Pretoria!

I flew into Joburg late late, like 2am, but Kate and her boyfriend Francois were there to pick me up and drive us to Pretoria. Well, the outskirts of Pretoria-in the “plots” or country side where Kate, and the family that runs BEAM Africa lives. Tropical Paradise is the closest I’ve come to being able to describe it. Quite the change from the business and loudness of Cape Town and living with a house full of rambunctious Americans. The peace has been very welcome and relaxing.

Saturday morning we went ice skating at a mall. It felt so very weird, to be in Africa, with Kate, at a mall (exactly like they are in the US, including the proportional amount of white people), ice skating in the summer time! What?! Many times I forget we are in Africa, especially when I’m with a friend from America, doing things that we would also do together in America. But then we drive down this red dirt road and see women walking to work, carrying a child around her back and a package on her head. We drive through townships and slums with shacks made of tin. This is where people live and this is indeed Africa.

After running a few errands, we returned home and I took a good long nap. Taking a “lie down” is a very important practice here, which I am enjoying to the fullest. We made dinner together and afterwards went over to Louise’s and Vernon’s house to watch a movie. Right before bed I made use of the luxury bathtub in the master bathroom of Kate’s house-everything is covered in tile and is beautiful. Tiles and columns fill the house.

In the night it STORMED! This is the first time since I’ve arrived in South Africa that I’ve experienced a storm, or even rain! In Cape Town the most rain I saw was a couple sprinkles for maybe ten minutes at most. This torrential downpour started at 4am and didn’t end until mid afternoon. Our plans to tour a diamond mine were ruined, but a lazy Sunday morning, spent drinking tea on the porch and watching the rain, was just as, if not more, pleasant. For lunch we went over to Erica and Louie (Kate’s bosses/ landlords/ boyfriend’s parents) for a stove potjie. A potjie is a big pot of deliciousness: this one contained chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, zucchini (they are miniature here and called baby marrows), onions, broccoli, cabbage, dried plums and apricots, mushrooms and spices and seasonings. Served over rice. We finished the meal with some of my chocolate cookies which we had made a batch of earlier in the day. After some reading aloud of Lord of the Rings, we took a nap until church. The church we went to was all white and Afrikaans speaking. Very interesting, I’ve liked being exposed to the Afrikaans language so much more, but I’m missing the diversity of Cape Town.

Monday I went to work with Kate! It was so very nice being able to see the work she does at BEAM Africa, and to just be in the atmosphere of a NPO. While she worked, I caught up on my journal, began reading “A Long Walk to Freedom” Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, and typed blog posts! Not having internet was a big part of my being productive J Sitting at the desk at BEAM, being a part of the business that was going on people coming in and out, seeing the good work that they do, all reminded me of my summer at Isabella County Habitat for Humanity when I worked there through AmeriCorps (I miss you all if any of my Habitat family is reading). BEAM is a drop-in center located in a township of Pretoria: Nellmapius. They serve lunch to about 145 children a day, provide live skills training, computer training and lift truck training, as well as literacy and numeracy training. Good good things, synergistic satisfiers fulfilling needs.

After work we went on a tour of this specialized private school for the Deaf (and hearing as well). I found it very….interesting. This school very well may be the nicest school I’ve ever seen, in South Africa AND America. It’s a private school that has done everything perfectly to promote language development in hearing and deaf children. They thought of everything, different types of stimulation, FM systems in all the rooms for the hearing aids, classrooms that open to the outside with personal bathrooms as well. Different “environments” to walk through to promote conversations. Average about 23-25 students per class, with one teacher and one teaching assistant deaf/hearing and no more than 5 deaf children, so about 12 students for every adult. The school has an audiology wing and hearing aids are tested each morning to make sure they are working optimally. Sign language is prohibited at this school, however, and they use an oral only approach-which I have mixed feelings about. Yes, they will most likely be more “successful” if they are able to use spoken language, but sign language is the cultural language of the Deaf population, it’s part of their culture and I think keeping them from using is not right. Another thing that bothered me was how absolutely beautiful and perfect the school was, granted, it’s a private school, but comparing it to Manenburg Primary in the township where many of my program mates volunteer is just depressing. At Manenburg there are 65 students in one first grade classroom with one teacher. There is no play ground equipment just dirt to run around in or to kick a ball. A twentieth of the budget of the deaf school could do wonders for so many run down schools like Manenburg. This is the case all over South Africa. Really really nice private schools and really really poor and run down public schools in townships. I don’t mean to put down this school we toured, it was absolutely incredible and I would love if all schools could have the resources to make learning and language development happen in such a pure way.

