BLOG UPDATE

GREAT NEWS! I figured out how to post pictures today on my blog, so now you can see whatever it is I've been writing about! I'll go back and add in pictures to old posts, too. Apparently I can post videos as well, but that might be too intense for me just yet.

EXAMPLE: This is where I am :) Ok, maybe it's a lame first picture but they'll get way better, I promise.

p.s. Thank you everyone who's been commenting. I just found those today, too! 

Bye bye Cape Town for the next four days (Fri 06/26)

I’m having mixed feelings about leaving at this point. Part of me is definitely excited for a change and anxious to see more parts of SA, but another part of me is getting pretty attached to the area. I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just thought it was interesting that I’m finally developing some sort of bond to the town.

So of course, because we’re traveling as a group, for some reason that requires us waking up waaaaaaay earlier than necessary to get around. I don’t even want to talk about what time we woke up, but it was early as hell. Especially for me since for some stupid reason I didn’t think it was a good idea to pack last night and so had to wake up extra early this morning to manage to stuff my things into my backpack and longchamp for the weekend. Success!

The airport was so ridiculous. It was filled with rugby fans traveling around with their team for the rugby equivalent of the World Cup. These people are die hard. I mean, there are hundreds, probably thousands of fans, traveling with their team! One gentleman said that he had heard that over 30,000 people were moving around SA today. Out of control. Is it really that horrible to maybe watch the game at home with a group of other die hard fans? Apparently it is.

I was feeling pretty good when we first arrived to the Durban area. That’s where we were flying to by the way. Fly from Cape Town to Durban, spend the afternoon there, and then drive to Pietermaritzburg in the evening which is about an hour away. I say I was feeling pretty good because I definitely slept on Anthony the whole plane ride over. The poor kid has turned into my nap-on buddy.

Our time in Durban involved museums and the beach. I’m sure you’ll never be able to guess which part I enjoyed more. Funny story though, we definitely went to the wrong museum at first, courtesy of our bus driver. We were all walking around looking for some stories on apartheid, and were getting nothing. It was really random, and I’m not sure who figured out that we were in the wrong location but we eventually made it to the right museum for a quick walk-through before lunch on the beach. Lunch sucked, but I’ve also not really been enjoying any of my food lately so I’m probably a biased source. After lunch was awesome though because we got to go in the ocean! I wasn’t planning on it since my hair was straight and the water was cold, but that was a huge fail. I have a lot of trouble resisting the ocean, and this big Indian one was calling my name. Minor problem that I didn’t have a towel. At least it was minor until I got out and almost froze my butt off. Really though, that was the coldest part of my body. TMI maybe? Sorry…

Our drive to Pietermaritzburg was maybe about an hour long, I’m not sure. Victoria and I listened to Disney music on my iPod for the majority of it before I finally slept for the last little bit of the trip. Our B&B here is awesome, but really isolated. There are five of us staying in the biggest cottage (Lauren, Rose, Victoria, Naomi, and I). The others are paired up in other cottages. I didn’t’ really notice much to do around our B&B, so I think the group is going to provide ourselves with the majority of our entertainment while we’re here. Case in point: Dinner tonight, cooked by our very own Professor Bill Chafe. It was really good, and even better that it wasn’t from a restaurant for the first time in forever! And get this, the B&B gives you cake every night and chocolate every morning. Uh oh, bad news for my body, good news for the satisfaction of my tummy.

Tomorrow is a day in Pietermaritzburg, so we’ll see how it differs from Cape Town.

Ukuthula and good night,
Lynn

Pardon me while I shamelessly watch you (Thurs 06/25)

Anthony, Lauren, and I had the opportunity to go to on a tour of a couple townships today rather than to go to our respective internships. (Sidenote: My original internship was supposed to be working in one of these clinics, shadowing the priest who owns our B&B in his social work for HIV/AIDS patients. The internship/shadowing fell through because it was too inconvenient for me to get to those worksites every day since they’re pretty far away. It’s perfectly fine though since I’m now getting to work with one of the most incredible health advocacy and action programs in the world. Everything happens for a reason!)

The excursion began with Bill and Karlyn driving us out to a hospital in an area called Tygerburg (I think?). The hospital building was soooo old. I guess something that I’ve come to take for granted, especially going to Duke, is how up to date medical facilities and equipment is in most of the US. I’m not the biggest fan of hospitals to begin with, they easily depress me and I have to fight to stay positive (hence me never wanting to be a doctor), but this hospital was especially difficult for me. The ward we were in keeps I think about to 30 children who are HIV positive. We saw children ranging from babies to probably age 5 or so. I think I’ve said this before, but kids always stir up emotions for me much more quickly than other victims of anything else do. If anything, if further inspires me to help in the way that I want to even more than before. If they’re willing to fight, then why shouldn’t we help them as much as we can, whether it be against disease, poverty, racism, whatever.

