This week was filled with a wide range of experiences and emotions. I don’t really know how to express my feelings about some of the things I encountered this week, but I will do my best. I came into this week feeling anxious and scared about staying in the townships because of all the preconceived perceptions we all had coming into this experience. After an extremely uplifting church service at the JL Zwane community center in Gugulethu, I felt relieved and ready to start my week with my host family. The church service was outstanding. I couldn’t understand most of it, due to the fact that the people in Gugulethu speak primarily Xhosa, but I could tell that a lot of people in the community valued this place for worship. I think they also value coming together every Sunday, which has allowed them to form a strong sense of community within the township. It amazed me how musically talented everyone was, and how much fun everyone had during the service. This really made me think about my own church service back at home. I have yet to find a church that is as welcoming and uplifting as the one I experienced this past week. At home, I personally feel like I need to go to church, or it’s the right thing to do. These people enjoy coming to church every Sunday and they honestly could sing worship songs all day long. I admire the lifestyle that these people have created for themselves, and I hope I can incorporate this into my own life when I get home. Looking back now at the church experience in Gugulethu, I find it incredibly moving that these people have so much hope and still praise God for the things they have been given in their life. At first, my first reaction to this was, why in the world would they praise God for their life? This may come out as really harsh, but they literally have nothing, or at least I thought. Their houses are about the size of a small apartment, and some are even smaller. The home I stayed in was extremely nice, which I was not expecting at all. There were three small bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a small kitchen. I was thankful for the fact that I was placed in a comfortable home and I was really happy to have a shower. You all are probably wondering why the shower is so significant. Well, out of all of my group members on this trip, my host family was the only one to have a shower in their home. Running water, and electricity is a high demand in the townships. In fact, people steal each other’s electricity quite frequently and a lot of people have been killed as a result.
On top of electricity and running water, food is also in high demand. Needless to say, a lot of people in the townships go hungry every single day. On Tuesday, our group had the opportunity to put together 250 food parcels to distribute to the selected families by the church. This was probably the most difficult experience of my entire week, but also an incredible learning experience. As I mentioned in my other blog, I learned to be more mindful and to let go of my personal expectations for the experiences we had during the week. One specific experience where I let all my expectations go was when our group observed how hospice care works in the townships. I really had no idea what to expect, which allowed me to let go of everything and take in the experience at hand. Our group visited a 33-year-old man who has HIV and has been on bed rest since 2007. Because of the fact that he has been on bed rest for the past couple of years he lost all of his mobility in the lower half of his body, and has gotten extremely bad bed sores. When we arrived to this man’s home, the hospice nurses entered this tiny room that was located to the side of a small shack, and began to change the dressings on the multiple bedsores he had on his body. We were told to peak our heads inside the room and I don’t regret looking inside, however it was incredibly depressing. I couldn’t even see the man’s face, but I saw his skinny body lying on a small bed in his small room, with his entire knee exposed. The sad part was the fact that this man hadn’t had his dressings changed for a while, and the nurses clearly did not have the supplies they needed to help him. On top of that, the nurses did not even have enough supplies to provide for the family members that stayed in the shack, so they could help him when the nurses were not there to assist him. As I stood in the shack watching this entire process take place, I noticed that the mother of the man was sitting in the corner of the shack crying. She had just arrived to Gugulethu a couple of days before we had arrived, and did not realize that her son was in such bad conditions. One of the hospice nurses also informed us that the family asked if they could receive a food parcel because they did not have any food for the night, and no money to buy food. I about lost it at this point, and decided to ask my instructor if it was okay to give the family some money. He said that it was okay, and my entire group ended up giving some money to the family.
Based on everything that I saw and experienced last week, I am feeling somewhat hopeless and confused as to what I am supposed to do next. One of my passions is to help others, and it was extremely difficult last week for me to sit back and see people literally fighting their way through life to stay alive. I want to help them and I have been feeling really discouraged because I know I can do more. Although I am feeling somewhat hopeless, I do know that I am learning a lot about myself, and the perspectives of others. When I leave South Africa, I want to be able to incorporate what I have learned into my daily life, and actually do something that will make a difference in other people’s lives.
Stay Posted:) Thanks for reading!
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