following the week we came back from Jo'burg was the Street Childrens' World Cup. After that we had the last of the lectures for the Social and Political Transformation Seminar. These lectures focused on the Reconciliation and Development process of SA which included the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and topics on the arts, music and dance, and football. and with for the past week each of us has been volunteering with a respective NGO while living with an Indian family in another township about 15 minutes away from Durban city center.
TIMELINE: end of ngo week on the 31st. we attend Splashy Fen Music Festival in the Drakensburg mountains April 1-4. it will be great. music four whole days, hundreds, maybe thousands of people? and then we move onto the Independent Study Project phase. will be blogging more soon
we are blessed, for during the spring (fall season in SA) there are many holidays throughout the semester. we have had one day off already and will essentially be having four-day weeks for the next 3 or 4 weeks. it really makes me conclude that spring semester is THE time to study abroad in South Africa. not to mention the upcoming Splashy Fen Festival.
during the week of the Street Children World Cup, we moved out of our Cato Manor homestay families on the 20th after spending thirty nights in total with them. it was bittersweet. I really love my african family but I was also ready to move on. I will definitely be visiting while I am still in SA. my family and I were also interviewed to be feature in a local newspaper. the article should talk about our experiences living with African families etc. as I am writing this blog, I really do miss my Cato Manor family (more so my real family). It was a very good experience and is one of the highlights of any SIT program. I had a very good experience with my family and I believe it worked both ways.
we were given the weekend of March 21-23 off, the 23rd was a holiday. we spent the weekend at a backpackers and it was nice to have everyone altogether. the arts lectures during the week did not really interest me. I appreciate the arts, music and dance, a lot. I really do but I don't feel the need to study it so deeply, although interesting. we were able to hear different types of SA music born out of the apartheid era which was cool. and honestly, I was falling asleep during the dance lecture. not that the lecturer was boring, I was just tired.
the very last lecture for our seminar was on Soccer and Reconciliation which had one main person from ACCORD (the conflict resolution ngo we visited earlier in the program) and the technical director of football for AmaZulu FC here in Durban. He spent time as national team coach of Sierra Leone and Rwanda. he spoke about his experiences and football as a tool for reconciliation in conflict-ridden areas. to learn about his life, the dangers and successes, was very cool. he is doing what he loves and at the same time healing nations. he had to leave the lecture early because he is helping out with a soccer tournament for, I forget, but some sector of the marginalized. I will be giving him a call soon to learn more about this tournament project and hopefully get involved and integrate it into my ISP (which is coming up fast!) and then get a trial with AmaZulu and then become a pro-footballer and move to Europe and live the dream…
the other man from ACCORD spoke about various programs in Africa and how football was used for reconciliation in countries like SA, Ivory Coast and Algeria. countries that'll be involved in the upcoming World Cup. it is just amazing how football can be utilized all over the world. and I believe that not other sport has the power to get such a huge amount of people together simply because no other sport is as popular as football all over the world. time and again football has united countries, regions, continents and people from different ethnic backgrounds and making it work. it was good to end the seminar on a positive lecture. it also got me pumped up for the World Cup.
so with the end of the seminar, we are spending the week which is about to come to a close by each doing community service in diff ngos. I am with two other girls and we were inspired by the Street Childs' WC to work with street children. we wanted to work with the org directly involved with SCWC but it didn't work out so we were placed with their rival org. Icare is composed of three stages. stage 1, pick kids from the street and take them into the house where they can hang out all day, are fed, go to the beach, do dance, art and other things together. this is the stage to introduce them to the rehab phase. stage 2 is a rehab phase that lasts for 3 months. what they do for 3 months, I don't know exactly. and when they "graduate" the kids are reunited and reconciled with their families or if it is a difficult situation with the direct parents, Icare finds other relatives for the child to stay with. and they are put in school, the family gets a little compensation, the org also helps the family out by for example, pushing the local government to provide the guaranteed housing, etc. they do good things, but I am not as happy because when we are at the 'house' we don't really do anything but hang out. basically, there isn't any work given. today we spent the day going around a community about 50kms outside durban, looking for a kid's aunt for housing. we spent hours looking for this woman using neighbors, the granny, etc and still did not find this elusive woman. we got a phone number and they got one too and things should get sorted out for that kid some other time.
during ngo week we have been staying with and Indian family. tonight is the last night and it has been great. there are tons of Indians in kwaZulu-Natal (Mahatma Gandhi spent a lot of time here) and we are staying in an Indian township during apartheid. the families we stay with are considerably more comfortable than our African families. showers, cars, satellite TV, the works but still middle-class sector. our dad has been with TelKom for 33 years, bro works and sister is studying Physiotherapy in Durban. our mom used to have a restaurant by the beach front and works with her friends in a catering business. she cooks very well. Indian curries, spiciness, I love it. her food is amazing so we've definitely been eating well and my tummy has been happy. it has been great and they love to have people over. i'd say it has been less stressful than the Cato Manor homestead because there are less cultural barriers. the families live comfortably and there are things in common in terms of things we do etc.
i'll stop for now but I will try to be better at updating the blog! haven't had much internet time for the past week or so.
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