First Day of Service

On Tuesday, Feb 14th,  I had my first full day of service at The Place of Hope. When I arrived it was explained to me that the woman who runs the shelter, Jenny, had meeting sin town and wouldn’t be in till mid afternoon so I should work in the “crèche” or daycare. I was lead to the daycare where I met the main teacher Veronica, and the other intern, Emily, who is from Germany on her gap year, working at different non- profits within South Africa. She has been at Place of Hope for a month and will be moving on to her non- profit mid- March. Emily and I were put in charge of the younger group of children, 0-3years old. These kids just looked like a bio-hazard, covered in snot, and dried food on their faces. YUCK. I was disappointed because I was told that my internship would not include babysitting but tat is exactly what I was asked to do. Emily and I spent the next 3 hours trying to entertain the younger kids, who were just not having it. While we were with the one group, Veronica was working on a Valentine’s Project with the 4 and5 year olds. These kids seemed excited to see a new face in the classroom, but shortly turned into obnoxious, rude kids, telling me they didn’t have to listen to me. At this day care all the children have a 2.5 hour nap time after lunch, during this time, Emily, another teacher, and I walked around the local town in which Place of Hope is located. This town had many different sized houses, but the town itself is what I imagined most south African towns to look like, more desolate, lots of street vendors, with more obvious signs of poverty one might not see in Observatory or in the more “posh” areas of downtown cape town. After we walked around Emily and I met with the director of the shelter, Jenny. She explained to us that in the future we would not be in the daycare but organizing donations, running classes and programs for the women, and helping with fundraising, and other departments where they have had to let people go because of financial difficulty. During this time I also met woman who for the last 20+ years has been on the committee for the largest bicycle race, which happens in South Africa every March. This year, she is organizing a way to get the women from the shelter involved – the racers need these bags for belongings and something to do with the timing mechanisms they use for the race, so she has found someone to teach the women how to sew and the women will be sewing thousands of these bags. At the end of our meeting we were also invited to the Valentine’s Day Place of Hope Fundraiser, which happened to be that evening, and Emily and I graciously accepted the invitation. By this time it was a little before 3:00pm and my transportation had arrived to pick me up to go get another housemate and return home.