One hot South African summer: Orientation, Township Tour, Cape Town

Monday February 6, 2012

All the new volunteers were to meet at 8am for orientation at apartment 11. Kamryn (my savior from the Amsterdam airport) and I left in time to make sure we could find it. Apparently flying 22 hours does not give me any more sense of direction than I have in the states, so needless to say we wandered around a bit and actually ended up finding a few other new volunteers who were also lost. We phoned Iviwe (the director of Dreams to Reality) and she ended up fetching us. It worked out because everyone else was late too so showing up a half hour late was not an issue.

Once we got all the paperwork out of the way and Tim (the director of Dreams to Reality) gave us a nice fatherly spiel about staying safe, we were off to tour “The Township” (slum). All 19 of us packed into a 12 passenger van. Formerly strangers, we were not more. Our first stop once we reached Capricorn Township was Mary’s Creche.  The last wave of volunteers painted the front wooden gates sky blue and helped put up siding on the tin and wooden rooms where the kids play. 

Glass lined the walkway and a dog was tied to the tree barking as we walked up and we were welcomed with open arms by Mary and her family.  We walked through her house and in the back area are a few added rooms from tin and wood that serve as the rooms for the childcare. I was the first to walk into the room with the little toddlers and one little boy just ran up and gave me a huge hug. My heart completely melted! He started talking to me in Africans but when I responded he quickly switched to English.

Malory a volunteer who has been working with the kids for about three weeks now brought grape scented bubbles for the kids to use and you would have thought they all won the Golden Ticket from Willey Wanka the way they were shouting.

We stayed there for about 15 minutes and then were off to the next Kreche around the corner. Jolene’s runs the Creche called “God’s Gifts Day Care”. We pushed open a piece of tin that usually serves a roofing material that they used for a gate to keep the children contained and the stray dogs from the Township out. There was absolutely NO air flow when we walked into the center, there were about 30 kids running around in one tiny room, 2 infants shared a mattress on the floor sleeping. All the kids were soaking wet with sweat, as were the volunteers who were currently helping there. One tiny ceiling fan, that only works on the lowest setting slowly turned. None of the windows opened so the front door stood wide open to try and help with the air flow.  Many of the kids sleep on the floor with no blankets, which maybe fine in the summer but in the winter it is very rainy and chilly and the room sometimes floods.

The next stop was a more formal child care center in the Township called Sunrise. The government subsidizes food and supplies for 97 students.Tthere are over 300 kids at the center at any given time. Within the last 2 months, a daycare nearby got into  trouble for abusing  kids so Sunrise built extra rooms for the 50 extra kids after parents came to the center asking for help.  The government will not recognize the new buildings or approve them and therefore, Sunrise has to ask local businesses and locals to help with food and necessities to help run the center. But local funding isn’t always guaranteed.

Last on the Township tour was the elementary school called Christian David’s. The school shares the property with a church. The pastor of the church doesn’t want the kids to come or worship.  When we first arrived, we were greeted by the principal and then shown the grounds. We went into a 6^th grade class when they were having their math lesson and they all stood in attention in their school uniforms and greeted the volunteers “Hello Teachers, welcome to our class.

They have a storage container that they converted into a computer lab for the older kids. There were six computers with the basics to help prepare the kids for computer technology in high school.  Recently all of the hard drives were removed from the computers so the kids haven’t been able to go to the lab. 

In the classroom they have for the fourth graders there are 55 students in one non air-conditioned trailer that they have converted into a classroom because non of the classrooms in the school are big enough to hold all but the trailer itself is not much bigger.

The First Grade has a 50% failure rate. Many of the kids do not know colors, letters, numbers, or any of what we would consider the “basics”.

After our Township tour we took the train from Muizenberg into Cape Town which was about a fourty minute ride in 3^rd class. We walked through greenmarket square where they have all sorts of street venders. I resisted buying anything for the time being but I will definitely need another carry –on for the plane ride home for the souvenirs and the kids. Everyone has been more than welcoming.