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
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