All good things come to an end.....

Tomorrow is my last day on project and my last full day in Cape Town, before I head east to Durban on Saturday morning. In a week’s time I’ll actually be back home! I can’t believe how fast the past month has gone……it seems like only a few days ago that I was saying goodbye to everybody!


I am having mixed feelings about leaving. In some ways I have to admit that it is a relief, as, after a month, I am tired of breaking up fights, washing porridge dishes and having sand thrown at me! Plus my poor hands can’t take many more days of washing up and I am in serious need of a manicure! A lot of volunteers arrived here at the same time as me and are also leaving this weekend, so there is a general feeling of winding down. But I will definitely be sad to say goodbye to Sophie and the children at Children of Hope and, as corny as it sounds, they will stay with me forever.

One of the hardest things about volunteering on a project like this is that the results cannot be seen immediately as they are the result of the work of a lot of people over many months and years. However, last Thursday afternoon four of us ran a Job Skills Workshop in the Red Hill Community Centre. It was for people looking for work and we kept it pretty simple, focusing on how to write a CV, what sort of questions you might be asked at interviews and how to present yourself at an interview. Yesterday, Mylena, one of the other volunteers who works in the pre-school next to the community centre told us that the Mum of one of her pupils had attended the session and had since approached Mylena to show her the CV she’d written based on our advice. Apparently this lady had never known how to do it before and was really proud of herself, which is just fantastic!

Those small things are what keeps us all going when it’s cold, raining, we’re tired and just damn well sick of small children! In the long term though, there is a project I’d like to help raise funds for when I get home. This morning Amanda, our Project Manager, told me that Children of Hope need to raise 250,000 Rand to install a flushing toilet. Believe me, the facilities up there are pretty grim – to the point where the volunteers drink very little before heading to work in the morning so that we don’t need to use them!

Since I got here I have taken about a million pictures and can’t wait to bore everyone with them when I get back! Like summer camp, I don’t think the true amazingness of this experience will really hit me until I get home. For now, all I know is that, despite the times when I have wanted to throttle the kids, despite the week of torrential rain, despite the dramas of sharing a house with so many other people, coming here and working at Children of Hope is one of the best things I have ever done and has changed me forever.

Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. ~ Mark Twain

Puzzling times

After a few minutes a boy came over and joined me, without saying anything, and we just got on with the jigsaw for a while before we started chatting. His name is Tamby and he’s 11 and speaks pretty good English. Up in Red Hill, where I work in the mornings, most of the kids can communicate in pretty decent English, but down in Masiphumele the residents speak Xhosa (the most bizarre sounding clicking language!) and the children in the primary schools there can’t speak much English until they are in the higher grades. So Tamby and I got on with our puzzle and just chatted about small things like music, films, what he does at school, etc. He asked me how often volunteers are at the library and I told him that we’re there every day of the week but that I’ll only be there again tomorrow and he said he was disappointed because he only wants to do puzzles with me. He pretty much broke my heart there and then and totally turned my day and mood around – so has saved my housemates from me being a total grump tonight!

On Sunday I went to Robben Island. It’s something I have wanted to do since I got here, but unfortunately the wind in Cape Town means the boat trips are often cancelled. Luckily Sunday’s trip went ahead and it was so worth the wait. The tours are run by former prisoners and are just fascinating. South Africa is a beautiful country but is still so divided and I think will continue to be so for a long time. Change is frustratingly slow, which is something I have also found while trying to recover from my eating disorder, as it is impossible to make big changes overnight to something so long-standing. One of the other volunteers here pointed out though that the generation of kids we are working with and helping now will be the ones that will grow up and make the changes to live in a fairer society. Sadly, they won’t all make it that far, and to believe they will is far too idealistic, but if even just a handful of the kids I have worked with out here manage to do something successful with their lives, to help change things for generations to come, then it will have been worth all of the snotty noses, bites and exploding yogurts I have been dealing with!

