I'VE BEEN TOLD I LOOK LIKE GEENA DAVIS...

Today was our first day of volunteering! A few weeks ago when we went to our interview with Ubuntu, the group that works with HIV positive children, the woman who was supposed to be interviewing us never showed up. Brilliant interview strategy. We were told that things had fallen through and there wouldn’t be an opportunity to volunteer with this organization. Ellen and I were really bummed but we found another group that needs help at Youngsfield Refugee Camp. We weren’t sure exactly what we would be doing, but we were told that there were families of refugees whose children couldn’t go to school here. So we interviewed and signed up to go every Thursday afternoon to teach English.

After class we drove out to the military base in Wynberg, another neighborhood of Cape Town, where the refugee camp is located. During the car ride over, we talked with Emma, one of the coordinators who has been working with the refugees at Youngsfield for the past year. Emma told us that the families we were about to meet were all Somali refugees who had been living in one tent on the military base for almost the past 2 years. They were forced to leave their homes in May 2008, during the xenophobic riots in Cape Town. During these attacks, mobs killed 62 foreign nationals and drove 35,000 people from their homes. Although some of the people who were displaced moved back to their homes, it was unsafe for a lot of them, so they moved onto the military base in Wynberg. However, the military has the authority to throw them out of their tent on the base at any time they deem fit—regardless of the fact that Somali families really have nowhere else to go. The fathers leave the military base to work when there is work available—but these instances can be few and far between. In one of my classes today we talked about the unemployment rate in South Africa, and coming from the United States it is unfathomable—estimates hover anywhere between 40 and 52 percent. Recently, the fathers of these families have been able to find work picking fruit and are making about 70 rand a day, or the equivalent of $10. The cost of living is lower here, but not that low. Right before we drove over to Youngsfield, Ellen and I had a relatively cheap meal and it was over 70 rand for the two of us (granted, this wasn’t exactly a light fare—we’re growing girls?). For these fathers to try and support their families of 8 on this meager amount is ridiculous. Emma said that one of the biggest issues they face is food. She explained that as volunteers, their budget is very limited and it sets a precedent by bringing food for the kids every time they come to teach. But how can you teach a child who is hungry? The kids are getting one or maybe two meals a day of all starch, so Emma has been trying to bring sandwiches of some sort to hand to the kids during break. She said she didn’t want us to feel obligated as volunteers to bring food for the kids, but it would really help if everyone could pitch in. This is great news because I always really identified with the pitcher in “A League of Their Own”—probably because we both have red hair and a budding professional baseball career.

The guard at one of the gates let us onto the military base and drove to one of the farther-reaching corners until we got to the dirt road leading to the tents. We parked and started unloading the pencils, crayons, worksheets and books from the trunk of the car and looking off in the distance we saw these three little figures sprinting towards us. From that far away, all you could really make out was their big smiles—and I’m sure that is all they could see of us too. As they got closer to us, they slowed down (this is Africa, therefore it is hot) and walked up to us to say hello for the first time. Right away, they gave us all big hugs and introduced themselves, some more timidly than others. We met Said, Ouwa, Bindi, Gamar, and countless other little ones. We played some icebreakers and sang songs with the kids—I may have pulled a muscle trying to bust out a high kick while leading “Daddy Shark.” I kinda blurred the distinction between refugee camp and cheer camp. I’m sure it happens often. After that, Emma handed us each a piece of paper with the name of the child we had been paired up with. I was paired up with Ouwa. She is 7 years old and absolutely fearless. There is one tree on the part of the base surrounding their tent. I looked up at it and asked her Ouwa liked to climb trees (big mistake). I glanced back down to hear her response and where Ouwa was sitting a second ago, there was now just a patch of dirt. I looked back up at the tree and Ouwa was halfway up the trunk and was clearly not stopping. As riveting as my conversation with the dirt patch was, I decided to follow her up the tree (bigger mistake). As I got closer to the top branch where she was sitting, I started to see a huge, and potentially dangerous, hole in my logic. I figured that if these branches could support Ouwa, I should be fine. But after I put myself out there on a literal limb, I realized that although these branches could definitely support a stick thin 7-year-old girl, this was just not a population subset that I fell into anymore. When we got back on the ground, my patch of dirt had never looked so good. Ouwa and I did some English worksheets for awhile and she practiced writing out letters and hearing the sound they make. Ouwa knows her ABCs and understands the sounds they make. She is incredibly smart, so excited to learn, and just has the best attitude about it. It kills me to think that this is the only “school” she will have for the week. Refugees are technically allowed to attend the public schools in South Africa, but the issue is that the kids here aren’t up to speed with the basic curriculum so even if there are any openings, they can’t take them. The goal of the program is to get them caught up so that as soon as a space opens in the grade they are supposed to be in, they can start attending regular school. With kids like Ouwa, I think that will be no time at all. I already can’t wait to see her next week.