Ok so I told myself I would be better at writing this week because I had access to the internet, but that obviously didn't happen. I actually finished my half of the report for our placement last Friday (though I used Monday to edit). Then I was sick on Tuesday, did research for my essay for my other course on Wednesday, and then yesterday was a public holiday and now it's the end of my last full day in South Africa!
Yesterday was really great, we got to sleep in and then we went to Westville (the campus where my placement is) because Khadija had forgotten stuff in the office and then hit up Victoria Street Market which is a massive indoor Indian market on the edge of downtown. By now I have dwindled my funds enough that I didn't buy anything other than another suitcase (to hold the books and other things which I dwindled the funds on), but Khadija and I hadn't gone with the other girls when they went. We were also bring a new girl who arrived at our hostel a few days ago who is also from Canada and who recently finished her MA at Carleton in the history department (with Susanne as her supervisor) named Vinnie (Vincenza). She's very bright and we've been having a lot of fun showing her around. We took a mini cab from Victoria Street market to the beach which was quite the adventure. Mini cabs are 12 seater cars which you flag down using different hand signals and they take you all over for only 5 rand. However, we have had a really hard time figuring out how to use them (because they don't have any indications on the front of where they take you) and the drivers often give us confusing directions. After wandering around downtown Durban for half an hour with my new suitcase in tow, we found a minicab to take us to the beach. They blast loud African music and it is often crowded with people. I love them! I realized sadly that yesterday was my last day going to the beach and taking a minicab which is really depressing. I will miss the beautiful blue water and the shark nets! Haha. And the delicious restaurants by the beach. Ohmygoodness they have the most glorious hamburgers here. Ha, I'm such a foodie :)
Today we handed in our 16 page report! Yay for being finished! I am so sick of that thing. HEARD was so sweet, they had a little going away thing for us, complete with cake and muffins and Given (the guy we were doing research with-not our supervisor but similar) gave a little speech about how we would be missed and about how if we keep up the work ethics we have, the sky will be the limit. It was very sweet :) He also is very willing to be a reference for both me and Khadija and same with Jacqui! So, even though I only spent 8 days at this placement, it was totally worth it because of all the great people I met and the awesome networking. And hanging out with Khadija, we got to be pretty tight too :)
So now I'm off to say goodbye and pack up my office. I have to pack tonight and then we have breakfast with Susanne tomorrow and then I'm off! Holy crap! I can barely believe it's almost over. What an unbelievable experience I've had here! So many wonderful people and a great deal of learning. I am so blessed to have had this opportunity, but I'm also ready to go home. So, this will likely be my last post and then I will be seeing a lot of you! I will come complete with pictures and a great deal of jetlag. Miss you all!!
Love Heather
Friday, 17 June 2011
Monday, 13 June 2011
Johannesburg part 1-Soweto
Hello all!
There is so much to say! This weekend I went to Johannesburg and it was an unbelievable experience. Did I have the money to do this? Only somewhat. However, going broke to see Soweto and the apartheid museum was completely worth it. Rice and beans for the week for me! Haha :)
We flew in on Friday night and stayed in our very posh hotel (which we got a great deal for!) called the Protea Balalaika in a very fancy area of Johannesburg (or known fondly by South Africans as Joburg). We were starving when we arrived because our flight was delayed a few hours, so for the first time in my memory, we ordered room service. We went all out and got a very snazzy snack-basket, complete with silver platter. It was really fun and we fell asleep eating French fries, laughing ourselves silly over the fact that we were in Joburg, and drinking delicious local wine. Khadjia and I have decided that the beds at this hotel surpass any other we have ever slept in (or at least it seemed like this because of how uncomfortable the beds are at Hippo Hide). We had called before we left to book a tour of Soweto with a tour company recommended by our lovely supervisor, Jacqui. She is the most adorable little woman (she is very petite and she has a gorgeous British accent and she always hugs and kisses everyone and calls people ‘Daaah-ling’ which I think is HILARIOUS!) Forgive my run-on sentences, it’s too early in the morning for me to write coherently.
Anyway, Saturday morning we woke up fairly early and went down to the amazing continental breakfast included with our hotel. The buffet was probably the best one I have ever seen. I admit, my judgment may have been clouded by my steadfast dedication to oatmeal for breakfast for the past several weeks, but I doubt it :) Everything you can imagine, including fresh locally grown fruit such as papaya (known locally as ‘pawpaw’ like in the Jungle Book!), smoked salmon, delicious croissants, and best of all, REAL COFFEE! Hallelujah, coffee that is not instant! It was wonderful.
Our tour guide then met us at the hotel and took us for our tour of Soweto. Soweto stands for South Western Township and it was created by the apartheid government to house the cheap black labourers who had lived previously in Joburg where they worked as miners in the gold and diamond mines or as labourers in factories. It is absolutely massive-there are about 6 million people living there. Though I consider myself to be well educated against the stereotypes one has about Africa, I find that I still get caught up in them every once and a while. For example, I expected all of Soweto to be like a slum. A slum (also known as a shantytown or a flavella, or more academically it is called an ‘informal settlement’) is an area where people live in tin shacks with corrugated iron for the roofs, sometimes tarps to keep out the water and to protect against lightning, and no electricity or running water. These houses are often packed really close together and people string their laundry lines between the shacks. I have seen several of them since I got to South Africa-we flew over a particularly famous one in Cape Town named Kayahletsha (pronounce KY-A-LEE-TSHA) and every day when we take the shuttle to our placement, we drive past one. Soweto is actually comprised of 6 different suburbs and it has people of all classes. For example, we saw some quite large houses in the upper class district, including the home of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu (an Anglican archbishop who is so smiley and cute!) and Mandela’s house which he lived in prior to his arrest.
