Getting into the Swing of Things:

Hello everyone- I’ve been bad about writing again and for this I do apologize, but at least I’m out enjoying South Africa instead of spending my time in front of a computer. The past few weeks have been really good because I’ve finally figured out what I will be doing at my site! It turns out that I am in charge of fundraising. Some of you may know that I did similar work last semester for my rowing team, so I’m pretty excited to do it in a different setting. The Foundation that I’m working for is a very cool place- I’m really excited to help them out. I’m going to try to focus most of my efforts in the US because I have a more intense network there and because there are so many good organizations over here vying for resources from the same funding entities. Also, the exchange rate is such that a relatively small amount of American money would make a huge difference over here. For example, $400 would provide my organization with 1000 meals in their hot meal program, pretty incredible.
Before I get too ahead of myself I’m going to give you some background information on my site and its location:
My site is called the Zanecebo Support Foundation. Zanecebo is a Xhosa word that literally means “Bringing about a plan” and that is exactly what this foundation has done in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that is literally plaguing their community. It is located in a Township called Guguletu which is about 20km outside Cape Town. Guguletu is home to about 325,000 people according to the latest estimates I could find (2003). It is estimated that 29% of the population of Guguletu is infected with HIV/AIDS. This translates into approximately ±95,000 HIV/AIDS infected people in Guguletu, and unfortunately, that number gets bigger every day. According to the most recent data I could find 40% of the residents of Guguletu live in informal settlements- commonly called ‘shacks’ and 50% are unemployed. These are obviously broad estimations, but they give some idea of the kind of conditions members of the support foundation find themselves in.
The Zanecebo Support Foundation was established in January of 2007 to support an overwhelming need in the community; seeing the plight of those who were infected/affected with HIV, a call was made to bring together all those in need of support. This call was initially made through parishioners at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church and the Church responded by offering a venue for the support meetings. The organization has experienced constant and consistent growth since its inception- beginning with just under twenty members April 2007, there are now anywhere between 60 and 80 at each program. Programs include:
• Door-to-door campaigning to promote HIV awareness
• HIV/AIDS counseling which encourages members of the community to support one another
• Home based care and visits which allows people to be involved even if their health restricts their movement
• Volunteer training which imbues foundation members with a sense of civic responsibility and pride in their community
• Life and business skills training
o Sewing, painting, beadwork, hand-craft and needle work classes
 Self-help gardening project which encourages members to learn to grow their own food- also provides fresh produce for meals
 The organization provides meals to those who attend the support group sessions and also gives out extra food when there are enough resources to do so

The support group meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am until 2:30pm and during this time members participate in the following:
o Devotions
o Exercise classes
o Crafts (painting, sewing etc)
o Work in the community garden
o Wellness program (health classes that cover topics like stress, nutrition, HIV/AIDS prevention, relationship seminars and discussion groups etc)
o Meal program- provides breakfast and lunch to all members- this nutrition is often vital to the health and wellbeing of those members who struggle with poverty
I am mostly involved in the Support Group. I come to Zanecebo on those Tuesdays and Thursdays and the people here have been kind enough to feed me and even teach me how to sew and garden. I really think that I’m getting more out of this than they are at this point. The people here are all very welcoming and kind- I am always greeted with a smile when I arrive in the morning and I get lots of hugs when its time to leave at the end of the day.
I’m going to do everything I can to help out while I’m here. So far I’ve done everything from creating a database to helping serve meals and hold babies. It’s quite a holistic experience and I really appreciate that. I’m trying to get things going with this fundraising stuff. The biggest problem is that there is very little to start with. There is no computer here so I bring mine from home everyday to use so the organization has no website. I’m trying to figure out how to create a brochure or something like it, but I haven’t done much stuff like that in the past, and there really isn’t any money to have them printed. This should be quite the challenge.

If anyone has any ideas of resources to tap into as far as fundraising goes please do let me know! I know that we’re in the midst of an ‘economic downturn’ but if you’re interested, a $4 donation would provide 10 meals!

