At Addo, we mostly saw elephants, but there were also some zebra and buffalo around. Schotia was where we saw the greatest variety of animals. We saw impala and nyala, which are both similar to antelope, and we also managed to run into some buffalo, elephants, and lions. Lastly, we saw a hippo, right before we were going to leave for the night. It was dark and silent, and all of a sudden, one of our flashlights landed on the hippo's body, and once our guide realized what it was, we stopped about 20 ft. away from it. It seemed much, much bigger up close than I ever thought it would be.
Near the end of program, we were mostly focusing on finishing final projects for our classes, but we did manage to take a trip to the Addo Elephant Park and the Schotia Game Park, which are both about an hour outside of Port Elizabeth. The day was spent watching and learning about all of the animals that we saw on safari, especially the Big Five: elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, and rhino. We didn't manage to see all of them on this trip to Addo and Schotia, but it was still very informative. At Addo, we mostly saw elephants, but there were also some zebra and buffalo around. Schotia was where we saw the greatest variety of animals. We saw impala and nyala, which are both similar to antelope, and we also managed to run into some buffalo, elephants, and lions. Lastly, we saw a hippo, right before we were going to leave for the night. It was dark and silent, and all of a sudden, one of our flashlights landed on the hippo's body, and once our guide realized what it was, we stopped about 20 ft. away from it. It seemed much, much bigger up close than I ever thought it would be.
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The second half of our community service project sent us to the Maranatha Streetworkers Trust, an organization similar to S.O.S. They remove children from abusive and neglectful family situations and take care of them until their families are able to take care of them. What's especially wonderful about Maranatha is that they will take in the child for as long as they need to and for as long as possible. Some of their children have stayed at the organization into their 20s. Maranatha is an organization that does everything possible to help someone when they're down, whether that person is a 7 year old or a 50 year old, who may receive help as part of a program that they have for destitute adults.
Both S.O.S. and Maranatha do incredible work for children, work that most people in the world could not do, but I do believe that Maranatha has a much better organized program that appeared, from my experiences to have better success in helping the children to heal. I enjoyed my time at Maranatha more because I felt that I was a part of that process. Just like at S.O.S., we spent about a week with the kids there. They had a lot more kids than S.O.S., and many of them were also older, which I preferred because I find it easier to connect with older kids rather than younger ones. We did a lot of the same stuff with the kids at Maranatha as we did with the kids at S.O.S. We played a lot of games outside, like soccer, the floor is lava, and jump rope. We also had a chance to help them with there homework because they went back to school the last days that we were there. I spent a lot of time focusing on the issue of education and access to good education in South Africa as part of my project for my classes in South Africa. So, having a chance to see where these kids were school-wise was something that I was very interested in seeing. Pretty much every kid I talked to was so smart. They didn't necessarily have a lot of book smarts, but they had life smarts, something that is honestly much more important in the grand scheme of things. But, to see how far behind a lot of these kids are made me so angry and sad at the same time. I helped one of the girls with math, and I could tell that it wasn't her favorite subject, but she was trying really hard. She was at least 11 years old, but she could barely do addition and subtraction, something that is mastered by most American students by age 8. It's just horrifying to me that most South African kids have access to poor education in addition to the fact that many have parents who either can't help or support their education, or, they don't believe that an education will be worth anything. That being said, I had a wonderful time with these kids, and like the children at S.O.S., they taught me a lot more than I taught them. I might have helped out with some math problems and other book smarts, but they taught me a lot about life smarts. Our last big trip was to Cape Town for about 3 days. Even though the weather kind of screwed up our schedule, we managed to see just about every tourist site possible, in addition to checking out some lesser known sites. On the first day, there was some confusion and juggling with our hostel, so we didn't do a whole lot, but everything still turned out okay. We started out at the District 6 Museum, which is a museum that commemorates the people of the District 6 area who were removed from their homes during Apartheid and relocated to other areas, many of them being placed in the Cape Flats township. It's a very solemn place. Like museums and monuments that help us to remember war victims, you can't help but be more serious and respectful than usual while you're there. The museum reminds Cape Town and the rest of the country who the people of District 6 were and what was lost when it was claimed by the government in the 1960s. District 6 was a very vibrant and diverse community and by virtue of the Apartheid system, all of that diversity was lost when the people were relocated. In addition, the very neighborhood itself was lost during Apartheid because District 6 was flattened. The only things that survived were a church and some homes. And though many of the homes and the people are gone now, this museum has brought a piece of District 6 into the present to ensure that it's not forgotten Part of the program involved doing community service during the week at a couple of long-term foster care centers. That might not be the best way to describe them, but essentially, these children were all removed from their homes because they were being severely abused-physically, emotionally, or sexually-or they were being neglected. The social workers assigned to their cases are always trying to work with the families in hopes of reunification, but sometimes it never happens.
