I'M BACK!!!

Hey everyone!! Long time no see!! I am officially back from the rural area and our 3 days of post-rural activities, and I now have internet access again :) I can't even decide where to begin telling you about my experiences over the past 12 days, there's so much to say.

My rural homestay was a lot of different things all in one. I suppose the main questions you'll want to ask have to do with the living conditions I was in. To begin, the family I was living with did have electricity, but some of the other students' families actually didn't. My family had a tap outside in their yard where we had to get water as there was no running water inside the house. I slept in a hut that the children called a "roundy" haha, which was pretty sweet, except for the nightly cockroaches who would try to make friends with my homestay partner and I in the middle of the night. One night it downpoured and the hut started to leak-fun stuff. The most interesting part was the bathing situation. There were no tubs or showers, so we took basin baths that were about half the size of a kiddie pool. You should have seen my try to wash my hair, what an experience! And lastly was the bathroom; once again to running water or sanitation inside the home, so there was an outhouse that wasn't flushable that we had to walk out to in the middle of the night.

Totally different and more challenging way of living! I actually got sick for part of it and now many of the other students are getting sick as well, but we survived I think. While we were there we went on a lot of excursions to different parts of the rural area called Ohwehbede. We visited a traditional healer called a sangoma who spoke of attempting to connect with western doctors to try and combine information in order to come to an understanding about the idea of healing.

The one thing that is continuing to nag me is the conditions of the schools there. The primary school (in American terms that would be similar to an elementary school) didn't have running water, electricity, and 60% of the children are AIDS orphans or else abandoned. There are 4 teachers for 500 students, and no after school activities or funds leftover. The kids spend more time in breaks outside than in the classroom due to lack of teachers and resources, and because the area is so poor and so many families have so little money, there are 15 year olds who are still in the 5th grade or lower. This is also because after the 3rd grade classes begin being taught in English, although the students are hardly able to speak it, they speak Zulu. For some reason there is this idea in the government here about the superiority of Western European/English speakers-they don't feel that Zulu speakers have much worth. In the high schools there is a rate of no more than 5% for students going off to university, and there are many dropouts. Teen pregnancy and drug use is very high, and even if students do pass the 12th grade exam called the matric (which many of them don't pass as it is once again in English and for other reasons), they still won't be able to go off to college. Many kids give up even trying, and teachers can do very little as there are only 5 of them. The high schools also had no running water or electricity.

Part of the reason why the issue of the horrible school system of the rural area is still entering into my thoughts is because of the close connection I was able to create with the children of my homestay family. I stayed with a family of 14 children ages 3 months-16!!! These kids were absolutely phenomenal, I cannot even begin to describe how much they were able to give me. They had so many responsibilities that I never had when I was their age; the 4 year old did her own laundry (which had to be done with scrubbing in was basins by hand-no washers or dryers here) and was showing me how to do it as well! The 4, 6, and the 7 year old girl named Sbaihle who I became very close to, took care of the baby all by themselves when the mother wasn't around-she even carried the baby on her back! They did the dishes, gathered water, cooked, served us, and even rounded up the 74 cows and however many goats there were on the family farm!

Most of all what I loved was the way they played with one another. No one living here had any toys to play with like so many American children do from Toys R' Us. So, they had to improvise. They were incredibly creative; they would use plastic bottles for balls-I played a game with them where we kicked the plastic pop bottle around to one another and then threw it to each other in a football sort of way. Then other times they would take a sock and fill it with sand, tying it together with plastic bags and use that for a ball! I taught some of them handclap games from my childhood which they loved, and they used a huge rope they had in one of their huts for a jumprope!! Another great example of the resourcefulness these kids displayed as well as their use of nature for activities, was when the 5 year old girl Ndomisu (who I also became very close to) created play food out of dirt and styrofoam.

I cannot express enough how much I miss these kids and how sad I was to leave them on Monday morning. On Sunday the day before we left the rural area, some of the kids took me to the beach near the area right along the Indian ocean. Sbaihle found out that I was leaving the next day and asked me if I was going to come back. I almost started crying when I said no, and she had a saddened look on her face as well. I have to back one day. I'll give you a list of all of their names and ages in my next entry...:)

For one final thing as I know this entry is extremely long already, I want to talk a little bit about what I did on Monday. After we left the rural area we went to go visit a prison in a town called Eshowe. We only visited the women's section of the prison, and we got a chance to talk one on one with some of the prisoners about their lives in prison as well as prior to their incarceration. While I was there I learned that many of the women prisoners have experienced some form of heavy abuse as children from a male figure, and many of them have experienced other forms of domestic violence. Fraud and stabbings were 2 common reasons for incarceration amongst the prisoners there, and our main topic of discussion on that particular day was the idea of motherhood-as many of the prisoners have children of their own, 2 of the inmates have babies in prison with them.

This was an extremely emotional experience for the prisoners to open up to us, we had some intense discussions. After the prison we visited a small art exhibit displaying art created by the prisoners to express themselves. The organization we worked with was called Phoenix, and their whole model was the idea of restorative justice. Art therapy was a major part of their work. I also learned how awful the prison system is here in South Africa, as well as in America even. America imprisons more people than any other country in the world and South Africa is close behind at #3. The director of this organization was a passionate man with a great deal of heart, and his comment that prisons are not conducive at all for "curing" crime like so many nations seem to want to do, but even more than that, they are not in any way shape or form conducive for rehabilitation. He feels that the world would be much better off if there were no prisons at all.

Although during our discussion with him no one had any real solutions or answers as to what should be done with people who commit very serious crimes such as child killers or pedophiles, still we can no longer afford to keep treating prisoners like animals. Simply locking anyone who commits a crime up for 10 years or more isn't going to do any of us any good-especially when those who commit very serious crimes are rarely even convicted-most of them remain on the streets, at least in South Africa that's the case. This experience has made me look at things so much differently, and in fact I think it might have even changed me somewhat. We're all human no matter what circumstances we are under, and it's time that more people began to realize that.

That's all for now. I'll actually be working more with the prison starting Monday for the focus study I'm on dealing with issues of reconciliation. I'm so excited! Hope you guys enjoyed this LONG entry, and on my next as I said I will give you a list of all of the kids in my homestay family, as well as hopefully some pictures of them :)