Our first stop was at the edge of Soweto at one of the upper class areas where professionals live. It was pretty uneventful and we spent 2 minutes outside of the car with the guide taking pictures under the sign that said “Welcome to Soweto”. Then we got back into the car and within five minutes it was like we had entered a different world. This was more like what I had imagined. Shacks everywhere, people walking along the edges of the highway, women carrying things on their heads, and people selling fruits and veggies on the side of the road. The guide pulled into one part where there were several other tour buses and told us that it was quite safe and that if we wanted, we could get out and there was a local man affiliated with the tour company who would show us around. This obviously was the opportunity I have been waiting for since I got to South Africa so I barely let him finish his sentence before jumping out of the car. Our guide for the informal settlement was named “Amandla” which means “power” in isiZulu (a word used commonly in the struggle against apartheid). He was very warm and was really excited about meeting two girls from Canada. He took us down a broad path in the centre of the settlement where we were followed by a parade of curious children of all ages. I had a little boy who was ten take a shining to me and he talked with me about school and wanting to become a policeman. Unfortunately, a lot of these kids have been taught to ask for money, which is what he ended up doing at the end. We have been told by countless guides not to give money to people who ask, especially kids. It broke my heart, but I had to say no. After the boy left, looking rather dejected, Amandla told me that I had done the right thing because once kids realize they can make money from begging, they stop going to school a lot of the time. The reality of this situation sucked. Rejecting a need from a child is probably the hardest thing I will ever have to do, even if it is the right thing.
We were taken into a yard of a lovely old lady who opened her home to us. She was a grandmother with a family of seven who all share her tiny tin shack. Inside there was one bed, a stove, a paraffin lamp and a cabinet. It was about 8 feet deep and 6 feet wide. I have obviously been preparing myself for this, but nothing can really prepare you for that kind of reality. Here I am, staying in a beautiful five star hotel and staying in a room three times the size of this woman’s house. But her and Amandla said something really interesting to me. They said that money was not the key to their happiness and it was through their poverty that they were able to form such a close-knit community. These people do not want my pity, they want life. And it seems that in some senses, they have life figured out a lot better than we do in the West. If someone is hungry here, they go to their neighbour’s and ask for food and there will always be someone to care for them. Children are raised by the community and everyone knows each other’s names. A loss or a hardship is felt by the whole community, as is a success. She allowed us to ask her our questions about her family and how she makes ends meet (to which she said ‘God only knows’). As we left, she gave us each a warm hug and thanked US for coming to her home. Dij and I gave her 50 rand when we left (less than $10 CAD) because we knew that she would be using this money to feed her family and help the community. I feel like I will not be able to explain to you how touching this experience was for me. It was like seeing the physical manifestation of love and compassion and warmth. All I can say is that you all must come to South Africa some day with me.
Next stop was the Hector Peterson museum on Vilikazi street. Soweto (as I think I said before) was a major centre for protest against the apartheid regime and Vilikazi street was the nucleus of this. Thousands of students gathered on Vilikazi street on June 16th, 1976 to protest the teaching of Afrikaans in ‘Bantu’ schools (Afrikaans is the language of the whites while blacks have several different languages they speak, though education was previously taught in English). The children were aged 8 to 18. They planned on marching to the board of education to show their protest, make their point by standing outside, and then leaving. However, on their way they were met by policemen. As the children got closer, the police hurled a few rocks at them to try and make them disperse. It is unclear whether some children through rocks back. Suddenly, one of the policemen lost his cool and opened fire on the crowds. 600 children were killed, most of them shot in the back while fleeing the police. There is a very famous picture which is in a book we have at home (which has always saddened me, long before I knew about South Africa in this book about the 21st century in pictures) where a boy is running, carrying another boy and there is a girl beside him, also running and her mouth is open in anguish. The boy who is being carried is bleeding. His name is Hector Peterson and he was the first child shot. He died that day. The boy carrying him is named Mbuyisa and the girl beside is Hector’s sister. This picture was circulated throughout the world and became the symbol of the terrible oppressiveness of the apartheid regime and sparked the beginning of a wave of international condemnation. I would be the first to say that I know a lot about apartheid. I know a lot about oppression too (I feel sometimes like that is what I specialize in). But it is a whole new thing to really SEE this-a picture of a child slaughtered for wanting to learn in English. It was hard but beautiful at the same time-to see the bravery of these kids who are sick of being oppressed and just did what they felt was right to fight against it. This sparked the beginning of the end of apartheid as the apartheid regime as P. W. Botha declared a state of emergency and expanded the oppression like never before. He was met with a massive wave of protests and strikes. People were tired of it. I love that. And eventually, things got so bad that he had to change things or be faced with civil war (in which he was sure to lose).
So, that was the end of our Soweto tour, which challenged me in many ways. Like I said, totally worth flying to Joburg for.
Something awesome just happened! Alan Whiteside just came in and invited Khadija and I to a braai that all the people from work are having! A braai is something like a mix between a barbeque and a party. It is a very South African tradition and Dij and I have been wanting to got to one since we arrived. It’s going to be at this swanky place called Sica’s Guest house (see my facebook for the link if you’re curious). Yaaay!
I will post about the apartheid museum and the rest of my visit to Joburg later.
Love Heather
There is so much to say! This weekend I went to Johannesburg and it was an unbelievable experience. Did I have the money to do this? Only somewhat. However, going broke to see Soweto and the apartheid museum was completely worth it. Rice and beans for the week for me! Haha :)
We flew in on Friday night and stayed in our very posh hotel (which we got a great deal for!) called the Protea Balalaika in a very fancy area of Johannesburg (or known fondly by South Africans as Joburg). We were starving when we arrived because our flight was delayed a few hours, so for the first time in my memory, we ordered room service. We went all out and got a very snazzy snack-basket, complete with silver platter. It was really fun and we fell asleep eating French fries, laughing ourselves silly over the fact that we were in Joburg, and drinking delicious local wine. Khadjia and I have decided that the beds at this hotel surpass any other we have ever slept in (or at least it seemed like this because of how uncomfortable the beds are at Hippo Hide). We had called before we left to book a tour of Soweto with a tour company recommended by our lovely supervisor, Jacqui. She is the most adorable little woman (she is very petite and she has a gorgeous British accent and she always hugs and kisses everyone and calls people ‘Daaah-ling’ which I think is HILARIOUS!) Forgive my run-on sentences, it’s too early in the morning for me to write coherently.
Anyway, Saturday morning we woke up fairly early and went down to the amazing continental breakfast included with our hotel. The buffet was probably the best one I have ever seen. I admit, my judgment may have been clouded by my steadfast dedication to oatmeal for breakfast for the past several weeks, but I doubt it :) Everything you can imagine, including fresh locally grown fruit such as papaya (known locally as ‘pawpaw’ like in the Jungle Book!), smoked salmon, delicious croissants, and best of all, REAL COFFEE! Hallelujah, coffee that is not instant! It was wonderful.
