Quynh has a funny way of having hilarious things happen to her. Her host mom Patsy loves this casino called Grand West that's near her house where we watch some of the soccer games and where Patsy takes us to eat seafood because she's known on a first-name basis. In South Africa, drinking and gambling age is 18. Unfortunately for Quynh, her Asian heritage has gotten her carded twice now, including when we went to watch the South Africa/France game on Tuesday. That day, I was convinced SA could go up 4-0 in the first half- I'm really glad to see that South Africans maintained their pride in their team and that the team responded with a well-deserved 2-1 victory to end their World Cup.
After I got back that night, there was a braai at my house because it was our neighbor Angelique's birthday. Initially we were supposed to play poker that night, but it was immediately decided that there should be a huge supper (with all of Moira's family invited as well), and I managed to get back in time to smoke hookah while Freddy and Lucien cooked the chicken. Although poker was vetoed, Angelique insisted that we go out clubbing again, so Lucien, the Germans, and I all went with her as we wandered through town on a Tuesday night, smoking hookah, drinking caipirinhas, recalling Angelique's bartending experience, and eventually ending up at a pool hall, where I was humbled by 2 huge, incredibly drunk South Africans in foosball (note: these 2 reportedly practice for hours every day, so I really wasn't that ashamed, but it was getting ridiculous). The highlight of conversation for the night- a long discussion on how FIFA's power is so unchecked and how it leaves countries far below the economic expectations they seek after World Cups. This led to a side conversation on how Cape Town is run by the Chinese mafia and how the Illuminati will contribute to a war also partially caused by FIFA's influence on international politics.
Yesterday, we started our interviews in the townships with our social worker, Edith. Our first stop would be Khayelitsha, whose name translates to "New House" in Afrikaans because it was a new settlement set up for black people after overcrowding in existing ones like Nyanga and Langa. Khayelitsha is known for being the biggest and among the poorest of the townships. As we drove past the airport towards it, you could begin to see the expanse of small houses, shacks, tents, and less spread across the land. Most of the townships in Cape Town are located in an area called the Cape Flats- a desert-like area surrounded by Table Mountain and the other mountain ranges that flank the city. It's almost like a crater, with the haze of smog and pollution rising up from the neighborhoods.
Khayelitsha is so big that it has its own sub-neighborhoods- Site A, Site B, and Site C are poorer areas where shacks are built on top of shacks from anything that people could find- storage containers (like those on huge cargo ships), scrap metal, even the lids of tins welded together, while places like Harare have more built-up houses that wouldn't be out of place in a suburb like the one I live in. Loads of barbershops and beauty salons have been created inside of these containers, as well as the occasional take-away (convenience store) and cell phone store. The roads are bustling with people carrying produce, men chatting in circles, kids kicking around a soccer ball. There is also an unusually high (I estimated around 10) number of white people roaming around as well, looking to be conducting programs of their own throughout the township. There were even tours, which make me feel really uncomfortable because it would be like asking someone to bus you through the projects of the Bronx or through Whalley St. You can hire a guide to lead you through the townships and experience poverty for yourself, and even get a more authentic experience by spending the night at a backpackers lodge somewhere in the township. Profiting off poverty just seems wrong.Our research is to conduct an AIDS audit. Since St. Joseph's is not meant to be a permanent home, kids are frequently discharged from their hospital (and subsequently St. Joseph's) and put back into the custody of their parents. Our job is to go out into the townships and find the guardians of these kids and see how the children are doing and if the parents are complying with ARV therapy.
The first 2 kids we check up on are in foster care with a program called Home2Home. The program helps a house mother look after around 6 children, all usually orphaned or severely disabled, and even provides them with a daycare and a school. Mothers are constantly evaluated in terms of their performance, and their compliance with medicine is tracked with a medical notebook that they bring to doctor's offices so that they can track reactions to medicine, CD4 counts, viral load, and general wellness. Our social worker is amazed by how much these children have grown, as many more kids from St. Joseph's have also been placed here. Old wounds and scars have healed, the children are doing well in school and learning Xhosa (for all those people that start making clicking sounds when trying to imitate how Africans speak- this is one of those actual languages, and it's damn hard to pick up, especially because there are 7 different clicks and a bunch of other mouth movements and sounds that I haven't figured out). But we were reminded that we were still in Khayelitsha when Toni, the awesome director of the program, scolded Edith for not taking the keys out of her car while Quynh and I (whom Edith adjudged to be able to fight off any robbers) were still sitting inside. "Man, people will still steal cars around here, whether or not there are people inside". The third child we visited was living in Site B with his mother and her mother's friend. The house was as big as a room, just a single room with a bed and a microwave and some other appliances. But the child was definitely doing well, though her mom who had told us that she knew English was struggling with our accents. The highlight of the day was Quynh and I driving past some schoolchildren, who then pointed at Quynh and excitedly yelled "umlungu", which means "white person". Or a discussion on how black people are "so bootylicious".
Unfortunately, not all of our searches were this happy or successful. One boy whom we looked for had been taken away by his mother after his father died, and now they were reportedly on the street somewhere. Our social worker sadly told us that her grandparents were in the house and had hoped that she was telling them they needed to pick up their grandchild somewhere. We soon headed back to St. Joseph's for the day, but were definitely very impressed with the kids we had seen and hopeful that this would be the norm rather than the exception for the other 20 children we are tracking.
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