Tourist Break

I thought after a few weeks of reflection I would break it up by updating you on all of my touristy adventures. So far I have been to the:

-          V&A Waterfront

-          Sky Diving

-          District Six Museum

-          Slave Lodge Museum

-          National Art Gallery

-          Table Mountain

-          Botanical Gardens

On my first day in Cape Town I went to the Waterfront, a beautiful tourist attraction with many shops, food markets and street performers, it is one of the 'go to places'. There is a distinct holiday atmosphere as you walk around the cobbled streets weaving in and out of camera clutching tourists from all over the world. I have enjoyed the food market on a couple of occasions during the day and admired the way everything lights up at night. This will be the first stop of my family trip at the end of May and already I am making plans of what we can squeeze into their time in Cape Town.

Sky diving was spectacular and certainly a bucket list event ticked off, whilst being the most expensive thing I have done it was worth it! When I look back at the photos it feels quite dreamlike, then I watch the clip and get the rush of adrenaline again and remember how great it was to fall from the sky.

Would highly recommend jumping out of a plane to get the rush and running off a mountain to take in the views as I did in Turkey last year.

Now to a couple more serious activities, the Slave Lodge and District 6 were brilliant, thought provoking museums that aim to educate people about South Africa's transition from slavery to Apartheid. 

Some quotes from the Slave Lodge include:

‘a shameless fortress of human misery’

‘When they (slave traders) embark on this unworthy trade them must divest themselves of every humane idea; their hearts must be steeled by insensibility and their crew be equally callous to the finer feelings of humanity’

‘For to be free is not merely to cast off ones chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others’ – Nelson Mandela

District 6:

District 6 was a place in Cape Town that attracted a wide variety of people, it celebrated a wide range of cultures. However in the 1960s black people were forcibly removed from their homes as it became a 'whites only area' this took place as a result of the Group Area Act. More than 60, 000 people were removed and relocated in the Cape Flats, a barren area that made getting into the city for work difficult. This museum was formed to remember the experiences of the people who lost everything during Apartheid.

‘Courageous people do not fear forgiving for the sake of peace.’

This artistically shows the street signs from District 6.

This mosaic flooring piece was put together by people who used to live in District 6. This was my favourite comment 'From the deck to the desert from the mountain to the sea, Cape Town has become part of me'

National Art Gallery:

They were showing an exhibition on the role of women, how this is portrayed through portraits and craft. Was fascinating to see the politics involved in selecting art for an empowering exhibition, SWEAT an organisation that supports the rights of Sex Workers decided to remove their art work because it was being shown alongside almost entirely work done by male artists. Including a man on trial for raping and killing a girl in the community. They refused to have their work that aims to show the strength of women in an exhibition that doesn't acknowledge the work of female artists.

Was an interesting exhibition, really liked this opening title stand.

As the sign above explains this piece of work was made to celebrate the bond between child and daughter. On the inside their was a padded floor and pink lighting, very cosy and slightly odd!

Believe it or not, this is made entirely from beads! Using beads to create art and small animal models is very popular in South Africa.

Interesting quote – ‘Providing safe spaces for the voices of women becomes a form of activism that raises awareness of the oppression they experience in their day to day lives, and allows for their presence to be asserted.’

On Saturday I went on a Red Bus Tour exploring the city, famous statues and hearing about different buildings. Then went around the coast admiring the beautiful beaches and expensive hotels with their sea views. Saw the other side of Table Mountain which looks much pointer and more mountainy as opposed to the typical flat top view. Then we went up Table Mountain on the cable car and walked around the top, it was incredible! Every few steps bring a new spectacular view. Lots of wow moments. Finished the day watching the sun set at Camps Bay which was also amazing, really enjoyed having such a full on day with so many moments of stillness. Struggled to understand how quiet it was at the top of Table Mountain with so many other tourists there with me, but with everyone absorbing the views there is an almost stunned atmosphere.

On Sunday I went to the Botanical Gardens after a 'hike' through the forests and almost got lost but with the magic of GPS found our way to the gardens. They were beautiful! We walked through a tree canopy, stopped for lunch and snoozed in the grounds. Of course fitted in a notebook session there also!

Prayer requests:

- Continue to have a balance between my week days and weekends.

