Freedom Day

On April 27th, 1994 ALL South Africans were finally about to vote. People age 18 and older entered lines at the poles to vote for their first time.

So this date now represents an official national holiday here in South Africa. I talked to the teachers at my school about the significance of this day and what it was like to vote for the first time. I was shown how the queue of people waiting had extending on and on throughout my small Northern Cape community. They told me how people were fainting left and right from having stood for too long.

At my school the police was invited to show the children how to officially raise the flag. We held a ceremony of traditional dances and songs and speeches by the teachers and students. Here is a picture from yesterday's event.

Soul Buddyz meeting on sexual abuse

This picture is from the other week where I stayed after school with the Grade 5's to show them a video on Child Sexual Abuse produced by Soul Buddyz with the funding of UKAID, SA government, MTN, PEPFAR, UNFPA, CDC, and BP (clearly getting the buy in from multiple funders).

I know I've explained before, but Soul Buddyz Clubs are a Soul City Institute "intervention" means used principally in the South African schools targeting students 8-14 years across all 9 provinces. At Robanyane Toto we have 3 facilitators of this club, including myself, where we meet on different issues that affect children and their community.

Child abuse is a significant problem in South Africa given these facts:

- 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 4 boys are sexually abused under the age of 10 years
- Rape is committed every 3 minutes
- Levels of violence and crime in the urban townships are high

We haven't had time to really deeply discuss the video we all watched about Avril who was abused by her uncle. But my hope is at this weeks meeting as we prepare for Thursday's Freedom Day activities we will talk about the importance of this. And as a teachers we all really need to be educated on the signs to watch in children who may be at risk of this danger.

Masego :)

I took this picture last Thursday of my friend and general worker at my school. Her name is Masego ("Ma-say-ho"). She's been like a second host mother to me at the school and always waits for me after school when I have programs or activities with the kid going on to close up the gates and turn on the security system.

Masego is so patient with my inability to grasp a fluency in Setswana (which most always accuse me of not speaking fluently 9 months into service). She will always ask me easy question about my day or weekend encouraging me to "bua" or "talk" in Setswana. Today she taught me how to say that's "very funny" and then we laughed haha.