One thing that made the group extremely uncomfortable throughout the entire day was the lack of confidentiality that the nurses and coordinators express while taking around visitors. Maybe in the States we take it to a completely different level, but it seems to me that the idea of confidentiality and patient respect is not valued nearly as highly here. The lady taking us around at the hospital had no problem taking us to private rooms, nor was she hesitant to tell us how one of the mothers with HIV positive twins had abused her children and that’s why they were here and she was surprised to see their father etc etc. At the clinics we subsequently toured, our guide at one of them would knock on closed examination room doors and just waltz right into them with the group of us, despite the fact that their was a patient on the other side being given his ARV shot or whatever. It didn’t seem to matter. I was SO uncomfortable, as were the others. I couldn’t believe that right after this woman had told us how many people were ashamed of their HIV status and because of that wouldn’t take the drugs that would save their lives in fear that someone would find out and make them victims of the social stigma against the disease. And here she was, clearly exposing these patients to a group of obvious and privileged outsiders. We did stick out pretty badly as a group. Not only were we the only white people the majority of the time, but I also felt bad that someone who could be helping the people waiting in line was instead spending time showing us all around. There were so many people waiting in line to have a check up or get medication or talk to a nurse. I think there were 8 doctors for who knows how many patients. Thousands are served every month in these overcrowded clinics by these overworked doctors. Literally thousands. On top of that, the doctors and nurses are extremely underpaid despite their exhausting work hours and commitment. It’s really discouraging to experience something like that, especially since my whole life I’ve been treated like a princess when it comes to medical care. (Thank you Daddy.) The idea of people not receiving even the most basic health treatment when they did it is unacceptable to me. Hence my determination to do something about it. I guess I’m at the right NGO too, since one of TAC’s stances is that healthcare is a human right.

The evening at Med Villa was a pretty standard one except for the extra face at the dinner table tonight! Bob finally arrived in Cape Town this evening so we spent some time with him, too. I’m interested to see how time with him differs from before. I’m sure it’ll be awesome. After that, Lauren, Julian, and I watched some of the soccer game and talked about different cultural perspectives on people from other countries. Like what do Germans think about so-and-so country versus what Americans think. I think one of my favorite things about Europe is how different each country is despite their close vicinities to one another. I can’t wait to travel around there. Maybe Christmas is a good time to start with Germany, Austria, and Switzerland? That’s my newest goal. I’ll let you know how that convincing goes.

Ukuthula,

Lynn

I need a master's degree or PhD. Can you loan me one for the summer? (Tues 06/23-Wed 06/24)

Some days as an intern are clearly going to be better than others. There are days at TAC where I feel so involved, like when I get to see a story I wrote/edited on the website or when I get to march the Toytoy protest dance in front of the Convention Center in downtown Cape Town. And then there are days like today and yesterday where I feel like an actual intern, at the bottom of the food chain. We don’t need to talk about it too much because I’m almost over it, but basically I just printed allllll day yesterday. A thousand pages of printing. Not even exaggerating. You know how I know I’m not exaggerating? Because then today, I had to count the thousand pages after I’d printed and organized them into a packet. I get it, it’s helpful, I’m doing work that will make more important people’s lives easier. But really? Days like this make me determined to do something exciting with my life, and I’m also going to need a job where someone else can do the busy work because God knows that if I had to do something like that for the rest of my life it would be bad news. So I guess I learned something these past two days, I need serious credentials. Great, so I guess between an mph and a phd in public health, I’m looking at getting out of school at the age of 30, at which time I will be too old to get married and too old to have kids. Ok, over-the-top. But given how bored work like this can make me, it’d totally be worth it. And I could always adopt.

Ok back on track for SA… I finished printing the packet, counting the pages, organizing it for mass printing, called 3 different printers 30 different times because apparently there is a 50 step process to printing out packets. Did you know that you need to specify not only page number, but double sided or single sided? Spiral or flat binding? Color or black and white? When do you need it by? How many copies? Colored paper inserts? Will you provide those, or else it’ll be extra. GOOD GOD. It’s not that difficult. But everything here seems to take way longer than it should. It’s over, I’m over it. The packet has been put together, printer ready. I did my job. Hopefully I did it well. Otherwise I’m an idiot.