- To not get overwhelmed by the amount of injustice in South Africa.

- To keep being motivated and energised by good conversations in the projects and small movements in the right direction in case work. 

Look forward to ticking more places off my list as the weekends pass here. 

Apologies for the late post! Thank you for making it to the end of my tenth post.

Hope you are all having a relaxed week. 

Thank you God that at some point in the future the lights are going to come on for me

Patience needed.

Whilst this wasn't part of the job description is it hardly surprising that this is skill is necessary in my work. If you have ever had a conversation with me around exam results, job interviews or big events like coming here then you know I hate anticipation.
Waiting for something to happen drives me mad.
I care more about knowing the unknown then I do the success or failure of my result (only slightly, but still).
Out here this mind set is being challenged.

It is now a month since I arrived in Cape Town, and it is clear to me that my mind set has already taken two dramatic shifts.

1)      I take one day at a time. 
2) There is a huge difference between my week days and weekends - an extent to which I have never experienced before.

The first one, taking one day at a time is something I have often been advised to do at home and I have listened, nodded my head and thought ‘not likely! I need to plan!’.
I am a worst case scenario (I must plan for all outcomes and know exactly what my week/month/year looks like) person.
I have a 16-56 years plan in my head that I am semi prepared to edit as the years go by.
So with this information in the back of your mind you can appreciate what a step it is for me to say that in one month I have moved from this to looking at each week as isolated, AND emotionally processing only 24 hours at a time is.
This naturally progressed as I realised that no day was the same, and there are so many factors to my work that I am not in control of or responsible for.

The second is oddly comforting, it feels like I swap brains on a Friday afternoon and swap back on a Sunday afternoon ready for the next week. All the way through school I went to school in the week and was at home on the weekends, however the two were always bumping into each other, on a school night I could be going to a drama rehearsal, a church event or meeting up with school friends – equally weekends would include homework and revision.
So they were never truly separate.

This then flipped when I started my gap year in September and I often worked Saturdays and Sunday mornings but rarely on Monday’s and Thursdays, they became my weekend.
My familiar structure and sense of work and home was lost.
Now it is hard to believe I am in the same city on a Wednesday and Saturday! I switch from the workshop organiser to a I must take a photo of everything tourist. This transition takes place every week and it still takes me by surprise, and is probably another reason why I am never without several lines under my eyes.

On the way to the National Art Gallery I spotted this and climbed in.

And then there was a giant one in the form of a swing!
Had a lovely walk through the Company gardens on Saturday morning.

Also went to Bokaap where there are beautiful coloured houses.
This was a Muslim area during apartheid who stood up for black people's rights.

Tuesday was Human Rights Day which is a public holiday in South Africa.
I spent the day in a vintage coffee shop with a view of the mountains.
Read books, did colouring and read more books!

A poster we did at St Anne's last week for Human Rights day, the women wrote things they had learned during the workshop on the hands. We then signed our names and agreed to stand up for our own rights and others.

I am struggling with the balance of wanting to believe that these young people can turn their lives around and achieve anything they want to and actually getting to grips with the reality they come from. I find this battle so draining and as I transition from weekend Amy to work Amy I dread just how drained I know the next week is going to make me rather than the work itself.

This has caused me to really chew over the word ‘persistence’ as I mentioned last week I have many friends and key people in my life who persistently pray, debate and listen to me until I can accept a different opinion to my own.
How can I learn from them now? How can I model persistence when I am such an impatient person who desires change so desperately? Perhaps I have answered my own question, caring SO much, in the way I do comes with consequences.

Because I like a challenge then whilst all this has been going on I have been reading Rob Bell - it's as if I came to South Africa to shake up every thought I’ve ever had (if you haven’t heard of him then I urge you at the earliest possible convenience to grab one of his books and a notebook, (trust me you need a notebook for this) and jump in!). A couple of quotes particularly stick out:

‘Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn’t they’d get a new one.’

All the young people I am talking to and disagreeing with believe they are right, they aren’t choosing to give up on turning their lives around because they want to, but because they believe there is no other option.

