Rav leaving a place where time didn't exist but excited to be returning to family and friends

We have a week left in this beautiful city. It's weird to know that our time here is ending, where the moments I spent here felt infinite; a place where time didn't exist. 

I turned 21 last weekend. It was such a special weekend, filled with new friends and adventures. I definitely missed my family and friends back home, but they still managed to make my day special by sending flowers and cards.

For my activist project, I helped organize a soccer tournament in Khayelitsha for the FireFighters Soccer Club. It was their first tournament at Mandela Stadium, and we helped raise money for FireFighters shirts, jerseys, and for their lunch and tournament fees. It was a great weekend, and we played with the kids and I had the pleasure to meet many locals and talk about Xhosa traditions from the past and during Apartheid.

For my internship, Right2Know is sponsoring Freedom week, which starts on April 27th and lasts for five days until May 3rd. The week will highlight all the aspects of freedom, including press freedom, freedom of expression, the Freedom Charter, unfulfilled freedoms, freedom from fear, freedom from want, accountability, etc. Every day of Freedom Week is a different theme that is filled with workshops and activities. I contacted organizations throughout Cape Town if they would like to participate and hold a workshop or lecture during Freedom Week on the topic of freedom. I reached out to organize panel discussion, breakfast/lunch lectures, and information sessions. I'm excited to see on Thursday how the event goes, however unfortunately I won't be here next week to see how it ends.

Overall, we're wrapping up our time here in Cape Town. I have already said some goodbyes, and it sucks. However, I'm excited to know that in a week I'll be back at UConn and be in the arms of my best friends and favorite UConn faculty members. I've missed them all so much. 

Sara W reflecting on the future while enjoying the present

Through doing all of the readings and just experiencing life here in South Africa, I have constantly been wondering what I want to do after I graduate. I honestly do not see myself fitting into any categories of any jobs I have heard of. I love people and I love so many things that I can’t imagine picking one specific thing to live the rest of my life doing. I want to find something that will suit all of the different passions I have and spend the rest of my life doing that. I want to impact others in positive ways and create positive social change, but I cannot see myself doing that by working for a single NGO or any single company for that matter. I don’t know if I just haven’t come across it yet, but I want to spend my life doing what I love rather than working for a paycheck. I want to help the people who feels all that they can do is work a minimum wage paying job and just live life day by day with no sense of self or purpose. I see so many people in my life that just seem bored or depressed without a passion. What kind of a life is that and how do we motivate these types of people?

Other than thinking about the future, this past week in Cape Town was a lot of fun. Last weekend, we hosted the first Firefighter soccer tournament at Mandela Park. It was a great success and meeting so many great people made all of our work worth it. This past week was also Rav’s birthday and we went to Blouberg to watch the sunset before celebrating on Long Street. The next day, we went to Muizenberg for a relaxing day at the beach. Then, a couple days ago we moved out of our house in Rondebosch and into a nice hotel not too far away. We get free breakfast which is a major plus! Some of us went to Old Biscuit Mill after settling in yesterday to get some last minute souvenirs and gifts for people who are back at home. Today, we went to Mzoli’s- a fun braii place in a township called Gugulethu. I’m starting to get sad that we have such a short time left here in Cape Town and I’m trying to make the most out of every day.

Sunset at Bloubergstrand with Devil's Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion's Head in background

Maddy enjoyed spending time with kids playing and watching soccer

Since getting back from Joburg, I’ve had an additional week off from my internship because of term break at the school. Though being busy with some stuff that I had to do such as catching up on homework and getting shirts for the Fire Fighters tournament for the weekend, I had a lot of free time on my hands to reflect. First off, I realized that during the week when everyone is in their routine of internships, I want to be at mine too. It was nice having the week off in Joburg, yet when we came back to Cape Town, I was ready to get back to my own internship.

During class this week we had a conversation about our transition back to the U.S. and what and how we are going to tell people about our experiences here. I realized that I have SO much to say and could go days talking about everything about Cape Town. However, Marita pointed out a good point that people may ask, but not everyone is looking for a detailed response or necessarily care about everything we have to say, and that’s okay, but it’s a good thing to acknowledge. I liked how Marita recommended that when people ask us how it is we say, “It was great, I saw and did so much, what would you like to know about?” I also realized that two of the hardest transitions I will have back to life in the U.S. are not wanting to hear people complain. Some of the stuff people complain about, including myself, are so not worth a complaint and I often find myself catching my complaints. However, listening to others who complain about things that really don’t matter is going to be different for me because here people are so happy with what they have when at home people complain about what they don’t have and I feel like I just see it in a bigger picture now. The other thing that will be hard to adjust to is people always being on their phones. I’ve always been a “no phones at the dinner table” type of person and always try to not be on my phone and enjoy the company around me. Being here and not even being able to use a phone unless I have Wi-Fi has really made me adjust to only using my phone before bed and in the morning. I know I will go back to using it all the time when I’m home but enjoying the things around me without distractions is so nice and I want to continue this.

