Anecdotes and thoughts on my third week in Africa

Hello friends and family,

so again it has been a week since my last entry! It shows that I am settling in to a busy way of life...Sunday is my one day of the week when I can do stuff that I want to do. Mid-week is just a bit too hectic so the weekend is the time to get online and collect my thoughts on what I have experienced.

This week saw the start of my job as a Fundraiser for the Home, so far, one 25 page application down...only a few hundred more to go I should think! I have applied to the FirstRand Foundation which is a collection of 4 of the biggest banks in SA into a charitable fund which awards grants to NPO's [non profit organisations]. I emailed it off on the 30th, the deadline was the 31st! So hopefully they picked it up in the office in time on the Friday afternoon for it to qualify for consideration.

There is a lot of work to do here which we need funding for...the main thing being a new block which needs building. Currently the Home can take 100 children, but that means 50 boys and 50 girls. At the moment we have 89 children including 37 boys and 52 girls. The problem is...that we have too many girls in the 2 dormitories for aged 4-12 yrs girls. They are really cramped with 15 girls in one room! That room should really only have about 10 girls.

So they want to build a new cottage for the staff quarters so that those rooms can be made into children's rooms. That cottage will cost about R496,000 which is £49,000. The other big project we are looking to get under way is for an administration block and hall. At the moment there is no one room big enough to hold all the children and staff together. We had a mass on Saturday with just the staff and children and maybe 40 other people, and they had to hire a marquee and put it up outside. They have to hire a marquee maybe 15-20 times a year. If they had their own hall they could hold more functions and events, have indoor events when the weather is bad, and also rent the hall out to the local community to generate extra income. Also, this building would have the offices in so the current offices could be turned into another cottage for children. The two extra cottages inside the Home would accomodate approx. 40 more children! And the cost of building this hall is R1,600,000 which is £160, 000.

So I have a lot of work to do to fundraise this money! They have had the plans drawn up for over a year now and nothing has happened so hopefully we can get the ball rolling so building can start in early 2010.

Other than that, my week has included only 3hours of teaching at the school [that's just how my timetable works, I have 4 busy days at school this coming week] and just general playing with the children. They are getting more used to me now which is nice, and even the boys are becoming braver and talking to me. I just had two of the boys from Zanzibar who are 13yrs come round and visit, they are so curious to see inside the house because I have hundreds of photos on the wall which they can see through my window! So they came in and looked at them all, and I was explaining who all my family and friends are. I also let them go on my laptop so they could look through all the photos I have taken of them over the past few weeks. It's just really nice for them to be able to come in here and see how I am living and know that they are welcome in here too, its not a place which is out of bounds to them! I am hoping that next week the boys will be able to come round for a dvd night in my house! They have a dvd player which they can bring and plug in, and I could buy crisps and popcorn and stuff, make it like a cinema night :)

Yesterday we had a really nice celebration here to remember the founder of St Anthony's, Fr. Tate. He died 40years a go this year. It was really special because we had a lady come back who was the first child that Fr Tate adopted! He was left with 2 orphans when their mother died and there was no other family to care for them, they went and lived with him in his presbetry, their names were Nancy and Ernest. From there they were adopted by Dr and Mrs Khoza who ended up with 22 orphans! So it was a really nice day with food, dancing and zulu singing and lots of Old Atonians visiting again.

Today I got up and went to Church as always at 8am, it was a special service where the children went in their school uniforms and each of them received a blessing from the priest, in preparation for the start of exams. Some of them have already written some exams, others are starting in the next couple of weeks. I love mass here, it is all in Zulu but the singing is amazing, they all sing in harmony all the time and I am gradually picking up some of the songs. The one thing I struggle with every week, and causes quite a stir amongst the children, is my dancing!! Yes dancing, in church...it is compulsory and I can't do it!!! They all do this special sway from side to side and I just can't make my hips do it! And then you have to do some turns, and I keep bumping the kids with my bum by turning at the wrong time...it is so embarassing! After mass one of the girls said, we really need to teach you the zulu step. And I could see that these men in the row oppositte were laughing at me, I went bright red!!

After church I had arranged to go with the teenage boys' careworker, Mlondi, to visit one of the boys who used to be at St Anthony's but has ended up in prison. He was my favourite child when I was here last year! I was so shocked to hear that he had gone to prison. His name is MARK, he is 20yrs old now, he originally comes from Durban where he lived with his mother and sisters until his mother died when he was about 15yrs, then he went into an orphanage in Durban. He got moved out here, I think it was because he was too old, when he was about 18yr. When I came last year he was in my grade10 class and was the star pupil. Because he is coloured [mixed race] his first language was English so he obviously was a better english speaker than the other children. But he was also so keen to learn, and was really intellectual. One night he came round for extra help with his Shakespeare work that I had started with them, I hadn't even set any homework! We ended up having a really good discussion about the political history of SA and he told me that he wanted to study philosophy at university. So you can imagine, he was a really clever young man with big ambitions and a mind focused on learning as much as possible, and really wanting to move up in the world. When I left I told him I would come back, he just looked at me and said, 'people like you always say that, but you never do!' He really meant it, he looked hurt, like he had been let down by people making empty promises before. So when I shook his hand and said 'I promise I will come back' I really meant it, there was no way I was going to break it.

