Let it not be a White Elephant

So this has been a pretty amazing and exhausting last couple of days. I have got to be a part of some really amazing projects and had some great conversations with people. First and foremost I would like to tell ya’ll about the auditions that we had on Saturday and then kind of go from there.

So, I have slowly gotten pretty busy in the office, I have a lot of work to do which is great!! Last week pretty much invited myself onto a project. The Football for Hope Centre in Khayelitsha is run by GRS, and the centre is opening on December 1^st(World Aids Day). It is the big kick off for the Football for Hope Movement and the beginning of the 2010 World Cup craze, so it will be pretty amazing.

On Saturday, we had auditions of traditional dance, singing, rapping and hip hop dancing to see who will perform at the centre opening. One of my colleagues needed help, so he asked me to organize and make sure that we had enough groups there, We had about 40 groups sign up to perform before the event and actually had about 60 different acts in total (it was AMAZING). It was so packed and the atmosphere was so unique and something I have never experienced before. I have just a few pictures and a ton of video. I promise at some point I will show everyone the videos.

The cool thing about running the registration table was trying to diffuse problems like, why haven’t we gone yet, there are how many people who are before me, and trying to coordinate the whole thing. It got pretty hectic especially because the sound guys were blaring the music or the drums from the traditional dances were so loud that I could hardly hear my own thoughts. Not to mention there is a huge difference between English and Xhosa. Language barriers are tough; especially with loud noise and kids everywhere.

When we set it up in the morning, one of the GRS coaches was suppose to be with me at all times and help translate. But as with all things, the registration table is not the coolest place to hang out. I could still see everything, but everyone would rather be in the mix, at the front instead of the back. A few times, I ended up standing on the table trying to get someone’s attention, it was hilarious. One of our assistant site coordinators GC, would try and come help me when he saw me surrounded with people (which was all the time).He would try and help me out a lot. He was a big help, so today, Tuesday we had our picture taken out by where the Football for Hope Centre is going to be built, so you could all see him.. (GC is a Awesome)..

The cool thing about auditions is some groups are really good, and others lets just say need a little more work. We learned quickly that you only need about 1 minute of a group to see whether they are good or not. At first, we let groups go for 5 minutes, too long. I think my favorite moment of the whole day, was at the very beginning of the morning. A group of really young girls were performing, they were so cute. Then all of a sudden this drum and loud chiming noises overpowered the noise in the gymnasium. I turned my head and there they were, the best traditional act we saw, a bunch of girls with bells wrapped around their ankles, cute little skirts, and no shirts. Yep, no shirts or top at all. A little different than what I am use to, but this Africa. What made me chuckle was the other intern Corey who was with us, he is a 22 year old guy, was a little uncomfortable at first. It is a growing experience for all of us.

We are going to have call backs sometime in November, which I hope I am in Cape Town for. When I got home that night, I literally went to my room and hung out by myself. I was so tired of talking (which if you know me well, is not an easy feat) and was mentally exhausted.

On Sunday, a group of the interns went and hiked Table Mountain, I passed. Hiking is one of my favorite activities, but the last time I hiked Table Mountain my legs hurt for a week. It is an intense 2.5 hour hike, and I wasn’t in the mood. Luckily, one of the interns let me borrow his bike, and I went exploring on the coast and rested at Camps Bay beach.

It was a great day, I read a book, laid out in the sun and got to ride a bike (all some of my favorite activities). The best thing is along that route you have to ride with the traffic and when the wind blows, you literally feel like you are going to get blown into traffic. A little scary at times and the wind blew so hard a few time that I was barely moving. It was pretty interesting.

At night Corey, Allen, Jessica, Amy went up on the behind the house and watched the sunset, it was sun fun, just the end to a great day.

One of the projects I am working on at work is that GRS is thinking of creating a new mission statement. For this, I get to interview all of the founders of GRS and get their perspective on how to do this. It is really amazing to hear everyone’s different ideas based on their background. Yesterday, I got to talk via Skype to Ethan Zohn, Survivor winner, pretty much the face of GRS soccer. He was talking about creating a strong and thought out campaign (including media and pretty much what I spent my masters doing) and the line went dead. Here in Africa you are charged for the internet by the bandwidth and the office ran out of bandwidth, so the call was dropped and I couldn’t get back online for another 45 minutes. It was sad about it because I was really enjoying the conversation, but that is how stuff works in Africa sometimes.