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After a week of not much going on, I had a very busy weekend with helping the Khayelitsha Fire Fighters host their first annual tournament. In typical African fashion, we showed up early Friday morning to start setting up for the tournament and they still have many things that we would have thought would have done days in advance to do before the games started. Oscar, they guy who was basically running the show was so awesome and had everything very organized, he just didn’t have any help. He was so thankful that we were there and we did a lot that first day helping him out whether it was registration of the teams, managing the entrance fees, doing the schedules of the games, and logging the scores of the completed games. The next two days were more relaxed because registration was over so we could watch some of the Fire fighter’s games as well as make almost 100 sandwiches for the senior and junior teams as well as the other volunteers. It was a senior tournament but many of the little juniors were there each day to watch. That gave us more time to sit and play with them because we usually only see them at practice. It was awesome to see them become comfortable around us and Sunday when we were leaving they thought it was our last time before going back to the U.S. so you could see how sad they were and wanted to make sure they were able to say goodbye. When we told them we would still be at practice at least one more time they lightened up and went back to playing knowing they would see us again.

Sara, Ethan, Maddy, Kaitlyn, Bongi, Claire, Power

Spending time with the kids was definitely the best part. The rest of the tournament was a little physically and emotionally draining. The coaches depend on us to do a lot for the team that we realistically can’t always do, so we had to learn to start saying no. Additionally, though we were there all weekend, people didn’t seem to get used to a group of white girls walking around and constantly just wanted to take pictures with us and then just walk away. It got exhausting walking by people everywhere we went and have people start talking in Xhosa to each other and laughing, clearly talking about us but we had no idea what they were saying. This has happened countless times to us before in many situations but having it occur constantly for 3 days straight was a lot. This was another reason why I wanted to hang around the kids, they don’t care what you look like, if you are willing to play with them and give them your attention, they will love having you there. Overall I think the tournament went great for it being their first one and it definitely brought me closer to the Fire Fighters. 

Alex spending a very different yet satisfying Easter at the Red Cross Hospital burn unit.

This week having come back from excursion, I am beginning to really feel like I am truly running out of time. I have been trying to plan my last two weeks and it’s been really sad but kind of motivating. Each day I have something fun planned which I hope will help to even out the sadness. Despite being ready to go home, I really don’t ever want to leave this place.

I went into my third round of surgeries with one of the student physios from Denmark. It was her last day and it was cool to observe with her since she had much more knowledge on human anatomy than myself, and prior experience with surgeries. She was able to ask questions and explain the previous symptoms of the patient, what the surgeons were doing to fix it, and what the probable recovery would look like. I found it so interesting to be able to hear a patient’s case from start to finish. It helps not just from a learning stance, but to better understand the pain of the patient. This time we watched two student doctors operate on a patient. In the past I have seen a surgeon working with a student so this was a different dynamic. The students turned on their playlists which really relaxed us all. We were laughing and feeling the music so much so that at times I even forgot I was in surgery. As we waited for the next patient, the student doctors and physio all sat in the break room together and at some point got into a conversation about different countries and their capitals. They were trying to guess a capital of a pretty well- known country in my opinion, and with every wrong guess, I was able to correct them and name which country that was from. They were all thoroughly impressed because as an American they believed that we often lacked the global awareness that most other countries had. I have never been so proud to break an American stereotype.

