A Bitter Sweet Farewell

First we would like to apologize for our lack of posting the past couple of weeks. They have been very chaotic with packing and the end of the program paper/ project. For a quick recap of our last weekend we went to Cape Town. We began our Saturday by going to Robben Island, and seeing the way the political prisoners lived during the apartheid government. Our tour of the jail was given by an ex-prisoner. This was really interesting because we got to hear his story and what it was like to live on Robben Island first-hand. He went through all of the different techniques that were used to dehumanize the prisoners, including faking letters of divorce from their wives. The boat ride to the island was very rough; we would go up and down and all around….sort of like a roller-coaster. Once we got back to the dock we decided to go shopping in the local market called “Green Market Square”. One of the street venders tried to get me to buy a pashmina. She kept telling me that she would give it to me for 100 rand (13$). I did not really want to buy this pashmina from her, but I love bargaining with them and seeing how low I can get the people to sell me things. I proceeded to tell her that I only had 100 rand left. Her response to this was, “good spend it on the pashmina.” The entire time, she kept taking a step closer to me until she was really close to my face. Finally, I told her that I still had to pay for taxi home. Immediately, she ran backwards and said, “ohh I see ok never mind.” Later while we were shopping, a fellow American College student at CTU, Cape Town University, informed us about another market that was less expensive. Martha, Erika and I decided to check out The African Women’s Market. It was a bit less expensive in some areas but it did have other things. They had a jeweler who would hand-make sterling silver pieces. This is the place that Martha and I bought our Africa necklaces and custom rings that say “Nkosi Sikeleli iAfrica” which are the first three words of the South African National anthem and mean “God Bless Africa” in Xhosa. On Sunday of this weekend we decided not to hike up table mountain but instead go to Desmond Tutu’s Church, Saint George’s Cathedral. This service was very interesting because it was conducted in three different languages: English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. It was really cool to be a part of a service where no matter your language you were able to participate and understand what was going on. Those were basically the highlights from our weekend in Cape Town.

When we got back to Robertson we began to frantically prepare for out departure to the States. As a part of CCS intern program, we had to complete a project. After being in Africa for a couple of weeks, Martha and I came to the realization that one of the main problems in the health care of the people is their lack of education on the parents’ part. The children learn these things in school but the parents do not make them do these things at home. So as our project, we created three lesson plans that will be used by the farm social worker. She will go to the farms and have programs to teach the farm workers how to better conduct their household to promote a healthy life style. These lesson plans were created in such a way that focused on how the parents could set a good example to help their children. The program is divided into three lessons each having their own activity to make the parents use the new information that they learned during the lesson. The lessons are designed to be around 30 minutes long thus not to take too much time away from the work day. The first lesson focuses on the importance of personal hygiene. It goes over the basics on germs and the ways that germs are spread. Then the lesson covers the ways that germs can be killed, thus covering personal cleanliness. Lastly, lesson one covers the things that are necessary for a bath, proper hand washing, brushing your teeth, etc. Lesson two covers the broad topic of basic medical care. This included subtopics such as wound care, burn care, and basic illnesses. Under each of these, we talk about the ways to prevent infection and when they should seek medical help. The third and final lesson focused on parent-child relationships. This covers the topics that a parent should discuss with their child: schoolwork, hygiene and healthcare. It also focuses on how the parents should be involved in their child’s life in school and in their social lives. There are whole portions of this lesson that are dedicated to teaching the parents how to talk to their children about drugs, alcohol, and sex. These are important topics that should definitely be discussed with each child because we saw a lot of problems with these topics: rape, FAS, AIDS/HIV, and children having children. The largest percentage of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in the world is in South Africa, and thus, the consequences of drinking while pregnant need to be told the young children. Also the ways go about having safe sex must be discussed with the children, because of the prevalence of HIV transmission in this country. Lastly the addiction to drugs such as alcohol and tic (meth) are major issues for this community and the consequences of using these drugs needs to be taught to the children by their parent and not just by teachers. For each lesson we created activities for the parents to apply the knowledge that they had learned during the lesson.

