So today was a really great day! We went to Mitchell’s Plain (a colored township outside of Cape Town) to do a variety of volunteering and learning. When we arrived, we met up with the coordinators of service-learning projects from the UWC, they work at the Community Rehabilitation Project in Mitchell’s Plain. It has been around for 20 years and is funded by the Department of Health. This organization does a whole lot, but some of the major projects are home visits (to being resources to people in their homes), community rehabilitation (workers who live in the community to provide hands-on aid) and 5 or so sites throughout the community for UWC students and really anyone to work in. These sites encompass: Early Childhood Development, Vegetable garden projects, Heaven’s Shelter (for battered women and children), a skills development center for seniors with disabilities, and St. Lukes hospice care for young-middle aged adults living with HIV/AIDS.
The theme of today was “Look, Listen, and Learn”, but the sexual health track got to do a little teaching too. We started off the day in a grade-10 classroom and we taught about health relationships, assertive/passive/aggressive behaviors and a little condom/consent/HIV info too. Although our time was short in the classroom, and we honestly did not know we were going to present, so we just pulled something out of the air, the experience was amazing. I know, I know, everything is amazing- but teaching, learning from and working with young people is truly humbling and rewarding! We jumped right in and by the end of the presentation and small discussion groups, I really felt that the learners respected us and hopefully learned something. I am always worried when we go into teach that it will seem like we are preaching and forcing foreign ideas onto the learners, but I really don’t think we did that today. In my small group we had some really great questions and they definitely understood the messages we were getting across. We role played giving and not giving consent, assertive behaviors to empower each person and just chatted about HIV, telling partners one’s status and getting tested. I felt like the learners were comfortable with us and asked good questions. I think they saw that we, a group of total strangers, cared about them and wanted to pass along healthy messages that anyone could benefit from. And that is so cool, sometimes at home when we present I don’t really feel like I am respected, or that my message gets across, but today I didn’t feel that way. American students could learn a thing or two from these kids.
After the school, we were rushed into the van and drove off to our next site; yes we visited three sites all before lunch! We stopped in the community to meet some women who have started a vegetable garden program where they purchase, help build and maintain vegetable gardens in their backyards to get healthy food without having to buy it at the market, etc. This was also really neat. The women we very proud of their gardens, and walked us around to 4 or 5 houses to see what other women had created. This taught me something about the value of self sufficiency, these women started from nothing and now have beautiful veggie gardens to provide healthy food for themselves and their families, they are extremely proud of what they have created and thoroughly enjoyed sharing it all with us, and we took it in- this was about them and we were privileged to see the outcome of their program. This program also leads to bonding in the neighborhoods, which is crucial to safety and security.
Next we boogied on down to the community center where we helped the same women with gardens make beaded jewelry for them to sell to get money to buy for seeds to plant in their gardens. I was grateful to spend time with these women, joking and sharing creative times, and it taught me that, for real, everyone is the same. We all want to provide for ourselves, we all want to have a little fun, and we all want to show off our awesome gardens. In the end, the service-learning coordinators told us that they are always surprised to see how well we mesh with the community. I was surprised too, in a good way. Today was a really good day. Tomorrow we are going back. I cannot even describe how excited I am for our site tomorrow- but I won’t ruin it now. You have to wait until tomorrow. J
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