Photos!

World Cup Festivities

I've just returned home now, and must catch up on events at the end of my trip. It was a very busy time with all the goodbyes and the world cup opening festivities. The internet at my house went down, and I did not find time to go to an internet cafe. Friday was a beautiful sunny day, and Jess and I departed Observatory on the train with our friends Ivy and Andrew. We were all decked out in our Bafana Bafana finery - well some of us more than others as you see in the photos! We carried vuvuzelas and flags, and jammed onto the train with the crush of other fans going to the center of Cape Town. The train ride itself was exciting, with more people cramming their bodies into the packed train cars at every stop and eveyone singing! Vuvuzelas blasting in our ears! In town we walked to the area designated as fan park, but the police had just declared it full and closed the gate. The crush of people there was almost frightening, so we walked a couple of blocks to Long Street to join the fans celebrating there. Everyone shared greetings and stopped now and then to dance to music on the street. We enjoyed the party there for awhile, and at game time walked to our friend Sean's house to watch the game = our back up plan in case fan park was full. The group watching the game there was quite animated and all cheering on the South African team. When Bafana Bafana scored a goal our group, as well as the whole town, was complete pandemonium. When the game ended in a draw the fans were philosophic and happy that they had not lost, but all in all a bit deflated after the hype of the whole week leading up to the game. On Saturday Jess and I returned to Long Street for shopping at Greenmarket Square, and to Jess' utter mortification, watched as a local news team nabbed her mother for an interview, asking her to demonstrate how to blow a vuvuzela on camera. Oh well! Just as well we missed that news story on TV. At night we watched the USA /England match on giant screen TV at a bar in Observatory called Trenchtown. The large space under a tent roof was jammed with fans - about half American and half British. There was much cheering and jeering in a friendly manner, a good time was had by all, and in the end at the draw, all were friends again. Sunday, my last day in Cape Town, was Ivy's birthday and a planned party for all of the Volunteer Adventure Corps interns at Mzoli's - a sort of famous meat market and party place in the township of Gugulethu. Mzoli had definitely built on to his little establishment - added more tent coverings, tables with umbrellas, and aquired a liquor license of his own so that customers no longer have to walk down the street to the shebeens. At Mzoli's you choose your meat - lamb, beef, chicken, boersvorst (farmer sausage) at the counter and they cook it over wood fires - the biggest braai (cookout) in town. Incredibly delicious! Very loud music, a DJ, and a giant TV screen for the games. Dancing and vuvuzelas! Then the ESPN camera crew showed up. If they play that footage on any of the between game shows I'll be the one in the green soccer sweatshirt eating the meat! I had to leave before the Ghana match was over to get to the airport. Goodbyes all around! Smooth flights, and back to summer in Illinois! Still corresponding with Jawaya on the curriculum and waiting to hear if funding to expand the training comes through, so will continue to post on that as events unfold.

Vuvuzela Fever

Well, I wrote a nice long post a couple of days ago and my internet went down before I got it posted. I've been included in a couple of meetings this week that have taught me much about the public health work in communities here, and levels of training of the various community workers. I was asked to explain our project to a group of leaders from NGOs working on AIDS initiatives, special needs, mental health, and community health, as well as professors from University of Cape Town and University of Western Cape concerned with the levels of training and credentialling of the workers who learn to carry out these programs. The group sponsoring the meeting was Community Mutual Trust. Jawaya and I met as well with some guys from an NGO called Molo Songololo. They previously implemented a training for mothers of young children project - differently structured than ours, but lost funding for it. They have current funding for a school based project encouraging adolescent boys to value education and make choices other than violence and drugs - very interesting! The guys there are so enthusiastic, and so committed to teaching within the context of the boys' lives. Then we moved on to a meeting with the folks at the Burn Unit at Red Cross Children's Hospital. They are also interested in recruiting parents for our program, as well as collaborating with Jawaya on desiging a Child Life Specialist track in their UCT health masters curriculum. Robert reported today that the Fertile Ground camp weekend's registration is full! There will be chronically ill children 7 and up with or without parents staying over at the camp, as well as some younger children and their moms, who will receive the first couple of sessions of our training program. The kids will no doubt have a marvelous time, and will all go home with elevated self-esteem, a sleeping bag, and a soccer ball! At the end of my work day today Jawaya announced that she was calling Helen Zille's office as well as Desmond Tutu to pitch our training program as support for both the government initiative against drug abuse and children's rights. She's so committed to improving the quality of life for this generation of children in South Africa!
So - what is a vuvuzela? The long plastic horns that the soccer fans blow at the games! There was an article in yesterday's Cape Times about the decibel level in the stadium damaging people's hearing with all those fans blowing their horns. At 6 am this morning someone was blowing a vuvuzela in the street outside my window. I blamed Andrew, but he swears he was not in Obs yet at that time of the morning. Though I did see him at 9 with his vuvuzela - Ivy too, and before the day was over, Jess and Ivy were driving around delivering Ivy's Kitchen dinners in Jess' car blowing the horn out the window as people on the street answered with theirs. Sort of like ILL - INI. At midnight tonight all of South Africa is to go outside and blow their vuvuzelas. No chance of sleep until after that for sure. We plan to go to the big opening celebration at fan park tomorrow. We heard, though, that it was full already today, so we'll see how close we can get. All the city of Cape Town will be celebrating! Go Bafana Bafana! Ivy's feeling it, and it's contagious!

