Capetown adventures!

Words can’t even begin to express how exciting it is to finally be in Capetown! After being in airports and on planes for 48 hours, it was very relieving to finally arrive Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, I arrived feeling very ill and spent the entire first day sleeping away my yuckiness. So, I missed out on all the orientation and meeting up with a lot of the other volunteers…which was upsetting at first.

Come Monday I was feeling a bit more myself and was able to join in on the experiences with my fellow volunteers. We were taken on a township tour of the city and got to see a few points of interests. The Trojan Horse Memorial, Amy Biehl Memorial, and Vicky’s B & B were just a few of the stops on the tour. It was really important for me to be able to see the townships up close and personal, as I know these areas in Capetown are in such dire need above any others. People that are forced to live in these townships make their homes from whatever they can find in the streets and cannot even have candles for light because if they tip over their entire home and entire neighborhood would be engulfed in flames. It is truly a devastating thing to see, but it is something I think more and more people should be aware of. I had prepared myself emotionally to come face to face with the townships, but in real honesty…you can’t truly prepare yourself for the devastation that is there. Unfortunately, I did not get to walk around as much as I would have liked to…many of the townships are still “no go” areas but I hope to explore them more with our guides during my stay here in Capetown.

Yesterday was our first day at our work placements. I had a bottomless feeling in my tummy out of complete nerves anticipating what my placement would be like…but when I finally started working I felt at ease, and at home. I’ve been placed at a location called Carehaven, which is a women’s shelter for abused women and their children from all ages, situations and locations. The morning started off with a beautiful prayer and song by the women who work at the center. I can’t remember what they sang, but I remember feeling completely at ease with the sounds of their voices. After the other volunteer (Seqouya) and I were given a proper introduction to the facilities and staff members, we were placed at our jobs for the day. For the first week I’ll be working at the criche (sp?), which is a nursery/day care center for the children of the women who are at the facility.

I spent the entire morning looking after 9 children from a variety of abusive backgrounds. Some were more playful than others, but all had such beautiful hearts. My first job of the morning was helping to feed a baby by the name of Joshua. He’s big enough to sit at the big kids table, but is still too young to feed himself. The way he looked at me when I was feeding him his porridge was absolutely heartbreaking… A particular little girl latched onto me quite quickly and I taught her how to “penguin kiss”…but when you teach one child something of course all the other children want to do it…so all morning I was giving all 9 children penguin kisses ☺ The center where they have the children is better than most locations in the area, but they still have no running water, no heat (and remember, it’s winter here so its quite cold right now) and their playground sets aren’t in very safe standards.

Talking with the children’s teacher/nanny, Cindy, was very vital for me. I’ve worked with kids before, but not to the extend that I will be here at Carehaven so I expressed my concerns about being able to handle the children correctly and how to discipline them in the proper way. Being a mother of two herself, she told me how children sense adults emotions. If they sense that I am nervous they will act out and know that they can get away with things, but if I am more confident in my body language they won’t try to get away with as much. It will be a learning process, but I am excited to learn everything about working with children.

Next week I will be working in the kitchen with Vicky and the rest of the kitchen staff, which is also something I am looking forward to. I am a huge food fanatic and love trying to cook, so I can’t wait to experience that part of my placement.
We had today off work from our volunteer placements, as there was a chance of a strike going awry in the city center, near many of our placements. Luckily, nothing too extreme happened (from what we know now, that is) and the organization allowed us to have a “free day” since work was cancelled. Many of us slept in since the night before turned into a bit of a party night on Long Street (where all the popular bars and cool places are) so when we all woke up a majority of us decided to go climb Table Mountain. All I can say is…WOW. I’ve been hiking before and I’ve hiked some pretty intense mountains…but nothing as ever intense as Table Mountain! Talk about a straight up nothing but rock climb! It was intense, but absolutely beautiful and breathtaking (in a good way, ha). When we finally go to the top and walked around for a bit I realized we were at the same level of the clouds! When you realize your that close to the heavens…it is truly an amazing feeling that I can’t express in words! If you’ve never seen photos of Table Mountain, I highly suggest that you google it and see just how gigantic the beautiful structure is…and to see what I conquered, knee brace and all! ☺

The rest of the volunteers and I are pretty popped from our hiking excursion, so many of us are just relaxing around the house for tonight. We’ve been throwing around ideas for excursions our weekend free time. Although I haven’t really decided on doing too much this weekend other than going to church with the family I made friends with in the airport most likely, however, next weekend one of my roomie’s (Kylie) and I are going to go stay at Vicky’s B&B in the township! This makes me SO happy so that I can get a chance to spend more time in the township under the direction of someone who lives there full time. Wow…I can’t wait! I’d also love to see the waterfront and experience the markets and Robben Island also! So much to do, so little time!

Until next time my lovelies ☺

p.s. for right now, I’m trying to save as much money as possible and since the internet is so expensive I don’t get to upload many of my photos. Take a look at my flickr account for a few frames from my first big day @ flickr.com/sunnyhutchinson and I promise to uploade everything as soon as I return to the states with free internet access ☺