EIL Intercultural Learning

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.

People come to the centre when they are really sick, if they are not responding to their ARV treatment, have opportunistic infections like cancer or TB, or if have defaulted on their treatment. One of the clients just arrived so we were both on our first day. He had one of his legs amputated because of an aggressive form of cancer; I think it’s called ‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma’. It’s incredible how positive he has been for someone that’s going through so much. He even took it upon himself to teach me a little bit of Xhosa as well.

The organisation also runs an after school programme for children, so myself and Gill organised a basic HIV/AIDS workshop for them on Thursday. We put together a talk that was really interactive and had lots of activities. The first thing we asked them to do was write down 3 things they knew about HIV. When we went through the answers out of a group of about 50 children, that’s 150 answers, we received 6 incorrect facts. Could you imagine getting a group of children in an Irish primary school to do the same thing? I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing that the answers would be very different. It’s strange to think how something like HIV can impact so differently on people’s lives depending on what part of the world they live in. Then we did a quiz and a true or false exercise, which they weren’t as sure of, but it wasn’t until the end when we asked if anyone had any questions that they really showed how big concern and how much they wanted to know about HIV.

I started teaching English to two kids at the after school project as well. I have heard the expression a ‘thirst for knowledge’ but these guys take the biscuit! Seriously, they are 10 years old, read 22 pages in their first session/class and are already getting competitive with each other.

The organisation also arranged for myself and Gill to do a 6 day peer education HIV course at Stellenbosch University over a couple of weekends. We’re just lucky that it’s coincided with our time in Kayamandi, so they pulled a few strings to get us on the programme. The people on the course are great. We’re pretty much known as the two Irish people!! Everyone has been asking us what are doing in South Africa, although they are all students at the University and live nearby nobody has ever been in Kayamandi. When we told them that’s where we were living people were really taken aback. So we’ve been on a mission to promote Kayamandi, a good few people have said they are going to visit us over the next few weeks... result! The course itself is great it challenges everyone’s ideas about HIV especially in terms of things like transmission, stigma and even gender roles, there’s a lot of debate and interaction… I’ve gotten really into it! 

Also a group of us went out to ‘Corridor’, the nightclub in the township, over the weekend. It was great craic. I got talking to loads of people from the community, and I had three people come over to ‘show me how to dance’…. not a great sign is it!! Hilarious though. I was pulling out all the moves I learned in Nigeria last year… really enjoyed it. Brilliant night.

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