Thinking back over the last ten days, it seems we have
accomplished so much as a group. A
little over a week ago, our program was stepping onto the bus for our Human
Rights Weekend located in a beautiful place called Goedgedacht Olive Farm. I had the pleasure of sitting next to a man
named Andy on the way to our destination.
Andy is from Botswana and he had arrived in Cape Town just the night
before. He was eager to share his
feelings towards his first ever plane ride from Botswana to Cape Town. Throughout the ride, Andy shared with me his
intended goals for this month-long trip to Cape Town. He wants to inspire the youth of his country
and it seems to me that he has already changed a few lives. He aspires to gain a position in the UN someday,
and I have no doubt that he will achieve this in the years to come. I appreciated our conversation and the
questions he raised. The dialogue seemed
to be a pretty accurate foreshadow of our weekend.
We were all amazed when we stepped off the bus. The views of our accommodation were unlike
any we had seen since landing in South Africa.
We spent our first evening swimming in the reservoir and settling into
this beautiful location. Throughout the
rest of the weekend, we were put into a workshop-type setting. We discussed, worked in groups, and even
constructed and presented skits. The
large project of the weekend was a group project focused on one country in
Africa. We worked together and research
the human rights policies and practices of this country and then coordinated a
skit to present later on in the day. My
grouped worked on South Africa, ironically.
We illustrated two key points of South African history: the year of 1990
when President de Klerk was ending apartheid, as well as the current year and
President Zuma’s State of the Nation Address.
Collaborating with individuals from all parts of the continent gave us
many more insights about human rights and how others perceive them. Walking out of the weekend, I believe we all
gained essential knowledge about human rights and how different the definitions
of those rights are in every country.
Last week, at Surplus People Project, Josh and I started to
find our rhythm with some interesting projects.
We have latched onto an on-going project with a campaign SPP
developed. The campaign is called the
Food Sovereignty Campaign and we are condensing information from the last four
years in order to create easy-to-navigate booklets. We have also begun the first stages of a
database for fieldworkers to record data that SPP will then give to its large
funders in order to keep them in the loop.
On Wednesday of last week, Josh and I attended our first SPP
workshop with the staff in the township of Khayelitsha. After about a two-hour bus ride around the surrounding
areas to pick up our participants, we arrived at the center where the workshop
was being held. It was a youth workshop,
which I assumed would mean a lot of little kids, but the ages of our
participants ranged from 13-55.
Ironically, in the workshop we did group work defining what the age of
youth actually was. According to the
South African Constitution, youth is defined from age 16-35. During the program, we also used icebreakers
in order to introduce ourselves. One
exercise I found especially surprising was called, ‘Over the Line’. We were instructed to all stand on a line in
the middle of the room; to the left of the line was an area where you could
disagree with a statement and to the right was an area where you could agree. A few of the statements and their results
were pretty crazy. One being, “I think
it is okay to beat a woman”, where we witnessed about three males in the agree
area and several on the line. Another
statement was, “I hate white people,” where we saw a pretty even divide. Overall, the program gave us another
perspective on SPP as a whole and the people we are trying to affect and
empower through our work.
To end a busy week of internships and classes, a good
portion of the program group all descended
on the famous Garden Route for the long weekend. The days were packed full and we didn’t stop
moving from Friday to Sunday. We
witnessed the sights of beautiful African elephants, who all seemed to be more
than happy to give us all hugs and pose for pictures. We spent our nights at hostels with young
people our own age and one hostel was even overlooking the Indian Ocean. It felt so good to be near the ocean and
enjoying each other’s company. It has
been hard to see the folks in the other house during the weekdays, so I really valued that
time to catch up with them. I agree with
Becca when she said the time spent away made me appreciate our home away from
home in Rondebosch. I feel inspired and
ready to dive into work this week. With
so much due in the upcoming days, I am so thankful we were able to squeeze in a
little getaway.
 |
| Relaxing and enjoying a brief time away |
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