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

All things wise and wonderful

Life at Children of Hope is going smoothly and I am settling into some kind of routine, which isn't bad considering the kids are crazy! I generally arrive at around 8.30am, when they are having breakfast, am pounced on for hugs and attention, and then set about putting out their toothbrushes and cups of water so that they can brush their teeth. After that I have the terribly glam task of washing the breakfast dishes, before I join Sophie in the classroom for stories, ABCs and counting. Snack is at 10am, when I supervise, open yoghurt pots and juice cartons, cut up their fruit, break up fights and clean up spills, then the children go outside to run around, let off steam and beat each other up before coming back inside at about 11am to colour in and play with blocks. They have lunch not long before noon (sometimes earlier if Sophie is really sick of them!) and then go down for a nap. Then all I have left to do is clean up the lunch dishes before being picked up at and driven back to the house in Fish Hoek.

In the house there is a book which most past volunteers have written in, generally with advice for anyone else about what to do in the area and also programme-specific tips. Among things I have learned and will be sharing are the following pointers:

• no day will go by without somebody's yoghurt pot exploding in their bag
• always put out water cups in the same colour at teeth-brushing time....a single red cup in a sea of blue ones creates havoc and fighting
• always fill the cups up with the exact same amount of water - the kids always want the 'biggest' of everything, no matter what it is
• ditto for blobs of toothpaste and pieces of fruit
• small children never get tired of the same joke - twice a day, every single day, I somehow find the will to laugh when a kid gives me their dirty breakfast/lunch bowl and pretends to have lost the spoon
• drawing pictures for them is unwise - one kid sees you draw a cat for someone else, and you're suddenly drawing twenty cats......which isn't bad considering I was 'strongly discouraged' from taking GCSE art.

I complain, but I do actually enjoy it. There have been times recently when I've been tired, fed up (generally due to the bloody awful weather last week!) and wondered if I should have come for just a fortnight, but really that would not have been enough. The children are just about starting to get to know me, and me them, and I feel like I am finally connecting with them. The pre-school experience is definitely the toughest, but I feel like I am getting so much out of it as I am there every day and am always needed in some way, even if it is just opening yoghurt pots. And, very importantly, play rehearsals are going fairly well, although the mice who squeak during 'Old Macdonald Had A Farm' have been demoted due to misbehaviour and nobody has yet managed to start 'All Things Bright and Beautifully' correctly......in Red Hill the song starts 'All Things Wise and Wonderful', and no doubt will do so on the actual opening night!

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

~ Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse

Bite me!

Things up at Children of Hope Pre-School certainly continue to be interesting.....in the past week, Clare (the other volunteer who has been there with me) and I have been left alone with the toddlers who spent that time screaming and running into walls head-first, I have been bitten by a small child (nothing serious for those who asked if my tetanus was up to date!), and Clare had to break up a fight where one little one threw a potty over another. It's crazy, no day is the same as the previous, sometimes I just want to hide from the kids and cry, but on the whole I am actually having a pretty damn good time. One of the other volunteers who normally works in the vet clinic came up to the pre-school for a morning last week and decided that working with dogs was far easier.....and that's saying something considering there was an incident at her place of work last week when a big dog attacked a puppy!

The reason we were left alone with the smallest children is because the older ones are rehearsing in the church hall for their end of year school play, and amidst the potty-throwing chaos last week we could hear the tune of 'I Believe in Angels', which is kind of ironic when you think about it! Anyway, on Friday I actually had a chance to watch the rehearsal and, while what I am about to say may sound cheesy, it was actually pretty inspirational. Sophie, who set up the school and currently works as principal, teacher and cook, tells the audience about the school, what the children have been learning and how they all have a dream, and then the six kids who are set to graduate and go to primary school in January step forward and say what they want to be when they grow up. Of the six, there will hopefully be one policeman (that's my little Cheslyn!), a fireman, a nurse and three doctors. Children of Hope has only been open for a couple of years and African Impact has already had reports from the local primary schools that the children who go there are starting Grade One at a far higher standard than their peers. Considering how primitive the conditions up there are, the fact that the school isn't even government-registered and that Sophie and the other teacher, Ntombie, are not even trained, I think that's pretty amazing and it means those six children actually do have a real chance of achieving their dreams. I could not be more proud to be a part of that, even if it does mean being bitten every once in a while!

