Facing Reality

In class last friday Friday, Grant took us on a little field trip to a nearby farm. The walk was about a mile and we took the route that many of the children walk to school. He wanted to bring us to see the conditions that the children and their families live in. The walk there was an eye opener on its own. The walk consisted of crossing train tracks that don’t have the crossing arms to signify the train is coming, crossing a very busy highway, and walking down a narrow road without sidewalks. This is a route that my mother wouldn’t want me walking now at 21 years old never mind the 6 or 7 year olds that do it every day.

When we arrived in the little area of about 5 or 6 houses, we met with an elderly woman named Kathleen who lived in one of the houses. Grant fosters one of her grandsons and pays the school fees for her other grandchildren as well, so he felt comfortable asking her if we could see her house. After she told us her story of her life living on the farm, she brought us inside. It was easy to see that she took a lot of pride in her house and family. She loved showing us pictures of her grandchildren and telling us how well they were doing in school. She was a lovely woman, but unfortunately the living situation wasn’t as great. Her house was made up of 3 rooms that were probably 15 by 15 for 3 people, which isn’t too bad. However in the past the house had had 10 people living in it and that definitely isn’t okay. The toilets are outside and she pointed out how she had asked many times for the farmer to put bathrooms in the house because of how terrible it is for an old lady to have to walk outside to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This is how the workers live, making about $100 a month while the farm owner is a millionaire with 5 houses all over the world. This farmer was one that treated his workers better than most or he wouldn’t have allowed us to look around. Still better than most is does not translate into a comfortable living. We all thanked Kathleen and shared some hugs as we were leaving and we could tell that our visit had made her day and ours.

On the way back we stopped in a little chapel on the farm that the families worship in. Grant wanted us to know how integral religion is to their lives because it gives them hope of earning something better in the end. He told us how this is a place where the families who live on this farm come to pray for miracles like food for dinner or for sick family members to get better. Sitting in this place made me feel stupid for 90% of my prayers that have to do with my favorite sports teams winning or their not being traffic on the highway. We all just sat there and reflected on what we have seen and learned over the past month. This for many was a pretty emotional time, but nice to compose all our thoughts and emotions in this peaceful place.

Our spirits were lifted a little bit when we returned back to find the entire student body in the gym watching a Valentine’s Day fashion show. The children were all dressing in red and pink and had lined the walls of the gym. Music was playing and everyone was dancing. Then some of the littlest learners would do their little catwalk down the middle of the gym and the entire school would cheer. It was adorable seeing all the little guys trying to act sassy and put on a show for everyone. You could see how much their face would light up when the cheers would come from the whole student body. It was just the pick me up we needed.

Saturday was a little bit of a different story however. 2 of the students at Lynedoch’s mother had been drunk and been hit by a car and died a week ago, so there was a funeral being held. Alcoholism is a huge problem in this area ranking among the highest in the world and 2nd highest amount of fetal alcohol syndrome in the world. Grant had mentioned that he would like it if some of us would take some time out to go and arranged a ride for us. We met around 7:30 and headed for one of the farms. The funerals here are held in their home because of the lack of financial resources to pay for something better. When we arrived, we quickly realized that Grant hadn’t lied the day before when he said that Kathleen’s farm had a nicer living situation than most. The first thing we noticed before even reaching their house was that the group of 8 or 10 houses dumped their garbage in a ditch right next to their houses. This created a very strong stench and also attracted a lot of flies. I had never experienced anything like it before. The flies were 100 times worse than anything I’ve ever endured and there was never a moment that I was there and I couldn’t feel at least 5 flies crawling on me somewhere. We walked up to the house, were invited inside, and were surprised to see the open casket sitting right there in front of us. We walked up showing our respect and could tell that they had worked to put her face back together after the accident she had been in. We stood right outside the door during the service because there wasn’t room inside for us. The principal of Lynedoch went in at some point and explained in Afrikaans who we were and why we were there because we could tell people were confused what the group of white people was doing there. They were honored that people from across the world would come to show their respect and we were told it made her life seem more valuable because of our presence. This was a little uncomfortable for us getting attention when we were supposed to be honoring the life of this woman. Something interesting that Mr. Janssen pointed out to us was her son, Jonathan’s, reluctance to be a part of the service and stayed distant from it. He explained that this is a survival tactic that people here use because pain is such a frequent occurrence in their lives. They distance their emotions, so that they don’t have to feel the pain, but unfortunately also end up losing out on feelings of happiness as well. When they were processing out they asked us to lead the casket and then the hearse to the end of the road. This again was an uncomfortable moment, but we honored their wishes and did as they asked. This was quite an experience and something that I don’t think any of us will soon forget.

