns along the way! Our first stop was in a town called Tsitsikamma where we jumped the world's highest bungee jump. The bridge was 216 meters high (over 650 feet). You are tied to the rope by your ankles and you dive head first off the bridge. It was terrifying but so amazing! The first drop is about 5 seconds and the swing for a while until someone comes down to pull you back up. It is great scenery too!!

Green Point Stadium

Last night we went to a soccer game at the new World Cup stadium in Cape Town. The stadium was absolutely amazing. The game was Ajax Cape Town vs. Bloemfontein Celtics. Cape Town won 2-0! People really do blow their vuvuzelas throughout the entire game too!

Athlone Towers

The Athlone towers were part of a power plant in a suburb of Cape Town. This power plant is about 50 years old but has not been in use for a while. These huge towers were a well known landmark in Cape Town because you can see them from virtually anywhere in the city. The towers are very close to Langa (where we were this weekend) and the demolition of the towers was scheduled for Sunday at 12 noon. This was very emotional for Capetonians because it was such a significant landmark. Since the towers were not being used, they were tearing them down to build more housing in the area. We got out of church at 11:30 right in time to change and hurry to watch them come tumbling down. I was positive they would not fall at exactly 12 noon because we are on African time here. There is basically two ways to give someone a time. There is "now now", which means pretty much right now or in the next few minutes and there is "just now", which means in the next 20 minutes to some people and in the next 2 hours for others. Needless to say, things are rarely on time and often late with no consequences. People get there when they get there. Well, the whole city assumed we were on African time as did I. The demolition of these towers that we had been waiting to see since we arrived in Cape Town in July occurred at 11:56am, 4 MINUTES EARLY. Everyone missed it including the people who won a free helicopter ride to see it. We were running down the street when we heard the boom and saw the smoke. I was disappointed that I missed it but now it is more comical because of the uproar it caused for going off early.

Homestay Weekend in Langa

This past weekend we stayed with a host families in Langa. Langa is a township about fifteen minutes away from where we are living. My host mother's name was Priscilla. She lived with her son who was in his twenties and her grandson, Hlomia, who was six years old. The people in Langa are Xosa people. Their language is pretty cool because some letters (such as "x") have clicking sounds. This also makes it a difficult language to learn because you have to integrate the "clicks" into the words. My host mother was so sweet and a great cook! Over the course of the weekend I had her home made soup, a type of porridge called "meali meal", chicken, potatoes, vegetables, beans, and rice. The townships here eat A LOT of meat. As we were walking through the streets, we saw chickens being butchered (which was really disturbing) and meat being cooked right along the street and immediately put up for sale. I also tried sheep liver which I will never do again. Everything was extremely cheap too and almost everyone falls below the poverty line. A result of this poverty is the immense amount of drinking that goes on especially on the weekends. People literally wake up and go straight to the bar and hang out there all day and night. Priscilla had a small house and then several shacks in her yard that she rented out to people. On Sunday we went to church which was a great experience. She belongs to a Baptist church and there was singing and dancing for the majority of the service. The service also lasted two and a half hours!! It was really interesting to see how the township people live. They have it really rough and it's amazing to see most people keep such a positive attitude about life despite their hardships.

Breaking Down the Barriers

We have now gotten started on our after school program for the hospital. We have done a few art projects with them, which they have really enjoyed. We also had a little celebration for one of the girl’s birthdays. The kids are desperate to have structured activities after school so they are really responding well to us. The teachers have also opened up a lot to us and it’s unbelievable what a difference it makes seeing that barrier slowly come down. One unfortunate situation occurred yesterday, which was surprising to me. An eight year old boy, Tumi, was told he would be discharged from the hospital but the next day they told him he actually was not cleared to go. He is a very shy, soft spoken boy but it was clear that it had affected him. It is shocking that they would give him and the other children that news without being 100% certain he would be able to go home.

TB Hospital

I slowly but surely feel like we are getting somewhere at the TB hospital. Today went a lot smoother than previous times we have been there. We first went into the school and helped the children with a computer program intended to improve their English. It helps them when you are one on one with them or else they just click randomly on the screen. We spoke to the teacher when school got out and she told us more background information about the children. A majority of them are infected with HIV/AIDS as well as TB. The injection that they receive daily is for the HIV not the TB like I had originally thought. These injections are very painful for the children. There are also side effects for some kids from the injections. There is a possibility that they go deaf and/or blind from them. Two of the children in this ward are almost completely deaf just from their treatment. There are also certain children whose family members do not visit them at the hospital. However, on a more positive note, several children are almost done with their treatment and can go home in September. We then went to the ward where they stay (the kids are about the ages of 8-13 years in this specific ward). We have noticed that they literally just sit around bored out of their mind in a small fenced in area after they finish school for the day. We spoke with the "coordinator" for after school activities about maybe setting up projects for the kids. She was very open to this and told us she has run out of ideas and would love our help. We were thinking we could do art and expression type projects two days a week and sports activities the other two days we are there. The kids seemed really excited about this idea when we mentioned it to them. If anyone has any ideas for projects please let me know :)

Devil's Peak in the daylight

Yesterday some of us hiked up Devil's Peak. We left earlier this time around 12:30 and it took about 6 hours. It was a great hike, extremely windy at the top but the scenery is so beautiful!