Since the weekend the weather here in Cape Town has been almost British, with lots of wind and rain, although it is set to improve by Thursday. The pre-school is really just a couple of shacks, and it has been cold there this week, so I can't imagine what it must be like in winter. One of the afternoon projects is doing renovation work at the schools at that township, so hopefully it won't be too bad for them next winter. On Thursday afternoon I was working at the Red Hill Pre-School chipping old paint off the walls, but most of my afternoon work has been in the library doing jigsaws, playing games and reading as part of the after school club. In some ways the library work is a lot easier than that in pre-school - almost a welcome break from shouting 'no!' all morning, but as much as I come home at lunchtime feeling shattered, filthy and sick of kids, I think it's secretly my favourite thing. However, from this week I will also be able to spend a couple of afternoons a week assisting in a medical clinic in the Masiphumele township, which should be exciting. Although I'm informed it will mostly be helping with paperwork, I will still get to wear a while coat which keeps me happy!

I am learning so much about myself here. I am absolutely not the most flexible person in the world and like a plan, which is a definite family trait. Life in Africa however, does not go to plan.....sometimes we are supposed to be doing something and it gets cancelled, I'm told I'll be working in one place and suddenly I'm assisting somewhere else. It's not easy for me to 'go with the flow', but I am actually managing pretty well and hopefully it's something I can continue to do when I get home. Hopefully I won't turn back into a scary control freak as I fly back to the UK! Anway, internet access here is pretty limited and I had better stop rambling. And as corny as it is, I am going to end this post with a quote from the school play......

I have a dream, a fantasy
To help me through reality

And my destination makes it worth the while

Pushing through the darkness still another mile

I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see

- Abba

Finally here!

Wow, after all of the worry and nerves I'm finally here in Fish Hoek and so far I am absolutely LOVING it!

I arrived in Cape Town on Sunday morning and was driven to the volunteer house in Fish Hoek at the same time as a couple of others. The area is beyond beautiful, just so stunning. In fact, I need to work on my adjectives as stunning doesn't even begin to cover it!

I'm living with 13 other volunteers from all over the world, including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, USA and Mexico, all here for roughly the same time as me. We're a happy mixture of teachers, medics and vets and are bonding well so far over shots of Tequila in the Fish Hoek beach bar! In the mornings we all get driven to our various projects, be they in the schools, medical centres or vet clinics, then after lunch we're all mixed together in all of the different community projects.

So, the most important thing......the projects! Well, as part of the induction on Monday, all of us new volunteers were taken to see all of the various schools and medical centres. I'll be spending my mornings working at Children of Good Hope Educare Centre, which is a pre-school on the Red Hill Township. In the afternoons so far I've been working in the library as part of the after school drop in centre, just doing general stuff like reading with the younger kids and playing puzzles. On Mondays I will be going to Hokisa Orphanage and doing one on one reading work with a 12 year old girl called Fundiswa. I'm actually really lucky to be able to take part in this particular project as the people who run the orphanage are very careful about who is selected to work with the children. Only the longer term volunteers are able to go there as the kids have been through so much already that it would be really unfair to have volunteers just dropping in and out of their lives. And funnily, as the work is reading skills, those with strong accents are also ruled out.....hopefully Fundiswa won't pick up too much of my lovely Northern tones!

The pre-school is definitely a challenge, but it's crazy good fun too! The kids are aged 10 months to about 6 and the can be WILD at times! So far I've been jumped on, swung on, had banana mushed all over me.....and I'm actually working with the older class! The school was founded and run by a lady called Sophie, and at the moment she is working as principal, teacher, cook and cleaner as there is only one other teacher there who looks after the very little ones. My work is pretty much helping out wherever is needed. When I get there the kids are normally finishing with breakfast so after that we get their teeth brushed, wash up and then help with the morning lesson. The morning just flies by after that, and involves a lot more washing up, sweeping floors and general crowd control. So far I have fallen for Cheslyn, who is very cute and cheeky, but sharp as a button!