Shosholoza

No work today - it's Saturday, and all of Cape Town watched their beloved Bafana Bafana's victory over Denmark. Yellow Bafana Bafana soccer shirts everywhere! Jess and I drove to Nyanga township to watch the game with friends at a local shebeen - Molo Mhlobo. What fun! We stopped at our friend Ivy's house to pick her up, and her son and his neighborhood buddies were waiting in the street to greet us with the long, loud horns the crowd blows to start off the soccer matches in the stadiums. Really loud, and Ivy and a tiny neighbor girl were blowing them inside the house as well. Before we left the house the match began with the South African National Anthem. The children in the street heard the song and stopped their play to sing along - Nkosi Sikele iAfrika.... Then Jess drove us over to the shebeen. We were of course the only white people there, and many strangers came to shake our hands. One man brought us beer and told us all about how life had changed since Nelson Mandela and the ANC had control of the government. He said that bad things can still happen anywhere, but that now there was so much hope, and he wanted us to feel very welcome there. Jess dashed into the bathroom a couple of times - to jot things down as they happened in her fieldnotes book for her thesis research! Beers were consumed as everyone watched the TV screen intently. Midway through the second half South Africa scored, and the place was up for grabs. High fives and handshakes and shouting! As the game neared the end and victory was assured, they guys in the shebeen started singing a song that I did not know. Then at the end they switched to Shosholoza, and we belted out the song with the rest of the crowd. Photo included here of Jess with our friends Andrew, Ivy, and Lloyd. Andrew and Lloyd plan on wearing the wigs to the big celebation for the opening game this coming Friday. Word has it Jess has a bright green wig to wear the the big party as well. Also included with this post are photos from a wine tour - beautiful landscapes there - and Jess' friend Eddie who plays cello in a philharmonic. After a performance he played for us a bit on the front porch at A Touch of Madness.

Photos from Ivy's Braai my first weekend here!

I finally got the photos from the Braai at Ivy's in Nyanga Township from Jess' camera. Jazz band and dancing in the street, township cookout, boys with home-made car, and soccer game among neighbors.

Internet Cafes

I'm working again at an internet cafe in Observatory. My favorite spot for internet is Cocoa Cha Chi. The food is great, the coffee strong, and they give you an internet voucher for free internet for a couple of hours when you buy food. Jawaya and I came here last Friday to do a skype conference with Debra back at Illinois - all about toddlers, advice for tantrums and biting. The usual crowd here at Cocoa Cha Chi is typically the university student group and a mix of locals and internationals. We arrived at a fairly slow time in the late afternoon, so the staff here gave the two middle aged women quite alot of attention. They made sure we got connected, got our camera working on skype, and slipped us an extra voucher, as skype uses the time up really fast. One of the guys listened with interest and amusement at our conversation, and as we were finished, leaned over and said,"I was beaten as a child for bad behaviour, and I turned out ok. I say just hit them with a sjambok until they behave." Though he was smiling, I'm sure he was not joking about the discipline when he was a kid. We seem to get a similar response from all of the adults here, so in the end, felt lucky that the women at our training were willing to consider other ideas like explanation and reasonable consequences. We can only hope they'll apply the information when they get home! Other venues with internet connection of note in Obs are Mimi's and A Touch of Madness. At Mimi's I prefer to just eat my breakfast, sip the coffee, and watch the people about thier business in Obs. Madness has a nice warm fireplace on cold evenings, I can just connect to Skyrove as long as I've got some paid internet credit, and the desserts are fabulous. Chocolate cake! Madness also has a resident ghost, but unfortunately, I've not seen her.

Weekend Parenting Training Sessions

Successful training trial run this weekend! I'm exhausted! What fun! All the children came with the moms to the training, and unlike parent meetings or classes at home, the children run in and out of the room, babies are fed and cared for, etc, all the while. Plan the agenda on Africa Time! I feel very accepted after a weekend of getting to know the moms. By this afternoon they were translating their jokes and the local gossip. These moms had willingly come to the training and really wanted to learn. They also agreed to tell me if I suggested things that absolutely did not work with their culture, which did happen a couple of times. I enjoyed teaching parenting styles - renaming the styles to Positive Parenting, Bossy Boots, Spoilt Child, and I Give Up Parenting. It was great to see how much sense this made to them, and rather than me giving examples, to hear their stories of families they knew who fell into each of the categories. I felt very clever explaining that warnings to remind children of the parents' expectation were like the yellow card in soccer, and consequence like the red card. I was not prepared, though, to answer the following question. "Jan, what then is an appropriate consequence if your child burns down the house?" We moved from there into safety and how to prevent accidents before they happen. Fire is a terrible thing here in the townships. It spreads so quickly and typically burns all the adjacent houses as well. They have asked me to next prepare a class on coping with tantrums. Sounds just like parent needs at home, but here there is less feelings related vocabulary to use, and parents are expected to tell their children what to do rather than helping them to sort out feelings and express their own ideas on how to solve problems. This week's challenge for me will be to sort out how to do this within the cultural context. I've also been invited to visit the moms at their homes. I hope to be able to do this before I return home. One more cool story for this post - regarding last weekend's braai (cookout) at my friends' house in Nyanga - the event made the township newspaper! The headline read, "Whites Spend Night Ekasie." We did have a great time sharing experiences with the locals folks in Nyanga.