Part of my first article, incomplete of course

Hello,

Just to prove that I'm actually moderately accomplished, I've posted the very incomplete text of my first article!
So read it. Enjoy it.
Know that it's not done yet but still, it's on its way.


(insert clever yet serious title)
(insert clever subheading about rising from the ashes of a fire...phoenix....something)

A pile of charred wood is all that’s left of the shacks. The sand where they sat is littered with burned belongings: a blackened Bible, an office chair, clothes no longer usable. The metal sheets that had once been walls have been salvaged, taken for use in new shacks, the obviously burnt edges blending in amongst the rust.

The first fire broke out three weeks before in the same shack that would be the ignition point of the second fire, which would tear through the informal settlement of Village Heights in Cape Town, depriving fifteen families of their homes.

 Fires in informal settlements like Village Heights represent one of the biggest dangers of living in such a community. Even with attempts to build with space on all sides, fires such as the one that destroyed fifteen shacks can spread quickly since the materials used to construct the homes are highly flammable and unregulated.

“It was better under apartheid,” says Bernie, the community leader who has created and maintained the Village Heights library, and who is the recipient of the first Projects Abroad sandbag house in South Africa. “At least then we all had our own homes and jobs. Now we have nothing.”

According to residents, after the first fire the government offered four wooden posts, five pieces of metal and some grounding plastic as a replacement. However, the metal went to the construction of a roof and the residents were left to use plastic to create walls. During the second fire, a woman was badly burned when the plastic melted onto her skin.

Proper housing is something that many people living in South Africa lack, for a multitude of reasons. “I’ve been on a waiting list for twenty one years,” says one woman who lost her home in the fire. “My daughter’s twenty now.”

While debates rage about governmental involvement and personal contribution for houses, the issue remains that people lack proper living quarters. Residents of the informal settlements around Cape Town and throughout South Africa are forced to create homes using materials that they can find, salvage, or buy, resulting in homes that often lack even basic features such as a floor. Security measures are an afterthought, allowing for criminal activity to flourish in the neighborhoods.

Sand is nearly ubiquitous in Cape Town and the surrounding areas, and it might present a feasible solution to the problem of the shack homes in the ever-expanding informal settlements. Filling bags with sand and then stacking them within a frame can create a solid structure that is built both efficiently and quickly.

Beginning with materials, construction with sandbags can be a cheap alternative to traditional building methods. Since all that is needed to build a sandbag structure are bags, sand, cement and a wood and metal frame, the cost drops significantly due to the lack of construction equipment needed. No cranes, no stacks of bricks and no heavy vehicles entering or leaving the construction site.

            This cost effective creation is also eco-friendly. Since most of the building can be done with materials found on-site, the need for waste is nearly eliminated. This waste elimination plays a large factor in the eco-friendly nature of the sandbag buildings.

            Builders who choose to use sandbag building as an alternative to conventional construction methods also stand to gain carbon credits for their choices. Carbon credits programs offer financial incentives for companies to build in keeping with the “green” trends and for waste elimination and recycling of materials.

This waste elimination and recycling presents an opportunity for those who are economically disadvantaged. By being able to build effectively and also save money, they can increase community bonds and safety.

Besides being fireproof, the sand structures also present an element of soundproofing not found in the corrugated iron structures, which currently make up most of the homes in the townships and informal settlements in the Cape Town area.

They are also not easy to deconstruct or demolish, in essence creating a lasting home that won’t be victim to natural disasters such as flooding or tornadoes.

The solidity of the sand as it is packed and stacked neatly to create walls allows for an element of indoor climate control that supersedes that provided by the corrugated structures as well. The sand essentially insulates the home, keeping it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

The surmountable caveat to sand building is that it is not well known. The newly homeless fire victims had never heard of sandbag building when asked about it yet were curious as to how it might work. They eagerly agreed that the community would want to be involved in such building, given the right materials.

Based on the readily available materials and the community mentality that many of the neighbourhoods have, it seems that if sandbag structures could catch on, they might make a wonderful improvement for communities who are underfunded and under protected.

Projects Abroad began constructing their sandbag house at the site of the Village Heights Library in August of 2010. While normally the construction of such a building (one room) would take less than a month, due to staggered volunteer arrivals, the project has continued for more than three months. However, the house is beginning to take shape.

The project supervisor, Deen Singh remains optimistic that the sandbag building will be used for the betterment of the community. He explained that everything must be done to help the children. 

....

it will go on. 

Scattered Tuesday Musings

Funny, here you never hear the classic bar songs that you'd normally hear in the US.
I've gone two months without hearing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" and I'm not entirely upset about it.
The music here changes wildly depending on where you are, obviously, but I've found that music here is everywhere. People don't have iPods. They have music on their phones or on small mp3 players. Often, instead of using headphones, they just play the music out loud. I hear a lot of the same music here, easy repetition that is slowly shaping my experience.
Mama P has horrible taste in music, and always listens to strange songs I can only describe as depressingly country. That or "Lady in Red." I will always think of her when I hear that song.