Culture Shock at Its Finest

So last night we went to a bar to watch the Arsenal/Liverpool game. It was a big football game so the bar was packed. I was a little hungry, so I ordered nachos with cheese. I was really excited about this because we haven’t been able to find nachos anywhere. They came and we all dug in. Immediately we realized something wasn’t quite right. Under the pile of melted cheese, salsa, jalepenos, and other nacho goodness were cheese Doritos. I like Doritos, but not under salsa and cheese. The salsa was sweeter than ours as well, so that wasn’t very good either. A disappointing experience to say the least.

A Rougher Day- Week #2 February 8th

Today the second grade was a little bit rougher than last week was. I came in very excited to work with the learners again. I had felt like we had used what we had learned from experiencing them the first week to better prepare for our day and fix it to work better with them. When physical education started, they all circled up and listened well when we were doing stretches. Then when we moved on to our activities they started to become a little difficult to contain. We tried to explain what we were doing and they seemed to get it. However, there were a couple of learners that were determined not going to pay attention or follow directions. This week again, I was not sure whether this was because they were overly excited, did not understand us, or were just trying to take advantage of the situation. These few kids then distracted the other children and drew them out of the activities as well. Eventually, no one was following directions and it seemed like chaos that we were trying to contain.

Pumle was involved in pretty much all the trouble that happened during this period and was getting on my nerves. I don’t think that he was the instigator, but was constantly being harassed. I noticed that he was slightly disadvantage from the other learners because of the condition of his foot (seemed like it had been burned badly in the past and hadn’t healed properly. A couple of other boys would taunt him until he got angry, run away, and then since his foot was in bad shape he would not be able to catch up. I tried to discipline these boys, but I’m not really quite sure how I am supposed to discipline them. They seemed to be aware of this and continued to take advantage of the situation. I tried to have a chat with Pumle about this, but he was not willing to talk very much. Although he wasn’t talking to me, he was unable to hide the fact that he was upset by this. I’m not completely sure of what is going on, but am pretty sure that he is not completely innocent in all of this either. I have come to realize that it’s not usually coincidence when one person is constantly involved in all the trouble that is around.

Later in their reading time, we made up a lesson on the Olympics and, more specifically, skiing and snowboarding in the Winter Olympics. I learned from last week that I was not sure whether they were able to understand what I was trying to explain to them, so I made a PowerPoint presentation with a lot of cool pictures to keep their attention. For this lesson we moved to Grant’s classroom to use the projector, this change of scenery along with the use of the projector caused them to be very excited. By the time they sat down, they were already being pretty loud. We quieted them a little bit, but weren’t able to find silence. I started with my presentation and they seemed to think it was pretty cool; I was right when I thought the pictures would interest them. I felt pretty satisfied because I had spent a very long time looking for interesting pictures to include. Even though they were into it, they would get very excited by every new slide and erupt in yelling and screaming. This was a bitter sweet moment: they liked it, but it was causing them to once again be out of control. I then showed them some YouTube videos of skiing and snowboarding tricks. This was the only time that I had silence all day from them. They were mesmerized by these videos and were amazed. This was an extremely satisfying moment. Then when it was over, we took them on an imaginary ski trip. They enjoyed this, but when we started skiing it made a whole lot of noise and we needed to end it very quickly. After, we did a coloring project and as it went on they again spiraled out of control. The three of us then just worked the whole time to keep them in some kind of order and prayed for the period to end soon. By the time they left, we were completely exhausted and we all basically collapsed in the teacher’s lounge. As we worked there, everyone kept on telling us that they could hear our class from all different places in the school. We were a little embarrassed and hoped we hadn’t ruined anyone’s classes with our noise. We felt like we were defeated and were a little disappointed in our efforts. We did not really know what went wrong and for the rest of the day discussed how we would be able to get them excited in a more constructive way.

These feeling of exhaustion and defeat carried on for the rest of the day. As other people headed outside during our lunch, we hid inside because of our embarrassment. Then with about 10 minutes left until yoga, I decided to go outside. I saw one of the girls in my class and went over to talk to her. She was very cute and we all joked around, laughing at my expense. A couple other girls in my class joined in and I was having a good time. This moment caused all of those feelings I had been feeling to drift away and again remember how lucky I am to be able to work with these kids and, even through chaos, how much fun it really is being here. I went back inside for yoga with a big smile on my face and one in my soul as well. This was the feeling that I tried to take with me when I left. Then when I saw Pumle at the train station, I wanted to go over and experience him without the other boys bothering him and with me in a better mood. Although he had frustrated me all day, I was able to laugh, enjoy this time, and remember that all of these children really are special, even when they are annoying.