Then the Union buildings! They were like a combination of White House and the Capitol Building, but more beautiful with statues and flower gardens.

Tuesday to work again and I was able to help out with the children’s sport’s program, which was so very much fun! I was starting to miss my kids from the TB clinic and this satisfied my longing for little ones to be near to me. Potatoes (both mashed and chips/French fries) and chocolate cookies made for a nice dinner, and an early bed time. I am getting a lot or rest and relaxation time here-it’s lovely.

Wednesday was my last day! After a few hours at BEAM, Kate and I left early for our picnic/tea at the Sammy Marks museum. We arrived and this sweet old man packed us a picnic and told us to find a place on the grounds to have a seat. It was the perfect day for a perfect picnic: surrounded by roses, birds, good food and a great friend. The tour of the museum (which was the mansion that used to belong to Sammy and his family) was also wonderful, filled with history, Victorian furniture, and old pretty things J At night we met up with Kathryn, Laura’s (super awesome friend from bike and build) sister and her boyfriend for Indian food. Kate and I stayed up late watching Friends and talking.

Thursday morning came too soon and we had to say our goodbyes. Kate is doing so well in Pretoria and with BEAM, I cannot begin to express how proud I am of the good works she is doing there and I am overjoyed with the time we were able to spend together.

Now I have a few days left of this spring/fall break before classes start! I think I shall continue to read A Long Walk to Freedom and get a start on my capstone proposal.

Check out all my pictures! I think you will be able to view these even if you do not have facebook. Here are the albums I have on facebook that you can visit:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=277414&id=508442372&l=95aa0d0d5f

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=278338&id=508442372&l=8f0f63e736

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=282330&id=508442372&l=2751cf0d5b

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=283895&id=508442372&l=b675f65897

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=286639&id=508442372&l=2a2bee6d87

Otherwise I will hopefully be posting more pictures onto the blog directly.

Take care my friends, I miss and love you all!

Life: ubuntu

I must speak about our Poverty and Development class we are taking, as it is the most interesting, enlightening and engrossing course of my university career, and our professor Anna Davies-vansmith is tied with Dr. Tatchel from CMU for the most brilliant teacher I’ve ever had the privilege to learn from. I look forward to each class and walk away having learned more than expected and having more questions than when I started, which I believe is the task of a professor. The more I learn, the more I realize that I still have to learn. I’m hoping this blog post will get you thinking.

I’m not really sure how much information you all are interested in learning, so I think I’m just going to share a couple statistics, some of the lecture notes I’ve taken and found most interesting and my personal thoughts. Forgive me if this bores you and you can skip to the next post where I talk about visiting Kate in Pretoria!

(all the statistical information comes from Lectures given by Anna, all credit goes to her)

Global Poverty and Inequality

ž A little less than half the world, 2.8 billion people, live on < $2/day

ž The poorest 40% of the world’s population earns 5% of the world’s income

ž The richest 20% receives 75% of global income

ž The net worth of world’s 358 richest people = combined income of poorest 45% of world pop (~2.3 billion people!)

ž In 2005, the wealthiest 20 percent of the world accounted for 76.6 % of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5 %.

Definitions:

Poverty

ž Poverty is the lack of the things necessary for living or it exists where basic human needs are unmet.

ž Allocation and distribution of resources.

Development

ž All attempts to eliminate or alleviate poverty/inequality

ž Attempts to increase the standard of living of a nation.

Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

First some demographics:

ž Population of South Africa – 50 million (2010)

ž Women – 50.9%, Men – 49.1%

ž 79.6% Black ‘’African

ž 9.1% White

ž 8.9% ‘Coloured’

ž 2.5% Indian/Asian

ž Urban – 60.3%, Rural – 39.7%

2005

— 47.1% of South Africans live below “lower-bound” poverty line (R322/mon $46.00 US)

— 53.5% of South Africans live below “higher-bound” poverty line (R593/mon $85.00 US)

— (South African currency is the rand, approximately 7 rand to 1 US dollar)

ž Percentage poor people by race

— 56% of black ‘African’ people

— 36% of ‘Coloured’ people

— 15% of Indian/Asian people

— 7% of white people

Other facts:

ž Life expectancy 49.3 yrs (USA 78.2).