Our tour guide then met us at the hotel and took us for our tour of Soweto. Soweto stands for South Western Township and it was created by the apartheid government to house the cheap black labourers who had lived previously in Joburg where they worked as miners in the gold and diamond mines or as labourers in factories. It is absolutely massive-there are about 6 million people living there. Though I consider myself to be well educated against the stereotypes one has about Africa, I find that I still get caught up in them every once and a while. For example, I expected all of Soweto to be like a slum. A slum (also known as a shantytown or a flavella, or more academically it is called an ‘informal settlement’) is an area where people live in tin shacks with corrugated iron for the roofs, sometimes tarps to keep out the water and to protect against lightning, and no electricity or running water. These houses are often packed really close together and people string their laundry lines between the shacks. I have seen several of them since I got to South Africa-we flew over a particularly famous one in Cape Town named Kayahletsha (pronounce KY-A-LEE-TSHA) and every day when we take the shuttle to our placement, we drive past one. Soweto is actually comprised of 6 different suburbs and it has people of all classes. For example, we saw some quite large houses in the upper class district, including the home of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu (an Anglican archbishop who is so smiley and cute!) and Mandela’s house which he lived in prior to his arrest.
Our first stop was at the edge of Soweto at one of the upper class areas where professionals live. It was pretty uneventful and we spent 2 minutes outside of the car with the guide taking pictures under the sign that said “Welcome to Soweto”. Then we got back into the car and within five minutes it was like we had entered a different world. This was more like what I had imagined. Shacks everywhere, people walking along the edges of the highway, women carrying things on their heads, and people selling fruits and veggies on the side of the road. The guide pulled into one part where there were several other tour buses and told us that it was quite safe and that if we wanted, we could get out and there was a local man affiliated with the tour company who would show us around. This obviously was the opportunity I have been waiting for since I got to South Africa so I barely let him finish his sentence before jumping out of the car. Our guide for the informal settlement was named “Amandla” which means “power” in isiZulu (a word used commonly in the struggle against apartheid). He was very warm and was really excited about meeting two girls from Canada. He took us down a broad path in the centre of the settlement where we were followed by a parade of curious children of all ages. I had a little boy who was ten take a shining to me and he talked with me about school and wanting to become a policeman. Unfortunately, a lot of these kids have been taught to ask for money, which is what he ended up doing at the end. We have been told by countless guides not to give money to people who ask, especially kids. It broke my heart, but I had to say no. After the boy left, looking rather dejected, Amandla told me that I had done the right thing because once kids realize they can make money from begging, they stop going to school a lot of the time. The reality of this situation sucked. Rejecting a need from a child is probably the hardest thing I will ever have to do, even if it is the right thing.
We were taken into a yard of a lovely old lady who opened her home to us. She was a grandmother with a family of seven who all share her tiny tin shack. Inside there was one bed, a stove, a paraffin lamp and a cabinet. It was about 8 feet deep and 6 feet wide. I have obviously been preparing myself for this, but nothing can really prepare you for that kind of reality. Here I am, staying in a beautiful five star hotel and staying in a room three times the size of this woman’s house. But her and Amandla said something really interesting to me. They said that money was not the key to their happiness and it was through their poverty that they were able to form such a close-knit community. These people do not want my pity, they want life. And it seems that in some senses, they have life figured out a lot better than we do in the West. If someone is hungry here, they go to their neighbour’s and ask for food and there will always be someone to care for them. Children are raised by the community and everyone knows each other’s names. A loss or a hardship is felt by the whole community, as is a success. She allowed us to ask her our questions about her family and how she makes ends meet (to which she said ‘God only knows’). As we left, she gave us each a warm hug and thanked US for coming to her home. Dij and I gave her 50 rand when we left (less than $10 CAD) because we knew that she would be using this money to feed her family and help the community. I feel like I will not be able to explain to you how touching this experience was for me. It was like seeing the physical manifestation of love and compassion and warmth. All I can say is that you all must come to South Africa some day with me.
Next stop was the Hector Peterson museum on Vilikazi street. Soweto (as I think I said before) was a major centre for protest against the apartheid regime and Vilikazi street was the nucleus of this. Thousands of students gathered on Vilikazi street on June 16th, 1976 to protest the teaching of Afrikaans in ‘Bantu’ schools (Afrikaans is the language of the whites while blacks have several different languages they speak, though education was previously taught in English). The children were aged 8 to 18. They planned on marching to the board of education to show their protest, make their point by standing outside, and then leaving. However, on their way they were met by policemen. As the children got closer, the police hurled a few rocks at them to try and make them disperse. It is unclear whether some children through rocks back. Suddenly, one of the policemen lost his cool and opened fire on the crowds. 600 children were killed, most of them shot in the back while fleeing the police. There is a very famous picture which is in a book we have at home (which has always saddened me, long before I knew about South Africa in this book about the 21st century in pictures) where a boy is running, carrying another boy and there is a girl beside him, also running and her mouth is open in anguish. The boy who is being carried is bleeding. His name is Hector Peterson and he was the first child shot. He died that day. The boy carrying him is named Mbuyisa and the girl beside is Hector’s sister. This picture was circulated throughout the world and became the symbol of the terrible oppressiveness of the apartheid regime and sparked the beginning of a wave of international condemnation. I would be the first to say that I know a lot about apartheid. I know a lot about oppression too (I feel sometimes like that is what I specialize in). But it is a whole new thing to really SEE this-a picture of a child slaughtered for wanting to learn in English. It was hard but beautiful at the same time-to see the bravery of these kids who are sick of being oppressed and just did what they felt was right to fight against it. This sparked the beginning of the end of apartheid as the apartheid regime as P. W. Botha declared a state of emergency and expanded the oppression like never before. He was met with a massive wave of protests and strikes. People were tired of it. I love that. And eventually, things got so bad that he had to change things or be faced with civil war (in which he was sure to lose).
So, that was the end of our Soweto tour, which challenged me in many ways. Like I said, totally worth flying to Joburg for.