I hope you all are having a wonderful day! I’m on skype now- search me- I think my name is Rachel.Stoll or something like that…..

First Full Day at my Site!

Today I went to my site for the first time! I suppose that I had gone once before but that was during the first week with the entire group so today I went there for the first time by myself. On the car ride over there I was quite nervous. I got there and walked in by myself and saw a few faces that I recognized but the woman who is my site contact (who sort of runs things) was not there.

I just jumped right in and started helping the ladies in the kitchen make breakfast for everyone. We were making butter and peanut butter or jelly sandwiches and coffee (instant not drip); basically I buttered bread. Once we were done preparing all the sandwiches we handed them out to the people who had been sitting around making small talk. There were somewhere between 60 and 75 people there so it took a little while to get everyone fed. I got a butter and peanut butter sandwich which was actually quite good- I also really enjoyed my coffee. Once the meal was done, everyone was just sitting around the two long tables talking again and a few people suggested that it was time for me to get everyone together to do an activity of some sort. I was a little terrified by this. I was in a room full of people of all ages (infants to late middle age) who did not speak any English unless they were speaking directly to me, and I was expected to lead? I know that I am accustomed to running reflection sessions and that I have experience being a camp counselor but this was a little over my head.

I suggested that we all sit in a circle and introduce ourselves so that I could get a chance to get to know everyone’s name and so that they could have a chance to get to know me. We did this and it was moderately successful, although it was difficult to hear and understand people who were all the way across the circle, it was nice to at least give everyone an opportunity to get to know each other. Once we had done that, I told them that I was glad to answer any questions that they had about me or where I came from or anything and a few people asked questions. I was asked a few general things like where I was from and how long I was staying, but a few of them got interesting. One of the men asked me what sort of assets I was bringing to them and what I was expecting to get out of the experience and a woman asked me how I was able to afford school in the US and how I was able to pay all of the money that it took to come the South Africa for so long.

After I answered a few questions in the big group I want over to the other side the circle and started talking to a smaller group which was nice, much easier then yelling across a big room. They asked me all about the US and wanted to know if I had met many movie stars. I tried to describe where Indiana was (they asked if a lot of Indians lived there) and how far away it is from where most movie stars lived… I promised to try to find a big map of the US to show them. It is a pretty big country. When I was talked to another group I was asked about Obama. The woman I was talking to said that she was worried that with Obama and this new administration there would be corruption- she compared him to Mandela and talked about the ANC and how it has become something very different than it was when Mandela was in office. We talked all about the differences between the American political system and that of South Africa. I told her that although Obama was black, he did not belong to an entirely black party and that his taking power did not signify a revolutionary power shift from one ethnic group to another and we talked about how in the US politicians are voted for directly by the people whereas in SA a party is voted for (this puts the power in the hands of the party to choose its representatives rather than the constituents). It was definitely very interesting. I sort of like talking all about America, but it is difficult because I am so ignorant about so many things. One woman asked me about the rates of infection of HIV in the US and I had to admit to her that I had no idea. I need to do more research on those sorts of things so that I have some kind of answer for questions like that. The people were all very welcoming and kind- it was really nice talking to them.

The highlight of the day, though, was the singing. On a few occasions during the day the entire group got in a big circle and sang together. I’ve heard some pretty good singing in my day in some pretty prestigious places, but this was maybe the most beautiful performance I have ever seen. I am hesitant to call it a performance because I was included in it (although I did not know any of the lyrics- or the language) and it was filled with such spontaneity and joy. One person would begin and everyone would join in a sort of call and response- there was clapping and impromptu dancing and a whole lot of stuff that a mid-western, white, Episcopalian girl is not quite used to. It was incredible to be a part of it.

It was a really good first day, but I did find it a bit exhausting. I’m sure you’ll hear more about my site as I get to know it better. I’m excited.