Jeff took a picture while I was changing for yoga.

I then went home, collapsed into my bed, and fell asleep for a few hours.

Note: None of these pictures depict by any means the chaos that went on. Hard to believe all these cute little kids could be so crazy.

First Cape Town Adventure

On Saturday morning we woke up and headed for Cape Town. A large majority of the people I hung out with had gone shark cage diving and the rest of us decided to go to Cape Town. The group was Beth, Jeff, Sarah, Casey, Karli and I. We Caught a train and headed in. Cape Town is a little under an hour by train and the ticket is about $1 American each way. At this point we didn’t really have much of a plan except that we were going to Cape Town. This is the way that you aren’t suppose to travel, but for us, not having a plan was part of the day’s adventure. Beforehand we decided that we would like to go to the beach if possible, so that was the mindset we had. When we got off the train, we kind of just started walking. This was a very different world from Stellenbosch and felt much more like Africa. Here the black to white ratio flip flopped and now it was 90% black to 10% white. I was now part of the minority for one of the first times in my life.

Eventually, we found a Cape Town tourism information station, we looked through some stuff, grabbed some maps, and headed on our way. Beth, Jeff, and Karli were planning on staying over, so first looked for a hostel for them to stay at. We came to Long Street which one of the central streets with restaurants, stores, bars, and hotels. There were quite a few hostels, so they picked on that looked nice and got a room for less that $20. While we waited, we looked through all the brochures and maps we had picked up and decided what next. We decided our destination would be Camp’s Bay beach. It was a pretty good distance, so we hailed a cab and headed over. This cab ride was pretty awesome (well besides 5 of us squeezing in the backseat) because it went right over Table Mountain. When we got to the beach, it was a little touristy with restaurants and shops lining the beach, but absolutely beautiful. The beach was really nice with lots of rocks to go exploring on, but even cooler was that it was at the base of Table Mountain. This was great, turn your head one way and see the frigid, yet beautiful Atlantic Ocean and the other way you see the Table Mountain staring straight down at you. We spent the next few hours exploring and enjoying the beach. The big rocks in the water were really fun to explore because they created lots of tide pools that made their own little ecosystems. I spent quite a bit of time just watching the little fish and snails living their lives in this miniature version of the ocean. To mean it was fascinating. We also found some giant seaweed that was almost so big one person alone couldn’t hold it. Here's Beth and Jeff with it.

This beach was pretty diverse and had people of all races enjoying it. Still you could see a division of wealth apart between the white and black people on the beach, but it was the first time that I saw affluence in the black community. I could tell that some of the black people enjoying this beach were just as well off as the white people, which is something Stellenbosch doesn’t have.

Eventually, Casey, Sarah, and I left the others and headed back to Stellenbosch because we wanted to get a good night sleep to stay up and watch the Super Bowl into the wee hours of the night the next night.This trip helped me to start opening my eyes a little bit more to what Africa actually is. This will be the first of very many trips I will go on to Cape Town. What I was struck with most during this trip was that I felt like I became aware of the prejudice that exists inside of me. I would be the first to say that I think everyone is equal and there are many different people of all races, gender, sexuality, etc that are much better than me out there, however in this situation I could feel that no one is without prejudice. When in America when a person enters an all black area they think this must be a bad area. This is something that is ingrained in us from a young age and no matter how hard you fight to think and live free from racism, this is a thought that is hard to move away from. When everyone in a city is black I found myself continuing to ask myself “are we in a bad area?” Then I tell myself that everywhere here is a black area and I must get used to that not being a symbol of something negative. Things like these are the ideas that I hope to break while I am here to become much more open-minded.

THE BIG DAY! WEEK #1 FEBRUARY 1ST!

Today was a very exciting day. I woke up ready to go and looking forward to getting in 2nd grade with the children. I was not completely sure what to expect, but was pretty confident that what we had planned would be well received. When we first met the learners in their classroom, I felt nervous for the first time. I really wanted them to like me, but also respect me. During physical education it was a little difficult because they did not really seem to get what we were doing. I’m not sure whether it was too complex, the language barrier, or their excitement, which caused them to miss the point. After the first two games we tried did not seem to fully keep their attention, we improvised and played “duck, duck, goose.” They really seemed to enjoy this, which I think was because they got to be in control when choosing who had to chase them. This sense of power and control seemed to excite them.