Lastly, today (Tuesday), I was out in Khayelitsha at the site of the Football for Hope Centre. We were having a strategic planning meeting. This allowed community members, other non-profits and neighbors of the centre get information about and then give their input of how things should be run. The great thing about GRS, is that conferences, meetings, trainings are very interactive, never a lot of one person talking. This makes them really fun and allows for every persons voice be heard.

Today was when the head of the Khayelitsha planning committee was talking and he said that we can not allow this building to become just another white elephant, and that the people of Khayelitsha must take care of the building because people will come and build it but if “we” tear it down or destroy it then there is no one to come and rebuild it.

One thing that is unique about these centres is that the host organization has to sign on to care for the programs out of the building, in an effort to make sustain and not just become another organization that drops money in something and then leaves, and it falls apart. It was amazing to hear a person in that position talk about preventing the white elephant and how that too realizes on the community surrounding it. For me, It instills a sense of HOPE that this centre can have activities and programs that betters a community that is plagued by HIV, murder, violence, and struggling people. As with all, bad area’s of any city, there are good people and I can only hope that those people come together and take pride in facility and help keep it nice.

This meeting was a good way to get the community excited and involved in the project. It also allowed for people to understand what GRS is about. It truly was amazing. I will leave with some pictures from today.

Sorry, so long.. but it has been a pretty busy couple of days.

Lots of love coming from Cape Town!!

Sarah

OOPS I forgot a coupld of things

Okay, so I forgot to mention two pretty important things in my week of firsts post yesterday that I need to tell you about. Additionally, I am going to add some pictures from the Concert Rockin the Daisies. The picture below is after I got my arm painted and drawn on by a local artist. I had the colors orange and white to support the VOLS , since it was Saturday. Also, I wanted them to write GO VOLS in it, however, VOLS in Afrikaans is a vulgar word. So I thought better of it. Today, Wednesday, I am still sporting the outline of the drawing. (Awesome). I have never had anything like this done before so it was pretty fun, it was actually really pretty and probably the closest thing to a tattoo I will ever have. ( I am completely okay with this)

Last Friday before I left for Rockin the Daisies, the GRS office celebrated Heritage Day. This is a public holiday in South Africa, (I was in Namibia for the actual day) where you celebrate your heritage. It was pretty awesome as everyone dressed in authentic clothes from their heritage. I wore a necklas that was white and orange for Tennessee and a green tank top and a yellow bracelet for the Ducks. I think my heritage was pretty well covered. What also is pretty funny is that everyone here are soccer fans.. so no one really truly appreciates my love of American College Football!

I got a lot of good video, but not that many pictures. The “interns” represented our Heritage by bringing food you would bring to a BBQ or Cookout (depending on which side of the US you live on), so we attempted to make a pasta salad and deviled eggs. Well the pasta salad (Kathy Nielson’s recipe as best I could in Africa) turned out pretty good. I wish I could say the same for the deviled eggs. First, our stove barely works so it took a really long time to cook the eggs, then they were almost impossible to peel. We pretty much destroyed them. Then, here in Africa when you buy things like mustard, you think it will taste like the mustard that you are use too. WRONG!!! Even if we could have peeled the eggs properly, the mustard was pretty bad. All I can say is cooking here is done completely by trial and error. In the end, we left the pasta salad at home, so it really didn't matter anyway!!!

Secondly, last week I went to my first fashion show. If you know me at all, you know that my fashion sense is pretty basic. I don’t dress extravagant. So for me this was pretty funny. The outfits were hilarious, there were more like main stream clothes you would find in the US, not authentic African wear. What made this experience even funnier, was I did not bring a lot of nice “fancy clothes” to Africa. I have a couple of dresses that are pretty bright in color that I got for 10 dollars at American Eagle. Needless to say I stood out a lot on the fashion no/no list. Everyone was dressed in different blacks and whites, really short skirts, and very hip outfits. The best thing was the four girls/roommates/interns all pretty much felt the same way, so we laughed a lot!!

There are some amazing perks about Cape Town, music festivals, fashion shows, working in a great office with all of the amenities of an office in the US, but it is also a fun to be in more rustic areas of Africa like Namibia. Even though my future here is completely unclear, I feel pretty blessed to have the opportunity of both. I hope that however it works out that I will be able to do the best work that I can, where I can have the most impact. I will leave you with a couple more images from Rockin the Daisies!!

Love Ya' All

p.s. because of a generous gift by Tim Williams, of 21st Mortgage, I get to come home for Christmas!! (Knoxville and then Oregon)!! Thank you Tim!!

