Update from Africa!!!

Hello everyone! I’m sorry I have been so awful with my blog, I’ll try and write more regularly from now on, it’s just hard to find time to get to the cafe during the day, it turns out there is no internet at our house, so I’m just writing it offline now and then will hopefully post it tomorrow afternoon.

So AFRICA!!!!!

I love it.

It is so incredible here, I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful it is.  I’m staying in a tiny surfer’s village called Muizenberg, it’s about a 20 minute drive/50 minute train ride to Cape Town.  The ocean is about a five minute walk from my house, and there is a huge beautiful mountain that overlooks the town.  (below is the view from House 2)

It has been going amazing so far! My last flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town was good, I sat next to a guy named Muzwi who lives in Cape Town, so he told me all about it, and got me really excited! I arrived at the airport around 9:30 and just went to House 2, and went to bed that night, but it was 3:00 pm Winnipeg time, so I didn’t really sleep at all! It took me about 4 days to get adjusted to the time difference, but I’m used to it now.  Monday we had orientation, that was really good, I met all the other volunteers, such great people, I’m very blessed to have made such good friends already! Lots of Brits and Americans, a few Canadians and Australians, one of my really good friends is from Denmark, that’s really cool.  There’s this one guy named Ross.  He’s from Texas.  Very classic American.  Then there’s Rachel.  She’s from London, and is awesome.  Ditte’s from Denmark, Lizzie’s from LA, Smit lives close to New York, so we’re really from all over the world. 

In the morning, we drove through the township where we work, the poverty level is heart-wrenching.  Everyone lives in shacks, there’s no insulation and it gets VERY cold here, so you wonder how they stay warm at night.There’s stray dogs everywhere, pretty big ones too, but they’re so feeble, you know they don’t have the strength to attack you. We visited all the different projects, Sunrise is the childcare centre where I’ve been working, a different school is called Shack 10, and it is literally a shack amongst the other houses. When we walked in, Tim said that they had just done a lot of work on it and that it looked a lot better, and I couldn’t imagine what it must have looked like before. It really makes you appreciate how blessed you really are!    There is also Christian Davids, and the art project, and then surfing and football in the afternoons.  In the afternoon of our orientation, we took the train into Cape Town, such a  beautiful city.  We walked around for a little bit, and then went through the Company Gardens, that was really nice.  However, just as we were exiting the gardens we hear a man shouting in Afrikaans at another man.  He runs past us, holding a huge knife trying to stab the guy!  We all stop and stare (which probably wasn’t the smartest idea looking back on it), and then he starts throwing the knife at him, and we decide that we should probably keep on walking.  I was definitely thrown off by that, a stabbing in the middle of the day in a busy area of town, and no one was doing anything about it.  I definitely experience major culture shock the first couple of days, but now I’m settled in.  

Tuesday morning was my first day working in the township, it’s about a 30 minute walk from our house.  As a safety precaution, all the volunteers walk together in the morning to the township.  A few volunteers were mugged a couple weeks ago, so we like to stick together.  It’s weird, at home if I was walking downtown and I was scared of someone, I would look away and not make eye contact.  But here, if I’m a little uneasy walking past someone, I look right at them and say Hello or Good morning.  I’m not sure why, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. I have been working with this one class at Sunrise, and wow, I am in love with these kids.  Within a minute of walking into the classroom, all the kids are hugging you, yelling “teacher, teacher,” and trying to jump on you.  They adapt very quickly to new volunteers.  It’s been almost two weeks working there now, and I really feel like I’m starting to know the kids.  There are a couple of them though, it’s going to be awful to leave them, they really tug at my heartstrings.  One little boy named Nawaaz, and a girl named Michaela.  (picture on the left) Nawaaz is 4 years old, and the biggest sweetheart.  We have this routine on the playground where he’ll climb up to the top of the structure, then I’ll put my hands on my hips, frown at him, and say “Are you ready?” in a low voice, and he’ll be like “Are you ready?” and point at me, trying to frown, but usually smiling, and then he’ll jump into my arms, and I’ll swing him around upside down, he has the cutest biggest smile the entire time.  Oh, and he loves to grab my hand and then climb up my legs and flip, that’s quite popular with the kids, I remember I used to love doing that to my dad when I was little.  Michaela is the cutest little girl.  She’s in her own little world sometimes, and will just start dancing, she has some good moves!   She also has epilepsy.  I brought my camera to Sunrise one day, and out on the playground, she followed me for an hour.  First it started out, “And me, teacher, and me!” meaning she wanted me to take a picture of her.  So I took a ton of pictures, they always love taking pictures and looking at them afterwards.  So that was good.  But then it changed to “And you teacher!” and she wanted to take pictures of me.  If you give one kid your camera, then you’ll have 500 kids all over you, so I was trying not to give it to her, but she really wanted it so I gave it to her, it was so cute, she would lead me to certain areas where she thought would be a good background for a picture.  The best part was that she wouldn’t actually take the picture though!  She didn’t quite understand that you had to press the button all the way down, she would just quickly tap it.  She is so adorable, I can’t even describe it.  I was shocked on my first day though, the kids I work with are between 3-4, but wow, they are so much more mature than that.  They know way more than they should at their age.  Living in the township, they have to be very street smart.  A lot of the children live off the food we make them at school, they don’t get any food at home.  You can tell, they always scrape the very last of their bowls, some try and steal extra food as well.  It just breaks your heart to think of what these kids go through.  We don’t know a lot about their home situations, but some kids have knife scars on their faces, things like that.  It’s so sad, there’s this one girl who we know is HIV positive, and none of the kids want to play with her because of the sores on her face. Today she was wearing a turtleneck, and she pulled it up to try and cover her face so that they would let her join them.  It’s a very emotional experience, but I am loving every second of it.  The kids are having a concert on October 30th, so we’ve been practicing, we’re doing a dance to “Twist” by Elvis, it is so cute, I’ll have to record it at the concert and upload it, it’s adorable.  I love having dance parties with the children.  :) Their favourite song though, hands down, is “Baby” by Justin Beiber.  Somehow, every kid knows that song, but only the one line, so they’ll all sing “Baby, baby, baby, oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh” over and over, it’s so adorable.  So I am loving working with the children, it’s so amazing.  We’re done volunteering around noon, then go over to House 3 and have lunch.  The surfing project runs in the afternoon, so usually a bunch of us will go down there and watch for a bit, hang out with the kids, and then go to the cafe or to get groceries.  But yesterday I decided to tag along and go to the soccer program, that was so much fun! Apparently it’s a lot different this week, because the older kids are on holiday from school, so there’s a big tournament going on and whatnot, so I’ll tell you how it goes when I go again.  But yesterday, the tournament went late so we watched the game, the kids were probably around 12-14, and wow, they were incredible.  The game was taking a long time, so we took the kids out to a field and just played monkey in the middle with the ball, then once the tournament was done for the day, we had a scrimmage.  The kids were probably around 9-13ish for the most part, and they are so good! They put me to shame, and I love it!  I think I’m going to start going to the soccer program on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well, it’s so much fun. The kids here are really so incredible.  The locals are awesome too, I’ve met some really cool people! Supper is at 7, and then usually we’ll sit around and talk, play a card game, watch a movie, or go to the melting pot (the local hangout). It is very laid-back here, so different from North America. 

