Sunday night I watched the football match between England
and Italy. We were at the tavern nearby
and we happened to sit at a table with these two guys. It turns out that one of them sat by my
roommate Emma on the airplane to Cape Town a month ago, pretty random. The
tavern had a nice fireplace and a friendly dog that wandered around. The game kept on going (into overtime and a
shootout) so we didn’t get to head home until late. We live just around the corner from the
tavern, but this guy from inside the bar insisted that we needed an escort home
to protect us. We would probably have
been fine, but he kept insisting that he was worried about us since the area we
live in does have muggings at night. He
looked alright so we let him walk us home, which we got there safely.
The weather wasn’t very nice all week (it is the
winter/rainy time of the year here). On
Monday Rebekah and I walked to EFB (Eastern Food Bazaar) for dinner. Tuesday I stayed in all night, not wanting to
be out in the weather. Wednesday I
needed to go rent a costume for a murder mystery party Friday night; the only
problem was the store is open 9-5 and by the time I get off work at 4:30 and
get to town it is after 5:00. My boss
let me leave 20 minutes early (4:10) so I could catch the bus (4:20) to get to
town (4:40). Then I got a cab (4:45) to
drop me off (4:50) and I had 10 minutes to pick an outfit and pay. It was pretty hectic, and it is very
frustrating that everything is open only when I am at work. I won’t ever be able to return it, so Rebekah
is going to return it for me so I don’t lose my 100R deposit. I did manage to get an awesome medieval
dress. Wednesday night we went to the
bar to watch Portugal-Spain. Once again
the game lasted forever since it went into overtime and a shootout.
The movie collection in our apartment consists of Bridesmaids
and the Kings Speech, Emma’s 2 movies.
Thursday night we were upstairs in a friend’s apartment and it turns out
they had season 5 of Will and Grace. We
have borrowed it and now have something new to watch when we don’t go out
during the week. Rebekah and I proceeded
to watch disc 1 while messing around online and reading our books.
Friday was one of the best days at work I have had. I work directly with the Executive Director
of PATA and right now we have very minimal staff. I get to work on important projects one of
which is to fill out the report to register PATA as a non-profit with the
Department of Social Development. Every
year you have to resubmit the forms, and if you don’t then the organization is
no longer a non-profit in the country.
Having all of that responsibility placed on me is pretty exciting. I also found out how incredible PATA is as an
organization; of all the children in the world on ARVs to treat their HIV, PATA
provides care for about 50% of them.
That is a huge statistic and represents over 300,000 children that are directly
impacted by the money and resources we provide.
Unfortunately there are lots of children that aren’t on ARVs yet.
In the afternoon my boss took us to go visit one of the
clinics we support. We drove 45 minutes
to Paarl, a town in the Winelands. We went to the TC Newman community clinic. One of the doctors gave us a tour
around. He explained how the town used
to be split with blacks on one side and whites on the other (Apartheid). This hospital was the black hospital. Then after Apartheid ended, they worked to
integrate the community. The clinic
itself was absolutely beautiful. They
had received a grant from Global Aid (I think that was the organization) and
the structure was brand new. It opened
in January 2012. The funding was to
provide health infrastructure. We got a
tour of the new facilities as well as to this cool area out back. They converted the old boiler room from the
past into a space for counseling with the HIV positive kids and
adolescents. There we met one of our
expert patients (PATA funds their salary) who is an HIV positive individual
that has become knowledgeable about the treatments. They help others understand
different aspects of their care that goes beyond the use of ARVs.
Afterward the doctor asked if we wanted to go to a palliative
care center nearby. We drove over to a
small township nicknamed “Fairyland.” Here
we visited the Butterfly House, which was also very inspiring. The facility is gorgeous and located in the
middle of all of the shacks where people live.
The people who come here are HIV positive children and adults, siblings of
HIV infected individuals, and orphans of HIV infected parents. The center doesn’t provide much in the terms
of treatment, but it provides tons of other resources. In the mornings while the kids are in school,
they have a variety of classes to teach life skills to adults. Then in the afternoons over 300 children come
to the facility for activities. Most of the kids only get one good meal a day –
and that is the one the Butterfly House provides. The children don’t have desks at home to do
homework so they use the desks here to study.
In the back there is a little playhouse that is used for playtime for
one child at a time. Then a counselor can
be in there to talk to the child if they think there is a problem at home or just
in general. They have a great puppet
stage where the adult acts with a puppet and the children open up about their
problems. One of the strange facts was
that no child ever picks to “talk” to the policeman puppet. This shows how they view the police in South
Africa. I was very impressed with
everything they do there.
We ended up not getting home from the clinic visits until 6
and I had to be at the murder mystery dinner party at 7. I came home and quickly changed into my
medieval dress. I had already read my
character description that was e-mailed to me last week. The dinner party was a group of 8 people who
each have a different character. The theme
was The Bloody Grail. I was Meryl
Knight, a well-known historian on Stonehenge from New York. I went with Rebekah and Melinda. One of the people at our table of 8 didn’t
show up so Rebekah played 2 characters throughout the night. It was a three course meal. We each had a character book in front of us
with three tabs – so we opened one for each meal course as we delved deeper
into the murder. It turns out my
character was very suspicious and was the last seen at the scene of the crime,
but I guessed right that Giovanni murdered Kathleen! The party was so much fun and everyone was in
costume and in character.
