Intruder?

I had my first security alarm scare yesterday morning! At about 5am I was suddenly awoken by literally the loudest sound I have ever experienced in my entire life. It was like an outer body experience - the walls of the house, as well as my entire body, were pulsing the beeping was so loud.  I’m pretty sure that the entire street woke up and that, had I been over the age of 60, I would have had a heart attack. It was inescapable.  After I got over the initial shock, I was terrified because clearly we had an intruder, which isn’t all that uncommon here and you hear so many horror stories about it.  So I stayed locked in my room, holding my pepper spray, unsure what you are supposed to do in that situation!  Luckily, no intruder was found but it sure made for an unpleasant start to the day. Now I know that South African’s don’t mess around with their security and alarm systems.  I think I am pretty safe between the electric fence and the deafening alarm system!

In other news, I leave Friday afternoon for a roadtrip adventure to Lesotho and Kruguer National Park with my friends Whitney and Jess.  We plan on having a leisurely drive up to Lesotho (a very small, rural, mountainous nation in the center of South Africa), spending a few days being nomads in huts there, then making our way to Johannesburg where we will start out Kruger safari adventure. Hopefully I will be posting lots of animal pictures this time two weeks from now! That is if I am not eaten by a lion…

roadtrip mates

Workshops and protests!

Last week I attended a workshop about an hour away in Sunset Beach, which is on the western coastal side of Cape Town.  The conference/workshop was for a group of about 10 NGO's from South Africa that were all jointly funded to conduct a survey on land access and hunger.  The survey phase was completed before I got to Women on Farms but now I will be the one using the SPSS statistical program to analyze the data.  The workshop last week went over how to use SPSS and what type of results to look for.  The nice part about the conference was the venue - literally right on the water with a great view of Table Mountain and the city.  I don't think you would find too many work conferences in the states with venues like this!!

I participated in my first (illegal) protest! This past Saturday, Women on Farms Project organized a protest to raise awareness of land in the Ceres, South Africa area that is not in use.  There are many farmer workers in the area that want land either for food gardens for household use or larger plots for income generation farming. We started the protest in the city center, then walked to the Farmer's Association where we handed over a letter requesting land, and then ended the walk at a plot of unused land as a symbol of intent to occupy the land.  We had a much lower turnout than expected because many farmers threatened their workers by saying they would be fired and evicted out of their homes if they attended the march.  One farmer went as far as stealing the keys from a bus we rented to pick up farm workers so that they could not attend. There were still over 100 people there and I think we at least raised awareness of the issue! 

 

Besides that, there is nothing much new here! It's still pretty chilly and wet on this side of the pond so enjoy the warm summer weather at home! I am missing it! 

Gelukkig Vroue se Dag!

Today is a national holiday here in South Africa - Women's Day! To wrap up the long four day weekend, myself and two friends took a leisurely hike up a nearby mountain.  It was absolutely beautiful today, not a cloud in the sky and mid 70s. Just a perfect winter day right? 

I spent most of this weekend in Cape Town with the other two American interns from Women on Farms Project.  We had to go out to farms Friday and Saturday to conduct focus groups and surveys on women's health care access. The focus groups and surveys are not my project so I just got to spend the days playing with the farm children. They go crazy when you pull out a camera! Friday night we ate at an amazing Ethiopian restaurant and went out, Saturday night we were exhausted so we rented a few movies. Sunday we went to a place called Mzoli's which is basically a butchery in the townships that became huge during the World Cup last year. Now it is the place to be on Sundays and was thus packed but a good time nonetheless!

 

In other news I started another project at work. I will still be working with the women's mushroom cooperatives but I am now also developing a ten session course on gender equality for grade 8 learners. The sessions will be an hour long each and will focus on issues such as South African rights, gender based violence, child abuse, responsibility, decision making, and opportunities post-school and off the farm. We plan on going into 5 or 6 schools and teaching 30 students in each school for the time being.  

All in all things are going great here! I keep reading bad news on the US economy but for whatever reason, the worse the economy is over there, the more the exchange rate goes up in my favor! I'm loving it! You can actual watch the rand per dollar exchange rate increase by the hour lately!

Well, check out my picasa site - I posted some more pictures! And lastly, anyone want to donate $2,500 to me so I can come home this weekend and go bridesmaid dress fitting with my cousin?!?! Let me know!

My Big Hollywood Break

Yesterday I stared in a film called GrapeJuice and now I am anxiously awaiting a call from Steven Spielberg...

GrapeJuice is about a coloured girl, Joy, born and raised on a South African wine farm who later moves to Europe in order to leave her past behind. She meets a European guy and they decide to visit South Africa to see where Joy came from.  The film starts off on a tour bus in Cape Town and ends up in the Stellenbosch wine area with Joy, at first embarrassed of her heritage, is forced to come to terms with her South African past. It shows the two sides of the wine culture here and how it is hard for many of the farm workers to ever truly escape the lifestyle they are born into.

I really was part of the film but I don't think Hollywood is in my future.  Since Women on Farms Project deals a lot with issues brought up in GrapeJuice, they helped with the organization of the film and I was roped into being a snooty, white tourist extra.  I got two friends, Whitney and Kate, to join me and it ended up being fun, though a bit long! We were picked up at 5:30 in the morning, headed into Cape Town where we were given stereotypical white tourist clothing, and began shooting with the sunrise. The first half of the movie was shot on a tour bus and we just chatted in the background. The second half took place on Beyerskloof wine estate and then at a slave memorial in the area.  It was a super long day and required a lot of patience as we ran through scenes over and over and over again. Definitely have a new respect for the film industry! 

in our American Tourist outfits.

filming the last scene. 

some of the 'tourists'

SHROOMS!