Something awesome just happened! Alan Whiteside just came in and invited Khadija and I to a braai that all the people from work are having! A braai is something like a mix between a barbeque and a party. It is a very South African tradition and Dij and I have been wanting to got to one since we arrived. It’s going to be at this swanky place called Sica’s Guest house (see my facebook for the link if you’re curious). Yaaay!
I will post about the apartheid museum and the rest of my visit to Joburg later.
Love Heather
Friday, 10 June 2011
June 10th
Hello!
Obviously it’s been a while since I blogged, sorry about that. Last week we were winding up classes and all the girls were going their separate ways, so I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them. Also, I finally picked up my socks and started writing daily journal entries about my lectures (as I am supposed to be doing every day and remembered this last week) so I got sick of re-telling everything I was doing. I also got to talk with dad and Jen on the phone and I got to skype with Steve for the first time, so I have felt pretty plugged-in to the goings on in Canada. Haha, you’re all roasting and it’s only 20 degrees Celsius here!
I guess the most significant thing we did last week was we visited our second HIV clinic, except this one was in a really rural area. It was called Ikaya-Labomie and it was run by a woman who had lectured to us about traditional medicine named Patience. We had a ton of trouble finding the place because our driver is deaf, so he originally took us to a Zulu safari place which is also in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Funny! One of the girls was actually like “Cool! An AIDS clinic at a safari!” Haha :)
We ended up picking up an older lady who knew where it was and she had her grandson with her, so she got a free ride and all of us girls got to fawn over the baby. When we finally arrived at the clinic, I was struck by how massive it was. I had expected it to be the same as Hillcrest which only had about 50 beds, but this place looked like a huge storage building for farm machinery. Apparently it had been donated to the community. To my surprise when we went INTO the building, we discovered that it was empty. Completely. There was a fully equipped kitchen, about 200 beds, a section for children, lots of wheelchairs…and no people. It turns out they had run out of money to run the hospital and that it had been like this since 2009! I could not get over how a government would spend 9 million Rand (over a million CAD) equipping this huge hospital in an area with a really high HIV prevalence, and then refuse to give it funding to keep functioning. But, Patience told us hopefully, that she would be opening the hospital this week. I was pretty shocked, so I asked her about it. It turns out, the hospital runs almost completely on volunteers, except for a few doctors and herself (a registered nurse) and the community had gathered together enough money to get the hospital going. So, somehow, they were going to open this week (and every bed would be taken) without any stable source of income. Every place that our group visited on our ‘reality tours’, we gave a donation. Our donation for the hospital apparently was going toward starting a micro-business which would bring in a small amount of cash for the hospital. Now, I’m not sure if Patience is crazy (she just says that she has faith and that we all should too, which made me smile and laugh a bit), but she really believes that this will work. Looking back, it makes me sad to imagine what it will be like when the money runs dry and they have to close their doors again, but I think it will do a lot of good for the time it is open.
On the bright side though, we got to meet 2 lovely ladies who were friends with Patience who had been treated at the hospital when it was open. Both are HIV positive, and one (Kosi) has tuberculosis. This was my first time meeting someone who was openly HIV positive and needless to say, I was pretty excited :) Janet was the first person to talk with us and she was the most adorable woman I have ever met. She spoke in this really soft voice and she was obviously pretty shy (probably partially due to the fact that she was speaking in English and her first language is isiZulu). She giggled a lot and was so warm, cracking jokes about ‘jolling’ (a South African slang term for ‘having a good time’) and how that had lead to her being HIV positive. It was very inspiring to meet someone who looked so healthy and happy who is living with HIV. She is obviously on Anti-retrovirals (ARVs) which are said to have the “Lazarus effect” because people can be on the verge of death from HIV and then they get onto ARVs and are suddenly well. Anyway, it was a really enlightening experience and I’m glad I did it.
This week I started my placement. It is an amazing experience, I have never met so many people who are passionate about the same stuff as me! And they all keep inviting me back and telling me that I absolutely have to do grad school here :) I am feeling like the networking queen-I have had 2 meetings with Alan Whiteside who is one of the leading researchers in HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa and he is the director of Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD). He wrote the article that Khadija and I are doing an impact assessment for. I feel very grown up-I have my own office (well, me and Dij share) and I get to talk with people who are all finished their masters or have PhDs and talk with them about where their research is taking them. People cannot believe I only just finished my second year of my undergrad, I feel like I have won the lottery to be so privileged! There is an AIDS Conference going on here in Durban this week, so the office has been pretty quiet. I have all of next week to finish my half of the data analysis, but to be honest I think I will be finished my second draft by the end of today (Friday of the first week). Alan is going to give us odd jobs and let us sit in on meetings for the rest of the week-yaaaaaay! That is not sarcasm by the way.
We had a guest speaker come in from California to talk about how to implement valuable sex education programs in schools in South Africa and Dij and I got to sit in, which was really cool. He talked over my head a bit (because everyone other than me and Dij know lots about…basically everything) but it was still a really neat experience. It was the strangest feeling to be sitting in the board room taking notes on how to implement policy-I felt so adult! I have decided I really love HEARD. I should probably give some background about why there was ever any doubt.
Basically, in aid work/philanthropy/research for people with HIV/AIDS, there are 2 kinds of people in South Africa. There are the people who are DOING the work on the ground (like Patience and the people we met at Hillcrest and the group of women who we met at a meeting for ‘women in social movements in Durban’) and who understand the locals. Then there are the academics, who do research and write papers about what the best way is to do things. Often, there is very little communication between the 2 and the academics look down on the grassroots people (or ‘community scholars’ as they are sometimes known). This has been infuriating for me because I believe that your education should be achieved in order to make an impact. However, many professors are so out of touch with the real issues that they CAN’T make a difference (or choose not to). I have decided I like HEARD because it is really focused on bridging that gap. Everyone here does fieldwork while also doing research and a lot of them have established real relationships with community scholars. I think I would like working here.