ž Infant mortality 44.8 per 1000 (USA 6.3 per 1000).

ž 1 in 4 men admit rape (2009)

ž Estimated 5.8 million South Africans infected with HIV – that is 1 in 10 South Africans.

So those are the raw statistics and facts, from here we went on to analyze these by looking at theories of development and what has been done in South Africa to alleviate the poverty and inequality. Neolibralism, Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), Federal Direct Investment (FDI) to name a few of the tried techniques. None of these seem to be successful and end up putting money in pockets other than those who really need it. “…in the absence of direct political control, foreign investment ensures that the natural resources and the labour of Africa produce economic value which is lost to the continent” (Rodney, 1981).

From here we looked at many many more theories, which I will not be boring you with. Instead I will get straight to Development in Practice, people centered development and Human scale development. What I got the most out of this lecture was the difference between needs and satisfiers. With human scale development the goal is to move towards meeting fundamental human needs as whole human beings, not as a number to fix or a statistics to lower. “one cannot have without being or be without doing” There is a list of the most basic needs that a human must have in order to live: sustenance (food, shelter), protection, creativity, participation, knowledge, love etc. Satisfiers attempt to meet needs, but there are some satisfiers that don’t do quite as well as they need. For example, a “destroyer” satisfier like censorship attempts to fulfill the need of protection, but in actuality it prohibits the needs of creativity, participation, etc. A pseudo-satisfier such as a food hand-out briefly fulfils the need for sustenance, but not long term. An inhibitor over satisfies one certain need and limits other needs and this creates an unhealthy imbalance, an example of this would be authoritarian teaching which consist of too much forceful knowledge and limits a child’s creativity. Singular satisfiers only meet one need at a time, such as insurance meets the need of protection, and a food handout meets the need of subsistence. The most ideal way in which to meet needs would be synergistic satisfiers. A synergistic satisfier fulfills multiple needs at once. One example would be breastfeeding, where the needs of subsistence, affection, participation, etc are all met in one activity. A practical example which I have had the pleasure of experiencing has been the non-profit BEAM organization in Pretoria, South Africa, where my friend Kate is working. Not only are they a drop-in center which provides food and protection for children, they also teach life skills classes and computer courses, inviting students to participate in multiple efforts within the organization itself. The core needs of subsistence, protection, knowledge, creativity, and participation are all met and build on each other, continually reinforcing another.

There is a debate among the needs I’ve listed: some say subsistence is the most important, because it is impossible to have participation, creativity, gain knowledge etc without having food in your stomach, or a roof over your head. Others claim that all the needs are equal and are necessary in order for a human being to live. I agree with the second point, if you look at the definition of life in a deeper, more abstract way. Living is so much more than breathing and heart beating, a life is defined by the impact we have on one another. There is a saying here in South Africa, Ubuntu, which means “I am because we are.” I am a person through other people. In essence, respect of fellow brothers and sisters and sharing life together. Life is interaction, sharing knowledge and stories, having joy, giving love and attention, supporting and encouraging one another, eating and talking together, dancing and playing with one another, taking care of each other.

We all go through our lives, seeing lifeless people, at times being lifeless ourselves. Unless these basic needs are met, and we are actively seeking to help meet the needs of others-are we really living?

This is life: ubuntu.

Taxi strike

This shall be a blog filled with randomness.

Passion gap: when the front four teeth are removed, particularly popular among the colored population. It’s like getting your ears pierced, or a tattoo, it’s a cool thing to do and apparently makes for more pleasurable kissing, so they say. Therefore the name “passion gap”

Now you have your fun fact, I will update you on my life in Cape Town! It has been a while since I last wrote, but things have finally settled down! This is my schedule:

Monday: Social Research Methods class 8:30-11:30am, volunteer at TB clinic 12:15-3pm (with school kids)

Tuesday: Volunteer at TB clinic 9-12:30 with the Audiology department or preschool/toddler group (I’m hoping to find the speech therapist soon) and then 1-3 with school kids. 6pm Reflection meeting with Angela.

Wednesday: Poverty and Development class 9-10:30, Social Research Methods class 10:30-11:30. Volunteer at TB clinic 12:15-4 with school kids. Afrikaans class 4:30-6. Life group through Jublilee church 7-9pm

Thursday: Volunteer at TB clinic 10-4, preschoolers in the morning, school age in afternoon. Afrikaans 4:30-6pm

Friday: Poverty and Development class 9-10:30am. And then it’s the WEEKEND!!!

