happy human rights day everyone! also, today is the first day of fall - sad. i was rather enjoying summer while you all brave the snow. the wind has been picking up a lot around here. also the weather has been really fickle. i often wake up and think it's sunny and nice, but by the time i get up the mountain to campus it's raining and freezing, with everyone frozen in their miniskirts! Things have been pretty dull recently. Because today was human rights day and there was no school, people took a faux long weekend. Most of my friends left to do the garden route (and ride ostrichs!! cool!) on thursday evening. i couldn't accompany them because i had a test on friday and no one wanted to wait for me. sad. but at least i think i did pretty decent on the test.
also, i know a lot of you heard i was supposed to have a date, but that didn't work out. but don't be sad for me! if a guy older than me isn't mature enough to set a time for a date, then it's just not worth it. there are PLENTY of other guys around here.
so friday after the test i went volunteering, then to wine tasting (cape reds, much better than cape whites). at volunteering it's really interesting. sometimes a lot of the kids aren't around, and most of them are a little bit sick most of the time. there are a lot who have really severe FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome). some of those kids are the sweetest ones. I'm also learning that a lot of them aren't really orphans. sometimes their families are just so destroyed that the parents are providing zero care. a few of the babies are really withdrawn and won't cry when they're upset - a sign that they were often abused or ignored in the past. a lot of them come and go too because the social worker will find members of their family - aunts and uncles, etc - and then the kids will go live there a short time until those members of the family decide they can't afford the kid or just don't want it and then will send the baby back to baphumelele.
so friday after wine tasting i went with some friends to the pub on campus. and since it was st. patty's we tried to order guinness. well this so-called "traditional english pub" did not have guinness. or cocktails. or really anything. at least my veggie burger was amazing. they are more like vegetable patties here, with whole peas and carrots, etc. then we were supposed to go to some student film festival, but the people i was with thought it started at 10, and we got there at 10:30 and it was over. Then they decided they "couldn't handle the bar scene" so even though we had just been at a restaurant, we went to another one that was a crazy expensive hamburger place. the night wound up being kind of a bust.
saturday i woke up early to go on a build in Gugulethu. This is definately one of the scarier townships. First we visited the philani nutrition center in khayelitsha which is really cool. it's beautiful and they have a garden and a daycare. the coolest part is that they have a shop where a lot of local women come to handdesign crafts. They make these rugs out of the t-shirt scraps that factories give them. They are beautiful! and 75% of the profits go directly to the woman who made it. If i get their website i'll give you guys the information. It's an amazing organization. They also do homevisits to families who are interested in their services. One of the interesting things is that nutritionists here try so hard to beef up children and to put weight on them (a lot of kids in townships are surprisingly short, i constantly am underestimating their ages), while in the U.S. it's the complete opposite. So i thought that with my experience from this summer working on nutrition with the girls in DC that i would be of value here, but it's such a different reality. very few kids are obese here.
so the build was for a family where the primary caretaker is a 19 year old girl with a 2 year old daughter and an infant daughter. She is also caring for her 3 younger sisters who are between the ages of 3 and 11. Since she had absolutely no way of caring for this family properly while trying to live in her uncle's already crowded shack (and i suspect she wasn't all that welcome there either) the nutrition center decided to build her a shack of her own. We found a site on the corner of a pretty rambunctious neighborhood, right next door to a shebeen (bar), and then went to get the supplies. They sell you the corrugated zinc shacks in 4 pieces and then you have to put them together. We hired a couple local guys with shack building experience to help us out. Since we were 8 white girls we were pretty helpless. Mostly we played with the neighborhood kids who kept getting in the way of the build. It was a really interesting day. First we had to clear the site, which meant digging up lots of roaches, broken beer bottles, weeds, chicken feathers (bird flu, anyone?) and dead animals and maggots (sooooo nasty, thank god i brought gardening gloves). Then we started building. During the build I went with the social worker, the 19 year old and dianna, the american girl who got us involved, to a hardware store for supplies. The girl got to pick out the paint and everything for her house. she chose light blue and she was soo excited about it. It was neat to see that even though we were building something that would not pass for acceptable living conditions in many places, she was thrilled to have at least something. Also, we built a 2 room shack, which is considered really nice. While we were building the whole neighborhood turned out to see the commotion, and since it was a saturday and no one had to work, they were all drunk. This meant that all the men were hitting on us. They all wanted our phone numbers and one man enquired about our lobola. Lobola is bridewealth around here and it's a pretty big deal. It used to be paid in cattle but after the men kept leaving their villages for the mines and coming back with cash, the payment method switched.