Tonight Dij and I are flying out to Johannesburg for the weekend so we can see the apartheid museum and go on a tour of Soweto (South Western Township-a centre for protest during the fall of apartheid). Next Thursday is a national holiday to commemorate the Soweto uprisings in 1976 which sparked the beginning of the end of apartheid. Students (as young as eight) took to the streets in protest against the Bantu Education Act (which tailored education based on race-blacks could only learn basic trades and they schools were barely funded) and the newly appointed leaders of the Bantustans who were disconnected from the needs of the people and were known as ‘puppet governments’. The uprisings were relatively violent and they led to a movement among blacks to make the townships/Bantustans 'ungovernable'. All this hit the Western media, leading to increased sanctions and eventually, the crumbling of apartheid. Mandela and Desmond Tutu also both lived in Soweto. I am really looking forward to seeing it!
That’s all for now from me. Hope you all don’t melt from the heat :)
Love Heather
Obviously it’s been a while since I blogged, sorry about that. Last week we were winding up classes and all the girls were going their separate ways, so I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them. Also, I finally picked up my socks and started writing daily journal entries about my lectures (as I am supposed to be doing every day and remembered this last week) so I got sick of re-telling everything I was doing. I also got to talk with dad and Jen on the phone and I got to skype with Steve for the first time, so I have felt pretty plugged-in to the goings on in Canada. Haha, you’re all roasting and it’s only 20 degrees Celsius here!
I guess the most significant thing we did last week was we visited our second HIV clinic, except this one was in a really rural area. It was called Ikaya-Labomie and it was run by a woman who had lectured to us about traditional medicine named Patience. We had a ton of trouble finding the place because our driver is deaf, so he originally took us to a Zulu safari place which is also in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Funny! One of the girls was actually like “Cool! An AIDS clinic at a safari!” Haha :)
We ended up picking up an older lady who knew where it was and she had her grandson with her, so she got a free ride and all of us girls got to fawn over the baby. When we finally arrived at the clinic, I was struck by how massive it was. I had expected it to be the same as Hillcrest which only had about 50 beds, but this place looked like a huge storage building for farm machinery. Apparently it had been donated to the community. To my surprise when we went INTO the building, we discovered that it was empty. Completely. There was a fully equipped kitchen, about 200 beds, a section for children, lots of wheelchairs…and no people. It turns out they had run out of money to run the hospital and that it had been like this since 2009! I could not get over how a government would spend 9 million Rand (over a million CAD) equipping this huge hospital in an area with a really high HIV prevalence, and then refuse to give it funding to keep functioning. But, Patience told us hopefully, that she would be opening the hospital this week. I was pretty shocked, so I asked her about it. It turns out, the hospital runs almost completely on volunteers, except for a few doctors and herself (a registered nurse) and the community had gathered together enough money to get the hospital going. So, somehow, they were going to open this week (and every bed would be taken) without any stable source of income. Every place that our group visited on our ‘reality tours’, we gave a donation. Our donation for the hospital apparently was going toward starting a micro-business which would bring in a small amount of cash for the hospital. Now, I’m not sure if Patience is crazy (she just says that she has faith and that we all should too, which made me smile and laugh a bit), but she really believes that this will work. Looking back, it makes me sad to imagine what it will be like when the money runs dry and they have to close their doors again, but I think it will do a lot of good for the time it is open.
On the bright side though, we got to meet 2 lovely ladies who were friends with Patience who had been treated at the hospital when it was open. Both are HIV positive, and one (Kosi) has tuberculosis. This was my first time meeting someone who was openly HIV positive and needless to say, I was pretty excited :) Janet was the first person to talk with us and she was the most adorable woman I have ever met. She spoke in this really soft voice and she was obviously pretty shy (probably partially due to the fact that she was speaking in English and her first language is isiZulu). She giggled a lot and was so warm, cracking jokes about ‘jolling’ (a South African slang term for ‘having a good time’) and how that had lead to her being HIV positive. It was very inspiring to meet someone who looked so healthy and happy who is living with HIV. She is obviously on Anti-retrovirals (ARVs) which are said to have the “Lazarus effect” because people can be on the verge of death from HIV and then they get onto ARVs and are suddenly well. Anyway, it was a really enlightening experience and I’m glad I did it.
This week I started my placement. It is an amazing experience, I have never met so many people who are passionate about the same stuff as me! And they all keep inviting me back and telling me that I absolutely have to do grad school here :) I am feeling like the networking queen-I have had 2 meetings with Alan Whiteside who is one of the leading researchers in HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa and he is the director of Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD). He wrote the article that Khadija and I are doing an impact assessment for. I feel very grown up-I have my own office (well, me and Dij share) and I get to talk with people who are all finished their masters or have PhDs and talk with them about where their research is taking them. People cannot believe I only just finished my second year of my undergrad, I feel like I have won the lottery to be so privileged! There is an AIDS Conference going on here in Durban this week, so the office has been pretty quiet. I have all of next week to finish my half of the data analysis, but to be honest I think I will be finished my second draft by the end of today (Friday of the first week). Alan is going to give us odd jobs and let us sit in on meetings for the rest of the week-yaaaaaay! That is not sarcasm by the way.
We had a guest speaker come in from California to talk about how to implement valuable sex education programs in schools in South Africa and Dij and I got to sit in, which was really cool. He talked over my head a bit (because everyone other than me and Dij know lots about…basically everything) but it was still a really neat experience. It was the strangest feeling to be sitting in the board room taking notes on how to implement policy-I felt so adult! I have decided I really love HEARD. I should probably give some background about why there was ever any doubt.
Basically, in aid work/philanthropy/research for people with HIV/AIDS, there are 2 kinds of people in South Africa. There are the people who are DOING the work on the ground (like Patience and the people we met at Hillcrest and the group of women who we met at a meeting for ‘women in social movements in Durban’) and who understand the locals. Then there are the academics, who do research and write papers about what the best way is to do things. Often, there is very little communication between the 2 and the academics look down on the grassroots people (or ‘community scholars’ as they are sometimes known). This has been infuriating for me because I believe that your education should be achieved in order to make an impact. However, many professors are so out of touch with the real issues that they CAN’T make a difference (or choose not to). I have decided I like HEARD because it is really focused on bridging that gap. Everyone here does fieldwork while also doing research and a lot of them have established real relationships with community scholars. I think I would like working here.
