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.

Catching Up

Finally found time to write more! I spent the weekend in the township of Nyanga with friends. Friday night we prepared lots of food for a braai - a barbeque - on Saturday. I grated carrots and chopped vegetables for chakalaka! Chopped cabbage for umfino! Prepared spicy marinade for meat! I was so impressed with my friend's 4 year old son, who helped with the vegetables and the housecleaning for hours! Oh, and the power went out, so some of this we did by candlelight. Saturday was a beautiful warm day for Cape Town winter. And we had a small jazz band - local guys - playing in the street outside the house. It was great fun watching people dance to the music - and watching the children push each other down the street in a makeshift car made from a plastic crate, scraps of wood, and small wheels off an old cart. The creativity in making toys and games from what you can find in the neighborhood is amazing! Why do we at home just run to the store to buy our kids another toy? By late afternoon older kids and adults had a soccer game going in the middle of the street. Cars simply had to wait or go around another way! South Africa is mad for soccer, and almost everyone has a bright yellow Bafana Bafana shirt. Everyone is to show their support for the team on Friday, so I had better buy myself a t-shirt! World Cup 2010 is just days away!
The curriculum for parent training is shaping up! We just keep expanding the things we need to cover - guidance, supporting children's development at home, handling emotional crises, parenting hot spots like biting, toilet training, sick children, and more! The plan for a weekend pilot of the training is going to have to be expanded to 2 weekends to get it all in! This weekend we'll need to get lots of feedback from the parents on what is helpful so that we can fine-tune it before training counselors to take over the sessions. We met with a young Xhosa man today who is also a psychologist and doctoral student. It was a very informative lesson for me on language translation. There is no Xhosa word exactly for anxiety or worry. The translation is literally "my hands are sweating." This is true for many words that we have in English regarding feelings.
Last night I attended Ivy's Xhosa conversation class. She's a talented teacher! Molo! Unjani?
Ngubani igama lakho? Igama lam ngu Jan. Of course we sang the South African national anthem - Nkosi Sikele Afrika! Oh, we were feeling it! So patriotic! We had a lesson on marriage traditions. To marry a woman a man must pay Ilobola to her family. Guys, if you get a girl pregnant you pay damages to her family and also support the child. We're talking 4 to 8 cows or money to equal that value. If you then marry her, you must still pay Ilobola - more money or cows. A meeting with the bride's uncles with a bottle of whiskey (weather you drink it or not) is necessary to seal the deal. It's much more complicated than this in all the details in reality. How much you pay depends on her education, if her job contributes funds for the family, how many siblings she has. I learned of very similar traditions from a medical student from Botswana last week as well. I truly learn more and more every day! What an opportunity just to be here!

Children at Red Cross Day Clinic

Robert and Jawaya sharing vegetables with family eating lunch on clinic steps
Children's artwork in waiting room at clinic

Robert doing puzzles with girl waiting for blood test

Siya with children in waiting room

Photos of Red Cross Children's Hospital

Giraffe at hospital entrance


Infant's hospital bed

Hospital entrance

More work today

Today has been great fun - more interaction with children and parents at the Red Cross Hospital, have met many researchers, doctors, nurses, faculty, and researchers who are all very supportive of our project. We work a bit each day at the Child Health Compound - in their room 7! I'm going to take a photo of it and place it in our room 7 Christopher Hall when I get home. It is also a lecture room, and has an observation window into the next room where children play as researchers observe. My experiences teaching at U of I, Parkland College, and with young children back home are contributing very positively to my input in the training project here!