I wish I had time to write more, to really let people know just how incredible it is to be here, how overwhelming and awesome the experience has been after just three days. It seriously feels like I've been here for much longer! Tomorrow afternoon I'm down to do building work up at the other pre-school in Red Hill, so I am expecting to end up covered in paint as that's how everyone else has come home this week! And there's going to be no time for sleep at the weekends either, as there's a wine and cheese tasting tour in Stellenbosch scheduled for Saturday and plans to go to Cape Town on Sunday!

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, MUST be attained.

~ Marie Curie

T-minus 2 days!

In the words of John Denver, all my bags are packed, I'm ready to go and I'm leaving on a jet plane in about 48 hours! It feels like forever ago since I decided to do this trip, but at the same time I can't believe it is actually here. I'm not sure how I'm feeling to be quite honest. Probably a huge combination of nerves, excitement and anticipation.

For a change, I don't have very much to say........just a massive massive thank you to the people who have supported me in doing this and also for the donations I have been given to take to Cape Town. I will do my best to keep this blog updated while I am away - if not then there might be some pretty epic posts when I get home in December!

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.

~ Christopher Reeve

Surrounded by love

My sister told me not long ago that I have a lot of love surrounding me, and to use that for strength. She and I don't agree on everything (harem pants and Donny Osmond, for example, are areas on which we have had to agree to disagree!) but I think she's pretty right on that one.

Since I have finally started to open my eyes to the world around me I have seen that I am very lucky to have certain people in my life, not least some incredible friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin - no pun intended(!) and a wonderfully supportive family who accept me for who I am, love me despite my flaws (which are many, and range from being a pain in restaurants and crying over food to supporting John and Edward on their quest for X-Factor victory!), who never judge and who make me see that there is always hope. And without those people I would not have made it through the past year. Because of them, I am learning to accept myself as I am, flaws and all. I am terrified about the next few weeks, but knowing that my friends and family believe in me means that I know I'll be fine.

On Saturday night I went out for a meal with the people I love and had just the loveliest time. Somehow I managed to leave the anorexia at home for the night, relax and enjoy myself......and even eat some baklava! I was free and had fun, which I haven't done for far too long. Maybe that's why I want to work with children - being a kid should be about playing and having fun, and for so many reasons, it isn't always like that. And that is something I would like to help change.

There are times, usually late at night when I can't sleep, when I worry that I'm not done with my eating disorder, that I never got ill enough, that I'm not ready to let it go just yet. And I realise how absurd that sounds - how can a person cling to something which nearly destroyed them? That's something I don't yet have the answer to, and logic tends to fly out of the window. All I know for sure is that I don't feel alone anymore. As corny as it sounds, I do feel very much surrounded by love and support. So while it may be a long time before the anorexic thoughts disappear entirely, just thinking about that love helps make them go away.

There have been moments when I have wanted to go back in time, to re-do my life and never have developed an eating disorder, but I could never decide which point in time I would return to. To 8 when I first went on a diet? To 14 when I worked out how to make myself vomit? At university I read Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître, in which Jacques believes that tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut - literally that everything happens for a reason. I haven't retained much of the knowledge I was supposed to be gaining at Nottingham (although I can still remember which bars and clubs do which offers on cheap drinks and where to get a decent pizza delivered after 2am), but that has always stayed with me, and even if I had the opportunity to time-travel now, I wouldn't go back and do it differently. Although this year in particular has been hellish, I have gained so much in return. I used to wonder why I had to get ill, why it had to happen to me, but maybe I needed to be literally stripped to my core to start to see things as they really are, to realise who I really am and what is important to me. If it took me losing nearly everything to finally see how much I really have, then I can start to be ok with what has happened over the past few years, stop wasting time wishing it hadn't happened and start to move forwards.

I've learned that all a person has in life is family and friends. If you lose those, you have nothing, so friends are to be treasured more than anything else in the world.