Tonight Dij and I are flying out to Johannesburg for the weekend so we can see the apartheid museum and go on a tour of Soweto (South Western Township-a centre for protest during the fall of apartheid). Next Thursday is a national holiday to commemorate the Soweto uprisings in 1976 which sparked the beginning of the end of apartheid. Students (as young as eight) took to the streets in protest against the Bantu Education Act (which tailored education based on race-blacks could only learn basic trades and they schools were barely funded) and the newly appointed leaders of the Bantustans who were disconnected from the needs of the people and were known as ‘puppet governments’. The uprisings were relatively violent and they led to a movement among blacks to make the townships/Bantustans 'ungovernable'. All this hit the Western media, leading to increased sanctions and eventually, the crumbling of apartheid. Mandela and Desmond Tutu also both lived in Soweto. I am really looking forward to seeing it!
That’s all for now from me. Hope you all don’t melt from the heat :)
Love Heather
Sunday, 29 May 2011
May 29th
Hello!
There's not a lot going on for me here, it's a 4 day weekend and I didn't end up going away, so it's been lots of sleeping in and going out and seeing movies. I can't believe how close we are to being done the course! Thought I should give a brief update, though I have little to say. It finally got warm again and I tried once again today to work on my tan (which of course continues to be an epic failure). Hope all is well with everyone!
Love Heather
Thursday, 26 May 2011
May 26th-a week's worth of life!
Hello all!
Sorry it has been so long since I’ve written-I went to Cape Town and then I got sick. I have so much to catch up on!
Cape Town was unbelievable. We (me and 3 of the other girls) left last Friday morning and we stayed until Sunday evening. We stayed in a gorgeous hostel built into an old Victorian home with 3 floors and a beautiful veranda on the front. We stayed on Long Street which is the party central of Cape Town-basically any bar worth visiting or restaurant worth eating at is on this huge street. On our way to the hostel from the airport, we noticed all these people dressed in red walking in one direction. When we asked the taxi driver about it, he told us that there was a “football” (aka soccer) game happening in a little while at the World Cup stadium. So, we dropped off our stuff and rushed over to the stadium, only to find that they were sold out. However, we found a way in by talking with one of the ticket sellers, who tried to rip me off by pretending that I hadn’t paid him when his boss came around. Anyway, we got in eventually and it was PACKED. We ended up snagging really awesome seats and getting to watch a game between Ajax Cape Town and Maritzburg United for Johannesburg was definitely an experience to remember.
That night we went bar hopping and got to meet lots of locals and even a group from Toronto! However, we ended up needing to sleep in after getting in at 3am, so we didn’t do Robben Island in the morning. Instead we went to Table Mountain because it was clear and the view was breathtaking. I really don’t feel like I can do what we saw justice with words. If you want an idea of how beautiful it is, google “Table Mountain” and then imagine legitimately seeing that. It was a 10 minute cable car ride and then we wandered around on the top for a few hours. It was amazing to think that hundreds of years ago, the Dutch East India Company saw this mountain in the distance and were like “Cool! How about we set up a refreshment station over here?” So, I was a fan. Then we used our tickets for the tourist bus (which is the most stereotypical bus you have ever seen in your life! Including it being a double decker) which took us on a tour all along the coast and let us know a bit about what we were seeing. At certain points, there were trees which were bent in half because of the power of the wind off the ocean. It blew my mind. I am totally not going to be able to cover everything we saw and experienced, but I decided that I like Cape Town a great deal more than Durban and that I would love to live there some day. The only thing that really sucked was that it was too windy on Monday, so we didn’t get to go to Robben Island (which was my entire goal of going to Cape Town). However, I got to see a football game, go up Table Mountain, hear live jazz music on the waterfront, and go to an apartheid museum, so overall I am very satisfied.
Tuesday we had a tour of a muthi market, which is a marketplace which sells traditional African medicines (barks, herbs, dead monkeys, alligator skins...pretty much anything you can imagine). It was definitely an excellent learning experience. I feel like I finally experienced what I had expected of Africa. Our group stuck out like sore thumbs (since we were the only white people there and we wanted to ask lots of questions and take photos) but it was a really cool learning experience. The woman who led us is named Mama Dudu and she is training to become a sangoma (which is a traditional healer). It is believed in Zulu culture that you are ‘called’ to become a healer-usually through having serious medical issues and persevering through them or by having unusual dreams. She was really great at answering our questions about the properties of the different things we saw and she sat down with us afterword and told us her story of being called and the struggles she has faced, especially coming from a Christian background. Muthi is interesting because it is directly translated into English as both ‘medicine’ and ‘poison’, so it can be used in medicine or in what is traditionally considered ‘witchcraft’. Not really my area of interest, but it was a really good way to learn about indigenous beliefs, especially since it is crucial to understand spirituality when trying to understand a people.
Wednesday we had a lecture with the research fellow for the Centre for Civil Society named Shauna. She lectured on Social Movements which was really interesting since that’s pretty central to our conversations at home and to the history of South Africa. The ten of us were a bit uncertain of what to expect from her because she was very disdainful of our lecture last Thursday about traditional medicine and she was outwardly condescending toward the lecturer. Despite what we feel about her personality, she was an awesome lecturer and I feel like I learned a lot. We looked in depth at social movements fighting for the right to water (called the Anti-Privatization Front), the right to electricity (which is localized in Soweto) and my favourite, the Treatment Action Campaign which called for access for all to free ARVs for those with a CD4 count over 200. Ok, for those of you confused by my AIDS-jargon I will clarify. ARVs are Anti-retrovirals and they are the treatment which is provided to people who are HIV positive in order to prevent the virus from progressing into full-blow AIDS. There are 3 different drug regiments with ARVs and one must follow their prescription very carefully in order to make sure their body does not build up immunity to it. If your body builds up immunity to one, you move onto the next. There are also different ARVs tailored to the different strands of HIV. There has been a great deal of problems in South Africa with getting people access to ARVs because their second president after the end of apartheid, Thabo Mbeki argued that they were toxic (and also took a stance that HIV did not cause AIDS and was not infecting 7000 new people every day, which was obviously inaccurate and very dangerous). CD4 count is associated with your white blood cells and the level of infection in your body. I hope that this provides some clarity. I am particularly interested in this stuff and I will be writing my paper for this class on AIDS under Mbeki and how social movements (like the Treatment Action Campaign) were able to affect change when Mbeki was not creating any.