These lesson plans were given to the social worker who works on the farm as well as the people from FAS facts. FasFacts is an organization that is committed to spreading the awareness of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. On my second to last day at placement at the clinic I had the opportunity to see sit in and learn about the research that is going on in South Africa regarding Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. This was very informative to learn the different physical features that are caused by FAS as well as learn about the behavioral traits of this syndrome.

On my last day at placement I was working with the physical therapist when the girls in the clinic began to move tables around and being really weird….Then they locked all of the doors to the clinic and took me to the wound dressing room. To my surprise they had prepared a surprise going away party for me!! It meant so much to me to know that they were going to miss me as much as I miss them. We had non-alcoholic champagne and traditional African food. They could not get over how weird it was for us to not have a braai, or as we call a cook-out, but that would be hard to do in the clinic. Then they told me that they had posted messages all around the town saying the clinic was going to be closed during lunch. That definitely made me cry!!!

After I got picked up the last day, we went to get Erika from the Creche and while waiting for her to get in the taxi, we started playing every South African’s favorite song: “Baby” by Justin Beiber. It makes me laugh to see two and three year olds who cannot speak English singing every word and dancing to this song. Martha and I would like to make a plea to you all: when we cry during “Baby,” please don’t laugh; we are just remembering the kids in South Africa and how much we miss them!!

Love,

Mary Emily and Martha

Adventure Weekend

Last weekend we went with the other girls to the garden route again. Except this time it was time for adventure weekend!!!!

We headed out of Robertson toward Wilderness Friday afternoon. On our way we stopped in Mossel Bay and went down and touched the Indian Ocean. For Martha and I it was the second time but the other girls it was their first. Our driver then decided to show us a hiking trail and we all hiked up to a really pretty light house. While on our hike we deviated from the path to sit on the side of a cliff while our feet dangled down into the drop off. Dad would have freaked if he had been here but we were safe. The Knowe Family backpackers hostel was really nice for a hostel and we had our own rooms. Unfortunately we did not sleep very well because the annoying French people came in the hostile screaming and stomping really loudly until like 12 at night.

Saturday morning we left Wilderness and made our way to Knysna for our fist adventure which was zip lining through the canopies of South Africa. It was absolutely beautiful!! We went over the river and multiple waterfalls, at very high speeds and took many photos and the tour guide even took a video for us. On the last line he made the line wiggle so hard that I hit my head on the other line that ran above. To be free hanging above some of the prettiest sights in this district was amazing!! After this we went into the Tsitiskamma national park to take photos out on the rocks, and eat lunch. Afterwards we had the option of going on a hike. This hike ended up being beautiful as it went along the cost to the suspension bridge that went over the cove in the national park. It was a magnificent view to see the waves crashing the cliffs and water spraying off in the distance while standing on the suspension bridge. It took us 20 minutes to hike there and 10 minutes to hike back when it was supposed to be a 30 minute hike both ways. We were practically running there and back and the time we reached the car we were panting and dripping in sweat.

Because we were running short on time we raced to Monkey land and Birds of Eden. Monkey land was a sight so see with monkeys running loose in the enclosure. It is a place that they take captive monkeys and retrain them to live in the wild. Our tour guide was absolutely hysterical and kept referring to them waiting to take dates to the disco and having to go to the bus stop, the covered area for the monkeys to stay in while it rained. The monkey taxis were actually giant turtles that live in Monkey Land. Our tour guide said that the monkeys have to start out the day before to make it to the disco. While on our tour the monkeys would come so close to you that you could almost touch their furry little bodies, but that was not allowed. It was amazing to see these cute little primates up close and almost completely wild. From here we rushed across the parking lot to birds of Eden. It was cool but it was not a guided walk and so we kind of got board. I mean how exciting can a bunch of birds be… We saw a toucan, parrot, bats, flamingos, swans, red birds, hot pink birds, duck that looked wooden, regular ducks, and all sorts of other birds.