A Week of Firsts

This past week I have had a lot of experiences that were new to me, things that I have never experienced. The are pretty neat, so I thought I would share them with you!!

First, for the first time in a long time, I am not running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I do not have a lot of work right, which is kind of a different feeling for me. I am trying to get into some type of routine in Cape Town, and that is my goal for this week. It is pretty different to have a goal to be get into a routine, but since I have been moving every three weeks for the past three months, settling into a routine for me seems like a good plan. I should be heading back to Namibia for a week and a half or so in the next week, so I am trying to get into a routine so that I will keep it in Namibia. I was going to leave this Wednesday but the training I was suppose to be help leading go postponed for another week. So I am in Cape Town for another week and a half.

If you could see the difference in my life from last year at this point! I had every minute of my life planned out until almost 3 in the morning everyday to this, a lot of free time, trying to find things that keep me busy. It could not be any different but I think it is good for me.

Secondly, for the first time in my life I am living in a house that is infested with roaches. So last week I got to wait at home for the roach guy to come and do an estimation on the house. He told me that it was the worst thing that he has ever seen and kept wanting me to come and check out behind the fridge, I passed!! So not only are there roaches, but there are lizards. However, lizards are suppose to be good because they eat the roaches and then in the end we would just need a cat to get rid of the lizard. (the circle of life). The best part of this whole experience was I was on the phone with my mom and she was freaking out. The roaches are gross, don’t get me wrong, it is NASTY, but they aren’t really in my room, they are just in the kitchen. So if you stay away at night then it is only kinda bad.

Also, we were all gone this weekend at a music festival (which I will talk about next), but when I came back there was a nice surprise for me on the kitchen floor. The roach guys came on Friday and started the first round of treatment, lets just say scene on the kitchen floor on Sunday afternoon was a roach cemetery. It really if gross, but at least now we have a roach guy that is going to try and get rid of them!!

Thirdly, I have never been to a music festival until this weekend. A group of 18 interns went to the Rockin the Daisies music festival about 1 hour from Cape Town. It was really fun, I got to see interns that were placed in Kimberly, Lesotho and Richmond. We had a really great weekend listening to South African Groups. My favorites were Freshly Ground, Just Jinger, Goldfish and a guy that played the harmonica. It really was fun, there was good food and a tent for comedians so I got to listen to South African humor, it was pretty funny.

The other neat thing was how clean they kept the port-a-potties. There were ones that had toilets that flushed.. it was so funny. But since we were camping/no showering for a couple days, having a clean port-a-potty is pretty important. This simple joys in life!!!

It was a great weekend, hanging out with friends and listening to music.

Anyway, I hope that you all have a great week, this week I am getting started on some pretty big projects here in Cape Town and am trying to plan for my trip to Namibia again. On Saturday we are holding auditions of music groups and dance groups for the opening of the Football for Hope Centre here in Cape Town. It is really going to be neat and I am excited to get involved in the process. I should have some good stories from that on Saturday.

Hope you have a great week.

Sarah

Don’t Take Any Moment for Granted!

So this week was so much fun. I really got to act like a kid for a majority of the week. I spent Monday and Tuesday in the office and the remainder of the week at a Holiday Camp in Khayelitsha. I hiked Table Mountain on Saturday, and watched 2 Lord of the Rings movies and went for an hour long bike ride on Sunday. I don’t think there is any better way to spend a week. I will go through the soccer camp first and then talk about my hiking table mountain experience (which both was amazing in two separate ways).

Khayelitsha is located on the outskirts of Cape Town, it is a Township where the people suffer from extreme poverty. It takes about 40 minutes to drive out to this area and driving out on the left had side are these amazing mountains and beautiful country and then on the right side extreme poverty, people living in shacks.

Before I start talking about the camp and how amazing it was, I have a few thoughts that I would like to share with you. Khayelitsha has poverty everywhere, it is hard to even describe what it looks like, it is something that you have to experience personally to understand. What is crazy though is how the more time you spend in an area; how use you get to the surroundings. Over the last couple of days I have driven in and out of areas in this township and there became a sense of normality to me by Friday. The first time I was in Khayelitsha it broke my heart to see all of the people, barely clothed, so skinny and living in conditions that so terrible that it is hard to explain. But as I was driving around this week I was so caught up in trying to get here and there that I got use too it; it just became part of the routine for me. I am glad that I caught myself doing this so that I could continue to see things the way the really are.

