Long Walk to Freedom...

Hey everyone. Today we finally made it to Robben Island. That was the most amazing part of the day, but today was an overall pretty interesting day. For starters, we woke up at 8:15am to make it to the dock by 9:00am when the first boat left (this boat is 100 rand, while every other ferry out is 180 rand). By the time we got there, however, this ferry was already full, so we had to wait for the next boat, which went out at 11:00am. To pass the time, we went to get some brunch at a restaurant called Mug and Bean. I got a breakfast burrito, but it wasn’t as good as the breakfast burritos that I get at Tony’s in East Lansing. The coffee was outstanding, however.
After we ate, we went back to the ferry and made our way to Robben Island. For those of you who don’t know, Robben Island is an island off the coast of Cape Town. It is where the apartheid rulers would send the black and colored (these are actually politically correct to say here, so don’t think I’m racist) prisoners. Specifically, it was where they would send the black and colored political prisoners. Such prisoners include Thambo Mbeke, Mbeke’s father, Jakob Zuma, and, most famously, Nelson Mandela.

Our two tour guides were two men who were previously political prisoners on the island back under apartheid rule. So many years of their lives were taken away as they spent time here, and now they work here. Their stories were amazing. To know that we were in the presence of people who stood up for human rights, were punished for it, but never quit believing in what was right, and now get to see their dreams come to fruition was a very special moment in my life.

Hearing the story of Robben Island is incredible. The prisoners actually built the prison that they would someday inhabit. It was also interesting hearing how apartheid treated the guards of the prison. The guards weren’t allowed to wear sunglasses because sunglasses weren’t part of their official outfit. It was also interesting hearing about how Mandela would hold meetings with the other political prisoners in their toilet cave because they were safe there, as white men weren’t allowed into black men’s restrooms.

Overall, it was a very humbling experience. To see where men lived, and some died, because of the color of their skin and the ideas in their heads is something I find hard to comprehend. We got to see the cell where Mandela lived for the 30 years he was imprisoned there. As I said, it was a very honoring, humbling experience.

After we returned from Robben Island to the mainland, we made our way to a restaurant called Mitchell’s to watch the British-Irish Lions play the South Africa Springboks play in a rugby match. Well, my friends did. I made my way to a bookstore in the mall nearby and found two books to add to my collectioin. One is called Blood’s Mist, by David Donald, while the other one is called Twenty Chickens for a Saddle, by Robyn Scott. Both are pieces of African fiction. Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is a memoir of author Scott’s, detailing her childhood and life in Botswana, and all of the events that transpired while she was there, such as the AIDS epidemic.
After I bought these two books, I met my friends at Mitchell’s. We watched the Springboks get off to a commanding lead by halftime before we left. Matt, Tara, Collin, Michael, and I wanted to go back to the apartments and relax, while Dag and Suvrat stayed behind to watch the match. Apparently, the Lions made it interesting, but the Springboks held on for the win.

After we came back to the apartments, everyone took small naps and we then made our way to Camp’s Bay, a local beach. We got there right at sunset, and saw a lot of people playing with their dogs. I cannot wait to get home and get settled so that I can get a dog. Seriously, I want a dog so badly. It made it even worse that one of the dogs was a weimaraner. Brianna, I thought one of the dogs was a basset, but as it got closer I realized it was just a really short beagle or beagle mix.

At the beach, we walked and found these huge boulders that lead out into the ocean. We scaled the boulders and all set and watched the sunset. After this, we went to a local bar to people watch. After one round of very, very expensive and very, very weak drinks, we returned back to the apartments for dinner. Michael, Collin and I had spaghetti with hot dogs. Mmmm, right?
Tara, Matt, Michael and I decided to keep it a chill evening. We watched V for Vendetta, and then we all went to bed. That’s the day everyone. Hope you enjoyed it, haha. I’m off to read my football book. G’night everyone!

Happier note

Sorry guys, but that last update was just too depressing, haha.  And, as anyone who really knows me knows, I cannot leave well enough alone and end with things on a bad note.  

Today, I ate at this place called the Eastern Foods Bazaar.  It is this hallway of small booths where you can get different kinds of Indian and/or Chinese food.  The process you go about getting your food is really complicated, however.  So, first you walk up and down the Bazaar and look at the menus and decide what you want.  There is a menu above each station.  After you have decided, you go down to the cashier, which is located in the center of the Bazaar.  You tell them what you want, you pay, and they give you a receipt for each order.  You then take that receipt to the different booths with the menus above them.  Oh, did I mention that the menus don't actually correlate to what each booth serves?  No?  Well, they don't haha.  There were six booths on the left side of the Bazaar, and Matt and I went to each one, showing our tickets and each one told us it was to the right.  We finally went to the booth to the right of the cashier, a booth we'd never even seen before that had a menu for sweet and sour chicken and other Chinese food, and gave them our tickets.  They, in return, gave us curry.  It's like going to McDonald's and finding out they actually only serve Taco Bell, despite having a menu for McDonald's, haha.  So, Matt and I wandered around, thoroughly pissing everyone off who knew how the system worked because we kept cutting in line to thrust our tickets to the wrong chef, and finally made it to the right place.  Oh the joy of being a tourist, haha.