We were hoping to make it to the Knysna Heads for the sunset but barely missed it. However we did get to go to the heads and look out at the wonderful view at night. This was situated in the middle of a neighborhood with some of the nicest houses I have seen in RSA on the edge of a cliff. The view was spectacular. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it!!! The waves crashing against the sides of cliffs from the dark was really hard to take a photo especially since it was so dark at this time and in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday morning we packed the car and headed to the Cango Caves located in Otschoroon. We had the option of doing the standard tour or the adventure tour. The other girls all did the adventure but Martha and I did the standard. For the adventure tour, they had to crawl through holes in the cave that were about 15 inches high. It was pretty cool but a cave is a cave…. Lots of rocks….. humid and hot…. Some of the columns and neat things had been there a really long time 2500000 years old, 170000 years old and the oldest was 5000000 years old they think and the youngest like 400 years. It was all fascinating but the neatest part was that they used to have concerts in the first big cave. It had a stage and everything, they were all orchestra concerts because of the spectacular acoustics but they had to be stopped due to people vandalizing the caves by breaking off the lime stone and touching the walls. I did not realized that lime stone was really green I mean I knew that but it never really occurred to me… Oh well over all it was pretty interesting to learn about the different structures in the caves and how they were formed over many many years and some form from the bottom up and some from the top down. Martha says that it gave her an excellent head start for her geology class next semester.

We at a very cute café out on their front lawn. The waiter was not very good because she could not understand what we were saying and mixed up the drink orders, she brought all of the coffees as a shot espresso… I had a ostrich baguette and for desert I had strawberry and tiramisu gelato. Then we tried to walked around the downtown but all the shops were closed so we decided to head on to the ostrich farm. We passed the Ostrich Safari, where we went to with my parents and went to Ostrich Show Farm. For the other girls it was fun but for Martha and I we decided that we did not really want to spend the extra money so we waited on the porch and went to the curios shop. I saw ostrich feather bow ties that made me laugh so hard.

Overall this was the best weekend experience ever!!!!! I wish we could post the pictures but it would be too expensive so until next time.

Love

Mary Emily and Martha

Stellenbosch

Hey All,

So Martha and I fail at life…. Sorry we have not updated the blog in like a week or so, but we have been so busy. Where do I begin with all that we have done in the past week? For starters, the weekend before last, we went to Stellenbosch. This weekend, I stayed in my first ever hostile, I think, but it was very nice considering the amount we paid per night. We left bright and early Saturday morning at 5:30 on the City to City bus. Apparently we are not so good with transportation because our bus arrived around 6:30 and they did not have our names on the bus list. They were nice anyways and let us on the bus with our confirmation number in hand. After a short freak out, we began our journey to Stellenbosch. We arrived around 8:30 and then began walking around to find our hostile and stumbled in to the “Stumble Inn” . This is a very cute French influenced town. All of the buildings are white and older looking, and the gutters on the sidewalks are open so we had to be careful not to fall in them while walking. For the remainder of the day, we decided to go to some of the wineries in the area. After going to the travel office like ten times (okay it was like twice), we got a cab to take us to Spier. This is the most commercialized winery in the area. The main attraction for this was to see the Cheetahs. Martha and I decided not to pet any of them because we did not feel like paying 100 Rand to stroke a Cheetah and take a photo…. Instead we paid 5 rand to stand next to one while it was in a cage, and we were on the other side, this was the cheaper, safer choice, and I still was able to take a photo of them.

On the grounds there was a curios market which was really neat. We got to see masks and other typical things sold at markets in RSA. By this time we were ready for lunch so we had a typical Christiansen family lunch, aka snack foods, from the winery’s convenience store. We ate quickly and then began our walk to the next destination. My parents had given us a passport to different wineries and one was for Van Ryn distillery, and since none of us had ever been to a distillery we decided to go and tour. The walk from Spier to Van Ryn was about 20 minutes… It was a very entertaining site to see the three of us walking down the side of the road next to the vineyards. This is when I also got my first South African flag because Martha found it on the side of the road…. It was gross so I threw it away. We were almost running at the end of out walk to make it to the distillery in time for the tour thus ending up practically dripping in sweat. While at Van Ryn, we got to see the world best 12 year brandy in 2005. This accomplishment was displayed all over the walls in the seating room.

