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!

Service

I have not written about my service project in a while because I was pretty discouraged last week. We were having communication issues with our mentor and the whole process was moving very slowly. For those who don’t know, the main part of this semester abroad is our capstone project. At our service sites we must identify the needs of the site and implement a program that is ideally sustainable once we leave. I still do not know exactly what I want to do but after today, I feel back on track. Today we went to the school at the hospital, which is basically a big room with grades kindergarten up until grade 12. Everyone is at different learning levels, developmental levels, and speak different languages. The teacher must try to accommodate all grade levels at once with very little help. All of the children have TB and most are also infected with HIV/AIDS. Once we talked with the teacher, she sounded relieved to have some help and said we could tutor the students one on one to work on their reading. She also expressed a need for a math teacher. She is going to give us their curriculum so we can get some lesson plans together. There is very little funding for the school and if the teacher puts in a request for something, she usually gets a response somewhere along the lines of “we need to worry about their health before their education.” Many of the students are eager to learn and very bright kids. We also sat in on an occupational therapy session and a speech therapy session. Tomorrow we are going to meet with the preschool teachers. The preschool does not have a curriculum. The children are usually just playing or watching movies so we are going to see where we can help plan activities and lessons for the little ones as well.

Kalk Bay

Devil's Peak Part II

This afternoon David & Chris (The Memphis boys), and I decided to hike up Devil's Peak again. We wanted to get to the top but we knew that was at least a 6 hour hike total and we didn’t end up leave until almost 4pm. I was talking to my Dad just before we left and he expressed concern about us leaving so late and also advised us to bring a flashlight. Apparently parents know best even when they are on the other side of the world. The hike up was extremely tiring and strenuous. Some of it was sheer rock climbing. When we got to the top, it was sunset. We watched the sun disappear and started to get a little worried about climbing down in the dark. The only light we had was from Chris' iphone. It was now pitch dark and we were slowly climbing down the rocks. To be honest I was terrified coming down that mountain especially after taking a spill on my back. After a few more hours, we got to a familiar landmark, the Rhodes Memorial which is pretty close to our house. There was a man lying down at the memorial, which seemed peculiar but we didn’t think much of it. As we got closer to the bottom, there was a group of five or six men blocking the path and chanting things. It was getting louder and louder as we approached them. They could have been completely harmless but it also could have been the worst possible thing to happen to us in Cape Town. The only thing running through our minds was the hundreds of times we have been told not to be anywhere isolated after dark. Long story short we ran the other direction as fast as we could. We found a big fence that we jumped over. I had no desire to jump from that far up but didn’t really have a choice and landed far from gracefully. We finally made it to the highway and walked home from there. We have no idea what that group was doing but it could have been a cult or some type of initiation that we had no aspiration to get in the middle of. We will definitely never do that hike again in the dark. On a positive note, there were amazing views when I was brave enough to look down!

Brooklyn Chest TB Hospital

I have decided to do my service for the remainder of the semester at the Brooklyn Chest TB hospital. We went today to have a meeting with our mentor, Yolanda, who is an Occupational Therapist at the hospital. The hospital is set up almost like a little neighborhood. There are different buildings including the wards where the patients stay, schools for the patients, and office buildings for the staff. There are OTs, PTs, Speech Therapists, social workers, nurses, and doctors who work in the hospital. Our meeting went very well and we quickly learned that there are endless things to do to keep us busy. She expressed needs with caring for and stimulating the babies, creating a curriculum for the preschool,and tutoring the older kids in math and reading. The hospital also runs life skills courses so that when adults get out of the hospital they are able to start their own businesses. She suggested we sit in on those courses as well as her OT sessions. She is going to teach us some of the exercises we can do with the children when we are with them. Lastly, she emphasized the importance of just holding the kids especially the babies and talking to them even though they cannot talk back. Many families do not have a relationship with their child in the hospital and rarely visit so the human touch is extremely important in their development. We do have to take precautions especially with the older kids and adults because they are more contagious so we will have to wear masks and gloves. Most of the babies have TB Meningitis, which affects their brain. The babies are not yet coughing as a symptom and that is mostly how it is spread. Hopefully we will have our first official day tomorrow!