Today we had our second field trip and we went to an HIV centre called Hillcrest in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. It is a holistic centre created for respite and support for people with AIDS. Created by the Methodist Church 20 years ago, this centre has been a beacon of hope for many in the townships of surrounding areas. We were led around by the executive director Judy who was able to talk to us in great depth about the various projects which have been created to make the centre self-sustaining. There is a workshop for making crafts including quilting, sewing, intricate beadwork, and pottery and then a store to sell it in and a nursery for selling plants to the rich people in the surrounding area. They have their own water tanks which are fuelled by the rain and are used for irrigating the plants but also for providing water to the respite building.
This organization was fascinating to me for several reasons. It receives a great deal of its funding from the Stephen Lewis Foundation which is Canadian and amazing. Also, they have several things in place to help the people who work there from burning out, including a policy that after 3 years of work, you must take 8 weeks off. They also have “Tea for Compassion” events once a year for the staff to give them something fun to do. Most of the staff who works at the centre are people who have gone through rehabilitation and are on ARVs or are nurses. There is also in home care available-the respite centre is only for those who are ill enough that they are going to die.
The respite part was the most amazing part for me because they refused to make it a hospice since a hospice implies that you are going to die. This respite centre is focused on wellness and love, which is clearly successful because it will have 58% of people admitted who are ready to die, but by the end of the year, 58% of the people will be well enough to go home. It is not a religious centre (they do not preach to the people there and they are focused most on acceptance) but they believe in the physical manifestation of the things which Jesus preached, like living out unconditional love. Judy said that she believes that if Jesus were alive today, she thinks that He would be doing something like this. This message of love was very hard-hitting for me and it was so unbelievable to experience something so centred around the principles which I try to live my life by. I was brought to tears several times throughout the experience out of sadness for the loss of life suffered in that place (7 people died there last week). There was a beautiful wall out back with little pieces of pottery with names on each one which were to commemorate all the people who had been through the centre and died. It is incredibly poignant to put people to the statistics which I have been studying. But, the tears I cried at that moment were mostly because of the hope that it filled me with for people who are in need. The dedication of the people in this centre to empowering those in need was truly amazing. I will look back at today for the rest of my life with the understanding that what I saw is a motivator for who I want to be. I know I will definitely be back and I hope to bring some of you with me so that you can also see what I did and be moved to see the world in a different light.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Hello all!
I’m at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal again today using the free internet! Yay free things! I’ve been paying .50 rand a minute since I arrived, which is pretty cheap, but anything that costs money still sucks. However, it has a ban on accessing facebook which is going to be complicated :P
Today we had my favourite lecture so far about HIV/AIDS and people with disabilities and also the opportunistic infections which latch onto people with AIDS, such as tuberculosis. I wouldn’t say it is the most interesting topic we’ve studied, but the lecturer was very engaging and was able to give us stories of her personal experiences working with people with disabilities who suffer from HIV/AIDS. South Africa is one of the worst countries in the world for gender violence (rivaled only by the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and this is my area of interest, which intersects closely with people with AIDS. She told stories about how complex it is for women who have suffered from gender violence to receive assistance for their problems because the health care system is sorely lacking (especially in terms of counseling) and the police system here is pretty corrupt, so if a woman reports rape then the file will often be “lost” because the police have been bribed. This is clearly a huge problem. She was very real, even though the stories she told were very hard to hear. It was inspiring to meet someone who is pioneering a new area of research and seeing tangible differences in how they implement their policy. South Africa has a strategy for dealing with AIDS called the National Strategic Plan (NSP) and she will be the person who writes about what the next version of the NSP will need to do in covering people with disabilities when considering AIDS, which will be hugely influential for people here.
Yesterday we got to sleep in and then had a lecture at Hippo Hide on the history of South Africa, done by Professor Klausen (the professor supervising us who came from Carleton). It was mostly stuff I already knew from my previous history classes, so I don’t feel like I learned a ton. It’s interesting here how all the buildings and highways are named after historical figures (just like anywhere in the world) but these people are closely linked to the history of apartheid. For example, Shepstone is the name of one of the buildings at the university and he was one of the people instrumental in creating the ideas of ‘separate development’ in the 1800s which would shape the policies of the National Party under apartheid. He was incredibly racist, and yet this school is mostly populated by black students and I feel that it is a very strange situation. Weird.
On a totally non-academic note, I have done more shopping here than I ever have at home. I guess it’s because that’s mostly what the other girls are interested in. But we went to a mall yesterday which would completely shatter anyone’s stereotypes about Africa as a completely impoverished continent. It was MASSIVE! I’m looking forward to doing more interesting stuff though J Alana and I booked our plane tickets to Cape Town this weekend which will be totally different and unbelievable.
Today I find out what is going on with my placement. I may end up going and living in a safe (I stress this word because I know mom is freaking out when she reads this!) township for 3 weeks and working within the community at a grassroots NGO which deals with access to services like electricity and water, while also helping out in the community garden and doing whatever they need. It sounds WAY more hands-on than the research paper, so hopefully I get it! I am going to have my interview for it in 20 minutes and then I will know J
Well, that’s all for now.
Love Heather
I’m at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal again today using the free internet! Yay free things! I’ve been paying .50 rand a minute since I arrived, which is pretty cheap, but anything that costs money still sucks. However, it has a ban on accessing facebook which is going to be complicated :P
Today we had my favourite lecture so far about HIV/AIDS and people with disabilities and also the opportunistic infections which latch onto people with AIDS, such as tuberculosis. I wouldn’t say it is the most interesting topic we’ve studied, but the lecturer was very engaging and was able to give us stories of her personal experiences working with people with disabilities who suffer from HIV/AIDS. South Africa is one of the worst countries in the world for gender violence (rivaled only by the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and this is my area of interest, which intersects closely with people with AIDS. She told stories about how complex it is for women who have suffered from gender violence to receive assistance for their problems because the health care system is sorely lacking (especially in terms of counseling) and the police system here is pretty corrupt, so if a woman reports rape then the file will often be “lost” because the police have been bribed. This is clearly a huge problem. She was very real, even though the stories she told were very hard to hear. It was inspiring to meet someone who is pioneering a new area of research and seeing tangible differences in how they implement their policy. South Africa has a strategy for dealing with AIDS called the National Strategic Plan (NSP) and she will be the person who writes about what the next version of the NSP will need to do in covering people with disabilities when considering AIDS, which will be hugely influential for people here.