For the rest of the afternoon we decided to go to a bigger market in the town square. This started out to be a great idea. Apparently what do you get when you put Mary Emily and money together in a market in RSA… um you get Becky Bloomwood!!! Martha on the other hand has a very different experience.. while paying for her paintings at one shop, one of the guys begins talking to her about everything while they are wrapping then up. Then as she is getting ready to leave the shop another guy comes up and proceeds to ask the same questions and then gives her a Bafana Bafana flag and a hug. Martha walks away to the next shop where I am and is like “oh no what if both of my paintings are not in here and I think this guys was trying to pickpocket me”… so we start to worry obsessively. It turns out that these men were just being friendly and really wanted to give Martha an RSA flag…. Since the shops at the market were trying to pack up we were able to get our purchases for decent prices which is good considering how much we bought.

For dinner we went to the Cape Town Fish Market… we kept trying to figure out why the Cape Town Fish Market was in Stellenbosch, but none the less it was very good, we had fresh sushi, and fish, hence the name .

On Sunday we decided that we should try to walk to the University of Stellenbosch’s campus. On the way, we stopped in Uncle Sam’s store, which is the oldest running store, at least in Africa. It was opened in the 1700s. It had typical old timey things that I would imagine they would use in the old days and then it also had things that people actually use today, like candles and new books. I realize that they used candles and books in the old days but that’s not the point because they were newer. From here, we adventured over to the campus. On the way we saw many groups of bikers. I believe that road biking is a big sport in this country.

While on the campus of Stellenbosch University we tried to find the different offices but since all the signs are in Afrikaans it was hard to find them. We figured that since we are college students and spend most of our lives on a campus we should be able to figure/ find our way around… apparently not every campus is set up like Sewanee. Any ways we wandered around and saw their outside ampatheatres in their quad, the admissions office, and the walk ways that were underground-ish. By this I mean they were exposed but they were below ground level due to openings in the ground, we could not get the point of these but they were very interesting. We had figured that this excursion would take us at least the morning to complete, WRONG! This excursion only took us till around half past 10 thus leaving us the rest of the day to roam aimlessly around Stellenbosch. This extra time would not have been a problem except the fact that all of the taxis were being used by the university students who were coming back from holiday. Because of the lack of taxis, we spent much time in the tourism office and they pointed us to the shopping district of Stellenbosch. Martha and I left the other girl who was with us at a coffee shop and decided to go shopping again!!! We walked around the prettiest part of the town.. The streets looked like a picture perfect small town, with the white buildings, the cafes with seating on the sidewalks on every block, and curios shops. We even saw a shop called Mopani (they even had Pashminas in the store!! If only they sold the movie JoJo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, then it would have been practically every one of Martha’s animals!), and Martha got really excited because they named it after her dog…. Or maybe it was actually the tree…. Well the rest of the weekend was not very exciting so at least we made some really good purchases!

Love,

Mary Emily and Martha

Mary Emily's Placement

Here I am writing at the end of our fourth week in South Africa, and I can’t believe that we are more than half way through our trip! For these past three weeks in CCS I have been volunteering in a local medical Clinic in Ashton, a nearby town that is smaller than Robertson. time that I have spent there has been very enjoyable and educational. One of the main focuses of this clinic is the treatment and diagnosis of TB and HIV. This is the area that I will be spending most of the remaining three weeks of my volunteer work. For the past three weeks I have been helping a nurse in the clinic, the receptionist at the clinic and the sisters. While helping in this clinic I have learned so much about the health care system of South Africa and have come to realize the wonders our health care in the US, but that is for a later story.

I mainly worked with a certified nurse and works in the dressing room. I was quite confused as to what this was when I first arrived at the clinic because I know KPA does not have one of these rooms…. This is the room similar to the casualties in a hospital but not as sever. It is the biggest room in the clinic and where I have spent most of my time. Her specialty is in wound dressings, and so in her room I help her attend to the various wounds that come into the clinic. Also this is where I have learned to take blood pressures, administer oral vaccines to babies, weigh the babies (which is not really hard you put them on the scale), learn about the green cards, and learned all about the different types of burn and wound cares. Every Wednesday is baby day, this is the day that the babies must come in and get weighed once a month. The mothers must bring the child’s green card which is their portable record. Everything must be written down on this card because if the child goes to another clinic this may be the only record that the doctor or nurse sees and so to ensure not repeating a vaccine. It seems to me that having multiple files gets really complicated because sometimes one of the two files would not get recorded and then you had to back track. If a child was born under 3kg then they had to come in weekly until the child is over 3 kg. Then they just come I monthly until they are 18 months. At given months the child is given vitamin A supplements, deworming pills, and various other injections that are given in the states. I have given the six week old babies their vitamin A supplements as well as gotten the opportunity to read their files and record the weights and measurements of the child.

