This week was a pretty busy one and
it is sad to think that there is such little time left in Cape Town. I am now
in the place where I do not know if I should do the ton of work I have or spend
time touring around and soak up all that Cape Town has to offer. The rational
part of me says to do work and then I look outside and see the beauty of the
mountains behind our house and I lean towards exploration.
This past week has also been quite
busy at my internship as I am starting a job readiness course and did a class
on gender based violence at Camp Joy, the rehabilitation center associated with
the community center. The class with Camp Joy was really incredible and
garnered much participation from the audience members. A lot of them came
forward and admitted that they had abused their girlfriends in the past and we
were able to have constructive conversations as to why that was bad in a human
rights context. This was a part of the trip where I really saw the change Cape
Town has made on me.
Before coming to Cape Town, if I
heard that anyone had hit or abused their loved one I would have launched into
a ten minute rant and not comprehend how it was possible to ever do that to
someone you cared for and respected enough to be in a relationship. Now Cape Town
has not made me any more accepting of domestic violence, but it has enabled me
to listen and recognize the differing situations that exist more. Instead of
jumping down their throats after hearing their confessions, I listened to them
detail a culture of men against women that they have seen being passed from
their grandparents to their parents to them and now to their own children. This
is the same culture that exists in the United States with the high rates of
sexual violence on college campuses, in the military and on Native American
reservations. The same culture that allows for more than half of women killed
by guns to be from intimate partner violence in the United States.
The reason these “issues” remain
“issues” is because we do not talk about it and internalize them through our
media and educational systems that do not show all sides of the coin. These men
that I talked with all agreed with each other initially that women enjoyed
being in abusive relationships because that meant that their partners really
loved them. I was lucky enough to have three women in my class who quickly
informed them that this was not the case and that the main reason they stayed
was for financial stability and hope that their partner would change.
This whole conversation made me feel
so honored to be a part of something so wonderful as peer education. The
conversations they had continued into the group lunch and we have a follow-up
class this coming Monday, so I am very excited to see how that goes.
On Wednesday we had the launch of
the medical clinic in Hanover Park, which had been closed for quite sometime.
This clinic would be equivalent to a primary care office in the states and was
for non-emergency hospital visits. The city of Cape Town and First Community
Resource Center sponsored a health awareness day that provided free blood
pressure checks, HIV testing and information on environmental health and
sanitation. I got to work the FCRC booth which provided community members on
various different drug effects on the body, substance abuse counseling and the
other services offered by the community center. I later got called onto stage
and engaged in a dance off with some local community members and won second
place, which was pretty exciting.
Although I do not think it was my dance moves that allowed me to do well
(all of the people I work with and those who I teach were there clapping), it
was really fun to further connect with the Hanover Park community.
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| this picture is from kruger because I do not have pictures from internship J |
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