In other news…

Our group is a little ill. And by a little I mean that 4 out of 8 of us have some sort of illness or another. I think three of us have already made it to a doctor in the three weeks we’ve been here and another one has had to miss work for couple days. That may be a DukeEngage record. No worries, I’m doing fine. I’ve got a bit of a head cold but I bought these drugs here (like medical drugs) from a pharmacy (yes it was a real pharmacy) that are miracle drugs, I swear. They’re probably way stronger than the cold medicines in the States, but they worked! I’m feeling better already! Hopefully we’ll all be healthy soon enough because otherwise this is just going to turn into a vicious circle of us being so close we share everything, including our sicknesses. I guess the weather doesn’t really help either. It is so rainy and windy here, which translates into cold. Each night I feel like the roof of our B&B is going to fly off. I sit up in bed a little scared, I’m not gonna lie. I don’t like the sound of a tsunami on the other side of the door to my room. A nice thunderstorm is ok, but I’d rather not feel like a tree is going to fall through the window at any given moment. Good think Lauren is there to take care of me at night J. I do hope the weather becomes nice again though, it’s much easier to do things when you’re not worried about blowing away in the wind. 

Ukuthula,

Lynn  

What can I learn from you? Teach me something (Mon 06/22)

Monday Funday. Not quite. Today was a pretty slow day at work. How many times have I had these days? I feel like it’s been a lot more lately. Sorry to complain, but I want something to do other than obsessively check my email at work. I guess I write my blog at work which is also helpful. But I want work!

Anyway, I basically just sat in on two meetings today, one for the PCR department that I normally work in and one for the Women’s Rights department that I’m starting to do more work in now. The first meeting was sucky for me, I didn’t really have anything to report nor anything I “hoped to accomplish” for the week other than getting in touch with my boss from the Women’s Right department whose been MIA for the past three days. The second meeting was more productive. I listened to Phil, my reappeared boss, talk about what the problems were for last month, how to take care of them this month, and what needed to be done by the end of July. Apparently this department is really far behind, hence the need for me! (I like to tell myself that I’m going to be able to help out a lot. Not likely, but I can hope.) I was given a massive assignment of putting together a packet for a training program that’s being held in July, which basically means the kind of intern work of printing, organizing, and making phone calls. Hey, I guess it happens to the best of us. I didn’t really think I’d be protesting and transporting around inflatable eyeballs every week. The problem was that I didn’t get sent the papers until late in the afternoon before I was about to leave, so the work will have to wait for tomorrow.

The B&B evening was a pretty standard one of dinner and hanging out. We talked about watching Baby Mama (that discussion happens just about every evening) but we ended up watching this incredibly strange movie that I can’t really begin to describe because I didn’t really understand what was going on. It was pretty hilarious though that despite the fact that we were hating on how horrible the quality of the filming was and how bad the acting was, we were all staring at the TV for the minimum amount of time we were watching it. Funny how that happens, the bad movies are the ones that you sometimes watch the most intensely.

The highlight of my evening was finally beginning language lessons with Julian. I’ve agreed to teach him Arabic if he teaches me German. Don’t worry, I will be completely fluent in the three weeks that we’ve got to learn the language. For sure. But really though, when else am I going to learn any German? We have a little notebook where I transliterate Arabic into English print and he writes the German beside it. Except I can’t remember anything I’ve learned right now since we only have one notebook and he keeps it. I’ll get my own. The sounds really corny, but I like having international friends. Actually that sounds really corny, I’m sorry. I guess what I mean is that I feel like I learn a lot from them, whether they’re from Germany, Egypt, Pakistan, India, or even different parts of the States. And it’s really fulfilling to be around people who are interested in that, too. It’s something that I’ve really come to value, and I hope it becomes a regular facet of my interactions with people. Plus, it helps to have people you know living in random countries so when you want to go visit them you have a place to stay. Just joking, I’ll be excited to see them again!

Ukuthula,

Lynn

p.s. Danke means thank you in German. I just remembered that!

Unlikely discoverers on the rooftops of Cape Town (Sun 06/21)

Free daaaaaaay! Hopefully they won’t equal lame days. We were definitely better about that today. After much motivation to get out of bed at a reasonable hour this morning, a couple of us decided to walk around town for the morning to explore Cape Town. Unfortunately, most things are CLOSED in Cape Town in Sundays which is garbage. But it was still nice to get out of the B&B on our own, in an unstructured way. Even if all we did was basically just walk around.

We did discover something pretty cool around lunchtime though. I’m not quite sure how it happened. All I know is that when people started getting kind of hungry, we spotted a cute little café that looked like a suitable place to satisfy our hungry desires. Next thing I know, we’re following this lady into an old school elevator (which we then had to empty because there were too many of us) that took us up to the top floor above the café. When we got out, we walked up the stairs to the roof outside. There was this little sitting area up there, with a bar and lounge section, and all these little trailers. Random right? They had mini-mailboxes in front of them, and each one was decorated with a theme inside. You can sleep up there! They have a full size bed, a little couch, shower, kitchenette, TV, everything you would need for a night, plus some really sweet decorations. It was like a nice trailer park that happened to be on a roof in Cape Town. We thought about maybe renting one out for my birthday, but the problem for me would be that not everyone would be able to stay up there with me. And the weather here isn’t consistent enough for a rooftop party. Sad L We’ll see what we decide later. The lady also took us down to the ballroom area of the hotel. It was such a random find! Oh, and the lunch we had there was good, too.

