Logan on witnessing hope and happiness

(front) Logan, Anna, (back) Taylor, Julian, Susie

It has been a very busy first 10 days since we have arrived in the beautiful city of Cape Town. We have explored the city, learned how to use public transportation (well… still learning), been educated on some of the history of South Africa including what happened in District 6 and the history of slavery, and eaten at many delicious and diverse restaurants. All of this was obviously really fun and has made it feel like a great vacation. The past couple days however the trip has started to shift from the tourist side of Cape Town to what many of us really came here for; understanding, working with, and growing from the problems within South Africa and the wonderful Capetonians who deal with it every day. On Sunday we visited a church that was in one of the townships. The hope and happiness that spread through that church was amazing. For a community that is dealing with extreme poverty and HIV to come together on Sunday morning to worship, dance, sing, and give offering with the little money they have, was a very emotional site for many of us.

After Church we were given a tour of some of the townships. Again it was a very emotional time to see how so many people live. I have never been exposed to such extreme wide spread poverty. So many of the homes are lined up in a row right next to each other, with four small walls made of metal sheets, dirt floors, and a deteriorating roof covered with black trash bags. I guess I should not feel bad for the residence of the townships because it seems that there is still hope and people do take pride in what they have. Also there seems to be a lot of people working to help out the situations as we saw when visiting the places where we would be interning.

We have now visited many of the organizations people will be interning. It has been really cool to see all the places that all my friends will be working at for the next few months. While it is sad to hear and see some of the issues dealt with in Cape Town, it was awesome to see how many people have dedicated their lives to working for a cause that is important to them. All of the organization leaders we have talked to recognize the problems they face, but take so much pride in their country and working toward a better South Africa.