I love how loud this country is. I love that music goes with everything. I love that so many of my blissful memories are so tied to the music that I was listening to at those points. And maybe that's why music is such an enduring cultural element - there's nothing more communal but also individual than the experience that is music. Everyone individualizes the music they love and makes it their own.

***

Last night, I was playing pool with the boys in Claremont. I am a terrible pool player, although every now and then I get a lucky shot. It's not that I don't know how to play (okay, maybe I could use some lessons in technique) but it's also that I just lack the patience to focus on the shot. It's all about angles and even though I know where I'd like to put the ball, it doesn't always seem to work out that way.

I'm coming to realize that a lot about myself. I can hear bits of accents and things but can't recreate them. I can see the difference between certain things yet can't replicate the movements.

Alas. The boys were good sports about it and luckily, I was able to hold my own. (A little.)

On deck tonight is family dinner. I'm cooking for the first time since I got here. I think I'm going to make the one thing I do well, which is mustard chicken. It sounds horrifying but it's actually delicious. Anyway, we shall see.
Also, I'm almost done with my first article!!
I'm going to post most of it immediately following this, so if you're reading this, maybe you've already read it.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2010/ca20101022_785986.htm

A Bit of Philanthropy with Your Résumé?

"Career advancement" and "philanthropy" may not seem to belong in the same sentence, but Projects Abroad is melding them to everyone's benefit

Worth a read, especially since it pertains to me.

The Shack

It’s a dark bar guarded by a dark man. We enter, climbing the concrete steps into a dimly lit space. What I don’t know is that this bar goes on forever, winding up sets of stairs, through rooms with bars, pool tables, couches, a kitchen. But I’ll find that out soon enough.
I stare around, squinting my eyes in surprise at the crowd gathered here. I recognize the music. Here, I can rarely name artists and song titles, but here, I know them. A man with square black glasses and a mustache slips past me and I smile, repulsed by his fashion sense but intrigued by his presence. Hipsters? In Cape Town?
Really.

We get cheap drinks. I stated earlier in the night that I think Black Label is the PBR of Cape Town and I believe I’ve been proven right. Everyone is tattooed cute and I’m trying not to stare. Thank god I wore my black skinny jeans and not some dress, I think, and then shake the notion out of my head with a toss of my hair and a flip of my fringe. (Yes, I fit right in here. Not on purpose, and not really, but the façade will keep them at bay for now.)

A man sits next to us. He wants to talk to my tall blond friend. She stands up and sits on my other side. She pulls out her phone, and then walks across the room. The other two are cuddling. I stare for a while. There’s a nearly melted candle on the table in front of me. I stare at that when I get bored of staring at jean shorts.

I turn to the man. “Tell me something,” I say, uttering my most used but worst pick up line. It’s all right; I have no intention of actually picking him up. “I’m bored.” For once, this is not a lie. Sometimes it’s easier to tell strangers the truth.
“Anything?” he says, turning to me, exhaling blue smoke and then tapping the ash off of his cigarette.
“Anything.”
“What color was your room when you were ten?” he asks. He has dark hair and a straight nose.
“Care Bears,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “It wasn’t painted until I was twelve.”
“It was painted Care Bears when you were twelve? That’s not what I asked.” He replies.
I spent a minute explaining. Care Bears up to twelve, blue and green post twelve.
“You seem very sure of this,” he says.
“I wasn’t ten too long ago,” I respond.
We chat about Los Angeles and La Jolla for a while. And then London.
My friend sits back down.
“Her eyes are almost as beautiful as mine,” he says to her. I roll my beautiful eyes.
He asks her where she’s from. She tells him Cape Town. She’s the one who’s lying now. I tell him she’s my host sister. We’re together in the lie.
Finally they tell me we’re leaving.
I stand and smile at him. “It was lovely not to meet you,” I say and then turn and walk down the concrete stairs into the darkness of Cape Town night.

Friday thoughts

You know, you're rather profound for being sick on antibiotics. It sounds like you came to South Africa for your brain, but it's your soul that is growing and being nourished. It's like a likable version of Eat, Pray, Love.

Feel better soon.

(The above comment is something that my friend Beau Smith posted on my wall. It was unexpected and it made my day!)

And that's really all I have to say for Friday because I think that pretty much sums it up. 

He's right. 

love to all. 

You know you're sick when you start making obvious grammatical errors

Wednesday is normally drunken shenanigan night.
Tonight, however, there will be no drunken adventures for me. I'm exhausted and on antibiotics for the first time since I got here. I actually might be running a fever.
Ugh, woke up yesterday and it was a flashback to Loyola graduation. I had the intention of going in to work, but then I curled up and slept for eight hours.
Prudently, I stayed home last night.
And, for my trouble, I woke with a head cold.