We moved back to the classroom for their life skills time and we were a little surprised to see that Mrs. Jephtha left it all to us. We had been under the impression that this was time that she had planned. It was good that we had come up with an activity beforehand to do during this time. We had them draw pictures of themselves with their best friend doing something they enjoy doing together. This went well and many of the pictures ended up being pictures of us with them. Once again we weren’t sure if this was because they didn’t understand the directions we gave in English or if they were just excited to meet us. Either way, I took it as a compliment and it made me feel good.

In the afternoon we taught them a little bit about Van Gogh’s life and then had them draw what they thought a starry night over a town would look like. Although once again I wasn’t sure how much of what we said they understood, Mrs. Jephtha explained in Afrikaans the assignment and they all went to work. It was very cool to see all the different variations they came up with and how all followed direction, but interpreted them differently. After they were finished we showed them what Van Gogh’s version looked like and they all seemed to think it was pretty cool. However, I think I liked some of the ones that they made better, but I’m biased.

The day left me feeling satisfied, but also extremely motivated to think of more activities to do with them that they will find fun and educational. My imagination hasn’t stopped going since I left the classroom this afternoon.

Service Entries

Sorry I haven't said anything lately about my service work. Every Monday as homework I have to write a journal entry about my day, so some weeks I will just post that. I'm putting up my entries from the last 2 weeks now and I'll put the dates, so you can see that they are from previous days. Thanks for reading!

Cederberg Weekend!

So we headed out around 6 PM from campus in a couple of school vans. One group of students had already left a couple of hours ago, but the rest of us had class until later Friday afternoon. The vans are driven by some students that are usually grad students at the school and are hired to drive and go on the excursions with us. This is nice because it adds some actual South Africans to our trip, so we can also see what these trips are like from someone native to the country. Our ride up was a little nerve racking because my driver Brit wasn’t the greatest. It was cool driving through the countryside and seeing more of what South Africa had to offer. We passed mainly farmlands that were being used to graze sheep and cattle. It got dark before we reached the mountains, so we missed a little bit of that scenery. We arrived in the Cederbergs around 10 and dinner was ready for us. They had prepared a traditional South African braii (there version of a bbq) of sausage sandwiches and for us vegetarians some veggie patties. In our group of 50, there are 8 other vegetarians, so I never have to worry about being an inconvenience on my own. This is pretty nice and something I’m not used to. We spent the rest of the night just hanging out by the fire and bonding. The moon was almost full and it was really beautiful, except because it was so bright, it preventing us from seeing many stars, which really sucked. We stayed in cabins, which were really nice and some of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in. On Friday night me and Pablo shared a queen size bed, bonding us even closer than our usual accommodations do.

We woke up early Saturday morning and were on the mountain at 9 for our hike. It was hot, but not anything ridiculous. When we looked up at the mountain, we thought that we would have to rock climb straight up because it looked that steep, however there were switchbacks that brought us back and forth up the mountain a little bit at a time. Our pace was pretty fast, even though this climb was hot, steep, and exhausting. At this point I was very happy I had been running a bit because it better prepared me. We reached the end of this steep climb in an hour, which is the quickest Hestea said she’s ever done with any AIFS groups in her other 23 trips. We all convened here and some at some lunch as we all took pictures of the amazing landscape. Other than the area with our few cabins and the land owner’s vineyard, there was no other signs of civilization in any direction. All that we could see was savannah terrain and mountains. Unfortunately none of these pictures do that view justice, but at least you can kind of check it out.

At this point we split up into 3 groups, one headed back down, another went an easier route to the top, and the final went up through the cracks. I chose to go up through the cracks along with about ¾ of the group. This part was a lot of fun. There wasn’t as much vertical climb as it was climbing and squeezing through different cracks and in different caves. This definitely helped us bond a little bit more because we at times needed to work together to give people a hand or a boost to get through different areas. I ended up doing a lot of helping along the way because Terry told Hestea that I was an experienced climber. However I am not an advanced climber or hiker, but when you put a bandana on people just assume all types of things. This wasn’t a big deal because nothing was really that crazy that we faced. Thes caves were really cool to climb through and at times we made them a little bit harder than necessary like when Terry, Jeff, Angelo, and I played the ground is lava and avoided the ground by climbing on ledges and whatnot for a long time. I was well prepared for these tasks from all the times we played the floor is lava in this suite trying to reach the refrigerator without touching the ground or shimmying through our hallways trying to see how far we could make it before falling. The last challenge was crawling through this little area just larger than our bodies, but with Jeff pulling everyone through it went pretty quickly. When we reached the top again the view was unbelievable to the point where I can’t even describe it.