For the first week of our community service, we worked with children at the S.O.S. Children's Village. For most of the time that we were in South Africa, all of the students were on their school holidays, and for the kids at S.O.S., that means that if it's safe for them to go home and visit their families for a few weeks, than they are sent home. So, there were only about 8 kids at S.O.S. while we worked there, and there were also about 8 of us. When we visited S.O.S. every day, our jobs were essentially to spend time with children and to help the house mothers, or "mamas" with any work that we were doing. We wanted to help alleviate some of the mamas' responsibilities so that they could have a break and we wanted to help improve the kids' self-esteem, confidence, and other things like that. One note about the mamas: these women are truly incredible people. They have a job that is 24/7 caregiving for children that are for one thing, not theirs, and for another can be very challenging behaviorally as a result of their personal trauma. The mamas are incredibly selfless, and I was honored to be able to give them a small amount of time off because if anybody deserves it, it's them. Like I said, we only spent a week at S.O.S., but during that time we did a lot of different things with the children. We played soccer, we watched movies, we had a dance party, we taught them some hand games, and then they taught us some, and we painted nails and played cards. After every visit, we left exhausted because these kids have so much spirit, energy, and enthusiasm that they always wanted to be doing something. Overall, the experiences I had at S.O.S. and the relationships I made with the children there are very special. They opened my eyes to a lot of the problems in South Africa, problems that I had seen when we visited the New Brighton township; however, when you see the trouble that these kids face, up close and personal, the abuse, the trauma, the loss of childhood, it becomes so much more important to you. It's one of the more important things that I've taken back with me to the States, and i know that it'll be important to me for a very long time. So this is definitely coming long after the Arts Festival, but better late than never, right?
For our second weekend trip, we went to Grahamstown, about an hour and a half from Port Elizabeth to attend the National Arts Festival. Grahamstown is where Rhodes University is located, and it is the quintessential college town, filled with bars, places to shop, and of course, the university itself. For me, if you're in South Africa for the first two weeks of July, you should make every effort to go to this festival. It's HUGE. There are more shows being performed every day than you can imagine, and almost all of them are very high quality performances, and it's the best way to get an introduction to African culture and more specifically, South African culture. I only had the chance to see two shows, and the rest of the time I shopped for my souvenirs and gifts on the Village Green. The first show was called #ToyiToyi, which I later learned means protest. It was a really interesting dance piece that touched on some major African events, including the ebola epidemic, discrimination, and the lack of equal rights for all. One of the more interesting parts for me was when they were "celebrating" Mandela Day, which was the next weekend. They had the one white woman in the troupe put on a Mandela mask and act as Mandela, while the rest of the dancers started to put chocolate sauce on her arms. The way that I interpreted it, the dancers and the director felt that while Mandela had done a lot of good while he was in power, most of his plans and aspirations for better education, employment, and housing had not come to fruition. Like many of the previous rulers as well as those who followed, there were a lot of empty promises made to the general population. And, again, still my interpretation, it seemed as if the director/choreographer felt as if Mandela might as well have been a white leader, because he was well-off, because after he was elected, he did not have to live in the horrible conditions that most black South Africans lived in. Anyway, that's what I thought of it. it was a pretty strange performance, but it grew on me over time, and it gave me a better idea of the problems that many South Africans face. I swear, I haven't forgotten about this! The WiFi has been extremely difficult lately, plus the schedule we have is keeping us very busy, so I haven't really been able to post. In the last couple of weeks, we've spent a lot of time hanging out with some children at the S.O.S. Children's Village and at Maranatha. They're some of the coolest and funniest kids that I've ever had the honor of meeting, and I have a lot more to say about them, but that will have to wait for a future post. We also went to Grahamstown last weekend for the end of the National Arts Festival. Again, more on that later, because if I get started now, I won't be able to stop writing about it. Right now we're in Cape Town, and it's been a blast. It's been raining all day today, which sucks, but we still had a chance to see some really interesting places like the District 6 Museum and the Two Oceans Aquarium. We still have another two days here, so there's still a lot left to do. Today was a shorter day since we had a free afternoon, so this won't take long. We spent the morning in a community service workshop before we start working with the kids tomorrow. I didn't really know quite what to expect, but everything we talked about was not what I was expecting. we focused on the old and the new way of community development. The old way focused more on throwing money at the problem, coming in as the "white saviors", and not listening to the people about what they needed most. The old way really didn't work because it focused more on the volunteers, rather than on empowering the community so that they could learn to sustain themselves. The most interesting parts of our discussion were that the world can be incredibly ignorant to the others around them, not even bothering to ask for their opinions, and that a lot of poverty and undeveloped communities remain that way because of the psychology of the people. Here in South Africa, for example, children are consistently told by parents and teachers that they won't ever amount to anything and then they start to believe it. What we're going to try to do is help them see that regardless of their situation economically and socially, that they do matter. That they do have a place in the world. That they are powerful in their own way.
It's been a little while hasn't it?
I'll just get right to it then. This weekend was a chance to unplug a bit. We all went up to the frontier country of South Africa in the Winterberg Mountains to experience life on some of the frontier farms for a couple of days. Of course, we didn't get the full experience. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if they had just had us doing farm work the whole weekend.
We only spent two days up there, but those days were packed with activities. On Saturday, we spent our Fourth of July shearing sheep, climbing mountains, and with shooting practice. The mountain climbing was my favorite part, I think. I'm not much of a hiker, so it was a bit of a challenge for me, but it felt great when I finally got to the top.
Tuesday was a doozy of an emotionally charged day.
We spent the morning learning some words in isiXhosa, one of the major cultures and languages in South Africa. It grew out of the Khoi and San people that originally came to this part of Africa. That was really cool. We didn't learn any words with clicks in them, even though isiXhosa actually has one, but it was still great. What was even better was that we got to use what we had learned later on that day when we went on a tour of the city and one of the townships. We spent the rest of the day (about 6 hours) on a tour of the city and the New Brighton township, learning more about the apartheid starting in the 1960s from Bradley, our tour guide, a Khoi-San man who actually lived through all of it. He made a point that we should look for the similarities or the "shared heritage" between South Africa and the U.S. throughout the trip, and though it might not seem like it, when it come down to it, there was a lot of shared heritage between these two countries. We don't share the same events, but we share the same pain and many of the same issues. Our first stop was at the South End museum which catalogued life in the South End region of Port Elizabeth before and after the apartheid began. The way that I understood it, before the apartheid and segregation began, there was much more community support and more color blindness in the region. He talked a lot about how there were Mosques next to Catholic churches and about how South Africa was a vibrant mix of many different cultures and peoples interacting with each other. I think that before the apartheid began is when the phrase the "Rainbow Nation" really symbolized South Africa. But, Bradley explained some of the more horrific things that happened as a result of the new government, and it's sometimes difficult to believe. The people of South Africa were segregated based on race between white, coloured, Indian, and black. The segregation meant that people were forcibly relocated to their new delegated areas, and even though the segregation has been officially over for some time now, there has been little to no integration. One of the more horrific things that we learned was that the police or the government, basically, whoever was in charge, would drive along a road that black children were walking on to get to school. Then, with no warning or provocation, they would roll down the windows and just open fire with machine guns. Because these children were black. Monday was the first "real" day of the program. We didn't do much academic wise, we just covered some basic South African history and culture, but it was still really interesting. The more exciting part of the day was the game drive we took for a few hours at Kragga Kamma. It was absolutely incredible. When we got there, we first went to see the cheetahs, which were in enclosures instead of roaming through most of the game park. We were only there for a few minutes before we piled into the trucks and started the drive. The park didn't have any elephants or lions, but they did have rhinos, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, and bonteboks, which are a kind of antelope that is very specific to Southern Africa. If I'm not mistaken, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History actually has a stuffed bontebok on display in the African mammals section. We weren't able to get extremely close to many of the animals, but that honestly didn't matter. Just being able to see these creatures living the way that they're intended to was amazing. It's such a different experience to seeing animals in zoos, because you're right there in the middle of it. And the people at the park interfere as little as possible with the animals so that they can live as naturally as possible. I think that the only things that they do are supply meat to the carnivores and omnivores (if they have any) and de-horn the rhinos to prevent poaching. Since I didn't get any photos or video of it, I thought I'd share these two stories about somethings that happened on the drive. We stopped in an area where there weren't any animals, and the guide got out and picked up some small animal scat (Scat=poop. This stuff was from giraffes and bontebok, I think, and it was almost completely grass). Apparently, people often make a game out of seeing who can spit the pieces of scat the farthest. Seriously. So of course, half of the group decided to compete against each other. I did not participate, and I don't regret that choice at all. The second story is about the rhinos. They have five rhinos at the park, three females and two females. Our car actually got held up a bit by the oldest female, because she just had a rhino calf about 4 months ago. She was afraid that the cars were getting too close to her and her calf, Chuckie. We got through fine, of course, but it was interesting to learn how protective the mother could be and also that rhino calfs stay with their mothers for the first 3-4 years of their lives. You really do learn something new every day. |
Author20 year old American college student. On a study abroad trip in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Archives
August 2015
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