Light Week

South Africa has a lot of national holidays, and this was a four day weekend due to Easter. Pretty sweet. Our volunteer group has taken full advantage of the time off and have been filling our days exploring the city. We ate at Africa Cafe, where we got traditional Xhosa face paint. We also did a day of wine touring and horse back riding on the beach. I got braids put in at the waterfront, and later we went on a sunset sailboat...which was something of a disaster because it was majorly windy and we got severely soaking wet and were pretty sure the boat was going to flip (it didn't).

My temporary placement for last week was a big winner. I'm really pleased with both of the places that Cross Cultural Solutions has put me with, Blossom Street Primary and Lawrence House. Lawrence House is a children's home run by the Catholic church. It houses about fifteen children ages 6-18 that come from refugee families. In some cases, the parents live outside of South Africa. Some parents live in Cape Town, but financially or otherwise cannot care for their children. And then some of the parents just choose not to have their children live with them, for whatever reason. The children are super cool and all very wise for their ages. They come from Angola, D.R.C., Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. I made friends with a 10 year old named Joel who speaks four languages - Four! English (perfectly), Afrikaans (which he has picked up in Cape Town), Portuguese, and Lingala (sp). The week was particularly fun because they were out of school and focused on relaxing and having fun. I took them on an outing to the waterfront, where the boys disappeared into a video game store to play Xbox the entire time. The girls and I wandered about and had a great time. Another afternoon was spent searching for a mouse we had seen sneak into the t.v. room and lounging on the porch and chatting. These kids are very strong and seem to hold each other up despite their circumstances. Not only are they away from their families, but South Africa unfortunately is known for having a fairly hostile attitude towards foreigners, especially when unemployment is high like it is now (38%). So they have the that stigma attached to them as well. They hope to be with their families again soon, but in the meantime, they have made a very loving family right where they are amongst eachother.