A World of Contrasts

I am in South Africa! This fact still hasn’t quite sunk in despite me seeing Table Mountain on my way to work each morning. Am definitely waiting for my brain to catch up with everything I am seeing, experiencing and hearing.

I landed on Sunday morning collected my luggage and met the driver from Projects Abroad, we began chatting about my previous trip to South Africa and how corrupt the government is, but within 15 minutes of leaving the carpark I witnessed my first car crash, a lunatic driver swerved through cars in front of us, driving very recklessly before crashing into a van and causing it to flip over several times. It is common for people not to wear seatbelts in Africa this resulted in passengers being propelled out of the windows and onto the side of the road. 

As you can imagine this was not the welcome to Cape Town I had imagined. Eventually the police and ambulance arrived but the driver had kept going only to cause another crash round the corner. The driver I was with got out to give details of the car to the police and after a short while we continued on our way, at the scene of the second car crash we heard that the driver had been caught as he had abandoned his car and ran for the Township.

All along the side of the main road coming out of the airport is a huge Township/ Informal Settlement with a population of 1 million people. The multi coloured shelters have been a sight I have seen again and again this week as I have gone to the prisons. It never ceases to fascinate me how stark the difference between the rich and poor is, this is very apparent in Cape Town as they live in close proximity.

I had inductions on Monday to Projects Abroad and to my Social Justice Project. Met the full team of the legal volunteers, having met a handful of people on my trip to the Water Front on Sunday. I have consistently felt disorientated this week as I walked round the Water Front - I might well have been in any sunny country with a sea view. I saw a H&M, Monsoon in air conditioned shopping centres, but encountered Zebra, Warthog and Caterpillars in the food market. It was clear that the Water Front is a man made tourist destination for foreigners and not seen as part of Cape Town by the locals.

Me post eating a fried caterpillar, was not great! 

I discovered my week will look quite a bit different from what I had imagined:

Monday – AM, case work and planning – PM, Vredelus a centre for juvenile female offenders both awaiting trial and sentenced offenders.

Tuesday – AM, Lindelani offers specialised assessment and care for young people who have been identified as needing care due to neglect, abuse or behavioural problems. Girls alternate weeks with PM Lindelani Boys

Wednesday – AM, case work and planning – PM, Bonnytoun a detention centre for sentenced teenage boys

Thursday –  AM, St Anne’s a shelter for abused women – PM, Bonnytoun a detention centre for teenage boys awaiting sentence

Friday – AM case work and planning with Internal Review Meeting at 10:30am with all Human Rights staff and volunteers – PM off

As you can see this is full on! This coming week will be my first experience of this from beginning to end, I am nervous to be constantly walking into new places but am keen to have a taste of every project I am working on. Look forward to Friday afternoon next week when I can take a step back and see what I will actually be doing.

So far I have only been to Bonnytoun (Wednesday and Thursday) and spent the rest of the week being introduced to the different topics verbally and been handed 13 cases to work on. Cases come from people walking in to the office asking for help but mainly from legal clinics run three times a week in different impoverished areas for people who can’t afford the transport cost to get to the office. I will be working on cases that have no legal element, most of them are problems that in the UK would be worked on my a social worker.

As I have mentioned this week has been full of contrast, some time has been spent sat working on my laptop in a cool office with other volunteers around me, some time has been spent in stuffy prison rooms with young offenders leading a workshop about peer pressure whilst Michael (the new head of Social Justice, an ex offender who started the week before me) translates as and when needed into the language of gangsters ( a mix of languages spoken around Africa with words of its own, I am told even if I wanted to I could never learn this without being a member of a Township gang). Some time has been spent eating pizza at the Waterfront and taking stunning pictures at Hout Bay. Putting sun cream on has become part of my daily routine, so has conserving all possible water as we are currently experiencing a big drought across the cape. This truly feels the thousands of miles it is away from my old routine in the UK.

I have so much more to talk about but know I have many weeks to fill you in on all my racing thoughts and mind blowing experiences.

Prayer Requests:

- Energy! This is SO exhausting, am going to sleep much earlier than I am used to in order to get plenty of sleep in before my early start in the morning, am looking forward to things being familiar in a couple of weeks.

- Good relationships at church to form, went to two churches on Sunday and think I am going to go to the one at the bottom of the road regularly, was great to be introduced to new people who are completely separate from work.

- Good planning to fit in my church work during my lunch breaks at work where there is good wifi connection. 

Thank you for making it to the end of my fifth blog post.