Impossible to Leave Unchanged -- Friday

I am not very good at expressing my thoughts and feelings, especially when as I write this, I know that people who I don't know very well will be seeing them. But I need to tell this, for many reasons.

Up until now, I've just been writing a play-by-play of my trip. Now, I feel like I'm ready to share some deeper things.

First off, I don't want to come home to the states. I don't even want to go back to Mowbray and UCT for the last week of class. I just want to stay with the JL Zwane center and Gugulethu (which, I never mentioned, means "our pride" in Xhosa) because this place and everyone here has an eternal spot in my heart and I dont want to say goodbye.

I have a new family. My Gugulethu momma's name is Noxie (short for Noxolo for those of us who cant click the X). I shared with the group last night my gratitude toward Noxie and something I will never forget: she looked at me and Stella and asked, "Are you happy in your home? This is your home." I never once felt like a guest (which would have been just fine, it was all I was expecting) but instead I felt like I belonged there and that it truely was given to me as my home. We were here for only three days and I've gained a huge new family with all the hosts that took care of our group. None of us know each other's entire life story but there is a bond here that surpasses all of that. I'll never forget the love of these people, and I've been praying to God that he'll bring me back here to see them again. They have a word, 'ubuntu,' which has a much deeper meaning than can be put into English, but basically means that their purpose is to live for others and to love them. I can say that every single one of us learned the meaning of ubuntu this week, and I hope that we bring it back home and live by it.

Every night here, we all got together for potluck style dinner, talked and tried to learn the chicken dance and how to do the Xhosa clicks while our host families laughed at us. To be honest, I was nervous to sleep in a township. I heard about all the crime and wasnt sure how safe the houses were. I wasnt scared by any means, but I was nervous and was hoping that it would all go alright. After the first night, though, all my nerves were put to rest and I realized that we would be just fine. Everyone made us incredible food for dinner and lunches and made sure that we were never hungry. Last night, our last night there, was even bigger than usual so my momma went all out and got a pig head! Nate, Aaron and I tried the eyeball (in my opinion, tastes like a hardboiled egg) and Aaron was pretty grossed out by the whole experience! He didn't want to eat any meat today.

So if our families and everyone at the community center showed us the happy side of the township, our lectures and excursions showed us the sad side. There are some lecturers that I want to talk about. The first one is Nombeko Mpongo. She is the Health Information Officer for the City of Cape Town. She contracted HIV in the 1990s when she was gang raped in an area that she pointed to through the windows of the community center. Her outlook on life is incredible, to say the least. She doesn't care what anyone has to think about her. She believes that no matter what happens to you in life, you always have to take responsibility for how you react to it and create your own life. She said, "It is your choice to live or die with AIDS." I know a lot of people, including myself, that have a lot to learn from her.

We learned about health clinics from our speaker, Zetu. Her discussion was very interesting, but the main points I took were:

1. If the government had responded to the HIV/AIDS issue earlier, the situation would not be as bad as it is now (1/5 people being HIV positive)

2. ARVS are given for free, but there is now a problem of people breaking into clinics and taking the ARVS and using them as part of a drug or selling them to people with HIV.
3. One of the most important things that need to happen is for more primary clinics to be opened that are closer to the township residents so that they are physically able to get ARVS.

**Something I just thought about and had to write down because it made me so angry: We sat in an HIV support group and there were these two white women from Dallas that were visiting. One of them raised her hand to make a comment and said something along the lines of "Back home, our rates of HIV are lower than they used to be because people are taking their ARVS; it's like chemotherapy for AIDS. So take your ARVS.." WHAT?!? WHAT??!!?!

1: ARVS do not cure HIV, they just allow a person to live longer.. I hope no people in that group think that they no longer have HIV because they take ARVS and end up having unprotected sex because of it and pass HIV along to someone else.

2: Our HIV rates are not down. If anything, rates are UP because people aren't afraid of contracting HIV because of the ARVS

3: Nonchalantly telling township residents to take their ARVS is almost like telling a woman to become a man- for most, it's completely impossible, and you aren't doing a damn bit of help coming in with your poorly-educated advice.

4: She did absolutely nothing to kill my stereotype that Texans are stupid.

Ok back to it. I don't want to go through all the speakers, so I wont. I want to talk about what Edwin told us. I don't cry in front of people. Throughout my entire life, I've learned to be completely stonefaced until I can be alone. I couldn't do that now, I teared up pretty bad and I couldn't keep it from happening. For me to tear up in room with 20 other people, it means alot. I've been able to keep together the entire week with everything we saw, but it was a lot to think about today. Here is what Edwin talked to us about. It is no big surprise that HIV and poverty go hand in hand. But no one in the world will ever be able to tell me again that there is no direct link: the South African government offers a disability grant that people with HIV who are no longer able to work are eligible for. Many women do not feel the right to ask their husbands to practice safe sex with them because they would rather contract HIV and recieve government help to buy food than have their children starve. HIV has become a way to survive in a life of poverty.

He also told us a story where he came across a 9 year old boy who was being taken care of by his uncle because both his parents had died of HIV. The boy was being used for sexual favors by the uncle's girlfriend and put out on the street as a prostitute to get money for her, and this is how he contracted HIV. Eventually the boy was somehow involved with having sex with a dog and was giving sex to other boys in showers and ended up transmitting HIV to two other boys. I can't even wrap my brain around this.. the conditions that are present to allow for this kind of thing to happen are mind boggling and something that I could never understand. I can't get over that. I can't forget the look on Edwin's face when he told us that story. Nothing that I'm able to write here will ever enable you to fully understand the situation and the emotion that the people in these townships are feeling. Nothing.