~ South Park

The Fear

I'm leaving in just over a week, in 8 days......and the reality of what I'm doing is starting to hit me. I'm excited and looking forward to the experience, but also nervous, scared, terrified. What if I can't do it? What if I'm kidding myself about being in recovery, and I'm actually not well enough to be going away? What if I get sick while I'm on the project and end up being a massive burden to other people? What if everyone hates me? What if I'm terrible at teaching?

Or what if I stop thinking and just get on with it? Feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear is natural....I felt this way before I started uni, before my year abroad, before camp, and those things turned out ok. Better than ok even. And I think feeling scared is almost good, because for so long I haven't really felt anything, I have just been numb to the world. The only fear I have actually felt has been associated with gaining weight and eating foods I consider scary. This is different - I'm not scared about going to Africa because of the food or my weight, but because it's so daunting, so new and I have no idea what to expect.

Anorexia is a bitch. Just when I think it's starting to lessen, it rears its ugly head again. This is my response to any kind of fear or anxiety I think, to distract myself from what is really bothering me by fussing about what I weigh and what I eat. For the past week or so the anorexic thoughts have increased, probably because I'm so nervous about going away. It's far easier for my brain to waste time worrying about the calorie content of every muffin in Starbucks than for me to contemplate what I am about to do, and the possibility that I might fail. But the anorexia has already taken so much from me, and I won't let it win again. To do that would mean not only letting myself down, but other people too. People like my family and friends who have supported me, encouraged me, made me realise that I am stronger than I thought I was, that I can be anyone I want to be and do anything I want to do. And, most importantly, I don't want to let down the people I am going to be working with. It may sound corny, but I want to help people, to make a difference and do something positive for people, no matter how small an impact I may have. So I need to adopt the slogan of a certain well-known sportswear brand, stop thinking so much and just bloody do it!

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

~  The Hours

Human pincushion

I am a human pincushion and have been injected to within an inch of my life in preparation for my trip. Well, perhaps not quite. As well as a tendency to digress, I also exaggerate - a lot! It was more like two injections, but they really hurt! I think I was more hardcore as a small child. At 6 it didn't phase me, but at 26 I was weighing up whether contracting some foreign disease was a more attractive option than having a needle stuck in my arm! My arms did actually really ache afterwards, but I'm thinking I'd be complaining a lot more if I got hepatitis A, diphtheria or typhoid!

The thing is, getting those injections was so easy and it was free. We complain about the NHS, and while it is severely lacking in some areas, we all still have access to free healthcare. If someone gets sick, collapses in the street, has a car accident, they are taken to hospital and treated, no matter what their sex, race or social status. It is just so wrong that those rights don't exist in every country today, in 2009.

I dropped Geography in school after Year 9, so I don't really know a whole lot about other countries. Or indeed my own country. When I applied for uni I found out that Bath and Bristol were on the opposite side of the UK to where I had thought they were. My parents paid a small fortune for me to go to private school and learn about Oldham and the Spindles shopping centre in Geography lessons!

With that in mind, I decided it was time to do some reading on South Africa. I went as far as getting Nelson Mandela's book off my Dad's shelf, but never got around to cracking it open. And neither has he....there's not one tiny crease in the spine. Clearly it's a display book to make him look more insightful and intelligent. A lot like my copy of Pride and Prejudice then (although in my defence, I have seen both the film and the TV series!). So I went for something a little lighter and have just finished reading Rainbow Diary: A Journey in the New South Africa by John Malathronas. Think Bill Bryson, but younger, gay and not adverse to a spot of recreational drug-usage and you're along the right lines......

After just a couple of chapters I was astounded by how much I didn't know about South African history and culture. I don't really want to get into a political rant, but it scares me how something like apartheid could continue until so recently. I mean, I can remember as far back as 1994, it was in my lifetime. How is it even possible that a regime like that could carry on until then? There is so much I want to say on the subject, but I don't know where to start. Yet.

But I have thought about what I believe....