The greatest thing about working at the holiday camp was interacting with the kids. Holiday Camps are similar to sports camps in the US on spring break or over the summer. This camp started on Monday and finished Friday afternoon. It started at 10 am and finished around two or three depending on the day. When the kids arrive they do a large activity together that lasts for about 30 minutes, then they break into groups of 20 kids and go through a GRS practice..




In the day I got to join in this part the kids did find the ball for the first practice. This is a game where you have the kids line up in two separate lines where they are facing each other. You have the kids pass the ball behind their backs for a minute or so. Then each team tries to pick which team has the ball. This activity shows kids that they can’t tell who has HIV just by looking at them, that the only way to know if someone has HIV is to get tested.

Next the kids play in a short sided soccer game, 5 vs 5. They play two ten minute halves and you can score points by playing fair and scoring. It is amazing how passionate these kids are about soccer and winning. They were all so competitive; it really reminded me of my younger days going to soccer camp during spring break. However, these kids are a lot better than I ever was at that age. There was one girl who was really good who was playing in her high heels, I can barely walk in those things, and she is running around playing soccer.

At the Holiday Camp lunch is provided for the participants and for the coaches. So after the morning is lunch time. The kids would have soup and two pieces of bread. There is a little difference in the soup here than the soup I grew up on. It is a lot thicker but one of the coaches really wanted me to have some soup on one of the days, so I folded. Man it taste so different, but I was thankful for it!!

After lunch the kids get into their groups again and go through another GRS practice. The afternoon session was high risk vs low risk. It asks questions about behaviors like drinking alcohol and whether that puts you at higher risk for contracting HIV (whether the behavior is a high risk, low risk or no risk). It sparked some interesting questions and I was so impressed with how intelligent these kids are about HIV. The thing I was most impressed with was how the coach whose group I was in told the kids that sex is for adults and that they are just kids. He acknowledged that knowing how to protect yourself against HIV is important but that it was important to wait and enjoy just being a kid. It was an amazing conversation and even though it wasn’t in English I could understand what was going on. It is moments like this that you realize how important the work that we are doing is. After this session the kids got to play in another round of 5 vs 5, which is always fun to watch.

After the game they bring all the kids together and do the good things for the day and the bad things. This helps to know what kids enjoyed, but also to know what the facilitators could improve on. But usually there are more pros than cons, and that is what you want.

So at the end of the week, Friday, we do a graduation of all of the kids. This was really fun to be a part of. I got to put hats on all of the kids when they came up and got there certificate. Lets just say I yelled as loud as I could for about two hours to make sure that each kid got cheered for. They also played music in the background so I got to dance around with all of the coaches it was really fun. Aside from that what makes it fun, is how proud the kids feel when they hear their name called, it was a sense of accomplishment. The graduation ceremony was amazing to be a part of.

After the graduation we had a dance competition that I got selected to be a part of. I got hummilated by a 13 year old girl, but it was totally worth it!!! The graduation ceremony really was awesome!! And it helps to remind me how impressionable kids are and how important it is to make them feel special!! This graduation was different because GRS had its SKILLZ DVD premier party at the graduation. SKILLZ is the title of the curriculum that GRS produces and they created a DVD to give to all the coaches to help them deliver the curriculum effectively. It was so awesome, they had the 21 kids that were in the DVD there and they got to watch the DVD and hang out with a professional soccer play from South Africa

This truly was an inspirational week!! It was nice to just be able to help all of the other interns out with their projects and be around all of the kids. Then to cap it off I hiked Table Mountain on Saturday. It is Sunday night right now and even after my relaxing bike ride my legs are still burning. This is byfar the hardest hike I have ever done. It was like walking up a never ending stairway of steep rocks. I hiked up the face or Platteklip George, which is like climbing the steepest stair way ever!!

The neat thing about Table Mountain is the top of it is flat and you can walk around and enjoy the view. I also ate the best hamburger I have had in a long time. I needed it because it took 2.5 hours to hike up and 1 hour to hike down. You can see all sides of Cape Town from the top of the mountain and it is amazingly beautiful. It isn’t a hike I would want to do everyday, but it was definitely worth it. We shall see if I will do it again; maybe I will hike up the back, which is a little less steep. The best part about being at the top was all the tourist that took the cable car up; they look so put together, in skirts and make-up. While I was covered in sweat and exhausted.

One thing that made it so amazing was to see all of the people going up and down, with vary different physical fitness levels. One of the guys we passed said he wished he was young again and told me not to take any moment for granted. Although I feel for the most part, I don’t, but it is always good to be reminded to live every moment of life the way you want too.

Love you all

Sarah