At this point we again split up into 2 groups and one headed back while whoever wanted could go an hour and a half further to the Cederberg Arch. Hestea was pretty strict about who was allowed to go this added bit based on how people were feeling and how much water we had. Me and 12 others decided to go for the Arch. After we reapplied suntan lotion, we headed out quickly because another 3 hours was going to put us back home pretty late. The ground had leveled out a lot up here and it was just minor rocky hills that we had to climb over. The sun was beating down hard, but since we were so high there was a real nice breeze keeping us cool. When we got closer to the Arch we again needed to climb up a steeper mountain, but this wasn’t too bad. The Arch looked really cool and being able to see it for a long time leading up to it gave us a nice boost to work our way to the top. Reaching it finally was an extremely satisfying feeling. Our group of 13 was very proud of what we accomplished as we sat in the shade of the Arch and shared snacks and drank some water.

After basking in the glory of our accomplishment for a while, we headed out for the descend. This part was a lot less fun. We made pretty good time on the way back until we hit that first steep part we had climbed up about 2 hours into our return trip. At this point the sun was the hottest and there was no respite from its rays and our legs were starting to get tired, but we had to be sure it didn’t make us careless because a fall would have made for a long tumble. At this point I was leading with JP, one of the drivers, right behind me. Earlier we had seen some baboons far off in the distance and we had been discussing them for a while. Mainly these discussions were about how vicious and scary they are, so I had been keeping this in mind our whole trip. It was at one point when I was passing a cave that I heard a rustle, I immediately turned and yelled “JP THERE’S SOMETHING IN THAT CAVE!” I grabbed the biggest rock I could find and ran down the trail a little bit, while JP and the rest turned and went back up. I was all alone and I remembered the advice that another driver, Grant, told me the night before “Don’t run or they will chase and attack you, just stand your ground and throw stuff at them and they will go away.” So with rock in hand I turned and looked up at the cave ledge ready to attack. As I turned I saw an older lady standing there confused about all the commotion below. I simply told her I thought she was a baboon, dropped my rock, and turned to continue down the mountain. Our legs felt like jello, we were exhausted, and had no more water; we were happy to finally reach the bottom at 4 about 7 hours after we had left.

As we were driving back to the cabins we found where all the baboons were hiding, stealing food from the campers right next to our cabins. They were chasing them away with sticks and apparently they had broken the mirrors off of one of the school cars we had brought. After this excitement, Sol, Adrienne, Sarah, JP, and I all went for a swim in the river to cool off. It was very refreshing after the long hike.

That night they made us a traditional South African stew, vegetable for us and beef for everyone else. It was delicious and extremely filling, well after the giant 2 servings that I had. I had gone with a few other people to a cabin to hang out that night without thinking about having to return. Then it hit me that I would have to walk the quarter of a mile back by myself in the dark to my cabin. This was easily the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. All I could think of while I was walking in the moonlight was of the crazy baboons that we had seen earlier. Since baboons have quickly become my greatest fear, this was not a soothing thought. Again I grabbed a rock and headed on my way. Thank god the moon was so bright or I’m not sure I would have made it very far, but I moved quickly and made it back to my bed without a scratch. I feel asleep around 10:30 after that very tiring day and slept like a baby.

On Sunday we headed to check out some caves where San Bushman had left cave drawings 8,000-15,000 years ago. I was completely taken back by that huge number and that I was standing where people had stood so long before. The drawings were simple ones of hunters, elephants, or handprints, but absolutely amazing that they had stood the test of time, while my mom says you are suppose to repaint rooms of your house every 5-10 years. Like all parts of South African history, this history of some of the people native to the land was also clouded by that of Apartheid. In a large cave very close to these painting, the walls were filled with names and dates from 1882 to the early 1990’s. These caves were used as secret meetings of the racist Apartheid regime, since they were so far from anywhere. When meetings were held they, would write their names and the dates on the walls. These names included extremely famous people in South Africa history including P.W. Botha, the last president of the Apartheid era. It was interesting to see these names of black native South African oppression scribbled across the walls of such an important and beautiful part of the history. It was easy to see the disgust on the face of our AIFS assistant resident director, Angelo, who is a black South African while seeing these names ruining this wonderful place. We then got some free time to wonder around exploring caves and climbing more rocks and stuff. Here's a picture of one of the little guys that i had climbed. This really was a cool place to visit and happy we got to spend time there. After 2 days of hiking and climbing, I was talking to some girls in the caves and took a step back, tripped on a rock sprained my ankle and cut my knee. Neither of these injuries were serious, barely leaving me with a limp when I got off the ground and not dropping the sandwich I was eating, but it was funny after so much activity and crazy feats, I fell down while I was just standing talking to someone. All and all it is a weekend I will never forget!