They took us around to the most impoverished area of Cato Manor; where many people have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and where people live literally in shacks made up of plastic garbage bags, and mud and rotten wood. I wish the world you all could have seen it-no running water except for what's been provided by the government, very little electricity, a tiny gas stove hidden in the corner. The particular home that I went into was the home of an elderly woman who was HIV positive, whose daughter died of AIDS back in July, and who was taking care of her 2 grandchildren- 1 of which also had HIV. We helped her do her dishes and washed her clothes in buckets, and cleaned up her room, as she was often too sick to do these things herself.
I can't begin to describe to you how grateful she was of all of us. Her words, "the way you are, stay that way forever. Bless you, bless you, bless you." These words reverberated in my heart. As we walked around the neighborhood we also saw children walking and running around without shoes on, walking through mud, and many of the children had large sores on their arms implying an advanced HIV infection. We also got to go to an orphanage/day care and play with the children-how adorable they were. A little girl named Lukala held my hand and wanted me to help her go down the slide as she was too shy to ask the other kids if she could have a turn. I wish I had pictures but we're not allowed to take pictures of children without adult consent, and the parents obviously weren't around.
I also had an experience that I'm not sure how to feel about. There was a group of school children, who I'm not sure if they were orphans, street kids, or who exactly they were. But as our group was having lunch we noticed that these kids were begging for food. So we decided to give our leftovers to them. At first I thought we were doing a good thing, but then as we were giving out our food, the children started fighting over the boxes of food and drinks. These kids were obviously undernourished and maybe even possibly struggling to survive. It was just another one of those moments where you begin to question human nature and the world around you. Tears nearly came to my eyes when I saw what the aftermath of our actions was becoming. Even though every child got something, they still were fighting over more. We then talked to some youth in the area about issues such as drug abuse, child abuse and AIDS as many of them are faced with these things in their everyday lives within their environments-another very eye opening experience.
After this experience on Friday, Saturday made me realize that despite all of the pain and strife in the world, there is another side to it all. There is a glimmer of hope that I feel has the power to make people realize how small we all are-the beauty of South African nature. We went on a very long hike in an area called Mzamba on the south coast of the country. We walked along the most beautiful beach that you have ever seen-not a superficial tourist beach either, but a real South African beach with the ocean water as blue as the sky above us. The beach reminded me of the beach I saw on the Gulf of Mexico when I was little. Then we went inland and walked along the path where a portion of "Blood Diamond" was filmed! One of our tour guides actually was in the movie and played one of the evil army lords with the AK47s. He said the Leonardo DiCaprio was a good guy and a real gentlemen-it was pretty sweet. We hiked up this huge mountain/hill, and you wouldn't believe the scene that I saw. I turned to one of the students on the group and said that people go through their whole lives and never see anything like this.
I took several pictures this weekend, but as I said in one of my previous entries I'm having trouble uploading them and plus I haven't put all of them on my computer yet. I'm going to try as hard as I can to put those on here but unfortunately I can't make any promises. So much for my trying to make this short haha. I still haven't reflected on this weekend enough to understand it all myself. So I'm sure this is enough for all of you to take in for now.
Oh, I almost forgot another experience that I had I'd like to share you all-this will be short I promise;
On Friday when we were standing outside waiting to be picked up from the Cato Manor Youth Empowerment facility, there was a group of street children playing outside who just became absolutely fascinated by us. We watched them play for awhile and interacted with them for a bit. Then when we got in our van they asked us if we had any plastic bottles that they could have to play with, as they have no toys of their own. Me and a couple of others gave them our bottles and you should have seen how excited they were. As our van drove away they all started chasing it and waving to us. I thought I'd end the entry on an endearing note.
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