It’s Been a While

Ok wow. It has been a really long time since I have written on this ‘blog’ thing… opps. Ok so I don’t think that I’m going to be able to give you a good big update that includes everything so I’ll summarize a lot and give some details on my most recent adventures: Since I last wrote I have: Climbed a big mountain with Liz and Mike Started my classes for realzies. Become pretty close with the 24 people I’m sharing a house with Explored the area around my house a lot Run into a guy that I haven’t seen since BJPS graduation at a bar 5 blocks from my house Gone on a wine tour Gone surfing Failed several attempts to go look at penguins Ok that’s sort of a lot maybe so I’ll just talk a little bit about what I did this weekend. I went on a “Bike and Wine” Vineyard Tour. Sound amazing? It was. We rented bikes and road around with a little tour group to four beautiful vineyards where we got to taste/buy a lot of really lovely wine as we looked at the mountains and enjoyed the sunshine. It was lovely. Obviously. The biking was also really nice- we got to ride around the actual vineyards and taste grapes right off the vine. I had never been to ‘wine country’ and I have to say that I do recommend it. from the top of a little hill we road up we could see a mountain range and the ocean in the distance and it was quiet and breezy and sunny and just about right in general. I liked it a lot. Then we took a train back to downtown Cape Town and then road a Combi home. We sort of laid around and watched It’s Always Sunny for a little while and then we went to this lecture at the Observatory that’s near our house that was all about how the Xhosa people viewed/view the stars and constellations and other heavenly bodies and then we went on a little tour of the Observatory and I got to look through the big telescope which was anticlimactic but still pretty cool…. All in all I’ve been having a lot of fun and I’ve had a good amount of down time which I’m using to read short stories and biographies- I get to go to my site for the first time tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to that…. I’ll try to be better about writing more…

Second Time to the Beach!

Today we got to sleep in for the first time since our arrival! It was pretty great. We woke up slow and then five of us moseyed our way to Mimi’s for brunch. After brunch we made our way to a holistic fair that is held a few blocks from where we live on the first Sunday of every month; it was really cool. I almost bought several things that were much too expensive. Thankfully, I did not have my money with me so I was not able to make any of those kinds of mistakes…

We came home and made lunch (I had another amazing sandwich) and then we figured out a way to get to the beach! We took a train to a different one this time, Muizenberg, which is known for its good surfing. The wonderful thing about this beach is that it is on False Bay which means that it is surrounded by mountains on virtually all sides. It is maybe one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever been to, and the waves were great! I think that I had forgotten how much I love playing in the ocean; it had been so long since I had gotten to. A lot of people rented surfboards (which was funny to watch) but I just played in the waves. It was a lot of fun and because its so windy it actually wasn’t hot at all…

Tomorrow is our first day of school so I’ll have to get a lot of sleep… except we might go to a bar at one or two to watch the Superbowl- that would be interesting… We’ll see.

False Bay:

http://www.capetownskies.com/full-size-favourites/09_kalk_bay_wide.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Capetown_table_false_bay.jpg/300px-Capetown_table_false_bay.jpg

First Time to the Beach!

What a beautiful day to write on my blog! Today I went to Robben Island (where many political prisoners were incarcerated during the freedom struggle, including Nelson Mandela) with our entire group which was good. The island is actually a lot bigger than I thought- it has an entire town on it! It also had a lot of history prior to the twentieth century which was interesting to learn about, AND I even got to see some penguins!

We all came home after the island and made lunch. I made an incredible sandwich- first I sautéed some green peppers and garlic and then I scrambled an egg in with the peppers. I put some jalapeño dipping sauce stuff on both pieces of bread with some sharp cheddar and then put it all together and grilled it with a pretty good amount of butter. Then I ate. It was fabulous- I might even say it was the highlight of my day… maybe…

