We are Watching: Day 2 (Thurs 06/11)

I was right, today was even better than yesterday! After some miscommunication with the the coordinator of advocacy for ARASA Paula,  I ended up following her to the ARASA to help with the poster making. I know it sounds lame, but it was way way WAY better than failing at finding any helpful stats for Marcus and Pouya.

I can’t even count how many posters I made that said things like “Knock Out the Stock Outs!,” “HIV/TB are not in recession,” etc. But what I can tell you is that it was super cool to see all these people carrying my posters around at the march today. If I can figure out how to post pictures, you can see for yourself all my craftiness. If not, you’ll see in August.

The march was really powerful, an exaggerated version of yesterday’s protest. African people do protest in an interesting way though. It involves a lot of singing and dancing, which I definitely got in on. If you were watching from a distance, you would think that the protestors were celebrating. Odd. I feel like protests in the States tend to be more somber and/or angry. It was truly amazing to see all these different people coming together for one cause. I feel like this country is so often divided into White, Coloured, and Black, but when it comes to HIV/AIDS/TB, the fight is colorblind. People of all colors finally have the same enemy, not one another, but this killer disease. I guess there is something that unifies the majority of this country. Now if we could only get rid of all the AIDS denalists…

One interesting pressing moment that I did have today involved me getting yelled at by a coloured women while I was helping to guard the massive eyeball. (p,.s. It was still there in the parking spot this morning!) Thinking that I was a coloured South African, this woman started speaking to me in Afrikaans. I told her I didn’t speak the language, which I clearly said in English, and she started to yell at me! Her English speaking friend told her that I was AMERICAN and that there was no need to yell at me for not claiming my mother language. What the hell??? Afrikaans isn’t even the language of South Africa, there are 11 remember lady? It really threw me off. But only for about 30 seconds, and then I was off on the march.

Maybe I’m making a little bit of a difference? I’d like to think so…

Ukuthula,

Lynn