anyways, we saw some interesting things that day. I noticed that the men were MUCH more aggressive out there than here on campus. You hear so much about rape and how dangerous things are, and on campus you get such a false sense of safety, but being out in the townships on a weekend you could see how it must be much more common. guys were just being very rough with local girls and no one does anything about it. we also saw women carrying around live chickens that they were about to slaughter. there were animal bones all over the place. and people were eating fried chicken feet. We also saw goats just wandering around.
one other interesting thing about the shacks is that they are very small and very crowded. in an 8 x 8 room shack you probably always have at least 5 people living, and you see these shacks right up next to concrete, government built houses left over from the Group Areas Act. You would think that those larger concrete building would be much nicer to live in, but each house or condo that was meant for one family usually houses at least 3. After apartheid everyone came to the city thinking there would be jobs, but there weren't. So they got stuck out in the townships, cramping in with relatives and trying to squeeze by.
Also we saw a lot of interesting advertising. There is one aids awareness group that hires american marketers and then posts billboards all over the townships. These american marketers are sooo far off the mark from the lifestyle here, that the billboards are completely ignored. They have sayings like "HIV loves skin to skin contact" and "teen pregnancy is good for HIV." They just don't make any sense. and a lot of the advertising features white people, which is just weird because there are NO white people living out there.
Anyways, then later on that night after showering, i went out to dinner with a couple guy friends who live next door and then we hung out at their house listening to nirvana for the rest of the night. Sunday i didn't actually do anything. and monday i went to class, then didn't do anything. i watched aladdin. that was fun. i also watched the notebook. cried myself to sleep. good times. today for human rights day i went to the mall. i know, not exactly the most politically correct way to celebrate the holiday. I saw some neat stores. bought a couple things to get me by. I had neglected to bring sweaters or clothes for going out at night. So i got a sweater, 2 tops and a pair of wedges (on sale!!). but no jewelry, because i decided that while i'm here i can only buy jewelry in the markets. why spend extra buying it at a mall? ok congratulations if you made it all the way to the end of this one. also i posted a few new pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/specialk0107, in the africa section. T hey are of my trip to stellenbosch. a couple weeks old. i don't have that many pics because i'm afraid of bringing my camera out at night. sorry.
also, i know a lot of you heard i was supposed to have a date, but that didn't work out. but don't be sad for me! if a guy older than me isn't mature enough to set a time for a date, then it's just not worth it. there are PLENTY of other guys around here.
so friday after the test i went volunteering, then to wine tasting (cape reds, much better than cape whites). at volunteering it's really interesting. sometimes a lot of the kids aren't around, and most of them are a little bit sick most of the time. there are a lot who have really severe FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome). some of those kids are the sweetest ones. I'm also learning that a lot of them aren't really orphans. sometimes their families are just so destroyed that the parents are providing zero care. a few of the babies are really withdrawn and won't cry when they're upset - a sign that they were often abused or ignored in the past. a lot of them come and go too because the social worker will find members of their family - aunts and uncles, etc - and then the kids will go live there a short time until those members of the family decide they can't afford the kid or just don't want it and then will send the baby back to baphumelele.
so friday after wine tasting i went with some friends to the pub on campus. and since it was st. patty's we tried to order guinness. well this so-called "traditional english pub" did not have guinness. or cocktails. or really anything. at least my veggie burger was amazing. they are more like vegetable patties here, with whole peas and carrots, etc. then we were supposed to go to some student film festival, but the people i was with thought it started at 10, and we got there at 10:30 and it was over. Then they decided they "couldn't handle the bar scene" so even though we had just been at a restaurant, we went to another one that was a crazy expensive hamburger place. the night wound up being kind of a bust.
saturday i woke up early to go on a build in Gugulethu. This is definately one of the scarier townships. First we visited the philani nutrition center in khayelitsha which is really cool. it's beautiful and they have a garden and a daycare. the coolest part is that they have a shop where a lot of local women come to handdesign crafts. They make these rugs out of the t-shirt scraps that factories give them. They are beautiful! and 75% of the profits go directly to the woman who made it. If i get their website i'll give you guys the information. It's an amazing organization. They also do homevisits to families who are interested in their services. One of the interesting things is that nutritionists here try so hard to beef up children and to put weight on them (a lot of kids in townships are surprisingly short, i constantly am underestimating their ages), while in the U.S. it's the complete opposite. So i thought that with my experience from this summer working on nutrition with the girls in DC that i would be of value here, but it's such a different reality. very few kids are obese here.