Saturday was the township tour. A township is a settlement that was forced to
be created during the Apartheid era. The
blacks were forced out of the city to live on the Cape Flats. Now they are still separated because they
choose to continue living with their own people rather than move back into the
city, even if they can afford it. Our
tour was of the township Langa, and we had a local man named MC guide us around
the area (he is from Langa and still lives there). We began near this nice recreational facility
that was built on their land when South Africa bid for the 2004 Olympics
against Athens (they got 2nd and Athens won the bid). The facility is very nice, but people from
Langa are glad they lost because the government would have taken their land
back to build more venues and facilities.
Langa has a small allotment of land originally intended for 5,000
people, but now 70,000 live in the area.
It was a lot of working men from rural areas, but then their wives and
families all moved as well for the greater opportunity near the city. Across the highway from where we were was the
initiation place. Women are not allowed
in this area ever. Men can only go if
they have been initiated or if it is there turn which is when they are around
age 18. Initiation is basically circumcision. The boys are turned into men at this time,
which creates a very painful memory that bonds them to each other and everyone
who has been initiated before them. They
know that life will never be that painful again. They receive no drugs, only an animal skin
wrap when they are done. Sometimes boys
still die from this initiation. Then for
the next 6 months they wear a specific coat and hat to signify to everyone that
they have become a man.
Next we went to the craft center. Here they have places for people to learn
pottery and other art forms. There is a
strong feeling of ownership of the building so it remains in very good
condition. Next we walked by shipping
containers being used as houses. The
government provided these old crates for use for two families per crate which
is very crowded. We stopped in a small
shack that is the local brewery. The
women must make this brew, which has a name in the Xhosa language. This is a click language that has three
different clicks as well as sounds. They
taught us how to say the name of the beer which has a click right in the middle
of it. At important events the tradition
is that the beer is put in a giant bucket and passed around for everyone to
take a sip. There is a place by here
where they sell smileys – sheep’s head.
It is a delicacy here where everyone wants to eat every part of it
especially the tongue. We walked to MC’s
house afterward which is nicer than a lot of them. There is an area nearby nicknamed Beverly
Hills because those are very nice houses that are lived in by people who could
afford to move out and live in the city.
They choose to stay by their roots and with their people, but they build
nice houses for themselves.
We continued walking into one of the many hostels in the area. This is the term for housing that is where
they cram many people in together. One
small room, probably smaller than your bedroom at home, is where three families
live. The couples and small children
each share one bed and the bigger kids sleep on the floor. There are many bedrooms in each hostel and
then a main kitchen area for eating and socializing. The area on the other end of Langa by the
highway has government houses. They built
them for the people however, they are too expensive still for them to move
in. Now they are sitting empty because no
one can afford it, and the government doesn’t change the prices or strategy for
providing houses. Right next to this
area is where all the shacks are. They
are made of tin and wood and tarps. It
is a huge area of people with their little plots of land together. They all have electricity that is pay as you
go and most of them have televisions despite their poor house structure. The bathrooms are all lined up in a row – a bunch
of portapotty like structures. There are
communal areas to get fresh water which is free by the government. We got to look inside a couple of the shacks
to see how they live. What they like is that there is privacy here so that it
is only one family per shack and the parents can have a separate private space
for themselves away from the kids unlike in the hostels. Outside one of the shacks this young boy came
up and kept pointing at the shiny part on my purse. I wasn’t really sure what he was going for
since he spoke Xhosa. Then I realized
that in the outward part of my purse I had 2 cereal bars that I brought as a
snack in case I got hungry. The child
must have seen the wrapper sticking out at one point. I pulled out one of the bars and the kid
grabbed it and ran away in less than a second.
Suddenly I was swarmed with other children around me. I gave one my second bar, which then made the
rest of the children sad that I didn’t have any more on me.
We walked to a traditional healers shop. He had tons of dead animals and weird furs
hanging in his little place which was another shipping crate building. Inside he had tons of weird potions and jars
of things. I couldn’t really understand
what he was saying while he was talking, but it was about his training and his
healing beliefs. Our next stop was Mzoli’s. This is a restaurant in the Guguelethu Township. Here you order a bucket of meat for your
group and everyone just digs in and takes what they want. There are no drinks, plates, napkins, or
anything provided. You are just given the
cooked meat consisting of sheep, steak, and boerwores.
Saturday night I wasn’t feeling very good and really just didn’t
move. Rebekah and I had put on Will and Grace disc 2. The disc kept skipping and restarting the
episode, but I didn’t want to have to move to fix it so we watched the same 10
minutes probably around 8 times before we fixed it. I have those scenes memorized now. All of
Emma’s coworkers came over for a bit before they all went out. I sat in my spot and talked with them. Once
they left I just went to bed, but I woke up Sunday morning feeling much better.
Sunday we took a cab back to Mzoli’s. Rebekah’s boss invited her and Milou and
their friends to come with them. We beat
them there and had to wait outside the restaurant for them to show up with the
reservations. While waiting many
different people from the township came up to us to comment on how beautiful we
were. One guy continued proposing to me
for the entire hour until Vince arrived with our reservation slip. Despite telling him no many times, he
continued to tell me that he would fly to America for me and that he wanted my
dad’s number to call and ask for permission.
One of the other guys asked what state I was from, and he had never
heard of Nebraska. He kept confusing it
and then asked what city I was from, Omaha.
He kept thinking I meant Ohio. It
was really funny because he would leave and then wander back to me and be like “Omaha?
I have never heard of that. I am going to look it up.” Once Vince arrived, we got our seats and ordered
our plate of meat. The place was slowly
filling up with people while we waited.
I thought the meat was much better this time because it was very hot and
fresh off the stove. We stayed at Mzoli’s
for 5 hours. By the end of it, the place
was packed, the dj was on, and everyone was dancing and drinking lots of alcohol. Since I didn’t feel good last night, I
refrained from drinking which made the situation pretty comical to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment