Whose yo mama?

Today Matt and I met with the mamas and former footsoliders.  Once again, Matt and I are Helen’s “new boyfriends”.  Our first task of the day was to travel to Monwabasi to sit in on a mamas meeting.  It is a great honor to meet with these “mamas” as they are the matriarchs of the townships, and without their permission and respect, we would be hard pressed to complete our task of documenting all of the buildings and sites in the Ikamva portfolio.  They all laughed at Helen’s joke of us being her new boyfriends, and a few gave Matt and I some waves and a few winks.

After we left Monwabisi, Matt and I followed Helen to the Rainbow Centre in Guguletu.  Here is where we had our meeting with Jubu, Martha, Notemba, Xoliswa, Meisie, and Mildred.  A woman named Benigina was unable to make the meeting.  They are all former footsoldiers for Ikamva who are currently in charge of the preschools and crèches in the numerous townships of Cape Town.  We go out tomorrow with Martha and Notemba to see the township of Wallacedene for the first time.  We only have 23 days with these footsoldiers, so we must be extremely efficient with our time in the field.  We have only seen four sites in two days thus far.  Going forward, we are aiming at getting to see an average of ten a day.  We think this will be easier than it sounds, as normally we have been traveling to multiple townships a day, and these sites are all in the same townships so travel time will be much shorter.

I’m so excited to actually get working tomorrow.  Now that crunch time has set in, we will be blazing through this project.  This is exciting to me, as homesickness is starting to hit a little bit because work has been a bit slow, but now that we will so frantic everyday, I’m pumped.  This will be an exciting time going forward. 

I’m really excited to start interviewing some of my co-workers at Ikamva.  I think I will start having a “meet my co-workers” update occasionally.  We’ll see how well it goes if it actually happens, but just keep your eyes open for it.  Alright everyone, I’m signing off now.  Totsien my friends!!!