Before I tell you about our first day volunteering I would like to share with you our new obsession: poop. Ever since our day on Table Mountain my roommates and I have been discussing the state of our bowels like we have known each other for years. Some of us have been more fortunate than others since landing in Africa. Nonetheless we manage to work some talk of constipation into almost every conversation, which has provided us boundless entertainment, and hopefully makes you smile a little bit too.
So far as we can tell we are only minimally sore from climbing and abseiling yesterday, which was surprising. Throughout the afternoon today I realized I was only sore in strange parts of my right arm, which Jackiy pointed out was the arm I repelled with. Next Sunday is cage diving with great white sharks, I wonder what will be sore after that...
Today was our first day volunteering at our projects. We are working at a center called James House which caters to kids and families from Imizamo Yethu, the local shanty town we visited. They do a numer of different things, including take in a few kids that have special home circumstances or offer programs, a playground, and food to school kids and orphans. We are working with a program meant for older teens to discuss basic sex and drug education. To do so we are using a program called Auntie Stella which lays out scenarios using a Dear Abby q&a style. A lot of the stuff is really basic material that we covered in junior high health. But other scenarios specific to African culture will be a lot more difficult for us as facilitators, like 'my teacher wants to have sex with me, what should I do?' and 'I was raped, now what?' We are definitely not anywhere near those yet, but it's going to be challenging.
However our first day was pretty basic. We had a meeting an hour before heading to James House and went over each hour of the day. We played some icebreakers with the kids, broke into groups and started with the issue of difficult parents. Tess and I are working with a group of 5 kids, ages 13, 15, and 18. I learned early on that these kids do not have normal lives and you have to watch out not to assume things--like that they have parents. It was kind of a slow start since they understood that not getting along with your parents at age 15 is normal (thank goodness), but then we shocked them with the next topic: "should I sleep with him?" Then a couple of them got pretty quiet and didn't seem able to relate all that well. I was surprised that they didn't even have friends dealing with these things and talking about it... or maybe they just weren't comfortable opening up yet. We'll get them over that soon.
We broke for lunch for an hour, and helped pass out food to all the kids including some really little ones that live there. There was a soccer game going on in the dirt yard that we sat on some tires in the playground and watched. As I walked into the yard a little boy came right up to me and hugged my legs, and I knew I had made a friend. His name is Afrika and he is a total ladies man, sitting and eating with us as we watched the big kids play soccer. He's 5 but tiny enough to look 3, and probably doesn't know English because he hasn't said a word to us yet.
As we're sitting there one girl comes up to us and asks if she can play with our hair. Then a few more come up and ask the same thing, and withing minutes there is a line of about 7 of us all sitting on tires with small girls braiding our hair. It was too precious for words. Hopefully we get the same treatment tomorrow.
(Afrika is sitting in the middle of all of us)
Tomorrow we will be going over all the different STDs and discussing topics around pregnancy, like "my girlfriend is pregnant" "could I be pregnant?" and "I don't want this baby." Now's when it really gets going, we'll see how the kids do with it.
*Photo cred Erica
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