I'm three doses of 500mg cipro in, and signs of improvement can be seen but I'm erring on the side of caution and remaining stagnant for the next few days.
Maybe tomorrow I'll sleep again and work from home.
I left my charger at a friend's house so I need to them or I will have no power, so that won't be good.

I have completely lost my train of thought.

Ah.
Yes.

We've been talking about things a lot lately.
Things I've been hesitant to post to my blog lest you think this trip was in vain.
And today I feel like telling you.

I came here to do a business internship. I paid with the expectation that I would be doing an internship.
The website says:

We organize work experience internships in a number of business sectors. These currently include chartered accounting, business consulting, marketing and branding, media/PR, and international development projects.

Interns working on an accounting internship will join a firm of accountants and work on a variety of tasks. Your responsibilities will normally include book keeping, forensic and management accounting, advisory roles including corporate recovery and restructuring, audits, tax assessments, and trustee services.

Interns working in marketing, media, or PR work on marketing strategies, marketing campaigns, branding, various sponsorship deals, events, networking, public speaking, and writing for the press.

We also offer several specific business internships in International Development and Business Enterprise.

As an intern working on one of our Business internships, the actual work you do will depend on the internship and will vary. You could find yourself gaining exposure to board meetings to observe business development plans, attending client meetings, working on set briefs, putting together portfolios, helping with events, and much more. As with all internships, you should be prepared to undertake some tasks such as proofreading, filing, and answering the phone, but provided you show enthusiasm and willingness, your English speaking colleagues will be happy to give you insight into their area of expertise. You'll go home with a new set of skills and a good understanding of how the business world works.

During the internship, interns are expected to be punctual, professional and hard working. You will be required to work an average of 35 hours per week, usually Monday-Friday. When you arrive at work on your first day, you will be assigned a supervisor who will be able to advise and support you during your internship, and of course our Projects Abroad staff are always available to help.

Developing internships in other business areas is always possible - just ask!

But what I was doing here was nothing like what I expected.
They reneged on my original internship days before I arrived.
And when I got here, they had no idea what I was going to be doing.
That reeks of mismanagement and lack of preparation.

The pre-trip is so beautifully arranged and communicated, and pick up is lovely. But project-wise, people are often left to fend for themselves. They are dropped at projects that don't know that they're even coming to work.

When I leave, I'm going to tell them that there's no way I would send anyone here to do any sort of internship. Because I came here to learn and I was put into a place that was neither professional nor very structured and because of it, I wasn't able to learn anything (except how to use a copy machine).

And I'm not learning.

Even now, in journalism, I'm not working alongside real journalists. I'm in an office with other volunteers and I'm setting my own pace. I'm blogging right now when I should be writing something useful.
But selfishly, I feel better for being in journalism, because at least I'm using internet and space that my payment might have paid for instead of being thrown into a strange project that didn't even know I was coming and being used to fulfill a gap that couldn't have been filled.

And if it wasn't for my host mother and my host house, which I love beyond belief, and the friends that I've made here (both Projects Abroad and otherwise), I'd feel as though I had no purpose being here.
Yes, I came here to explore and to live, but I also came here to learn about business. And the only thing I've learned about business thus far is that it takes a lot more than promises to get anything done.
So while both the business internship and the journalism internship are going to go on my resume, I feel as though I'm lacking the true experience that Projects Abroad promised - project-wise.


Projects Abroad says that it's what you put into your internship that matters, but there are matters of materials, etc, that can never quite be sorted out. One girl can't print things for her project because she has to pay for them out of her own pocket.
The projects are mis-managed and lack structure and focus. Instead, there is a sense of stagnancy about the whole thing. Productivity is by the wayside.

And thus I've learned about what not to do, and perhaps that's productivity in itself.


But please don't think that this doesn't mean that I'm not loving it here. I wish to stay here forever, if I could.
I love this place.
I love being here.
I love what I'm doing.
I love the cultural atmosphere, I love the languages, I love everything.
I am learning about myself, and about what I can do and what I'm capable of, and I believe that it's all knowledge in itself.
But I so badly wish I was coming back with actual business experience because I could have taken the money I spent to come here and gone around the world with it.

But for now, the frustrations are minimal. I wake up every day looking forward to spending time with the family I have here. And when we all get home, we sit and cook dinner and talk about our days.
The woman I live with is in HR and is a writer, so I feel as though maybe I have a lot to learn from her.





In other sad news, Dad and Jeanie have ended their relationship after three or so years.
I got the phone call the other day at work.
I didn't think it would upset me, but I spent that entire night sort of in a dark mood.
I know that I'm too old to be upset, but I was. I really was.
I guess I knew it was coming and I should have been prepared for it, but it sort of hit me strangely.