Work Has Begun

Yesterday I began work with Jawaya and Robert Shea. They introduced me to many staff members, grad students, researchers, at the Child and Public Health Compound. They explained the big picture of their project - including their summer camp experiences for children who are chronically ill or have life threatening illnesses, additional experiences there for the kids' parents, and the counselors who work with the campers and will be their mentors. We decided to begin by focusing our training curriculum on the moms (hopefully a grandmother and a couple of dads will join the group as well) who we have immediate access to and will offer a relaxing camp experience to them while they receive the training. Then we can test it out right away, adapt if needed, and expand into counselor training to support all of this next. We began looking at my teaching materials, their stories of previous camp experiences with the kids, and cultural factors that will guide our interactions. A funny story about the camp first opening - at dinner time they offered food to the children first - not a culturally appropriate thing to do among Xhosa families, and the kids gorged themselves until sick while the parents responded with anger. Homework for us last night was to interview people we know living in local townships - as many cultural groups as we could connect with - and ask questions about discipline, interaction with grandparents, common toys and games, the value of education, and more. Today Jawaya and Robert took me to the Red Cross Children's Hospital. I will post photos soon, as I did receive permission to take photographs as long as I kept the children's faces out of the shots, so you'll see the backs of the children on purpose. This was a humbling experience. We take good health and quick, efficient health care for granted at home! Jawaya took me on rounds in the infant's ward. The babies looked so frail, and miserable with oxygen tubes and IVs connected. The best comfort they had was if the mom, and in a couple of cases, the dad, were there simply to hold them. I commented on the fraility of the babies, and Jawaya responded, "These are the healthy ones! They're still alive!" Then on to play with the preschoolers in the clinic waiting room. Their monthy check ups included having blood drawn. I was so impressed with the self-regulation ability of a 2 year old girl who was showing me a coloring book when another child who had just left the waiting room began to cry loudly. She looked worried, then began to suck her thumb, then ran to her mom for comfort saying the Xhosa word for blood, then calmed down and came back to the coloring book. She knew very well that her turn to have blood drawn was next. The hospital seemed a very child friendly place all in all, with smiling staff and painted murals everywhere. The moms who met me in the waiting room and learned the purpose of my visit offered to come to the training. Jawaya promised to come to their homes to give them information and have them sign the participation forms. Then back to the drawing board for curriculum training. It looks like our training goals will include empowering parents, guidance practice, activities to enhance parent-child interactions that will support physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Tomorrow we'll design games and activities that parents can make or do with their children at home with materials at hand. Compared to the things we think we have to have at home, this will be very simple. No computer games, writing materials, board games, or educational toys: this will include old tires, balls, empty water bottles, rocks, sticks, and seashells. Another thing that happened today - we stopped at the store and bought 60 rand (about $8) worth of bananas and carrots. We gave them to children and adults at the hospital, as many of the families bringing kids to the clinic can afford to eat about every third day. Happy banana faces!

I'm Here!

I arrived in sunny Cape Town today - Monday, May 17. My plane was one of the last out of London Heathrow before another closure due to volcanic ash, so I am thrilled to be here instead of still waiting there! I am staying in a neighborhood called Observatory, very near the Groote Schur Hospital where the first heart transplant was done, and not far from the base of Table Mountain where the University of Cape Town is located. Obs is a very mixed neighborhood in terms of race and socio-economics, though not the very wealthy of Cape Town. It is home to local families with children, academics and international students, people with small to medium sized houses with fenced yards, and people who are homeless. During the early 90's Observatory witnessed some of the violence associated with the ending of apartheid, including a bombing. Today there are restaurants (one with a resident ghost), art galleries, book and clothing shops, internet cafes, and more. I am sharing a house with Volunteer Adventure Corps interns from around the world - Montreal, LA, Rome, Pakistan, France - and more coming in during the week. Those of you students reading who need some adventure and would like a volunteer experience tuned in to your own interests in South Africa for a few months, check out VACorps.co.za online! Those of you who have been on one of the UIUC study abroad trips with me - Steph in my house is doing her internship with Esther at the Health Clinic at Imizamo Yethu! To get to work Steph must take the train from Observatory to Wynberg and then the mini bus to Hout Bay, though today here a train workers' strike began so she was an hour and a half to work on two mini busses - careening down the streets - more than the usual sitting-in-people's-laps crowded due to the train strike. Everyone here is more than ready for World Cup Soccer (football here) - team flags everywhere and murals at the airport and in town. World Cup 2010 merchandise for sale everywere! I begin work with Jawaya Shea tomorrow morning and will then have a clearer picture of the training program we will design and when we will begin work with the counselors, foster parents, and mothers group. More tomorrow!

Journey

I'm just getting started blogging and will do my best to document my latest trip to Cape Town, South Africa. Uhambo is Journey in Xhosa - I think an appropriate name for this trip. Previous trips have taught me to have open expectations. What you think will happen in South Africa is often different than the real experience, though always positive. I can't wait to connect with those I already know in Cape Town and make new friends as well. I plan to spend a month in Cape Town collaborating with my friend and professor at The University of Cape Town, Jawaya Shea, designing training programs for counselors and foster parents, and a group of mothers as well, in child development practices important to the support of HIV positive children. I will also spend time with my daughter Jess, a grad student in social anthropology at UCT. I should arrive in Cape Town on Monday morning, May 17, and I've been told there is to be a welcoming party of friends waiting at the airport!
My recent previous trips to Cape Town have been leading study abroad trips for University of Illinois students - Human Development and Family Studies Volunteer/Experience Abroad, open to students of all majors at Illinois.

Will post again when I arrive in Cape Town!