It’s unreal to think that my time here in South
African is more than halfway over. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how
a month from now, we’ll have only a few weeks left in this beautiful country. I
want to enjoy the present moment as much as possible, but it’s hard to ignore
how fast time is passing here. With that being said, there are still so many
things I have to look forward to; our excursion to Johannesburg, a community
dialogue for Prevention and Action, parasailing, and more. I’ve noticed that
I’ve grown very acclimated to Cape Town, and this country is starting to feel
like my second home.
Last Wednesday, Prevention in Action hosted a
community dialogue in Kuyasa, which Katherine and I helped organize. The
purpose of the dialogue was to bring people who are involved in gangs and other
members of the community together to debate and discuss relevant issues, and
brainstorm possible solutions. At first there were only a handful of people at
the event, however; more and more people arrived as the event went on, and we
ended up having more than 40 people attend. Although the majority of the event was
in Xhosa, I was still able to tell that everyone was engaged in the debate. The
topics that were discussed include gang violence, substance abuse, and
gender-based violence. After the event, one of the gang members came up to me
and said how happy he was that we hosted this event, and he told me that many
gang members “do left, but they want to do right”. That statement stuck with
me, and made me realize how important it is to do community work such as this.
Katherine and I are now in the process of planning our final event for
Prevention in Action, which is a community dialogue. The dialogue will be a way
for us to continue the conversation that was started at the debate, and present
the solutions that community members came up with to different organizations,
in hopes of partnering with them and creating sustainable change in Kuyasa.
Although the semester is flying by, during the next
few weeks I want to focus on appreciating the present moment as much as I can.
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