On Friday, we had the day off, since it was Heritage Day, so me, Ross, Rachel, Ditte, and Julia climbed Table Mountain!! That was an exhilarating experience!  We took the train to Cape Town, then took a taxi from the train station to the foot of the mountain.  It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get to the top, but we stopped a lot, and we also had a half hour detour when we made a wrong turn!  It was really cool, you could feel the change in the air as the elevation increased, the air became more watery. I drank some of the spring water from the mountain, which I thought was really cool haha. It was so beautiful, I had to stop a lot to take pictures, I got some really nice ones though I think.  The view was so spectacular, especially when we finally reached the top!! I remember when the end was in sight, me and Rachel ran, I think I was screaming “Yes!” over and over, a lot of people were looking at us pretty strangely, but we were so happy to finally be at the top.  It was so beautiful to overlook the city, and to be at the same height as the clouds, we were even above some of them.  

The temperature difference was astounding though! When we were climbing the mountain, I was hot in tank tops and shorts, it felt around 27 degrees. At the top of the mountain, it was 8 degrees!! And very very windy.  So we didn’t stay up there for too long, the other girls were so cold, but me and Ross were determined to get a few pictures of us on top of the world! It was such a wonderful feeling, such a spectacular view. We took the cable car down the mountain, that was really cool, it only took two minutes to get down! And the floor spun around, so you were able to get a panoramic view as you descended. 

Friday night we went into Cape Town and went down Long St., that was really fun. On Saturday, Rachel, Julia, and I took the train to Claremont to do a bit of shopping, it is a lot colder here than we were anticipating so we all bought blankets that we carry almost everywhere. Saturday evening we just took it easy, my throat was really sore, I actually lost my voice this morning, I’ve had no voice all day, it’s awful! On Sunday morning we went to the market, that was lots of fun! I bought two nice bracelets for R20, two pairs of knee high socks, two South Africa shirts, and an amazing  African toque. After lunch, we went down to the beach where a big surfing competition was taking place.  They were trying to break the world record for the most surfers on a single wave.  Muizenberg currently holds the record at 110 people.  Unfortunately, we were only about to get about 90 people, but it was still really cool to see! On Sunday night, we just had a night in, watched 3 movies, one of which was Blood Diamond, I would highly recommend the movie! Most of the movie was filmed in South Africa and Mozambique, Tim was able to point out where each scene was filmed, which was really cool! This week we haven’t done too much, just volunteered during the day, and then hung out in the evenings.  Last night, me and Ditte saw the strangest animal! We were walking from House 1 to House 2, and a cat ran across the road, except it had the strangest fattest tail!  We went over to the yard to look at it, and its face looks exactly like a typical cat. But then it scurried away, and it jumped like a rabbit! So we’re going to google it, and try and figure out what it was. Anyways, we’re headed off to dinner now, I’ll try and write again soon though!!




*update: I googled the animal this morning, and it is called an African wildcat!!!!*