Hello Cape Town!

I've officially made it to Cape Town!!


My flights were ultimately okay . . . Of the three flights, the two last ones I had crap seats. On my twelve hour flight I had the absolute last row of seats, next to the window (which I did prefer), but also next to a heating and cooling device. So the entire ride I was either burning up or frozen. Then, the guy next to me wanted to be really chatty, but was a little too full of himself . . He was a biologist heading for Madagascar to look at lemurs, how closely related they are to humans, but also how they are able to hibernate, unlike humans. Hearing about the research he was continuing with his son and grandson was interesting, but he was just really rude about everything we talked about. So that irritated me, but I was especially irritated after he kept elbowing me and pushing me even further into the little corner I had to sit in. Eventually, he literally pulled the blanket up over his head and went to sleep.

My second flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, I had another awful seat . . . I was between these two huge men, in the first row of non- first class. So there were only two seats in front of us, but three of us in the row. Our row of three was maybe six inches longer than the row of two, and my seat definitely was the one that got cut down. We had little make shift tray tables that came out of our arm rests. The guys next to me had no problem with theirs, but my tray couldn't even unfold all the way over my seat because the seat was so narrow. And the guys beside me were both fighting for elbow space, but again, my seat was so narrow that my arms had nowhere else to go unless I hunched over . . . Needless to say, I wasn't in the best of moods by the time I reached Cape Town. The person picking me up was a little over 10 minutes late, so I had started to worry, but it ended up on being fine. I was one of the first people to land within the group that would be transported to the volunteer house together, so I was really glad to have a little bit of time to sit down by myself and calm down after hours of being irritated.

One thing the struck me suddenly on one of my flights, is that I have no idea how people here feel about volunteers. I still do not have an answer to this, but would imagine that some recognize the good, while others hate us for it. Somehow though, I hadn't really considered it until I was in the situation of being asked by locals why I was visiting . . .

One of my instant favorite parts of this trip already, is the diversity of the volunteers. Already I know people from Australia, Brazil, China, Canada, and from all over the U.K and U.S. So while we are all foreigners to each other, we have all embarked on this adventure to a very foreign place together. I think that it will be great to see all of the different perspectives that everyone has.

Eventually a group of us left the airport for the volunteer house. It was Andrea from Missouri, Danny from Australia, Lesley from Canada, Jeanie (short for something else) from Brazil, and two from China, one of which I'm pretty sure is Alex . . . We drove past so many cool looking sights that we goggled over, but at the same time, there are these huge blocks of run down looking shed communities that people are obviously living in. That was the first view of the need for help here . . . We were driving by this gorgeous sandy beach, then turned right onto a street right before the van was stopped. It took us a second to realize that we were living right by the beach we had just been oohing over. It is an actual house in a regular neighborhood-- much more than I had expected. We were all in complete disbelief. There are five rooms of 4-6 people each. It's far from perfect, but definitely exceeded all of our expectations.

South Africa is undoubtedly a beautiful place, but from talking with the volunteers who have been here for a while, there are some really serious social and economic problems here. Apparently, this can be a rough part of town and all kinds of bad gangs live right around the corner . . . I wasn't planning on it anyway, but you never walk anywhere by yourself and never carry any valuables on you. In Prague, I just worried about pick pocketers, so as long as you're cautious you'll never have a problem and can really carry around whatever; here though, people will pick pocket you, if you're lucky, but will also come up and threaten you're life in some way and you just have to give them whatever you have. So if anything ever happens, you'll never be prepared for it and there's really nothing you can do to save the valuables you do have on you . . . I probably will not be using my nice camera here, which is a huge disappointment, but it's just not worth the risk . . . The program started getting transportation for the volunteers at the child care centers a while ago because of the muggings that had happened. There haven't been any problems since, but it's definitely a little scary here. The kids that I'll be working with at the centers apparently can be rough because they grow up in the gang environment and are often beaten or starved. So the school environment is so important for giving them some sort of supportive environment.

Tomorrow we have orientation and will visit the different placement options that I have for child care centers. We are also going into Cape Town to see the city!

 

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