recap of last week

Haven’t written in a while! This past week has been a number of things: Frustrating, encouraging, boring, busy…… sound like a bunch of contradictions? Well, that’s exactly what is has felt like. 

Monday and Tuesday I was at Molo. The most I did was organize tax invoices for about a half an hour. Boring, you say? UMM YES. NOT KAITLIN’S STYLE. Part of me was infuriated. “I am paying to be here to do an internship that I want to do- not organize tax invoices and sit on my ass in front of a computer!!!” Oh, my mind was not a pretty sight.

Side note:

You may be asking yourself, “Well, Kaitlin, can’t you just make up something to do?” I will now pull a quote from an email I wrote my special friend last week to hopefully clarify this:

" it is SO MUCH EASIER SAID THAN DONE to just "come up with a project". initiative is a different beast here. things are slow. anne marie and i are bored out of our minds and so is everyone else, it appears. from an outside perspective it might be easy to say ,"well, just go to ao school and teach sex ed! just show up!" or, "just research something!" but both of these have serious obstacles. i cant just get up and go to a school because #1) there is no transportation #2) i cant do anything in Molo's name without therir approval, and the people who would approve it are either never around or dont really care #3) i dont speak Xhosa #4) i cant just show up at a school, they do have classes and teachers. (though it is usually kind of unorganized). the list goes on and on. im not giving up though, no no no, im just really heart-set on switching. i have more to give than sitting ony my ass writing everyone in the world emails"

Anyway, I had asked our study abroad internship coordinator/advisor, Vernon, LAST Friday to see what I could do and if I could possibly switch. He said he would look into it over the weekend and get back to me. Well, Tuesday morning rolled around with no word so I took it upon myself to go to other people’s internships.

Wednesday:  I went to Christel House with my roommate Diana to teach gymnastics to second graders and sixth graders. OH. MY. LORD. 2^nd graders= little demons. I have NEVER worked with children that misbehaved. It was absolutely impossible. I can’t even describe how bad it was. They did not listen. AT. ALL. Wow wow wow. Terrible. On the other hand, the 6^th graders= little angels. They were so attentive and good gymnasts! This one little boy could do a back-tuck! Amazing. Frustrating and encouraging. All at once.

Thursday:  I went to Olive Leaf Foundation in Khayelitsha with my friend Sarah, still frustrated that Vernon had not gotten back to me. The whole day was a community meeting almost entirely in Xhosa about establishing some sort of Community Child Care System. We all sat in a big circle and all of the Mamas (about 30 of them) spoke in extremely fast Xhosa. Do yall know how crazy this language sounds?! All the clicks! My Lord. My special friend seemed surprised when I told him the other day that I hadn't really picked up any Xhosa yet. "Kaitlin, immersion is the best way!" I love his optimism, but DAMN BOY, YOU EVER HEARD XHOSA?!?!! Anyway, back to the point- It is amazing how much you can pick up from body language. I enjoyed watching their eyes speak. One woman talked in Xhosa for a half an hour straight and it was pretty fascinating. One of the facilitators translated the gist of what she said during the lunch break. Turns out when she was 20 she had a baby that was very sick and the doctors didn’t know what to do with it. They treated her and her baby very poorly because they were black. After a few frustrating days, the doctors gave the baby back to her. When the woman got on the bus to go home with the child, people kept looking at her strange and looking at the baby strange but she had no idea why. Someone told her the baby should go back to the hospital. She immediately turned around but when she got to the hospital no one would touch the baby. She kept trying to give it to a nurse but the nurses would look at it and run away. Turns out when the doctors had given her baby back it was already dead, but she didn’t know because she had never seen anything dead before. She said that the baby’s eyes were open and it was smiling. She was so unfamiliar with death. This woman is now probably in her 50s and says since then she has been very passionate about the rights of children.

At the lunch break I was explaining to Sarah how I would love to intern here and how if Vernon didn’t get back to me I would just come anyway. Then a man came up to me and already knew my name and said that he had been talking to Vernon all week and that I start Monday. WHAT?!?!?! I had been worrying myself for nothing? Vernon still hasn’t contacted me directly, but apparently this staff member said that he cleared it all up. I was shocked but am happy that it worked out. So I start Monday! I'll let yall know how it goes.....