After all of that we went to the beach! We were in “The Town of Camps Bay” which is about as upscale, posh and creepy as “The Village of West Clay” mixed with Laguna Beach… pretty much just of lots of wealthy Europeans drinking stiff martinis and soaking up as many rays as possible. But it was a really lovely beach. When we first got there we went the completely wrong way and had to climb over tons of giant rocks to get to the actual beach- it was maybe the best part of the entire beach experience. I love climbing around on big rocks more than I love most things so I ‘blazed the trail’ barefoot which was great. The rocks were hot so I had to move pretty quickly so I wouldn’t burn my feet- so I had to think fast. Once we finally got to the beach we just swam (the water was super cold- I guess it’s next door to the artic?) and read and laid around which was quite nice. Afterwards we went on a walk through “The Town of Campus Bay” and found a really cool place to eat called Nandos which was Portuguese and African. I had a baler status salad that had this super spicy but really delicious chicken on it. yum. We got to watch the sun set over the ocean from our table and by the time we were finished with dinner it was pretty much down and the moon was big and beautiful. We called the same taxi that took us to the beach to take us home (I forgot to mention that this ‘cab’ is a big yellow van that has ‘yellow submarine’ painted on the side and is driven by a man named Pierre. Awesome.) Now I’m sitting at home and contemplating going to Long Street to ‘da clubs’….we’ll see.

Camps Bay: http://www.ideafarm.co.za/blog/images/campsbay2.jpg

http://www.diamondhouse.co.za/Camps%20Bay%20View.jpg

http://www.bluewaters.co.za/images/CampsBayRestaurants1.jpg

Robben Island: http://monthliesblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/robben_island.jpg

http://z.about.com/d/africanhistory/1/0/q/A/Robben-Island-Entrance.jpg http://www.tropicalisland.de/CPT%20Cape%20Town%20Robben%20Island%20Nelson%20Mandelas%20isolation%20cell%20with%20his%20artifacts%20b.jpg

Site Contacts and Sunburns

The last two days have been really fun. Last night was one of my housemates birthdays so we went out to dinner and then ended up doing some pretty hilarious Karaoke which is always a good time. I hate to say it, but I don’t think that Liz and my rendition of “Bills, Bills, Bills” was the highlight of the night- if I had to say, I would give the award to everything that Peter and Brian sang and Honorable Mention to Mike’s awesome dancing. We did end up going home pretty early (midnighish) but we realized upon reflection that it was perhaps a fairly reasonable time since we had begun the festivities at about six and had done a lot on our feet that day…

On another note, I am suffering from some fairly intense sunburn, which is unfortunate… I guess a white girl who’s used to the winter in Wisconsin should be more careful about these things, but hey, everyone was young and stupid once right?

Today was really exciting because I got to go to my site for the first time which was amazing. My ‘site contact’ is named Mrs. Mvambi but she goes by Mrs. M. She is incredibly kind and wonderful and I am really looking forward to seeing her twice a week. We talked a little bit about the kind of work that I will be doing while I am there and it seems like it will be fairly varied and sort of up to me, which is exciting. The site is called The Zanecebo Support Foundation and it is run out of St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church. The program is for those individuals who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and it runs three days a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays are adult programmes which include wellness seminars, painting classes and gardening as well as a mid day meal and nutrition training. I got a chance to meet a lot of the adults that I will be working with throughout the semester and they all seem really open and nice, lots of wonderful smiles.

I’m pretty tired, and tomorrow is class registration which means a long hectic day, so I think I’ll have to fill in the rest of the gaps later!

Learning more everyday…

Today we had orientation at UWC (University of the Western Cape) which was pretty cool. We met the other foreign students who will be studying there this semester and got to know them a little bit. We also got a brief history of the University which was interesting; it is a historically non-white institution and its students played a role in the freedom struggle throughout the school’s existence. It seemed like the students and administrators were really proud of their school’s history which is not something that I’m necessarily used to. I also really liked the campus- I think I’ll really enjoy taking classes there.

