Background

Cape Town is an absolutely gorgeous city in the Western Cape of South Africa. Not only do you get the city feel but you also have the beautiful scenary of Table Mountain almost anywhere you go in the city. It is winter here now and VERY cold. Some days are warm (60s) but most are rainy and cold during this month. Locals have told us this is the coldest winter they have had in a long time. The World Cup just ended here. Hosting the World Cup ran deeper in this country than just having a bunch of soccer matches on their fields. Hosting the World Cup proved to South Africans, the South African governement, and the rest of the world that their government CAN be successful if someone is holding them accountable. It was said to be a fail having the World Cup here and that it would be infested with crime and rioting. However, it was a huge success and spirits are high here because they did it even when people did not believe they could. Since so many people came from around the world, stereotypes are now challenged because there is so much greatness about this country that people do not speak about.

Apartheid just ended in 1994, which is extremely recent. It is still so fresh in people's minds and a hot topic to speak about today. South Africa is broken down into 4 ethnic groups: Black African, Coloured, White, and Indian/Asian. The majority of Cape Town is Black African. There is so much diversity and a very interesting dynamic between races because of Apartheid.

Today, we went to look at a few of the sites that we can do service at. For this, we had to drive into the townships, or the "ghettos", on the outskirts of the city. It is shocking being in these areas. Shacks are made out of anything that the family had available whether it be wood or metal. The houses are crammed together so tightly and there are one million people living in the area we drove through. The first school we went to visit we spoke with the principal who was an amazing, enthusiastic woman. They were in the middle of gathering information about one of their students. She is a ninth grader and is being held hostage by a 50 year old man. The man is doing whatever he wants to her right now. They are trying to locate where she is to get her out of the situation. The shocking thing is how casually the principal was explaining this to us. At that point we knew this happened too often.

The next school we went to was Manenberg Primary School. The teachers were having a staff meeting so we sat in on that. There are 600+ students at the school and each classroom has 40 or 50 students in it. One year a class had 75 students to one teacher. They do not have enough textbooks for each child, nor enough desks. They have computers and one computer program but no headphones so they cannot use the program. When we left everyone was extremely overwhelmed. Where do you start? There is too much to be done. I don't know how these teachers stay so optimistic.

Tonight we are going to an African restaurant to eat and dance!