Also helping in the dressing room I have been able to assist her with many burn victims. Because it is cold this time of the year and they don’t have central heating many people use hot water for heat and thus results in the large number of hot water burns. A twelve year old girl came in with hot water burns all down the back of her leg right after it happened and I was there with her to apply the burn shield and the other ointment to the legs. There is also a large population of people with sever diabetes and so I have had the opportunity to help change their sore bandages and the bandages of a person who had recently lost her legs to diabetes. During this time that I have spent with her, I have also learned that one of their contraceptives is Depo, I recognized it as the medicine given to control moody horses aka Dori.

As I mentioned earlier I have also helped one of the Sisters. She is not at nun as I had originally thought but is one of two nurse practitioners that work at the clinic. Our clinic does not have a doctor that works at the clinic so they are the ones who regularly see the patients and if need be recommended a person to see the doctor when he comes once a week for like 3 hours. With her I was able to see a child who had a chronic nose bleeding problem, help on the baby day when she gave the injections and see a child who was negative for TB.

During the time that I am not in the exam rooms with either the sisters or the nurse I spend my time in the receptionist desk/ area. While working in this area I have learned how to check people in and assign different appointments and figure the ins and the outs of their health care system. Also my latest project has been refilling all of their files. Since my clinic does not have a computer we have completely paper files that are organized by surnames. Also no one has a file number it is done my birthdays, but that’s not really important. So I have spent the past two days re-alphabetize their files, and I have only gotten through the Cs. Apparently this project is going to take me a while.

The two receptionist and have been amazing people to work with. They are very informative and understanding that I don’t understand Afrikaans and so need extra help when talking to patients. One funny incident occurred when a man walked into the clinic with his head bleeding really bad and a piece of newspaper stuck to the back of his head. He kept talking to me in Afrikaans and I and the rest of the waiting room kept telling him I could not understand him. Well then when I went with Mollie to help her patch up his head. He had his new head patch on and was pacing around the room. I told him to sit down and just wait and he kept looking at me like I was stupid. After we gave him a tetanus shot and he got up to leave he looked at me and said “God Bless you I speak English”. I was like, really you just made me look like a fool in front of everyone and you understood me!!!

The time that I spent at the clinic has been so rewarding and I don’t have enough space to tell you all about the different experiences that I have had! Luckily I have three more weeks at this clinic to finish my filing system and then to help out in the HIV and TB clinic. Ill update you more about my experiences at the clinic and our potential educational project at a later time.

Love,

Mary Emily

Martha's Placement

I can’t believe we’ve already been here for almost four weeks. The time has flown by, and it just reminds me that soon I will be back to sitting in class and wishing I was back in South Africa. Today was my last day at the crèche, and I was so sad to have to say goodbye to everyone. On Monday, I will start at one of the primary schools in Robertson.

For most of the time, I worked with the kids at the centre, which was right next to the crèche. It is for the older kids (around ages 5-14), and there is minimal supervision. They have a T.V., a pool table, and some other games and supplies. The centre/crèche is a place for all of the children of the farmworkers to go when their parents are working. All of the farmworkers and their children live right on the farm and are extremely poor so everything for the crèche is provided by the farm owners. Since I have been here, up until last Monday, all of the schools were on holiday for the World Cup. This meant that all of the children who were on the farm came to the crèche or the centre all day every day.

The first day that I got there, all of the kids found out that I could play soccer. From then on, I played A LOT of soccer! Since I had not brought a specific activity for that day, I saw what was probably a typical day for them. A couple kids played soccer, others held their own pool tournament, and then I played chutes and ladders many times with a bunch of the kids. From that I saw how bored I would have been as a ten year old playing chutes and ladders, so I decided to teach them as many activities as possible that they could do with what they had there.