• I believe that everybody has the right to education and healthcare and other fundamental things, no matter what their gender, race, age, sexual orientation or social circumstances.
• I believe in the power of dreams and imagination.
• I believe that love and laughter really can be the best medicine.
• I believe that anything is possible.

Something has changed within me

Something is not the same

I'm through with playing by the rules

Of someone else's game

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It's time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes: and leap!

~ Elpheba, Wicked

PGCE

I've just sent in my application to do a PGCE in September 2010. It had to be in by December 1st, meaning I needed to get it done before I went away. Which is good really, as otherwise I'd have procrastinated like crazy and ended up not doing the damn thing until about 11pm on November 30th. I've applied for Primary Education (with Modern Languages) so you only get to choose two institutions. In a way it's good because the choice is narrowed down, but what if neither accept me?!

The thought of not getting a place is pretty scary, I don't even want to think about it. What if they don't like my application? Or they meet me in an interview and decide I'm no good? The fact that I'm so worried I won't get a place shows me that this is something I really want to do, that teaching is the right path for me. Unfortunately it doesn't make me any less anxious about whether or not I'll be accepted onto a course!

For my personal statement I wrote a lot about my time at camp and also about going to South Africa and what I am hoping to achieve over there, and probably sound a lot like Alyson Hannigan's character in American Pie (although I swear I have never done anything inappropriate with a flute!). But this is something I care a lot about, something I'm passionate about, and I'm not ashamed of that. For so long all I cared about was food, calories, my weight, my BMI, and there was just nothing beyond that. My world was nothing more than an eating disorder....excuse the pun, but I was literally consumed by it.

My Aunt told me recently that I come alive when I talk about camp, and somehow it does feel like I am coming back to life. There's a whole world out there and I'm only just seeing it for the first time, or seeing it through new eyes. It's bloody scary, but also so exciting. In the past, I've always let the fear overtake the excitement and run back to my eating disorder, but not this time. Life is just too short, there's so much to see and do, and I feel like I've already wasted way too much time by being ill, so I can't afford to waste another second.

Last time I ended with a quote, and I've decided to carry on doing that.....because, well, it's my blog and I can kind of do what I want! So here's another pearl of wisdom for you.....

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

 ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This one time, at Adventure Camp.........

This past weekend I was in London, mainly for a training weekend with BUNAC, the company who I did Summer Camp USA with back in 2007. I have a position with them where I'm a Student Marketing Co-Ordinator. It sounds fancy, but really just means that I big BUNAC up at universities and encourage other students to do summer camp and the other programmes. It's something for the CV anyway.....

Being around other people who have done summer camp did remind me just how much I loved it and that I absolutely want to go back next summer. I have never felt more free to be myself than I did when I was over in New Hampshire. The experience is so hard to describe - it's intense, the hardest work I've ever done, crazy, mad, emotional. Within a single day you can experience every feeling under the sun. The kids are funny, amazing, inspiring, yet intensely annoying and frustrating at times! As far as jobs go, being a counselor doesn't look so appealing on paper - the pay isn't amazing, you live with teenagers, sometimes your evening meal is something your campers cooked for you over a log fire (seriously kids....how hard is it to boil pasta?!), you work pretty much from the second you wake up until you hit your bunkbed at night and get maybe two days off a fortnight. Am I selling it yet?! The thing is....the mud, the tears and the tiredness are what make the experience. Without a doubt I have never done a more rewarding job - and I really hope South Africa will be more of the same.


Described by my friends as a 'girly' girl, I like clothes, make up, cosmetics. I paint my nails and blow dry my hair. I like to shower every day, wear clean clothes. Mainly I wear skirts and dresses and read subscriptions to Marie Claire and Glamour. But not at camp. At camp showering daily was a rare treat, and there wasn't time for blow drying my hair afterwards. At camp there's no point painting your nails because they'll just get chipped when you're collecting wood for a fire! I had to sleep in the wilderness, face my fears, climb high ropes courses, overturn a kayak, jump into a murky (and snake-inhabited) lake, learn to mountain-bike. Not only did I do all of those things, I enjoyed doing them. I was proud of myself for achieving something other than losing weight. What annoys me is that I can face up to the fear of jumping down from a high ropes course (even if it did take a lot of persuasion!) but I can't let myself eat a sodding muffin. My biggest fear was falling off a mountain bike and getting hurt.....one rainy day it happened. Did I break a limb? Did I get hurt at all? No, I just jumped back on the bike, carried on and had a pretty awesome bruise to show off! So why can't I do that in my real life?