For Easter, I was able to help out at Red Cross in the burn victims wing. I can’t even begin to say that I was unprepared for what lied ahead, but I am glad that I did it. I spent much of my time talking to a little girl who was hooked up to a machine and had a bandage around her head with her eyes and mouth swollen shut. I could barely tell that she was even responsive other than the fact that she managed to turn towards me in her crib as I stroked her leg because even her little hands were completely bandaged up. Another one of the patients I played with was a one-year-old baby boy. As I disinfected the games I had just used with another patient, I heard him crying as he tried to crawl onto his pillow. My heart broke. Since he was mostly bandaged as well, I could only touch his hand. But even with that, he held on, stopped moving, and stopped crying. On this day I managed to make it to three different patients and each one was such a gift. Having worked with many children injured in car accidents and left to recuperate in cots for months with few visits from family, I was amazed at these circumstances. How strong these kids were to battle burns all over their bodies, some not even able to see or move for weeks. If nothing else, my time spent here has showed me just how lucky I am to be in good health and have the funds to travel and afford the necessities. Whenever times are rough, I must think back to the people I have had the pleasure of meeting and push forward knowing they would do the same. Having gone to church every single Easter of my life, this year was unique. Though I definitely would not call myself religious by any means, I felt as if what I was doing was like church in a way. Interacting with the kids was not only satisfying but left me feeling happier and more at peace.

Kaitlyn's busy and rewarding weekend

I can’t believe it’s been an entire week since we came home from Joburg/Kruger! I had a great, but busy week with internship, class, homework, and lots of fun activities we are all trying to cram in before leaving. After internship on Monday, a few of us went to Langa Cultural Center to get lunch and buy pottery from the local artists. We went into the city to explore Green Market Square; Maddy and I walked around Loop Street for a little and found a few cute cafe’s that we want to go back to. Tuesday afternoon Maddy, Karen, Sara, Laura G, Laura T, Taylor, and I hiked up part of Lion's Head for the sunset and full moon. We wanted to find Wally’s Cave, but instead we found a dead end around the corner where we were able to enjoy the sunset with no other people around. When it’s full moon, there are an overwhelming amount of people on the mountain so that’s why it was so great to find a quiet spot for us to eat dinner and enjoy each other’s company. Once it started getting dark, we began to make our way back down. As soon as we turned the corner, the full moon was right above us so we stopped to take a bunch of pictures…I finally figured out how to take moon pictures on manual!! On Thursday, we accidentally found an outlet/mall in Kenilworth when we were trying to find uniforms for the Fire Fighters.

Ethan, Rav, Sara, Maddy, Kaitlyn, Bongi & Claire

This weekend, the Fire Fighters held their first annual soccer tournament! We dedicated our whole weekend to help out and do all that we could to ensure the weekend ran smoothly. We didn’t really know much about what was happening until we showed up Friday morning. Oscar, a guy we hadn’t met before, was pretty much organizing and running the entire tournament by himself. He lives in Khayelitsha does all the behind the scenes work for anything soccer related there. He is absolutely amazing and knew exactly what he was doing. Karen and Laura T came with us on Friday, which was a HUGE help! Karen was our photographer for the day and Laura T helped us out at the gate. Claire, Laura, and I stayed at the gate most of the day, charging entrance fees for people and cars, while Sara and Maddy dealt with the chaos of twenty three teams registering the morning of the start of the tournament. Saturday we brought peanut butter and jelly so that we could make sandwiches for the Fire Fighters. We walked around with Bongi, taking pictures of all the teams and supporters watching on the sidelines. We made about 60 pb&j sandwiches for the team and tournament staff and then went to go watch the Fire Fighters play in their 1 o’clock game. Bongi sat with us and a bunch of local children, many of whom are on the Junior Fire Fighters team. Bongi told us all about South African words and phrases such as “shame”, “now now”, “sharp sharp”, “eish”, and many more that I don’t know how to accurately spell. We played music, watched the game, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Today we took a city bus to Khayelitsha for the first time, with Bongi, and it took a full hour to get there. Ethan and Nikita also came with us today! Today, I walked around a lot to take some more pictures and put my zoom lens on so that I could get action shots of the players during their games. We also got the chance to watch the Junior Fire Fighters play, since there was an empty field and Power wanted to give them some game time. Even just sitting watching the senior teams is so fun for me; it makes me miss soccer so so much. I’m so glad I chose to make this my activist project and spend a lot of my free time in this environment. We made another big batch of pb&j sandwiches for the players again today, but then left to catch the mini bus home so we could get to the grocery store before it closed. Oscar was so SO appreciative of our help; he mentioned it multiple times each day and kept reiterating how the tournament would have been a mess if we weren’t there to help. Since he did most of the general tournament organization, it was nice knowing we were able to help him be a little less stressed. We loved being there and I’m just so glad we could actually help make a difference and ensure that the weekend ran smoothly. 

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that we have less than two weeks left with everyone! Time has flown by way too fast.