Along with the speakers, we had little excursions, I guess you can call them, in the afternoons. One house we went to belongs to a woman named Pricilla, who is one of the most amazing people ever put on this earth. Pricilla is an older woman who is taking care of 11 children, only three (or two?) of them are her own. She gets some support from the government, but sometimes that support only gets food to last for a week-after that, she has to figure out how to get food for the rest of the month. We went to her house twice-the first time was to meet her and some of her kids. The second time really made an impact on me. We brought stuff to make lunches for her kids to eat when they got home from school. We put together sandwhiches and gave them chips, juice and a candy bar. We brought some toys with us and gave them to the family as well... before we knew it, there were about 30 kids cramming into Pricilla's house and front porch, all wanting to play with the new toys and get their picture taken. It was so much fun seeing all the kids playing around and blowing bubbles.

When it was time to go, Pricilla thanked us, and I could see in her eyes how much our small effort really meant to her. She said it was beyond words to say how meaningful our time with her family was. Edwin later told us that what was truely important about the lunch was that for even just that one day, Pricilla didn't have to worry about how she woud feed her kids. She didn't have to go out to find odd jobs to earn enough money to buy what food she could. It is just that one time and that small act of help that means the world to someone and gives them hope to wake up the next day.

We also went out to deliver a bunch of the donations that we brought. Some of you might know how completely excited I was to be able to buy a ton of rain jackets to bring down here- for those of you who don't know, the rain jackets were the favorite thing that I got and I couldn't wait to bring them down here. The reason I was so excited was that before we came, we were told that rain jackets would be a really important thing for us to have to keep us dry because the winters here (as we found out the hard way) are rainy and windy and consequently very cold. I wanted the kids to be able to stay dry too. If we could stay dry, why shouldn't they be able to? They shouldn't have to be sopping wet on their walk to school.

So some of the items that we dropped off today were some of the rain jackets! I wanted to share this with you guys because I saw the look on one woman's face when she got a couple of the rain jackets that you helped to get.. she couldn't believe it. There was a moment when she was speechless and all she could do was smile and shake her head. Just like everything else I am writing about, words cannot describe this moment. The look in her eyes, genuine gratitude and when she said "God bless you," will be yet even more moments I will never forget. She reminded me if my Grandma Lowinske, by the way.

These are boys who got rain jackets as well. I wanted to show this one because they are orhpans living with their aunt and the boy on the right is HIV positive. When I found that out, I tried my hardest not to let this thought enter my mind, but it wouldn't go away: HIV eventually becomes resistent to ARVS and requires a different line of the medicine to be taken. There are only 2 lines available in South Africa-when your HIV becomes resistent to the second line, all you can do is to prepare for death. Even if this boy is taking ARVS and able to survive for a long time, his HIV will become resistent. Because he is so young, unless the situation surrounding the HIV pandemic drastically improves, his ARV lines will run out sooner and he will never see a long life.

I want you to see the face of what it is to live in a township. Please keep this in your memory, because I believe they deserve to never be forgotten.

Our last day in Gugulethu, we went to a school for disabled children called Thembalethu, which means 'our hope' in Xhosa. This is the only school in all of Gugulethu which accepts children with all disabilities. I really liked going here. All the students got together so that we could introduce ourselves to them and say hi. Their chior sang some songs for us and then we split up into groups to help out around the school- some people worked on crafts, some helped file, some cleaned up the basketball court, and the group I was with cleaned up the playground.

When we first got there, the playground looked completely abandoned and the principal of the school said that the kids were afraid to play there. We worked on getting the sandbox loosened up so kids could dig in it, and as we went around, we pulled out countless pieces of broken glass and had to cover up sharp rusty metal rods that were sticking out in the corners. We mowed the grass too. For everyone at McCarens that knows how uncomfortable it is to clean up the flower beds downtown without wearing gloves--this was just as bad, if not worse. I definately picked up some very questionable items.. there were bones, condom packets, old food, glass, wrappers... all of them I had no idea where they had been. And this was in a playground. Eventually, the grass was all cut and we were able to clean most of it up before we had to leave. It was really great because the kids were helping us out and having some fun with it. It was fun to talk with them and hear about what they like to do.

Seiphemo told us that he thought the groundskeeper was embarassed by us coming out there to fix it all up, so maybe that means he will keep it up better in the future. We also left all the tools we used at the school, so they will be able to use them in the future as well.

My host momma is a first grade teacher and Stella, Cole, Kate and I got the chance on Wednesday morning to visit her class. The kids are sooooo cute! It was funny because I could tell the second I walked in the door which table was the troublemaker table, they just looked mischeivious. They sang a bunch of songs for us and we taught them a couple.. we did Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the Hokey Pokey. They really liked that one. Here is Noxie and her class:

Noxie's school is in a township called KTC, which largely made up of slum settlements. Most of her students live in the kind of shacks that we saw during our tours of Gugs and she told Stella and me later that 3 of them have HIV. One girl was hospitalized to treat the tuberculosis that she got because of HIV and will be there for 6 months. First grade.

That's it for now, we are shark diving in the morning so I need to get up at 5am. I think tomorrow I will be writing about the guilt and messiness I am feeling now that we are out of the townships, knowing that millions of people will never have the opportunity to leave like we did. That, along with my nervousness to come home-for many reasons.