‘I do not ask for success I ask for wonder’

It is a month since I have been here and naturally I go to weigh up my success and failure rate, but what does this even mean in a world where teny tiny changes in attitude that you might not really see for years may or may not be taking place in front of me.
So instead how do I change the language, what would wonder look like in this context?

‘Thank you God that at some point in the future the lights are going to come on for me’

One day I trust that I will look back on my time here with a different perspective, this could be next week or in a few months’ time when I am home, but it will come and I hope I will understand better.

Prayer Requests:

-        -   I am praying for a break through moment when I either come to accept in a new way my purpose here or my eyes are opened to a different perspective that brings me peace. I really really hope that I get a glimpse of this before I leave. I know that when I get home and have millions of literal miles of distance between this me and that me I will be proud of what I have done, but it would be really nice to feel a bit of that before I go.

-        -  For Tom as he flies to Port Elizabeth on Sunday to spend 9 weeks on a conservation reserve, for safety and for nice people to be nice to him.

-       -   For dominoes to fall in the minds of all the young people I am working with. Whether I say something, do something or model something that causes a shift may it be amongst a whirlwind of comments that past and future volunteers say that tips the balance for them.

In other news I am now on the second series of west wing! And loving it!

Thank you for making it to the end of me ninth blog post. I hope you have a week filled with wonder.

Holders of Hope

This week I have had some big conversations, this is not that surprising as I tend to initiate deep conversations with most people I meet. But this week has been quite full on in that way, homosexuality in the Bible, faith and politics, the death penalty and the faults of capitalism to give you an idea…

Teaching Chelsea about who is running our country! Featured political quizzes and wine - good combination...

Lunch with people from Heathfield Baptist Church, discussing faith and politics and marriage in the Bible.

I have been doing workshops on children’s human rights this week.
It feels slightly odd to be talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with people who have never heard of them or have any idea what World War Two is…. a topic I am so familiar with in a place that causes me to regularly re-evaluate my assumptions – takes some thinking about.

I explained that no one has to do anything in order to get human rights, you don’t have to belong to a certain religion, be rich or be a law abiding citizen in order to be treated with dignity and respect.

Later in the workshop I talked about human rights abuses and used two examples from last years ‘Write for Rights Campaign’ by Amnesty International, these blew their minds. They couldn’t believe that someone could be tortured and imprisoned because of a text between friends or accused of trying to overthrow the government due to a photo of political graffiti on Facebook. We then talked about how they would feel in this situation... (I did a similar activity with the group of young people at Alderbrook Sixth Form, encouraging them to empathise – there couldn’t have been more different results!)

The teenage boys honestly believed that killing people out of revenge was an obvious decision and by no means morally questionable.
Their mind set was so defensive, if you attack me then I’m not going to blink before getting my own back.
They wanted to kill the teacher who had reported the joke between friends, they wanted to kill the police officers who arrested them and they wanted to kill the witnesses that had got them into prison in the first place.
Suggesting that all those people are human beings with the right to life was an alien concept, clearly their human rights were more important than those who were offending them. These boys didn’t talk to shock or get a reaction out of us, they were simply answering the questions bluntly, it was obvious to them what action they would take.

That evening I turned to my notebook, and wrote a page of questions:

-          What makes me different to these boys?

-          Why do I have higher aspirations for my life?

-          Where does my hope come from?

-          When God looks at them what is he thinking?

-          Why should you treat people better then they treat you?

 And so the list went on and on.
 I then mind mapped some of the things that have helped me get here:

-         Consistent education with family and friends encouraging me to try my best.

-          People holding hope for me when I couldn’t believe in a better tomorrow.

-          People listening to me when I expressed an opinion.

-          People trusting me to make independent decisions and plans.

One of the five notebooks I bought with me, this is where I splurged all my questions.

I then prayed for all the people who I am working with and asked for wisdom on how I can offer an alternative view point without coming across as ridiculously idealistic and naive.

This also got me reflecting on people who have held hope for me, I was reminded again just how powerful this is. I am in awe that so many close friends and youth workers (Sarah Sharpe!) continued to pray for me, continued to listen to my expressions of utter hopelessness and anger whilst firmly believing that there would be a day when I could step back and hear their words as statements of truth. I am so grateful for their persistence and patience for I know that I didn’t make it easy for them being stubborn and a little opinionated.

