South Africa Part 3 of 3

My third day in South Africa was undoubtedly the most eye-opening and rewarding. I participated in an SAS service trip with an organization named Operation Hunger. With locations across South Africa, Operation Hunger is a small, but critically important, privately funded non-profit. Its goal is to supplement the diet of children in the townships. Most children eat plain bread or biscuits (the equivalent of a dried out English muffin) with tea for nearly all of their meals. Operation Hunger tries to provide one or two heartier meals each week to as many township children as possible. Ideally, they try to provide protein in the form of chicken or cheese. However, more common is a soup that they prepare from a powder mix that is fortified with protein and vitamins. Another aspect of Operation Hunger is to try and track malnutrition across the regions- both for their own knowledge and to aid in fundraising. In Cape Town, Operation Hunger has a special relationship with Semester at Sea. With only one full-time employee to serve the Cape Town region, monitoring the children is nearly impossible without helping hands. The 2-3 times a year that Semester at Sea stops in Cape Town, the students participate in what the operator named, The Semester at Sea Malnutrition Monitoring Program. Which I will come back to in my story.

Our day began with a 45 minute bus ride out to a more rural township, named Green Valley. In the majority of the townships, the shacks are built extremely close together. (This leads to problems when the government does offer to build small houses for them because one house takes up the space of three shacks, so two families are displaced. As they don’t know which of the three will end up getting the house, the people resist the change.) However, Green Valley is unique in that the shelters have small parcels of grassy land between them- each lot is probably close to the size of a small classroom. However, this allows the people to do some sustenance farming which is critical because being so far away from the city, jobs are rare. As I wrote in my previous blog, the unemployment rate in the townships is roughly 80% and education opportunities are few. I would guess 20% of the children go to school, but I’m not really sure. When I asked Lavinia Crawford Brown why people don’t vote to change the income tax structure to provide more services to these people, her response was that people might be willing to vote for such a change, but their doubt in the government’s ability to spend the money wisely (not corruptly) keeps them from voting for such change.

A group of SAS students did the same township visit as us the day before. They began a gardening project outside the community center with ten tires filled with dirt mixed with manure. We finished this project by planting seeds, setting up a very basic sprinkler system, and putting up an awning. The goal of this project is to develop seedlings that can be transplanted to people’s gardens. The students the day before also did a collection of their own money ($300) and gave it to Lavinia to buy toys. So we had the delightful job of getting to pass these toys out to the children in the community center.

The community center in Green Valley is a one room building with open doors and windows. There were three elderly women watching over twenty children under the age of two. It was truly a site that I had never seen before. Children who could barely sit up on their own, were sitting on the dirty cement floor, covered with flies and playing with bug- covered toys. When we first arrived, many of them began crying. Our guide informed us that the only white people they usually see are the doctors who come to give them shots. Parents often wait as long as possible, using home remedies, before bringing their children to the doctor, leading to the need for shots instead of medication. So their first thought upon seeing twenty of us was that twenty doctors had come to give them shots. After they calmed down we played with them, unveiling the new toys and building forts. I thought it strange that even though the majority of the parents do not have jobs, they still drop their children off for childcare during the day.

Later a number of us went on to the other community center in town where the older children pass their days. They danced and sang songs for us and we passed out stickers and played games. Most of the townships speak a rural dialect of Africant, but the children usually know a few words in English. There we measured the arm circumference, height and weight of all the children for the malnutrition tracking program. We said our goodbyes and were off to have lunch at a quite posh truck stop complete with a small grocery store and burger restaurant. The ship had packed us boxed lunches- the usual for day trips- a bologna sandwich, a chicken leg, a hardboiled egg, a lemon bar, Oreos, an apple and a Capri Sun (it’s always exactly the same, haha). Our guide encouraged us to buy bread instead of candies or other treats for the next community. Altogether, we bought out the store’s bread supply and arrived at the next township with over 80 loaves of bread.

At our next community, designated as a “coloured township,” we met a living saint named Sabil. She welcomed us into her home- by far the nicest home in the township. We learned that she lives there by choice, even though she could afford to move to a much nicer neighborhood. For over twenty years, she has served a meal to the township’s children nearly every single day. She finds funding for this through her church, Operation Hunger, another non-profit, and her own money. As much as we were overwhelmed to hear her story, she was overwhelmed by all of us there to help. While we crowded into her house to hear her story, her double garage was filling up with children. By the time she introduced us, there were over 200 people smushed into her garage sitting on the floor, smallest to largest. They sang a number of fun songs to us and we returned the favor by doing the hokey pokey. After our introduction, we promptly set to work making sandwiches out of our lunch leftovers. We peeled the shells off the eggs and mixed it with the mayonnaise and mustard packets to make egg salad. We picked the chicken off the bones and mixed it to make chicken salad. We cut up the bologna sandwiches into halves, and made egg and chicken salad sandwiches. One girl had bought a couple jars of nutella, so we made apple slice and nutella sandwiches as well.

Before the children ate, we set up a system to measure arm circumference, height and weight. The mothers were all very thankful to have this information for their own knowledge and tracking. Our guide also recorded the information for his research. To go through all 150 children, it took us about 2 hours. Afterwards, we played with the children in the front yard for about another hour or two. Once again, our stickers were very popular! The children were ecstatic to play with us. I think I gave about a hundred piggy back rides. The tall boys in our group were particularly mauled, as the children wanted to sit up on their shoulders. The children loved getting their pictures taken and borrowing our cameras to take pictures on their own. I was amazed by how clever they were- they figured out how to work my camera in about 2 seconds and later taught me about certain features I didn’t even know I had, haha. Finally, after the children had waited nearly four hours, the food was served. Meanwhile, our guide had plotted the malnutrition information from the afternoon. He said it was actually far worse than he had thought, with the boys’ malnutrition nearly off the charts. The mothers’ reply to this was that the girls stay close to home all day, near their mothers. However, the boys take off during the day, often playing in unsanitary areas of the township. Therefore, when there is a little bit of extra food around the girls are there to have some. With the boys out and about in the dirt, they consequently get diarrhea frequently- one of the most troublesome illnesses in the townships. Our guide, though shocked by the data, was very thankful to have it so that he could go back and secure more funding. We said our goodbyes and were off back to the ship.

On the extreme opposite spectrum of South Africa, we went to a professional rugby game that night. Cape Town’s Stormers against the New Zealand Reds. It was quite violent- they don’t wear any padding and frequently punch each other for no reason. I enjoyed the efficiency of the game though- more like soccer than football- the clock doesn’t stop. They play two 40 minute halves with a 15 minute half time. It was quite speedy- the game started at 7:10 and we were out of there by nine. It was very fun to watch, but I don’t think I will ever let any of my children play, haha.

The last two days I spent around Cape Town. Hayley and I did one of the red double decker bus tours one day and got to visit Camp’s Bay as well as the District 6 museum. By the last day we were exhausted and mostly hung out around the port area and did a few smaller museums. All in all, South Africa was an incredible experience and I look forward to hopefully returning someday.

More to come on India soon!!! Xoxo Rose.