Yesterday we got to sleep in and then had a lecture at Hippo Hide on the history of South Africa, done by Professor Klausen (the professor supervising us who came from Carleton). It was mostly stuff I already knew from my previous history classes, so I don’t feel like I learned a ton. It’s interesting here how all the buildings and highways are named after historical figures (just like anywhere in the world) but these people are closely linked to the history of apartheid. For example, Shepstone is the name of one of the buildings at the university and he was one of the people instrumental in creating the ideas of ‘separate development’ in the 1800s which would shape the policies of the National Party under apartheid. He was incredibly racist, and yet this school is mostly populated by black students and I feel that it is a very strange situation. Weird.
On a totally non-academic note, I have done more shopping here than I ever have at home. I guess it’s because that’s mostly what the other girls are interested in. But we went to a mall yesterday which would completely shatter anyone’s stereotypes about Africa as a completely impoverished continent. It was MASSIVE! I’m looking forward to doing more interesting stuff though J Alana and I booked our plane tickets to Cape Town this weekend which will be totally different and unbelievable.
Today I find out what is going on with my placement. I may end up going and living in a safe (I stress this word because I know mom is freaking out when she reads this!) township for 3 weeks and working within the community at a grassroots NGO which deals with access to services like electricity and water, while also helping out in the community garden and doing whatever they need. It sounds WAY more hands-on than the research paper, so hopefully I get it! I am going to have my interview for it in 20 minutes and then I will know J
Well, that’s all for now.
Love Heather
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
May 17th
Hello!
So today I had my second day of class. Yesterday was a lecture by Andrew Gibbs, a researcher at HEARD (HIV/AIDS Education and Research Division) about gender inequality and AIDS. I absolutely loved it, though the other girls much preferred the lecture today which was by a PhD student about sexual and reproductive health in South Africa. It has been really interesting doing the readings and learning more about this fabulous country :) All the girls are really great at engaging in discussion and I feel like I am discovering ideas and perspectives that are shaping my ideas for what I want to do professionally.
Tomorrow is a holiday because it is the national elections, which given South Africa's history are a big deal. The ANC (African National Congress) which was a major player in the fight against apartheid has remained in power since the onset of democracy with Nelson Mandela in 1994 is likely to win again. Everyone we've talked to on campus seems to be voting for them. They have such a vibrant sense of their civic duty to vote in this country! To raise awareness about the different political parties, people will drive around in brightly coloured cars, honking their horns and playing loud music with people dressed in bright clothing hanging out the windows. It is almost like a parade! It is something I am really jealous of. That and their incredibly liberal constitution here. Second generation rights (such as the right to clean water) are entrenched in their constitution, making it the most progressive constitution in the world. I think that's awesome :) However, implementation is where the problems are created. I am curious to see whether the new government will tackle problems of health, education, and access to clean water (all of which are sorely lacking).
On Sunday a few of the girls and myself took a cab down to the city (because we are living in a fairly wealthy suburb about a 15 minute cab ride from the centre) to go shopping in a mall which was built in an old factory. It was so cool! There was a man playing ragtime music on an old piano in the middle of the mall. I was obviously in love :) Then we walked to city hall to see the natural history museum, which was nothing special. The real experience was actually walking around in an African city. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous because of how much Western society (and people I know) have built up South Africa as a dangerous place, but honestly, it was fine. I look forward to going back again!
I continue my quest for real coffee. I have been living off instant coffee for a week, and every time I buy what seems to be a cup of regular coffee, it is either instant or full of milk. BLAAAH! However, if that's all I have to complain of, I'm pretty satisfied.
I'm planning on a quiet night tonight, doing my history readings for tomorrow (Professor Klausen is going to come to Hippo Hide at 11:30 and give us our lecture here). I have been feeling weird and antsy today, so I want to chill and try to kick it.
Love Heather
So today I had my second day of class. Yesterday was a lecture by Andrew Gibbs, a researcher at HEARD (HIV/AIDS Education and Research Division) about gender inequality and AIDS. I absolutely loved it, though the other girls much preferred the lecture today which was by a PhD student about sexual and reproductive health in South Africa. It has been really interesting doing the readings and learning more about this fabulous country :) All the girls are really great at engaging in discussion and I feel like I am discovering ideas and perspectives that are shaping my ideas for what I want to do professionally.
Tomorrow is a holiday because it is the national elections, which given South Africa's history are a big deal. The ANC (African National Congress) which was a major player in the fight against apartheid has remained in power since the onset of democracy with Nelson Mandela in 1994 is likely to win again. Everyone we've talked to on campus seems to be voting for them. They have such a vibrant sense of their civic duty to vote in this country! To raise awareness about the different political parties, people will drive around in brightly coloured cars, honking their horns and playing loud music with people dressed in bright clothing hanging out the windows. It is almost like a parade! It is something I am really jealous of. That and their incredibly liberal constitution here. Second generation rights (such as the right to clean water) are entrenched in their constitution, making it the most progressive constitution in the world. I think that's awesome :) However, implementation is where the problems are created. I am curious to see whether the new government will tackle problems of health, education, and access to clean water (all of which are sorely lacking).
On Sunday a few of the girls and myself took a cab down to the city (because we are living in a fairly wealthy suburb about a 15 minute cab ride from the centre) to go shopping in a mall which was built in an old factory. It was so cool! There was a man playing ragtime music on an old piano in the middle of the mall. I was obviously in love :) Then we walked to city hall to see the natural history museum, which was nothing special. The real experience was actually walking around in an African city. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous because of how much Western society (and people I know) have built up South Africa as a dangerous place, but honestly, it was fine. I look forward to going back again!
I continue my quest for real coffee. I have been living off instant coffee for a week, and every time I buy what seems to be a cup of regular coffee, it is either instant or full of milk. BLAAAH! However, if that's all I have to complain of, I'm pretty satisfied.
I'm planning on a quiet night tonight, doing my history readings for tomorrow (Professor Klausen is going to come to Hippo Hide at 11:30 and give us our lecture here). I have been feeling weird and antsy today, so I want to chill and try to kick it.
Love Heather
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