My weekends have been filled with great things, I’ll just give a list of some of my weekend activities:

Nap, library opening complete with children singing SA national anthem, V&A waterfront with sushi, wine and ice cream, skype with family and friends, biking, Constantia wine tasting, picnics, ocean, mountains, more biking, beach, breakfast buffet on the beach, craft markets, Kirstenbosch botanical garden concert complete with picnic, wine, and good people/music, visit from great friend Kate Burchett!!!, hike up Table mountain, braai (bbq party), Bo-Kaap market, Green square market, Clifton beach, dinner and sunset at Camps Bay, Long St. clubs and pups, Jubilee church, homemade chips (fries), another concert at Kirstenbosch: Goldfish (South African Techno-jazz), Bike expo, swimming at a friends pool with wine, pasta evening with the UCT cycling club, morning hike up Lion’s Head with Habitat for Humanity UCT, another visit to the Bike expo, BIG braai with everyone from professors to volunteer supervisors to south African friends-about 50 people total, AAAANNNDDDD the Cape Argus Cycle Tour!!! 110K, lots of mountains and coast and ocean and bikes. Over 30,000 riders. World’s Largest individually timed bike race. It was absolutely incredible to be a part of. And nap again.

So that was three weekends of activities, I have an extremely blessed life. Next weekend our program has us scheduled to go to Stellenbosch (a town about 45 min away, well known for their vineyards) Wine Tasting on Saturday and to Robben Island on Sunday. Also the weather is always lovely and sunny. Starting in May, however,winter starts and it is supposed to become rainy and cold.

There is one bad thing about all the lovely things to do here in Cape Town, and that is it makes it so very hard to do any school work. I have a big paper due on Friday which I have not even started (that’s actually the real reason I’m writing this blog post, in order to procrastinate), in addition to making lesson plans for the kids I teach at the TB clinic and arts and crafts programs I put together for the kids as well.

I’m beginning to realize that the hardest part of leaving Cape Town won’t be the mountains, or the ocean, or the city or the great weather, or even the friends I am making (although they are phenomenal) but my children at the TB hospital. I walk into the preschool room and the faces of absolute joy and love and excitement to see me are overwhelming! My lap isn’t big enough to hold them all, and that is all they really need. Affection, love, attention. These children are at the TB hospital from 6 months to 2 years in order to receive treatment for their TB, most of them also have AIDS. Most of the children’s parents can’t afford the transportation to come visit often…can you imagine, leaving your sick child at a hospital without seeing them for months and months?!? Can you imagine, being a sick child without seeing your mother, father, siblings for months and months? The hospital is very understaffed and affection isn’t possible when there is one nurse for 20 children, one teacher for all grades. I have so much love to give, but I still feel like they always need more.

And don’t worry, once the children have begun treatment, they are no longer contagious to adults (for those of you concerned about my health)

A couple more facts/random things:

The first recorded Afrikaans was written in Arabic.

Walmart is coming to South Africa this month

There are many bitter feelings here about Green Point Stadium for the Fifa World cup this last summer, it cost about $600 million US dollars, which may have been used to create housing in the townships, provide books for the schools, etc etc. But the World Cup DID bring in a lot of tourism, but was the new stadium necessary??

South Africa doesn’t really have the “volunteer spirit” we are accustomed to in the US, not many South Africans volunteer. We were told this at the beginning of our time here, but now I’m actually seeing it.

Ok, that is all for now. I suppose I should work on my paper a little before going to the pool later today.

peace and love

Moooorreee pictures!!!

Old Biscuit Mill market

Hiking up Lion's Head!

At the top of Lion's Head

Sunset at Clifton Beach

Walking up to campus

Awe bru!

Awe bru! (translation: awesome friend!)

More thoughts: My Michigan accent is disappearing, its kind of cool, I can turn it on and off-code switching ability. Also learning Afrikaans is fun!

The people in my program are like my little brothers and sisters, they are great and I love them.

Things I’ve done:

High Africa Adventure camp in the bush: rock climbing, high ropes, lots of workshopping and teambuilding.

Classes started! I love all my professors and the classes: Poverty and Development, Social Research Methods, and Afrikaans (although I sometimes sit in on the xhosa classes for fun). Still working on getting stated at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital (TB clinic)in the children’s wards. Children are not contagious once they have started treatment, so we are able to interact and play and work with the children with no fear of infection. Had my first day today!