I heard a comment recently that ‘As Christians we should be the most positive people on earth because we know what is to come’ I struggled with this a lot.
I care so deeply about the injustice and suffering that overwhelms the world – how can I possibly care about this and be positive at the same time?
I have to ground myself and trust that God has the last word and he is loving and just ALWAYS and therefore justice will come eventually if not in my life time.
Ahh why is my reaction even as I am typing this!

There is a clip I always go to when I think of hopelessness, it has got me through some difficult days, it was one of my important things I quoted at my baptism and it came to mind again today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGuO6hzI8Ok

Prayer requests:

-         -  To resist the urge to become numb to what I am experiencing, had some dips in mood over the last couple of days and can get to the point where I simply don’t want to care about anything.

-         -  To trust that God is in control and he holds hope for these young people.

-         -  To always listen to the young people I am working with, not getting distracted by running the session exactly to plan but taking the time to give them my attention fully.

Thank you for making it to the end of my eighth blog post!

Ps. The Christians in Politics PAX clip is now up! I went to London just before I came here to discuss my faith and politics and young people, was brilliant  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIV2xMyR95s

Pps. Here are some skydiving photos I got sent from last week.

Perfecting the balance of workshops and west wing

Time works differently over here it seems, the days feel long. For each one requires so much brain work, I am now coming to the end of my second week and it feels only an hour ago that I was writing up last week. This makes no sense to me.

We have an Internal Review Meeting every Friday morning, we share stories and cases from the different legal clinics and social justice projects. This week I have been to five projects and talked about the following things: peer pressure, children’s human rights and the women’s marches following Trumps Inauguration (see placards made by the women at St Anne's).

Got introduced to this song that was part of the protest at the Women's March, would highly recommend giving it a listen:' I can't keep quiet' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeQD9QwYC5M

I have seen one of the young people slap another right across the face with no reaction from prison guards, I turned up to a session where we were expecting 20-25 boys and were met with 54, I have been turned away from a prison because policemen had been bought into help search the boys for weapons after some had been found on the premises.

Additionally I have led an activity of match up with key words, definitions and images with 54 boys all of different ages and abilities with success! They behaved well, listened and took pride in their teamwork. I have spoken to a mother who has been trying to get her child into a disability school for years thank me many times when I told her that the school thought it would be two months before her son could have a place. My heart has only just started processing what I have been experiencing. This makes me feel small.

Another thing to add into the mix is goodbyes, already the legal team I was introduced to last week has diminished in size from 6 to 2. Come Monday there will be 5 volunteers with one starting last Friday and two more coming this morning.
This chop and change in the team and unpredictability in the workshops probably explains why time doesn’t make sense, my brain is playing catch up constantly. I have been processing this by trying to leave work at work and have separate activities to fill my time at home.
This feels a bit odd, but am sure it is worth it. When I get home I eat, sleep, watch west wing and read books. There isn’t wifi at home so can use data to get in touch with the world but don’t have it on for more than a few minutes at a time. This stops me from getting drawn into wasting time scrolling through BBC News or Facebook.

Goodbye meal last week, AMAZING food!

I am on the third book in the Narnia series, have begun Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and am 13 episodes into the first series of West Wing.
My love of West Wing persuaded me that it was necessary for my sanity to bring the entire box set with me, all 168 episodes.
This was a good decision.
These fictional spaces allow me to switch off and spend some time in a familiar world. Furthermore one of my house mates is a West Wing fan and is interested in global politics, this allowed us to talk about electoral reform within 24 hours of knowing each other – how exciting is this?!

This is how I packed my hand luggage!

Overall this week has had its frustrations and joys, I am taking each day one at a time in a way I have never been able to do at home. I also find myself praying much more than I did at home, instead of the twice a day I am used to I seek wisdom during my planning time, for patience and compassion as I walk into the prisons and rest as I go to sleep.

Also this week I went skydiving! It was absolutely incredible! Will share photos in my next blog post, am still waiting for them to be sent through to me.

Prayer requests:

-          - To continue to take each day one at a time and enjoy living life in such a different way

-        -   To build good friendships with Ryan and Julia (people I have met at church who I am spending the day with on Saturday)

Thank you for making it to the end of my seventh blog!