EIL Intercultural Learning

After what was an incredible weekend we came back to the office on Monday for our last week, but there was zero time to get nostalgic about anything. My card teacher’s condition had deteriorated a lot over the weekend and his infection was getting worse, so he was sent to hospital again. But later on, the other client who had been catatonically depressed and hospitalised the week before, walked in with a big smile on his face. The turn around period for some people is quick. A lot of the clients made leaps and bounds in their health during my time at the project.

This week started by travelling to a town 2 hours away for a talk on ‘sexual violence’. It was really interesting and there were people from all over the world at it. One of the guys had written a book about HIV and Stigma so he gave both myself and Gill a signed copy which was nice. What was bizarre however was the venue. There were goats, impala, horses and a pot belly pig strolling around the grounds outside, in the car park, on the lawns; everywhere … I kid you not! Bizarre!

Because of the HIV workshop hiatus, myself and Gill have been meeting with some other organisations in Kayamandi this week. There is one that do fairly large scale testing, they went to section J of Kayamandi last week so we just missed out on that, but they’ve asked us to join them on another testing programme next week.

A national public sector strike has been announced over the weekend, doctors, nurses, teachers, guards… everyone is on strike. So needless to say the workshops have been put on hiatus for the time being.

I’ve been in the office a lot more this week just helping out with anything and everything that needs to be done in the respite centre. I’ve become friends with one of the clients, he’s been teaching me more Xhosa and every lunch time I’ve been learning new card games. I still can’t shuffle though… my hands just don’t work that fast!! The food we get for lunch here is amazing.

So, refreshed from the course at the weekend, we started this week by making a pitch to the ‘Life Orientation’ teachers at the high school, about HIV/AIDS workshops in the school. Thankfully it went well and they’ve asked us to come back next week and do at least six workshops with the older groups, possibly a second session as well. So yea, this week has been spent running around like mad trying to get all the prep work done.

My first week at the project, in a word… busy! I arrived, introduced myself to everyone, finally met Gill, the other global awareness participant, and I had a quick sit down with Tracey, the manager of the respite centre. It was really interesting, she gave me the low-down on the organisation, the work they did and what was going on. I told her a bit about what I was doing, about the Global Awareness Programme, and that was it, I was part of the team and of to work. They had just received new clients/patients over the weekend so the centre was completely full.

My first week here in South Africa was hectic. It started as it meant to go on as well! After being in Cape Town for a few hours, and just meeting my orientation group, we all decided to hike to the top of Table Mountain for our first day.