Goodness it is glorious here during the day, but man it chills down at night; I am talking almost a 30-degree difference. I have spent the last two days trying to adjust to this ungodly time difference and I am definitely not there yet. I had to take some Nyquil last night to make myself go to sleep and now I am sitting in the office wishing that I was in bed. This morning I had to be up at 6:30 a.m. for my first intervention.
We went to a school and watched the coaches take the kids through an activity in the curriculum called “HIV Transmission Tree.” During this activity, the coaches set up different areas, each named after stadiums in the world and then the kids go from stadium to stadium and meet different people. At the end they come back together and they pick three kids to stand-alone and represent people who are HIV positive. From there they request that if you met one of the kids standing alone in one of the stadiums, that you go put your hand on their shoulder. They continue this until all but two students are left. This explains the key message that HIV spreads quickly when people have unprotected sex with multiple partners. Those two students were told before the game to only talk to each other at each stadium, to demonstrate the key message that you can avoid HIV by having one mutually faithful, uninfected sexual partner. During orientation in Hanover, we did this activity so we would have a clear understanding of what the curriculum would look like, especially since each practice is in a language other than English. Anyways it was super cool to see the program in action and meet some of the Kimberley coaches.
I worked my first 11-hour day yesterday (day with the intervention, I am writing over a few days). It will also be my first weekend here and I will be working my first Saturday on the job. Too bad I am not getting paid, because I would be making some serious overtime. I am getting the impression that is going to be how life is; I think we just work a lot, which is fine because aside from that I just plan on hanging out in the awesome gym we have. I joined yesterday and made friends with Ralph, one of the guys working in the gym. I think he might be slightly scared of me because I kept asking him about social get-togethers, how I should meet people in Kim, where we should go, but it just seems like the gym is going to be the place to hangout. Plus it has Internet, quite a hot commodity in Kim. I think Albert and I might look into upgrading our Internet to unlimited, depending on how much more it would be a month, just so we can do what we want on the computers.
Yesterday when we got back from the intervention, I spent some time with Mandla going over the set up of our site and the expectations they have for Albert and I. We have four sites (Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Lime Acres, Danielskuil). The largest is actually Bloem, then Kim, and then Lime and DK, which we pretty much consider one for the time being. We are heading out to LA and DK later today, so I will be able to report back on those then and then we are headed to Bloem (sounds like “bloom”) tomorrow for a two-day HCT tournament. An HCT is a an HIV/AIDS Counseling and Testing tournament, so what happens is we put on a soccer tournament, where people can come out and get tested while either playing or watching some soccer. I found out yesterday that I will be spending one week out of every month in Bloem and that I will be the intern in charge of that site. They have their own office, staff, and coaches, and I will be a little extra support for them. I will also be their voice being that they report to Mandla. I am also in charge of a program called Skillz Street, which is a street soccer program for women, and I am doing all of the write-ups (thank you notes, letters, anything that needs to be written obviously). Skillz is the name of the curriculum we run, so we have the Skillz Core (basic curriculum), Skillz Holiday (curriculum delivered in one week as opposed to 8 weeks), and the Skillz Street. Also they always use “z” in place of “s” at the end of words. All the rest of the stuff Albert and I will work about evenly on.
Yesterday I had my first driving lesson and I did well until I went from one road to another and turned into oncoming traffic. Albert starting screaming, “car! Car!, wrong side of the road!” and it didn’t even register because I jus felt like I was on the right side of the road. No worries, I can apparently sort of drive stick, I just cannot remember what side of the road to drive on. I also like to veer to the left because it feels weird driving on the wrong side of the road, sitting on the wrong side of the car. Oh well, more practice might be needed before I start driving myself to Bloem, which is about 75 miles from Kim.
I will try to put some pictures up eventually, but like I said before the Internet can be a little questionable, so I will do my best. Actually I probably have to take some pictures before I can put them up. I’ll try to get on that. I really want to take pictures and video of the kids doing the activities, but I don’t think we are supposed to. Maybe I’ll be able to after we have been here for a while. When I was flying into Kimberley, I was so confused because all you could see was desert-like land for miles in every direction; there didn’t appear to be a city of any sort, never mind one the size of Kim (apparently Bloem is even bigger). I really think that flying into Kim is what it would feel like to land on Mars. It was just reds, browns, and tans, with some small shrubs sporadically thrown out there. The shrubs, though a hunter green color in real life, just looked like moon rocks from the plane. All I could think is that this definitely is Africa. Cape Town, not so much, flying into Kim, fo sho. I think once you get beyond the city of Kim and its townships there is nothing aside from trees, dirt, dirt roads, and more dirt.
Oh, above I forgot to mention that there is a nationwide teacher’s strike going on right now, which makes it very difficult to do anything since we work in schools. So right now we don’t have many interventions, but we have other little projects. We have an “Ingakara” competition going on right now. Ingakara means “leader or big-dog” in Africaans. Yesterday we spent the day creating an application that the girls will have to complete in order to enter. We are trying to find 8th grade girls who are doing something in the fight again HIV/AIDS. This project is in conjunction with Nike’s (RED) campaign and the first place girl will get a new Dell laptop, second place will get R500 worth of Nike gear, and third place will take home R400 work of Nike gear. So that is pretty cool!
Sorry if this was a slightly boring blog, just trying to relay some information for the time being, hopefully it will get more exciting. Mandla just got back to the office and we need to head to LA/DK. Actually he is just dancing right now though to some I-YAZ.
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