This weekend has definitely made me feel a lot more excited about SA! I've been focusing on how nervous I am, but now I've truly remembered how much fun working with kids can be, that every negative minute is outweighed by an hour of fun, laughter and positivity, that I can let go, be myself and have fun too.

Every camp meal starts with an inspirational quote, and with that in mind, I want to end with my favourite quotation. Ok, it's not by Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Ghandi or even Sarah Palin(!) but I still love it and it is something I want to apply to myself and my life:

The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.
 ~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex & the City

12,000 miles

My life is a big jumble of contradictions. I can look in the mirror and see that I am still underweight, then I glance at myself again and I see a different reflection, I see fat. I alternate between restricting what I eat, eating very healthily and very little, and then there will be one or two days a week where I become bulimic again, eat far too much and make myself sick.There's no happy medium, no equilibrium, and that's also reflected in how I feel about South Africa.

One minute I wish I was going away forever, or for longer than 5 weeks at least, the next I worry that I have been too ambitious. A week ago I ate out with one of my best friends and was almost in tears in the restaurant because my prawns had been cooked in a trace of oil (and again Rosey, I am sorry for being such a loser!), so how can I possibly cope in another country, not having any control and eating what I'm given without making a fuss?! Strangely though, putting me on a plane and sticking me in another country seems to help. In April I was at a pretty low point - not just in terms of weight. I weighed out all of my food to the exact gram, the exact calorie (yes, I was actually weighing out celery and cucumber!) and on the days I didn't obsessively count calories, I was binge-eating, vomiting and taking obscene amounts of laxatives.

For Easter weekend I flew out to Spain and met my sister and nephew. Looking back, I have no idea how I got there and back in one piece as I was physically and mentally such a wreck. But, despite being in a pretty bad place, from somewhere I pulled it together and ate out in restaurants, had a glass or two of wine (one of the few benefits of anorexia is that it's a pretty cheap night out - two drinks and I'm fairly merry!) and my world didn't fall apart.

So I know that I can do this. It's sometimes better not to think about things too much, and just get on with them. I blame the producers of Dawson's Creek - a generation of people my age have been brought up watching teenagers talk and talk and analyse themselves to death! If Dawson had just kissed Joey instead of agonising over it for episodes, maybe he wouldn't have lost her to Pacey. But I digress........

The irony certainly hasn't escaped me....the fact that I limit what I eat, and at one point was literally starving myself, and here I am, off to work with children who are lucky to get one decent meal a day. It does feel a bit strange, almost perverse. I'm sure Freud would have a field day!

I have talked quite a bit about my illness, but I don't want it to be the main thing I write about. However it is hard not to mention it, as it is a huge presence in my life still and will probably continue to affect me for some time. But I am more than anorexia. It does not define me - it is a condition I have, but not who I am. The thing is, I almost can't remember who I was before I got really ill, and I don't think I will ever be that person again. But that's ok......the girl I used to be was on the verge of making herself scarily unwell, and so I don't want to get that back. For me, there is no going back, only going forwards.

For a long time I blocked out how bad things got and how ill I became. Scarily, I actually looked back at myself at my worst and missed being there. It is only recently - very recently in fact - that I have started to remember just how desperate and scared I got, how unbearably miserable I felt. It sounds dramatic, but I think my family started to worry that I would die. The idea of going back to that.....it is just unthinkable. But as much as I hate to remember how sick I was, it helps, because it will stop me from ever going back there. With those memories and the thought of going to South Africa pushing me forwards, I know I can keep going and stay on the right track.

The distance between Manchester and Cape Town is over 6000 miles (6161 to be precise). But by December I will have travelled so much further than just a 12,000 mile round trip........

