Week 5: BITE ME...

... is apparently what I said to the ferocious-looking stray dog on the porch of my host family's house.
OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH!
I never thought a beagle could be so nasty, but their bite is most definitely worse than their bark.
Well to be fair, its merely a blue-ish/purple bruise now, no blood drawn [don't worry!], but yes, I guess township stray dogs don't mess around.
So that was a lovely end to a long day in De Doorns! Oooch.

This week we left around 5.45am on Friday, to make it to the school in time to announce our new round of Grassroots Soccer training sessions [a grassroots program that teaches kids about HIV/AIDS and life skills through soccer]. We made it there bright and early, and watched a lovely sun rise on the drive there.


Going to the school was a neat experience, and  it will be exciting to get to work with the local kids more through out the next few months.

The rest of the day we ran errands:

• We met with a farmer, who signed a contract for our associate organization to start the solar panel project in town [building a small plant & generating a moderate amount of power in the valley]. 
• We met with the local banks to see how difficult it would be to open an account for our new organization (TDG).
• We bought new tools and chicken wire to add to the fence to keep the rubbish [burning & other kinds] from floating on into our garden.
• We added the wire to the fence, watered the plants, and weeded the terrible weeds away from their death-grip on our poor baby seedlings.

                                                          All in all it was  a pretty productive day!

The radish is still doing the best!

Friday night we then had a meeting to plan the budget for TDG, which took a few hours of long, concentrated work. After the long, intensive meeting I headed back to my host family, where I was unwelcomed by that ruffian beagle dog. Long day!

Saturday we couldn't stay around for long as we had another meeting at 12 back near Cape Town in Philippi, so we got up early and headed back. 

The meeting Saturday was for a separate program that we're working on [one of the many!]. This other project is the Unite As One Campaign, promoting Unity in Africa and acceptance of cultural diversity. This year the campaign is focusing on local High Schools, getting them involved in various aspects of the campaign. We have cultural diversity workshops in 12 schools, documentary screenings followed by empowering discussions, mural paintings, awareness days [World Refugee Day in June], and a Film making project. Saturday we went to announce our film making project to the schools chosen. We'll select 12 kids to take part, and through training and facilitation, they'll learn and produce a documentary that tells a story about their area, and views on cultural diversity. Super cool! I wish I could take part!

So we showed up at this meeting, and waited for our turn to make the announcement. As we arrived there was a lady from a department of the South African government there talking about xenophobia. She proceeded to claim that at present, there is no xenophobia in South Africa, and that since the attacks in 2009, South Africa hasn't had any problems besides minor threats here and there. WOW. I found it so hard to believe that she blatently lie to all of these kids so easily. Not only is it a lie (as our interns here compile a weekly report of all the cases of xenophobia in the country/continent), but its a lie to this group of kids that have themselves experienced the xenophobia, and had to live in the camps themselves. At least it looked like a smart group of kids, and I hope they're being taught to question this "authority figure" because she was lying through her teeth! geez. 

Either way, the kids seemed very motivated to combat issues of xenophobia, as they were all at this meeting because of their motivation to be Peace Ambassadors at their school, promoting Peace and Ubuntu (borderless-ness). They were also very receptive to our proposition, and were enthusiastic to write the essays to be selected for our film making program!

The weekend was very full and also quite successful!

"Giiiiiiiiiiirllll, your trash is on Fiiiiiire"

This week on Tuesday we went back to Philippi, for a meeting and we saw these crazy black billowing clouds coming right from the area we were supposed to have our meeting. Well it turned out it was about 100meters from the office space, but still, a bit too close for comfort. As an extension of my commentary on the problem of rubbish burning in the townships, here's a great big example of how bad it can get. Not only do all of the people in the area have to breathe in this soot, but the dry landscape seems to scare me a bit, although somehow they manage to control the burns (I think/hope).

More to come next week!

Keep the Peace!

-Laura