So the majority of the day ended up being pretty relaxing, but not all that exciting. In the evening, Victoria and Naomi had been invited to a lounge/bar where a friend of a friend’s band was playing for the night. Anthony, Julian, and I decided to come along just to do something for the evening. It ended up being really cool. Everyone was just sitting around, on the floor, in big arm chairs, on couches, standing. It was a very eclectic group of people, and so was the music. There was a jazz band, a man rapping in Afrikaans, and a more mellow artist whose music we only caught at the end. Sitting around, with a diverse group of people that we didn’t really know was oddly refreshing. And the music was good, too.

I guess today was a strangely fun day. We didn’t really do all that much, and we didn’t really do anything super involved, but it was nice to spend a relaxed day in different parts of Cape Town. I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but I really learned today that it is much more about the company you keep and less so about the things that you do. But not gonna lie, I can’t wait to go shark-diving.

Ukuthula,

Lynn

Daylight Robbery at the Waterfront should mean you get shipped off to Robben Island (Sat 06/20)

         

The weekend has finally arrived! The work week did take a nice turn in the end, but it’s always nice to have a change. On the schedule for today was Robben Island, the prison island which held Nelson Mandela and other political threats to the apartheid government during its active time. Getting to the prison involves a drive down to the waterfront of Cape Town. It was my first time down there, so I was excited to have time to get to explore what I had heard to be a beautiful area after our tour. Once the whole group arrived via Bill’s carpooling and shuffling, we hopped on to a short fairy ride out to the island. Had the island not been a former present, it could have been oddly appealing. When the ferry pulls into the mini-harbor on the island, you can see all these black birds sitting on the rocks, outlined in the horizon.

Touring the island involves riding a bus around the different holding facilities of the island. Come to find out that the island was not only used to hold political prisoners, but also convicts, felons, and diseased people who were basically isolated from their communities because they were sick. It’s crazy how humane treatment changes in so few years. The most interesting part of the island tour was the description of a cave in the area where the prisoners used to mine limestone as part of their labor. The prisoners were forbidden from talking during their work. The sun was shining so hard onto the limestone that its reflection back onto the men’s eyes caused their eyes permanent damage. What was interesting about the cave was that while the guards only allowed the men to eat and relieve themselves in it (yeah, disgusting that both those things happened in the same place), the prisoners were actually teaching one another literacy. The cave became known as The University. Some illiterate guards who discovered what was happening in the cave began to partake in the teachings, as well. There is now a pile of rocks, the first laid by Nelson Mandela himself, in front of the cave in the limestone quarry to serve as memories for their time there.

On the bus part of the island tour, we also saw some of the wildlife such as penguins, springbok, rabbits, and one of the three ostriches on the island.  Just thought I’d throw in that little tid bit of excitement. At least I found it exciting…

 

The second part of the tour involved walking around the main prison complex. I think one of the most amazing aspects of this prison was the community that was formed among the inmates. Sometimes, the community would even involve relationships between the inmates and the prison guards. The smuggling of documents and other forms of information in places like shoes is so cool to me! (Please, don’t judge my lack of intellectual writing right now.) Not that I’d ever want to end up in a position like these men were in, but if I ever do, I hope that I’m as creative as they were in keeping up communication with the outside world’s activities. I mean, some of the prisoners were only allowed a visit by their families once every six months. Can you imagine? I feel horrible when I haven’t talked to my mommy and daddy for a day. We also saw Mandela’s cell, and took some pretty awesome group pictures in another one. Again, not that I’d ever actually want or expect to end up in one.

After the island tour, we rode the ferry back to the waterfront to grab some lunch and maybe do some shopping before heading back to the B&B. Fail, on both accounts. On the first account: I am really sick of eating at restaurants. Like really sick. I can’t look at menus anymore. The pub that we chose to eat at had birds crapping all over the tables outside, but even when we moved inside the menu wasn’t too appealing, probably something to do with the fact that the pages were sticking together. I ordered a hot chocolate and then went off to explore while the rest of the group finished their food. That was also a fail. Everything was extremely overpriced at the waterfront. The area is super nice and chill to hang out in, but I’m not trying to pay full price for a souvenir that I can bargain down to half-price for at the market down the street from work. Tourist traps to the max. It was neat to see almost everyone dressed up in the rugby attire though. Springboks vs. Lions. We decided to support Springboks since they are the main animal of SA, despite the fact that I know zero about rugby.

Today I decided I like being a traveling student better than a traveling American tourist. It’s a lot cheaper, and more fulfilling to buy something you’ve argued down to a reasonable price in a fun but intentional way.

Ukuthula,

Lynn