Weekend Wrap Up

It's a small bar at the top of a backpacker's hostel on Long Street. You go in an unmarked door and you take the elevator to the sixth floor, and then you walk through some double doors, past the front desk and on through the winding halls (through a kitchen, too) that smell faintly of cat urine and finally up some stairs. The top of the hostel is open to the air, a rooftop oasis from the wild night. It's comfortable, couches everywhere, blankets for when you get cold. 

The bartenders let me go back behind the small bar, covered sort of by flags of all nations (not the US or Ireland, though). They let me open Black Labels and pour shots. I take the money, hand it over and continue with my work. 

One of the bartenders knows I like the Deftones, so every night he plays me a song I love. It's nice. 

That was Friday. There was an international phone call that came in while I was up there, not necessarily paying attention to a game of pool. And then there may have been street food and dancing and a late night spaghetti adventure that involved me clamoring around the kitchen at five in the morning. 

But then there was sleep. Saturday was a beautiful day for sleep. 

And a nap. 

And some delicious little pasta delight. 

And then some more sleep. 

Sunday was by far the most wonderful day I've had in Cape Town yet. I cannot believe how much I love water. We went to Muizenberg Beach. I took Margaret (my new Dutch roommate) to Muizenberg Market where we bought sunglasses. I am now the proud owner of a pair of knock-off Ray Bans. The vendor tried to take our money and then not give us two pairs because he was convinced that Margartet had stolen a pair. It took a good few minutes of tense conversation to get it all worked out, and in the end, he found the pair he thought she'd stolen and we went on our merry way. 

We walked down the beach, found a nice spot, and set up camp. I laid out my stolen South African Airways blanket (hey, I paid for the flight ticket and I didn't drink any of the complimentary wine) and stretched out in the sun. We were joined by Mike and Philpp and their new roommate Utah as well as Ellie and Ryanne. 

I got to swim in the ocean! It was so cold, but the day was hot and after awhile, all I felt was the sea around me. I swam and jumped in the waves. I let them lift me up and surround me and cover my head. 

Afterward, I went and laid on my blanket and drank wine and soaked up sun and wind. 

I was overjoyed. 

Overjoyed, yet sunburned. 

And so today, I have a red back that bears hand prints and other odd markings from where I attempted to put on sunscreen. Oh, but I'm so happy. I can't wait to get back in. I want the weather to be warm enough that I can go and lay out or go and swim without a wetsuit. 

The train home was horrible. We missed the first train and had to wait nearly an hour for the second one, so we went to a local pub and had a beer. It was nearly empty, seated at the bar were people who looked as though they'd lived their entire life at the beach - leathery skin and graying hair, yet still slender. 

We drank quickly, ignoring the drunken man who kept trying to engage us all in conversation - he thanked Mike profusely for bringing lovely women into the bar - and then went back to catch the train. 

However, it seems that everyone within a ten mile radius wanted to catch the train at that particular time. It was a literal stampede of people rushing for the doors of the already quite full train. And so we jammed ourselves on. Well, some of us jammed ourselves on. Mike and Margaret were left standing on the platform and by the time I saw them and figured out their situation, I was sandwiched in between a stroller with some really sharp wheels, a woman and a baby, Philipp and a man. 

As the train started moving, I felt the man put his head against my back. (He was probably a good five inches shorter than me.) His friends laughed. I shifted. He put his head back again. I turned entirely. My backpack was hanging off one shoulder, held against my stomach with my hand. As soon as I shifted he began a gross humping motion. At this, I turned and looked him square in the eye. "Don't even try it," I snapped. 

"But you have such beautiful eyes."

I rolled them. 

"NO." I said. "Get away from me." 

I said it loud enough that the people around me could hear and then I gave the death glares I'm known for. He stopped, thankfully. And when we arrived at our station, I was grateful to be moved along in the crush of people exiting for safety.

Here's hoping that I don't find myself on a packed train anytime in the near future, as I'm apt to just wait for the next one.  

I arrived home sunburned, exhausted and so happy to have spent the day in the sun. 

And this week brings adventure as well. Robben Island on Wednesday with the Journalism people, hopefully the completion of my first story (I've been ADD-ing out on this one, in case you were wondering why it's taken me so long. I am going to do a work-from-home sort of thing tonight and try to get it all sorted.) Some more interviews and the beginning of two different stories. 

And then what?

Next weekend, Biscuit Mill on Saturday and then hopefully a wine-biking tour sort of thing on Sunday. 

I love this place. 

I really do. 

It's strange and it's wonderful and it's everything I never expected but could ever want. 

Except I miss fiber bars and healthy food and real spinach.