A few of us hiked up Lions Head (portion of Table Mountain, soo beautiful) it was a decently hard hike, but very worth it.

Visits to Clifton Beach for sundowners (going to watch the sun set with friends, food and good times), celebrating birthdays in our program family.

One Saturday morning we went to the Old biscuit mill food market, which was the largest organic farmers market/ foodie fananza I have ever experienced. It was also filled with white people! The most white people I’ve seen in one place since I’ve arrived, it was very odd and made me feel uncomfortable. I can only wonder what returning to West Michigan will feel like. It was almost exclusively white people at this market-but so so very much good food for good prices. I have mixed feelings about this market place.

I’m loving my new church Jubilee and lifegroup which meets on Wednesday nights, have I mentioned how great the diversity is here? A baking exchange was planned after I was asked if I could bake, “Real, American chocolate chip cookies?” and we will all bring what we know, from Zimbabwe, America and different areas of South Africa.

CIEE (our study abroad program) took us to a professional soccer game one Sunday afternoon, this next Sunday they are taking us to a concert at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

I’m learning SO MUCH, I’m tempted to stop telling you all about the things I’m doing all together in order to devote more time to sharing the knowledge and wisdom I’m acquiring. For now I’ll attempt to do both.

Other random things, we have a gardener, night guards, a cleaning woman, lecturers come to our house to have personal meetings with us, our academic advisor and program director meet individually with us once a week to see how we are doing and to make sure we are doing ok, reflection meetings once a week at our house-pizza included, we are SO well taken care of here. Treated like kings and queens. The other day I spent some time talking to Adam the head head boss of all CIEE programs who was visiting from America, so that was cool, he is very happy with the service learning program here.

Having all these wonderful experiences and plush living in contrast with the poverty we work with as we volunteer everyday is heart tearing and mind perturbing. More to come about my service site-in the next learning post.

Learner

Hello again family and friends! Students here are called "learners" and teachers are called educators, just fyi :) I’ve decided on a kind of formant for this blog, one week I’ll give a day by day run down and the next I’ll share my thoughts and things I am learning. How does that sound? I don’t think I can do both each week. There is so very much I have learned since I’ve been here, it’s really hard for me myself to comprehend it let alone pass it along the interwebs back home. But I shall give it an effort.

The Dop system, also called the Tot system. I had never even heard of this before coming to South Africa, and neither had Kelly who I was certain knew something about everything J so here is another “did you know”! While we were driving to High Africa in the bush, one area of a town that we passed through Angela turned around and said, “In this area here, the dop system is still in use” She went on to explain that “dop” stood for alcolohic drink, which represents a cap of alcohol used as a method of payment, so many “dop” per hour of labor. That’s right, workers are paid, in part, with alcohol. The area we drove through, as I was informed from my Afrikaans professor today, actually holds the world record for women who drink the most. Sadly, there is a very high incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome due to this and the obvious alcoholism. Wine farmers started this system of payment for two reasons, one “they could use low quality, surplus wine that had little commercial value to pay the workers; and it resulted in a worker being held captive not by physical force but by the restraint of addiction” This practice was outlawed in the 1960’s, but wasn’t enforced until the 1990’s, and some continue to us this system. It is really quite sad. How alcohol holds so much control over lives. How it is so hard to get out of this trap because there aren’t AA or other support groups available in these areas and jobs are hard to come by and it would be foolish to quit. There is an organization called Dopstop that is working to “enable people to take control over alcohol and other substances in their lives and promote healthy rural agricultural communities in South Africa.” Check out their website: http://www.dopstop.org.za/

Last week was the opening of Parliament, and along with that President Zuma gave a speech very similar to The State of the Nation Address. Together a couple of my program mates, security guards and I sat in our living room and watched him give his speech. A couple things he talked about I found interesting to say the least, which were brought to light during our Poverty and Development lecture this morning. Zuma said that that the amount of people in South Africa under the poverty line had decreased, but he also stated that the amount of grants and other assistance had increased; implying that sustainable job growth was not really taking place to draw people up out of poverty. This is something he promised to do, create more jobs, decrease unemployment etc etc… Zuma also spoke about the mining industry, South Africa’s mining assets are valued at approximately 2.5 trillion US dollars! 2.5 trillion!!! Where is that money going, and why is South Africa still in the state of poverty that it is? In one 30 minute car ride we can drive by houses that are mansions on the ocean, with pool and beach and security systems then through inner city poverty and homelessness, then through the townships with shacks, lean to’s and slums. This morning our professor said that at the end of the course, we will more likely be even more confused than how we are now. The more you learn the more you realize how much you don’t know and how much more you have yet to learn.

