Talking bout the revolution

I’m in the thick of it now. The meaty part of my year of volunteer year where I think to myself every once in a while….hmm I might actually be getting the hang of this.

I’m finding my niche so to speak, getting into a routine and figuring it out a little more each day. 

My work schedule defiantly keeps me busy. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I spend my days teaching little hellions oral English at a rural school outside of Durban (most of them are surprisingly well behaved actually). On Tuesdays and Thursday, I volunteer at a community health clinic and help with everything, from paperwork, to ambulance rides, and shaving patient’s facial hair. In addition, I also spend a few hours a week at an orphanage for boys and every now and then I help out at a clinic for patients suffering from AIDS. So basically I’m all over the place.

Day in and day out, it’s hard to process how different and crazy things are over here. I’ve become numb to the troubles that plague the people around me. You have to come to terms with the fact that life just isn’t fair. It’s not fair that the most of the kids at school are missing one of their parents. It’s not fair that people wait in lines for 8 hours just to be seen at a hospital, or that grandmothers are raising households with seven children. The lack of education, extreme poverty, remnants of apartheid and one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world compound these problems a thousand fold. It’s hard for me to even wrap my head around all the struggles that the people around me face.

Even so, I don’t feel depressed throughout my days and the people I work with don’t seem to be either. I rarely hear much complaining despite such dire circumstances. I’ve come to realize that you can’t dwell on all the negatives. You don’t have time to. I have met some of the happiest, most vivacious AIDS patients who’s smiles light up a room. Some of the kids I teach walk an hour to school each day and survive on a single meal of rice and beans. Yet they come to class on time, excited, and full of energy.

One of the most rewarding days that I have spent in South Africa was when my roommate Erika and I took four patients from The Hillcrest AIDS Center to the beach. The center is only about 30 minutes from the beach, but most of the patients have only visited the ocean once or twice in their lives, and some never at all. Of the four we took, two had never seen the ocean and a third had not been to the beach in forty years. The looks on their faces when we arrived were sublime. At first they were scared to even touch the sand, let alone go near the water, but in no time at all they were covering themselves head to toe in sand.

It’s a different world for the poverty stricken people of South Africa, and it isn’t one bit fair. But I cant dwell on this fact to much, because everywhere I go students are laughing, sick patients are smiling, and moments of pure joy are taking place.