Yesterday was a little bit more exciting; we went to the American Consulate and listened to a presentation about America’s relationship with South Africa as well as a brief history of South Africa and a short synopsis of the current political situation there. Hearing this from Americans was interesting, especially because I think that I will be learning a lot this semester that will challenge the American point of view on a lot of things that they told us about. One of the things that did bother me was that they constantly assumed the American/western way to be both the most advanced and the best. For example, they talked about education (western education) as being a goal for those living in poverty- they criticized the educational system and noted that it often fails the black and colored populations and talked about how much those systems need to be altered and fixed to do a better job of training more students in skills that will allow them to get jobs and get themselves out of poverty (sounds a lot like the education system in the US, eh?). This bothers me because it assumes several things that I believe to be very American: that a wage economy is the only viable economic model (that earning a wage should be the ultimate goal for any individual who finds him or herself in poverty) and that western education (primary, secondary school etc) is the best way to achieve this goal. It doesn’t seem to me that either of these assumptions should be made in a place where a wage economy was only introduced with European invasion and imperialism and where there was a perfectly viable economic situation prior to European contact. The two men doing the presentation also referred to socialism generally and the eastern communistic/socialistic paradigm generally as the ‘old’ way of doing things and seemed to inherently devalue all things that go into that paradigm regardless of any merits they might have. They did make some good points about the structure of the South African government and pointed out that the ANC (the party that has been in power since the first free elections) has much more power than any party in the US because of the differences in governmental structure (in SA you vote for a party and the party appoints representatives- this gives the head of the party extreme power and creates a situation where elected officials are loyal to their party and not their voters). They also pointed out that the ANC was becoming quite comfortable in a one party system situation which has been having some negative affects. They did say that it makes sense for the ANC to be ok with being the one big powerful party because that is the way they saw South Africa being run before non-whites were fully enfranchised and that is also what they saw in the Soviet countries who were sympathetic to their revolution- it seemed sort of “this is the new boss, just like the old boss” or like the pigs in Animal Farm or something….Anyway- it was interesting.

Yesterday we also got to tour some of the sites where students from our group will be doing their internships this semester. In the course of doing that we got to see one of the townships or informal settlements up close for the first time (one of the sites we visited is in one of the townships). I was astounded to see that such a developed country allows so many of its citizens to live in incredible poverty, but upon further reflection I realized the United States is very similar to South Africa in that respect both domestically and abroad. It is much easier to ignore poverty when it exists so close to home and it is something that is routinely seen; I don’t think twice when I see a line down the block at The Rescue Mission or people sleeping in bus stops in Milwaukee so who am I to question those who pass informal settlements when they drive to work and do nothing about it? Obviously visiting some of our sites raised a lot of questions.

Today we also learned about the HIV/AIDS situation in South Africa- about 2,000 are infected with HIV here PER DAY! I’m glad that I’ll be working at a site that deals with this epidemic- I’d like to learn more about it.

It has been lovely living in Kimberly House, all the people here are really great and I think we’re melding as a group more and more by the hour… I can’t believe I’ve only been here a week!

First Full Day in Cape Town!

Today we went on a couple pretty fun adventures around Cape Town as a group. First we went to the Water Front which was really pretty. It’s a fairly touristy area but it was super sunny and really lovely by the water. Next we went to the top of Signal Hill which is next to Table Mountain and gave us a great view of both the city and the ocean which was beautiful. It’s pretty incredible that I get to live here for the next few months; it is a really awesome looking place. Lastly we went to Marco’s Africa Restaurant where we got to sample some legit South African Cuisine including tripe and oxen tail (eating the tripe was not the most pleasant experience I’ve had but I suppose it was worth it…. the oxen tail was actually good, it was curried). After that we came home and have been chillin’ pretty hard core and it hasn’t been too exciting (except there was a cockroach sighting…)

Hello Everyone!

I arrived in Cape Town yesterday afternoon and it has been lovely so far! I’m sitting around our big dinner table with some of my roommates and enjoying the sun through the windows and breeze blowing through the open doors.  We haven’t done anything too official yet… Last night we all ate a big family dinner together and drank some lovely South African wine and then went out to see the area around where we live which was all a lot of fun.

I’m going to try to figure out how to post pictures on this site but if I can’t then they’ll be on facebook…

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