I brought in an art project pretty much every day. At first, it was really hard to get them all to work on it, but there would be five or six kids who were really excited to do the art every day, and then everyone else would realize that it was fun, and they would come too. All of the kids really seemed to like crafts that involved cutting stuff out and gluing it on something. The first day, we made masks, which they decorated with ribbons and yarn and stuff. The next day, I had planned for them to put tape on paper in whatever pattern they wanted and then color over it and take the tape off. However, I accidentally bought double sided tape, which I realized as I was making my demo the night before. So, we ended up putting dirt on the tape instead¸ and they looked really great! Then we made “stained glass” out of waxed paper and tissue paper squares. After that, I just started bringing in all of the materials that I had previously brought, and they made whatever they wanted. They ended up getting very creative and using all sorts of things that they could find. One day, they all found flower petals to glue on their projects. Every day, we would hang up the art projects around the room. I think they really liked .

I also brought in some other activities too. One day, I brought in a jump rope, and they really enjoyed it when I brought in nail polish. Their most favorite thing, though, was the deck of cards that I brought in every day. Two of the kids LOVED playing, and I taught them a lot of games which we would play many times in a row every day. I taught them spit, Egyptian rat screw, B.S. (which I told them was called banana sandwiches), and revolution. It could be difficult to teach them each of the games, but I would show them exactly what they each had to do and then we might have a practice round. By far the funniest was teaching them banana sandwiches because it took a LONG time for them to figure out that they had to lie. They would say, “but I don’t have any sevens” and I would say, “then lay whatever you want down” and they would say, “two fives.” Every time that happened I would laugh so hard!

Most of the kids’ English was not fantastic, but that was certainly a lot of the reason I was there, so I talked to them as much as possible. I could definitely tell that it improved that at the very least, what they could understand increased as I spent more time there. Hopefully, this will help them now that they are back at school. I also think that teaching them all of the card games helped because they had to comprehend what I was saying.

I definitely had a hard time saying good-bye to the older kids as they went back to school on Tuesday, but I do think that I will be able to go back for at least a couple of afternoons when they will be there. Once they were gone, I stayed in the crèche all day with the littlest kids. They were probably from little babies to 4 years old or so. There were six or seven kids who I would play with, and while I certainly enjoyed them, I realized that that is not my favorite age group and not an age group that I handle very well at all. Of course, it was also probably more difficult because of the language barrier, but I found them exhausting, and it was very difficult for me to organize them into any sort of activity or even just keep them from fighting each other! Every once in a while, the Oumas who are in charge of the crèche would just have to come in and set them all straight. There was one horrible day where they all cried and jumped on top of me and “played” with my hair so much my scalp ached, etc. Oh well…we had our bad moments, but we had plenty of good ones too, and today, my last day was very good.

The Oumas at the crèche were incredibly nice and do a great job with the kids and everything else. In the mornings, they make all of the kids breakfast, and the younger kids change into sweaters and other clothes that the crèche has so that they can wash each of the children’s clothes. They also make them lunch every day. Sometimes, the Oumas would give me some of whatever they were having, and it was always delicious!

One of the biggest things that I have noticed is how every kid at the crèche (and I think that this is a cultural thing and not just at the crèche) knows how to take care of the kids that are younger than them. As soon as a kid can reach the handle of the stroller, they push the babies until they fall asleep. And if one of them would give me a baby, it was typical that when it started to cry, kids around 8 years old would be taking it out of my arms to comfort it. I think that the Oumas thought I was crazy because I had so little experience with babies. One day, they gave me a baby to feed, and it spit up all over my jacket whenever I burped it. I certainly have heard about feeding babies, but I have never done it all by myself, and I really was not quite sure on the particulars. I think that the Oumas thought that was very strange!!

It was so hard to say good-bye to all of the kids and the Oumas today. If I could, I would have just brought the whole place right to my back yard because they were so much fun, and I’m going to miss them so much!

Love,

Martha

The Fam loose in Cape Town....

Desmond Tutu's Church on a Sunday morning...

The soccer stadium in Cape Town.

Market Time With the Family

The food at the resturante where we saw the Queen of Spain the night before the world cup finales!!!

The local resturante that is making fun of America.