Also on a happier note, Matt and I have finished two townships!  Two!!  Two townships in two days!  Sounds like a Dr. Seuss story.  Anyway, we have successfully visited and documented twenty-one sites over the past two days.  As I said before, in our previous two days out, we were able to document four total.  Our productivity has gone up over 500%!  Woot woot!

Rough day...

Today was a really good, but hard day.  I won’t lie, going out to the townships everyday is very exhilarating and is much more exciting than sitting cooped up in an office all day.  At the same time, however, seeing these structures and these children and how they have to live really weighs on your soul.  I met a boy today at one of the crèches, Lilitha Educare I believe.  He followed me around wherever I went while we were doing our inspection of the crèche, the whole time he holding onto the backflap of my jeans’ pocket so that he could follow me. His teacher smiled at him and told me that, “he can’t see or hear well at all, but I love him so much.”  I nearly lost it there.  I stopped what I was doing for a bit to play with him.  He was a really nice little kid.

Today I finally felt like I was in “real Africa”.  Cape Town is this mirage, this ivory tower that makes you think different of a place than what it really is.  I kept telling my friends here that it still hasn’t hit that I’m in Africa.  Today it did, and it hit hard.  Seeing that little boy and how many health problems he has, and realizing that he is just one of many, and that they are all in these informal pre-schools which are nothing more than day cares, it hurt.  I know that my project is to go to these pre-schools everyday, and that I should be prepared for this, but I’m not sure that’s possible to prepared for what you will see.  No matter what people want to say about the American education system and what it lacks, it is so much better than this. 

This fact doesn’t make me proud or happy, it makes me angry.  Given the chance, these kids would love to have an opportunity to learn.  You can see it in their eyes.  They’re so bright and curious, and to see them when they have grown up, and seeing that brightness become dulled is heart wrenching. 

It’s the same with the dogs in the townships.  They are all running around, pet or stray, it doesn’t seem to matter, they’re just names we bestow upon them that have no real meaning to the animal.  It just runs around searching for food.  The puppies are all puppies we’d see in the States, little rolly-polly, jovial balls of fur, eyes full of brightness and youth.  Then you see a dog a bit older, and it hangs its head and walks cowardly, afraid of people, afraid of not finding food.

I’m sorry that this is such a downer of a blog update, everyone.  But, I guess this blog is supposed to represent my thoughts, and these are my thoughts right now.  I think everyone needs to know these things.  Please don’t take anything for granted, my friends.  We all lead great lives in our own ways.  Please be thankful.

My day :D

Hey everyone, so this is pretty much the most amazing day of work since we have been at Ikamva for the past three weeks.  In two days in the field previously, Matt and I were able to visit only four sites.  Today alone we visited fifteen.  FIFTEEN!!!  We might actually be able to accomplish something spectacular here.  When we were leaving Ikamva after our long day of work, Matt and I were saying that we truly believe that we can create something special that Ikamva can use going forward in continuing its mission of developing within the townships.

So, as I said, Matt and I visited fifteen different sites in two different townships, the townships of Wallacedeen and then Bloekompos.  We finished all of the crèches/preschools in Wallacedeen and got a great start in Bloekompos.  We worked today with former “foot soldiers” Martha and Notemba.  There is something humbling about being in a car with two friends who speak a different language and know that they are making fun of you, haha.  We know this because we learned some Cosa and Matt and I both heard some words that we know were directed at us. 

After we had lunch at KFC (which are EVERYWHERE here) with them, they warmed to us.  We told them about us, our life stories, and they told us there.  For instance, Martha has been working with Ikamva since 1992, working as a footsoldier, as well as maintaining her own two crèches.  She told us that she has three children, and one grandchild.

Notemba is also a former footsoldier who runs her own crèche.  She has been with Ikamva since 1993.  Notemba has had three children, but one of them died.  He died while as a student at the University of Cape Town.  He was studying graphic design.  She also has a daughter who is a teacher at her crèche.  She has four grand children.

As I said, they really opened up to us when we told them our life stories.  They especially enjoyed hearing that both of my parents are former teachers, and that my girlfriend is going to be a teacher.  They were stunned when I told them how hot it gets in Arkansas.  I’m not sure if they understood that I was talking about Fahrenheit and not Celsius when I said it would get over 100.  I’m going to assume that they did, but the way they reacted was quite interesting. 

Anyway, back to the original story.  We went to fifteen different crèches.  Some of these sites were amazing and some were very sad.  Not sad as in I look down on the people who run them, but sad that this is where children must go because this is all that is available.  Some of these sites are structures constructed out of plywood, and some even cardboard, and all had leaks.  They are more day cares than schools, which is no slight to the women who run them.  They are providing a great service to the townships, but the education curriculum is devastatingly lacking.  I think this is what makes me the saddest about the townships; in my opinion, education is the great equalizer and these children are given NO chance to compete with an ever-globalizing world and economy.  It is truly sad. 

Sorry, mini-rant.  Now we are back to the original story.  As I was saying, with regards to our project, the day was fantastic.  We are finally getting going, and we are hitting it hard.  If we can average 10 sites a day even, we believe that we will really create a very useful and detailed database of the over 300 sites that Ikamva is invested in.  We got the plot maps today and the Access database is completed, so we are now going full throttle with project.  Thank you everyone!  Good night!

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!!!