As I told you in the last post, one of the projects I will be concentrating on at work is a women's mushroom co-op.  This project is very much in it's beginning stages so I have been able to help with all aspects of the initiative from logistics to their marketing and finances. The cooperative consists of five farmwomen from the Rawsonville area (about 45 minutes north-east of Stellenbosch) and one mushroom growing container (looks like one of the big dumpsters you can rent when you gut a kitchen or something).  They are doing an excellent job at producing a large volume of shiitake mushrooms but finding a market to sell to and the logistics of actually delivering the product without any mode of transportation have been a bit of a challenge.  Right now Women on Farms is providing a considerable amount of help both financially and physically but the ultimate goal is for them to be sustainable on their own. So far I have gotten to make a label for their mushroom containers and have gotten to go with them to restaurants and wine estates to market the product.  We have had more interest in the mushrooms than we estimated and the women are actually nervous they won't be able to fill all of the orders!

  

the product - and the label I designed.

Three of the women in Franshoek to market the mushrooms to restaurants.

I MADE IT!

I have officially been living in Stellenbosch almost two weeks now! I left the States the Wednesday before last, did a very rushed tour of London on Thursday, and then arrived in Cape Town on Friday! My arrival marked 13 months to the day that I left last year - I knew I would be back someday but it really is amazing how quickly I was able to do it.  I am now all settled in and it feels like I never left!

first sighting of Cape Town from the plane

This time around has been completely different than the last, both in good ways and in ways which will take time to get used to. First off, I arrived to winter instead of summer. Last year I left a miserable St. Louis blizzard and stepped off the plane to a beautiful, sunny, warm Cape Town day. However, this time I left warm, summery St. Louis and arrived to a dreary, cold, winter day in Cape Town. It has been in the low 60s here during the day and then 40s at night. While that may not sound too bad, the buildings are not insulated or heated and it is the rainy season so you would be surprised how cold it does feel. My bedroom is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit on average which can make it pretty miserable to change clothes or get out of bed in the morning. The first two nights here I didn't have bedding yet so I wore coats and boots to bed and got a pretty decent ab workout from the constant shivering. I am getting used to it already though and am beginning to look like a local with a hot cup of coffee or tea constantly in my hands. I am told it will start warming up in September!

Another way in which this experience has already been different is that with the study abroad program it was nonstop fun activity from the moment we landed at the airport. This arrival has been much more relaxed with me doing a lot of the getting situated activities on my own. I don't have an instant group of American friends to hang out with either. Overall I think this is a good thing because I feel like I really do live here instead of just doing an Americanized stay. I have had to learn a lot of 'South African' things that I wasn't exposed to last year such as how to buy electricity at the supermarket, how to operate the electric fences that surround the homes and businesses, and how to converse in Afrikaans.  

I have two roommates, Charne and Jen, as well as two puppies, Dexter and Molly. I am loving living here - both roommates are wonderful and my dream of having a pet finally came true! Dexter is the sweetest dog and Molly is a bundle of energy - if dogs could be diagnosed with ADD, she would have it. She loves tearing up just about anything and always has mud on her nose from digging holes in the 'garden.' The dog psychiatrist actually paid a visit the other day to see if there was hope for Molly and it sounds like there is! The girls have been very welcoming as well and make sure to take me out with them.  There are always people at the house so I have had no trouble meeting people.

I started worked last Thursday at Women on Farms Project and while I am still excited about it, I think it is going to be way more of a challenge than I anticipated.  Afrikaans is spoken 95% of the time and so I tend to fall a bit behind in conversations. The conversational Afrikaans I learned last year doesn't get me far in an NGO environment where a lot of the topics are political based and spoken super fast. Working at WFP has definitely encouraged me to pick up the language faster so I will be looking for a tutor as soon as the university students return for their spring semester! As far as what I will be working on, there are two main projects.  The first is the Young Women's Project in which I will be going into schools and speaking to students about their rights as people and as South Africans. I will also be informing them of their opportunities post high school off the farms.  The other project is a mushroom cooperative in which women on farms have joined together to grown shiitake mushrooms in order to have more food for their families and more income.  I am currently working on marketing their product.  My favorite part of the internship thus far has been visiting the farms and meeting the local women. Not only are the drives to the farms beautiful, but I have gotten the opportunity to see a side of South Africa that I did not have much of an opportunity to experience before. I can already tell that this is going to be an influential experience for me - I am working in an environment that is completely foreign to me, with women from diverse backgrounds very different than my own, and on projects that I am genuinely interested in. There is a lot for me to both learn and contribute which should make for a positive experience.

In addition to WFP I will be helping out with the CIEE study abroad program I participated in previously. I visited with Bradley and Joe from CIEE upon arriving in Stellenbosch and it was so good to see them! There are only four students on this semester's program but they said they will let me know when I can help out.  The four Americans, all girls, arrived yesterday so I showed them around Stellenbosch in the afternoon and got them set up with cell phones, etc. It's nice to still have a tie to the university and the CIEE program and I'm sure I will enjoy participating when possible. Plus the four students all seem very fun so I am excited to have a few American friends again!

That's it for now! I will try to update more frequently from now on!