Whew, that was some heavy stuff. So very much is going on in my mind right now that I want to share with you all, but I can only write in little bits at a time.

In other news I’ve decided on doing my service work at the TB Clinic at Brooklyn Chest hospital! More on what I will be doing there later.

I love you

In Afrikaans: Ek het jou lief.

In Xhosa: Ndiya kuthanda

Chilled

This past week has been very “chilled” as they say here. I’ll just give a quick rundown of what each day held…

Sunday: Went to this church called Jubilee, which is very much like my school church His House! Everyone was so very friendly and there is so much diversity-loved it very much. We were invited for dinner at one of the worship leader’s home, and found out about their student ministry for UCT. I felt very much at home J Later in the day we walked about 5K to Kirstenbosch Gardens, it was a long, hot walk, and I introduced the inspirational alphabet game to a couple of my program mates. Once we arrived…WOW. Every day I am astounded by the beauty this place holds. As my friend Jess said “Every day in Capetown is beautiful, because there is always a mountain!” Going to Kirstenbosch, I honestly forgot about the mountain, and only thought about the flowers, but it’s right at the base of the mountain! I’m not sure if I’ll ever lose the awestruck feeling when I am in the presence of mountains, I certainly hope not.

Monday: Walked to upper campus for UCT’s version of Mainstage, we explored all the different clubs, got some free stuff and listened to a little music. When I say “walked to upper campus” it’s a really big deal, because it’s quite the hike up in elevation, lots and lots of stairs. I visited the Habitat for Humanity booth, the Cycling Club booth, and Mountian and Ski Club (they do lots of hiking, rock climbing and backpacking-not really any skiing…). I’m very excited to get involved in the campus life here at UCT. Later we had a group meeting with Angela (program director, who was actually the first person of color to appear on South Africa television! She is wonderful) and Ronell her assistant. A chill evening consisted of watching Lion King while eating Crunchie Snap cookies and drinking Rooibos tea.

Tuesday: Tour of the Castle of Good Hope and the District 6 museum, then lunch in the Gardens. Later in the day we biked back to Plumstead (where we bought the bikes) and I switched out the plain pedals for my clipless mountain pedals-so much nicer! And what a lovely ride! So good to be back on the bike (even if it isn’t by beautiful Giant) We picked up some wine on the way home to celebrate our bikes, and the fact that the wine is superb here and inexpensive, so many winelands and vineyards.

Wednesday: Walked up to upper campus again to register our computers, which was quite the process. The rest of the day was spent riding bikes! Ben and I biked to Halp Bay, which is over a mountain, and then all along the coast. SO SO SO INCREDIBLEY ASTOUNDINGLY AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL!!!! This ride convinced me that Capetown is the most beautiful place I have been in my entire life-and I have been blessed enough to have seen many other beautiful places. But nothing compares to this. I implore you all to visit Capetown at some point in your life. We had about four hard hills/passes to climb, but the descents were breathtaking, the combination of ocean and mountains is almost too much to handle. After a long descent into the city itself, I got a flat tire L and did not have a spare. So we just called a cab to take us back home, luckily we weren’t that far from UCT. That night several of us went to Jubilee Church’s Welcome Braai for stuents.

Thursday: Visited Yabonga AIDS clinic again, and then went to Manenburg elementary school to help paint the school all different colors. Yellow, blue, purple, orange and green. So much fun! The rest of the day was lazy, I cleaned my room, talked to many friends from home, journaled and relaxed. It was good. I figured out how to text from gchat and make phone calls too!

And now today! After a cup of tea and Sudoku, Megan and I walked to take out our recycling and then to the store. Then I started writing this post and making some lunch. In a couple hours our program is going to High Africa in the bush, a type of adventure camp, for our expectations workshop. All I know about it is that we will talk about expectations for the semester in our service projects, do team building activities such as high ropes courses, AND something called “the leap of faith” I cannot wait! Now I must eat my lunch and pack for the weekend.

Love and miss you all!!!