Well this week was certainly one I will never forget! The Amy Biehl Foundation took 93 kids out of their township life to a campsite about an hour north of Cape Town for some much needed time away. The week was spent hiking, swimming (at least attempting to), playing soccer, roasting marshmellows over the fire, conquering obstacles courses, performing talent shows, making new friends, learning new languages, and simply overall bonding in a new and different environment.
It was so great to take these kids out the their usually every day surroundings and transport to some place away from the pressures (the drugs, the alcohol, the abuse, the cracked family structures) to a safe area. One boy told me on the first night, “I’ve never been outside of Cape Town before. It’s so nice to be somewhere quiet. To be away from all the trouble.” Pretty crazy for a 14 year old right?
This was the first time the Amy Biehl Foundation mixed 2 different cultures on a camp. We recently opened a new center in Manenberg (a coloured community) and gave them the opportunity to come on camp with the Xhosa kids. Now, if you are reading this from the States, you might think that I’m being un-PC when I say coloured kids and black kids, but here they are 2 very different cultures. They speak different languages (Afrikaans and Xhosa respectively) and there is a lot of left-over prejudice between the two groups that is left over from Apartheid. These two groups met with some opposition at the beginning of the camp, but by the end, barriers were broken and new multi-cultural friendships were made.
The camp started off with quite an upset when one of the girls claimed that the Holy Spirit had come to her and said that someone in our camp was going to murder someone else. This girl was able to rally most of the kids around her and began to yell and scream in Xhosa. We tried to break up the group and go into our next activity, but the kids were too terrified to not listen to her because of what she said. Girls were crying and saying they were too scared to go to sleep that night or walk anywhere alone in the dark. Boys started to second guess their friends as they tried to figure out who the murder would be. After some deliberation and some sensitivity to the different cultures, we decided to send the girl home. We couldn’t have the kids terrified for the rest of the week or this girl leading the kids. Let’s just say it was a very startling start to our camp. I don’t know how the rest of the facilitators felt, but I sure started to wonder what I had signed up for… Funny enough though, the kids woke up the next morning and seemed to have forgotten the whole episode. They went about their activities as if nothing every happened…and nothing did happen. We took all 93 kids back from camp safe and sound.
World AIDS Day happened to be on December 1st and because South Africa has the highest AIDS rate of any other country in the world, we decided to tailor our activities to educate our kids. We held a debate during the day with different topics pertaining to relationships and safe sex practices to get the kids actually thinking about the issues. It’s not taboo to talk openly about these things and the kids were more than willing to give their views. In the township culture, many of the kids are sexually active by the time they are 13/14 so they were no stranger to such topics. (This is a whole other issue that I can’t go into now, but a huge problem in not just Cape Town, but South Africa as a whole)
To finish off the day, we split the kids up in to 6 groups and had a giant water balloon fight. Buuuttt, when we were in town looking for balloons, we ran into a few obstacles (mainly the fact that would couldn’t find water balloons) so we had to improvise, South African style. After asking around a bit, we found the local clinic and were able to receive a box of 200 condoms (they are free in this country). While the kiddos ate lunch, Lesedi, Lungisa and myself managed to…yep, you guessed it—fill 200 condoms with water for our AIDS Awareness fight. I don’t think our fight will actually end AIDS, but hopefully the kids have a better awareness?? (Sorry if this topic is offensive to anyone, it is everyday conversation and life here and I feel a bit desensitized to the whole thing now)
Some other highlights from the camp included teaching a few of the kiddos how to swim, an impromptu camp-wide water fight on the hottest day, a facilitator vs camper soccer game (I played soccer with incredible talent…eish!), learning Xhosa songs, leaning about different cultures and seeing the incredible talent that our kids have during the talent show. The camp was so great that I’ve decided to go with the next group of kids going next week. It will be my last week of work and instead of spending it in the office doing office work, I’ll be out with the kiddos—the whole reason we do all the admin in the office. I can’t wait!!! I will try to put up pictures from the camp either later today or tomorrow so you guys will be able to get a little taste of the environment.
I still can’t believe I come home so soon! One more week at Amy Biehl and then a few more days and I’m headed for the good old US of A. Weird…. If anyone has any requests for something from SA send them my way and I’ll see what I can do J
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