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| An unuusal two-story house in the township |
We all arrived safely and without incident in Cape Town last night around midnight (here time) after about 30 hours of travel. The guest house is beautiful and right in the center of everything. It’s a bit disorienting because Cape Town looks like any other industrialized city- actually, a bit like my visit to Austin, TX last year… The guest house used to be a maternity ward- turned priest house- turned guest house. Beautiful wooden stairs curve up to the second floor, and you can hear every little creak- every elephant footstep on the floor (yes, girls, I’m calling you out). But, despite the fact that I slept the entire flight, I slept all the way through the morning and then some- must be catching up from the ecitement in the months leading up to the trip!
Today we will visit the GAPA project in the townships. This project is a local NGO of grandmothers taking care of their grandchildren because their own children have died of AIDS and there’s no one else to care for them. I’m really excited to go. One of the students in our group has been working with them to facilitate a photo exhibition of the grandmothers which will be taking place while we’re here. After that, we’re visiting Beloved Beadwork, a local NGO established by a British woman who employs refugees and teaches them beadwork skills to earn extra income.
Nothing much to say today since we just got here and have only had a brief orientation of the city. More later…