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
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