Because I haven’t been doing the best job keeping up with my blog for the past couple entries, I’ve posted a bunch of entries all at the same time so bear with me. On top of that, our internet at our bed and breakfast is too expensive to be downloading and uploading onto the blog, so this way I’m saving time and money. Nice.
Anyway on to the important things…
I thought I’d give you some basic information on the NGO I’m interning with this summer. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was started in 1998 by AIDS rights activists in South Africa. Again, in the interest of time and space, I won’t go into much detail about the group’s history here but if you want to wiki it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_Action_Campaign. The primary goal of the organization is to raise awareness and to mobilize governments around the world to ensure that all people who are HIV positive are given the proper antiretroviral treatment that they need to survive, regardless of social or economic status. This has been a huge struggle in South Africa especially due to the AIDS denialists who have unfortunately had a strong presence in the government, including former president Mbeki, who in my opinion, may be one of the worst things that has happened to this country post-apartheid. I’m working with the PCR department in the Cape Town office this summer. My primary goals: 1) to learn how an NGO works from the inside, 2) to explore all the different aspects of global health and activism that I could go into, 3) to develop some good networking connections, 4) to get a sweet “HIV positive” trademark t-shirt from the group.
Here’s what my week looked like:
MONDAY
My first day of work! Or half day at least. Everyone went to their respective internship sites this morning. I’m the only member from our group working at TAC, with the others interning in law offices, policy programs, teaching, or working at a local museum. I’m the token health child. Every time our group is introduced as “history and public policy” majors I’m sure to put in my science words. Can’t get drowned out you know? At any rate, my first hour at my internship was crap. Bill and Karlyn took each of us to our sites to make sure we could find our way there and to assure that we actually had internships. They stayed with me for a grand total of thirty seconds before one of the girls in the office took me in. She, unfortunately, was not super friendly at first. I didn’t need someone to take me into their arms and tell me how excited they were to have me there. But she did basically the opposite. Her reaction, along with many others, was “another intern?” Thanks guys, really. Way to make me feel welcome. Like I said, it did get better once the head of the department, Rebecca Hodes, finally came in. This woman is SUCH a rockstar. She immediately came up to me and made me feel like I would actually have a purpose this summer other than taking up valuable desk space. I basically spent the remainder of the day reading up on TAC and a couple of the magazines they put out, as well as taking advantage of the free internet at the office. All in all, a pretty slow first day.
Anybody who really knows me knows that my sense of direction is not my strongest trait. Not at all. So of course, because I had to walk home alone from my internship site, I got lost. For…I don’t know…maybe...an hour? Not good in Cape Town. I have never been a paranoid person when it comes to walking alone by myself. I’ve been to big cities, go to school in Durham, and walked around the streets of Cairo by myself, and never really felt uncomfortable. That is definitely not the case here. Cape Town is so unnerving to walk around. We here so much about people getting mugged that when you’re walking on a street alone and the only people on that street are a couple guys hanging out on the corner with no obvious purpose for being there, you don’t necessarily feel like you’re strolling in the Duke gardens. After asking a couple people for directions and having Victoria guide me over the phone, I eventually made it back to the B&B in one whole piece. But I’m not too keen on walking around alone anymore.
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