That was why I was so sad when I found he was not here when I returned! I absolutely had to go and visit him and show him I had kept my promise, and that I still support him and believe in him even though he made a mistake. I should probably tell you what he did...Like I said he was from Durban and had trouble growing up with a single parent family, I think he was involved in trouble on the streets. When his mum died he started stealing to help the family live, this was why they ended up in care. So when he came to St Anthony's he already had created a habit of stealing, it becomes like an addiction, when they see an opportunity to take something, they really can't resist.

MARK has a 2yr sentence in Ekuseni Prison - for young offenders aged 12-24yrs I think. It is about 30min drive from St Anthony's. You come out the town from the North and drive through some beautiful countryside, surprisingly it can be quite green and lush and there are some dairy farms out there. On the horizon you can see the hills that this area is famous for, flat topped hills just like Table Mountain, but not on that scale. There are not many houses for about 10k then you turn off the road to Ekuseni Prison...which is Zulu for 'in the morning'.

On the journey I had been trying to imagine what it would be like. I had heard it referred to as a 'young offenders' institute so was shocked to see it called a 'Prison' on the sign. I began to fear that it was more serious an institute than I imagine of a young offenders in UK. My fears were increased by the sight of the guard office, behind two rows of 20ft high steel fencing, the inner fence which it turns out is electrified. We had to go in, show our IDs, leave our cell phones behind, then be searched and go through a metal detector. The guards went to fetch Mark from the actual prison building which is separate from the area where visitors can meet. We could see him walking across the big open courtyard in his burgandy red prison uniform, that shocked me too. The sight of him actually in prison dress, with standard issue plimsoles and everything. One thing I didn't see any sign of were handcuffs, which was a bit of a relief I suppose...We were allowed to sit with Mark outside in the shade, not inside at tables like I imagined from TV, and definitely not through glass with a telephone! So that was good too, I could actually give him a hug!

He was predictably, very surprised to see me there, but good surprised! He didn't think I would be coming back, and one thing which did actually make him light up was when he realised that I will be here for 2years so he will get out before I go back. Maybe even after serving 1yr of his sentence he will go on probabtion. In many ways he was still the smiling, chatty young man I remembered, but he was definitely very troubled. He kept talking about the problems he was having within the prison, with the other prisoners forming what he called Gangs, and the tension with the guards. Apparently he has been getting trouble because, he says, he is one of only two 'coloureds' out of the 700 prisoners. It's been hard for me to understand but there does seem to be almost as strong a divide between coloureds and blacks, as there is between blacks and whites. Mark said that he has been accused of making chair legs into weapons by sharpening them, but he said it wasn't him, just someone decided to turn him in for it because he is different, so can be a scape goat for them. Apparently the whole 'drama' as he called it, started on Friday when he was accused, and they had just been questioning and beating him for it, just before we got there. It is illegal for the guards to beat them but he said they all do anyway. He was really anxious and talked about it alot, he was worried about what they would do to him when he got back. One good thing that came out of my visit was that he said the fact that a white lady had visited him might make the guards lay off him a bit. They would be wondering who I was, and he said he would lie that I was his lawyer, and that my husband is a magistrate!! I think he is right that my visit did have an impact and hopefully it will be a protective one for him.

Apart from telling me about his troubles in the prison, we did manage to talk a bit about his future and I tried to encourage him to continue with his studies. He is going to start an engineering qualification which will teach him how to do things like fixing a boiler, so when he leaves he will be able to get an assistant's job. Hopefully he can also find a way of getting back to school so he can finish grade 12 and matriculate [graduate from high school]. If he can do that then he will have the option of later being able to go onto further education, but he really needs to graduate from secondary school to have a hope of being something successful. The problem is that when he gets let out he doesn't have a home to go to, and St Anthony's won't be taking him back again. I just don't know where on earth he is going to be able to get accomodation from! Now that he has a criminal record he's not going to be able to find a foster home, and besides, he will be 21yrs when he leaves. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I say 'we' because I really feel like I have a duty to do my best to help this boy. If he was still in the Home I would be helping him through his last year of studies, just because he made a mistake and ended up somewhere else doesn't mean that I will just forget about him. He really does have no one. And I couldn't live with myself just cutting off all contact with him. I already think about him so to do nothing would be ignoring my conscience. Hopefully we can take things slowly and I will visit him every fortnight, maybe taking him some books and studying with him...just to keep his mind focused on the academic goals he used to have. He could be so much more than an engineering assistant, he should go into teaching or even social work. The best social workers are those who have been through the systems as a child and now what kind of support they needed when they were in that position.

I left him with a letter I had written last night, where I had tried to put into words everything I wanted to say to him, just incase it didn't come out right face to face. I'm really glad I did and I hope that letter will be the start of a friendship between us which will have a positive impact for Mark. This first meeting has left me quite shaken and again emotionally drained...but then all this I know is simply a reaction to what I see him suffering, and so what he is experiencing must be so many hundred times worse. Hopefully the little I can do and the support I can offer will be the start of a new future for him.
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