so the build was for a family where the primary caretaker is a 19 year old girl with a 2 year old daughter and an infant daughter. She is also caring for her 3 younger sisters who are between the ages of 3 and 11. Since she had absolutely no way of caring for this family properly while trying to live in her uncle's already crowded shack (and i suspect she wasn't all that welcome there either) the nutrition center decided to build her a shack of her own. We found a site on the corner of a pretty rambunctious neighborhood, right next door to a shebeen (bar), and then went to get the supplies. They sell you the corrugated zinc shacks in 4 pieces and then you have to put them together. We hired a couple local guys with shack building experience to help us out. Since we were 8 white girls we were pretty helpless. Mostly we played with the neighborhood kids who kept getting in the way of the build. It was a really interesting day. First we had to clear the site, which meant digging up lots of roaches, broken beer bottles, weeds, chicken feathers (bird flu, anyone?) and dead animals and maggots (sooooo nasty, thank god i brought gardening gloves). Then we started building. During the build I went with the social worker, the 19 year old and dianna, the american girl who got us involved, to a hardware store for supplies. The girl got to pick out the paint and everything for her house. she chose light blue and she was soo excited about it. It was neat to see that even though we were building something that would not pass for acceptable living conditions in many places, she was thrilled to have at least something. Also, we built a 2 room shack, which is considered really nice. While we were building the whole neighborhood turned out to see the commotion, and since it was a saturday and no one had to work, they were all drunk. This meant that all the men were hitting on us. They all wanted our phone numbers and one man enquired about our lobola. Lobola is bridewealth around here and it's a pretty big deal. It used to be paid in cattle but after the men kept leaving their villages for the mines and coming back with cash, the payment method switched.
anyways, we saw some interesting things that day. I noticed that the men were MUCH more aggressive out there than here on campus. You hear so much about rape and how dangerous things are, and on campus you get such a false sense of safety, but being out in the townships on a weekend you could see how it must be much more common. guys were just being very rough with local girls and no one does anything about it. we also saw women carrying around live chickens that they were about to slaughter. there were animal bones all over the place. and people were eating fried chicken feet. We also saw goats just wandering around.
one other interesting thing about the shacks is that they are very small and very crowded. in an 8 x 8 room shack you probably always have at least 5 people living, and you see these shacks right up next to concrete, government built houses left over from the Group Areas Act. You would think that those larger concrete building would be much nicer to live in, but each house or condo that was meant for one family usually houses at least 3. After apartheid everyone came to the city thinking there would be jobs, but there weren't. So they got stuck out in the townships, cramping in with relatives and trying to squeeze by.
Also we saw a lot of interesting advertising. There is one aids awareness group that hires american marketers and then posts billboards all over the townships. These american marketers are sooo far off the mark from the lifestyle here, that the billboards are completely ignored. They have sayings like "HIV loves skin to skin contact" and "teen pregnancy is good for HIV." They just don't make any sense. and a lot of the advertising features white people, which is just weird because there are NO white people living out there.
Anyways, then later on that night after showering, i went out to dinner with a couple guy friends who live next door and then we hung out at their house listening to nirvana for the rest of the night. Sunday i didn't actually do anything. and monday i went to class, then didn't do anything. i watched aladdin. that was fun. i also watched the notebook. cried myself to sleep. good times. today for human rights day i went to the mall. i know, not exactly the most politically correct way to celebrate the holiday. I saw some neat stores. bought a couple things to get me by. I had neglected to bring sweaters or clothes for going out at night. So i got a sweater, 2 tops and a pair of wedges (on sale!!). but no jewelry, because i decided that while i'm here i can only buy jewelry in the markets. why spend extra buying it at a mall? ok congratulations if you made it all the way to the end of this one. also i posted a few new pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/specialk0107, in the africa section. T hey are of my trip to stellenbosch. a couple weeks old. i don't have that many pics because i'm afraid of bringing my camera out at night. sorry.
posted by kerry at 6:57 AM
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