In the beginning.....

So somebody called Abra Fortune Chernik once said, “Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I ever committed”. (I have sat through numerous lectures on plagiarism at uni, and feel the need to point out that I read this quotation in Marya Hornbacher's Wasted. Yes, I am a geek. But a geek who won't be getting sued!) Anyway, I’m going to take that a little bit further, pull my head out of the toilet, out of the calorie book, out of my a**e, and take it all the way to South Africa, to a community project near Cape Town where I’ll be working with under privileged children. The rumours are true, I have quite possibly lost my mind, and on October 31st am flying out to Cape Town then travelling south to Fish Hoek where I’ll live with other volunteers for the next month.

If anyone wants to read more about what I’m doing, details are here and it explains it far better than I can: http://www.africanimpact.com/volunteers/community-work-south-africa/

A few people have asked me about why I’m doing this, so I will try to explain as succinctly as possible.......

Firstly, why Africa? Well, in practical terms, all of the projects in South and Central America were ruled out by the fact that my Spanish is limited to ‘la cuenta, por favor’. And I won’t lie, I was kind of influenced by Out Of Africa and do have some fantasies about running into a (young!) Robert Redford lookalike, being flown around in a plane and having my hair washed on the banks of the river..... I have (somewhat annoyingly) been running around informing everyone that ‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills’. But I’m no Meryl Streep, nor am I living anywhere near a farm and my accent borders on being offensive, so I may stop that sharpish.

The project looks pretty amazing too. It’s based in a community just outside of Cape Town and the work they do there is so varied, which is what appealed to me. In the mornings I'll be working in the schools, in the afternoons it's more community based and I could be doing anything from working in the library to painting murals in the classrooms. Although I suspect they may take one look at my painting skills and leave me in the library! After I did summer camp two years ago I realised how much I loved working with kids, and now I am considering teaching, so this seems like a perfect way to gain some experience before I commit to a PGCE.

Some people know, and some do not, that since I was 14 I have suffered from anorexia and bulimia, and that over the past two years it has got hellishly out of control, resulting in me landing myself in hospital for a couple of months earlier this year. I’m not recovered yet, probably far from it. (And yes, the people who run the project are aware of my history! I didn’t lie about that, yet did tell them that I could cope with Afrikaans as I ‘speak a little Dutch’. This is not entirely accurate, but nevermind.....) While I’m not naive enough to be doing this as a miracle cure, I do hope that doing something worthwhile, being less selfish and looking after kids who really need help, will in turn help me to gain some perspective. I might come back bigger, but then I could also come back smaller, which probably wouldn’t go down well. But whatever size I am, I don’t want to care. I don’t want my happiness and self-worth to be defined by the number on the scales. I want to be more than just another anorexia statistic, and this is my way of pulling myself back from the huge low I got to earlier this year. It is giving me something to aim for when I slip, when I don't want to eat. When getting well seems too much of a struggle there is a huge reason for me to keep going.

It will soon become clear that succinct is not my style and that I have a tendency to digress when I write. But really there is no single reason why I am doing this. The past two years have - to put it mildly - not been a whole lot of fun, and I just need to get away from things, to do something new and exciting, to prove to myself that I am capable of more than just losing weight.

Despite being somewhat scathing about blogs and bloggers, I have finally decided to get one to keep in touch with people while I’m away. Mass emails weren’t really an option as certain members of my family don’t speak so therefore can't be included in the same emails and not everybody has Facebook. And I still refuse to accept my parents as friends on there anyway – you’re too old people! ;) Plus last week I saw Julie and Julia and now hope to become the next Julie Powell with my very own book and film deal......

I won't lie - I don't really understand how blogs work. But mine is pink, so it can't be bad! I have no idea how often I will update this - either with ridiculous regularity, or never again. It may continue long after I come home from Africa, or I may get bored before I even leave in 5 weeks time. I may be the only person who ever reads this. But for now a pink blog it is - the perfect way for me to bore you all to death even on another continent!