Today is going to be blog-heavy, hopefully, provided I can get to an internet cafe with my computer to do a picture post. (It's going to blow your mind - we did the Cape Point tour this weekend that included the Cape of Good Hope and Simonstown - Boulders Beach with the penguins!)
This is the sort of obligatory "Where is my life going?" post.
I've been here for nearly three weeks now and everything has pretty much become routine.
I wake up between 7:30 and 7:45 every day. I'm out of bed by 7:50. In the car before 8:25. At work before 9:00.
Free between 16:00 and 18:00. Dinner. Shower. Bed by 21:00. Sometimes there's reading, sometimes there's just sweet sleep.
And then it begins again.
We have sort of created a giant pack of volunteers. We go out together, we have dinner together on the weekends, we plan trips together. It's nice. I am actually coming to enjoy the routine, the segmentation of it all. It gives me structure that perhaps I've been missing. It allows me to feel that Fridays are actually Fridays. I feel that Mondays are Mondays. (Trust me, since it's Monday I feel like the whole week is weighing down on me.)
But what happens when I go home?
I dashed off a frantic email to my mom this morning outlining my life plan, just so someone would see it, would read it, would reassure me that I'm on track to meet my goals, that home ownership before thirty can still be a bright spot on an otherwise (currently) dull horizon, that I've still got a future.
And it's funny, because the enormity of this future thing isn't a part of what I'm thinking about here. I'm left wondering where it came from, how it might have overhelmed my subconscious enough to have leaked out into a barely grammatically correct email that was little more than a collection of thoughts and a list or three?
Perhaps its the surroundings that are pushing me to fret.
I think it might be the realization that my education is such a precious thing to have; the realization that I have a support network unlike any other - my family, my friends; the gratitude I'm feeling for everything I have, everything I'm lucky enough to own; the desire to provide for myself and someday, my family.
I think maybe it's all settling in.
I need to stop being so afraid of what I might not be able to do and just do things. I'm great. I'm a hard-worker, a fun co-worker, determined and a quick learner. I can do anything I want to do. I'm feeling better about all of that now.
Priscilla talks endlessly during our long conversations about how hard she's worked for what she has, how proud she is to have a space to call her own. She calls her house her "haven" and it's true. It's cozy and comfortable and shows the signs of constant attention that any house should.
I work around determined people; I watch them try to handle tough tasks on a daily basis. But just as much as I see the struggle, I see the giving up that's all around me.
"They're unemployable," I said to Mom one day, exhausted and frustrated with the task at hand.
It's not that I don't want to see everyone around me succeed, but I can feel that the necessary sense of purpose doesn't seem to be alive here. No one wants to finish the equivalent of a high school education. Even of those who do - some are content to stand around day after day. It's not just in the townships. It's all over. If there is a means of support then there are those who will take advantage of it and run with that support until it's exhausted.
But for those who want to do anything to get somewhere, there remain hopefully a few options. Hopefully there can be a way out for those who need it and want it the most. Hopefully the people who want to learn and think and work will find the jobs that need to be filled, will succeed, will move up, will move out.
And hopefully I can be good enough at what I need to be doing to help them.
There's a sense of struggle that hangs over the communities and the people.
Priscilla touches on it during our conversations. I can hear the bitterness in her voice when she tells me that she could just sit around waiting for handouts, but that instead she goes out every day to work even though there are days that she doesn't want to. I wonder how much of that is the leftover sentiments from the apartheid, or how much of it is the true feelings from one class to another, how much of it might have to do with all of the theft in our neighborhood, how the people come from the townships to take and take.
It's the culture here, I want to tell her.
It's not people from the townships only. People everywhere steal. Here, they take and they take and they don't give anything back, they don't work toward anything better for themselves.
But is it merely expectations? Or is it a cultural epidemic? Does it have to do with race?
I hope to know the source of this by the end. I know it's not just joblessness, hopelessness, fear and struggle. It's also greed and history and ties to family and to the past.
But above all, it's the lack of education, the lack of resources.
Today, a new set of Fit for Life/Fit for Work people started. No one had pens. We didn't have any to offer them. It's that sort of thing that hinders intellectual progress.
Yesterday at Cape Point, we watched a car snatch a purse that was laying by the side of the road. It sped off. As we were leaving the park, we saw police gathered around the car by the gate, with the tourists milling about behind it, filing the report. Priscilla wanted to know who had committed the theft.
My cell phone now lives with someone else, stolen Friday night during the crowded five minute walk from the bars to the waiting taxi. I hadn't brought a purse exactly for that reason. Priscilla told me I had to keep everything in my bra from now on (I had all of my cash and my ID in there) but I reminded her that I've not got a lot of room with which to create storage space. She laughs, but gives me that look that says, "make some space, you silly sausage."
So I have a new number. I don't know it yet, of course, but I think it's: +27-0766658768. So you know, text it, see if I answer. I also think I can video chat from the new phone! (More to come on this development later...) But the new phone is no longer coming out with me when I go out. It can stay at home and languish in a cupboard, or a dark drawer. I'll hand out my number on sheets of paper. I'll write Mike's number on my arm so I can call it from someone else's phone.
To conclude this poorly organized thought jumble, I will say I feel better about things that I can do. It's reassurance. It's positive thought, it's that glimmer of hope that I needed.
I finished the manual for the program. I typed it and had to undo nearly everything and make it a more succinct package, but I did it. And then I printed it and bound it and now it's laying on the desks, ready to be taken home by the learners. It's clean, well-organized, cut perfectly, absolutely everything that was required of me.
And when my boss told me I was doing a good job, I nearly inhaled the praise. I'd needed that small bit of reassurance and it strenghtened my resolve. Brenda told me that without my work there would be no manual, and I glowed on the inside.
Tomorrow we institute the Katie Barry and Company attempts at re-organizing the job placement sector and hopefully all will be well. I finally feel like we can accomplish something and that my time here will be spent well.
Also, I know how to use a copy machine (entirely - loading paper, faxing, scanning, toner business, etc.) and route calls from one side of the building to the other. Those are the two most basic skills I could have developed and I can check them off.
Progress, however small, is still progress.
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