Sunday, 2 September 2012

St Lucia


I've got to admit I was a sceptic. I doubted the amount of good these sort of volunteer programs actually achieve. I sort of thought they were a way for people to feel good about doing something for someone in less fortunate position than themselves, then at the end of the day return to the safety of comfy accommodation with hot showers, a cook and a cleaner. I always admired NGOs like the Red Cross who go into war-zones to deliver food and medical supplies to people who desperately need it, I just wasn't sure of the benefit of teaching pre-schoolers English for a couple of weeks. I hate being given help when I don't want it, and I know a lot of people like that, I would be incredibly embarrassed to be forcing lifestyle changes and charity on someone who didn't want it. And how could you ever know if what you're doing is the right thing? I always wondered if programs like this were treading on traditional culture and spreading western ideals and ways of life.

This was before we arrived at our placement in St Lucia, on the Northeast KwaZulu-Natal coast. We were supposed to be volunteering in Mozambique, but had to change our plans because visa rules changed and we suddenly needed work visas, which we weren't going to get quickly. I always thought of South Africa as a pretty modern country which didn't really need the help of international volunteers, before we left Australia I would never have chosen to work here. Things change, though, and after a few months in South Africa I was happy to accept the change in placement. Monique loves helping people; she sponsors children, raises money for charities, and volunteers to help the needy quite regularly. She doesn't have the same piss-weak reservations and excuses that I do. Doing volunteer work while we were in Africa was a no-brainer for her. For me; I don't think it's quite right to spend this long on such a troubled continent without giving something back.

Upon arrival I thought all my worst fears were becoming a reality. The vibe was akin to something you might find at a Rock Eisteddfod, or Australian Idol or something. Everyone was over-the-top positive, North American accents were common and every second word seemed to be 'like'. Commercial pop flowed from the stereo. We were in the nicest accommodation we'd come across in Africa, we had hot showers, a cook, a cleaner and we were based in a touristy town outside the communities where we'd work.

It only took a few days to realise that my first impression was way off. The NGO we were working with, African Impact, has been in St Lucia for around seven years. They have a number of long-running volunteer projects based in two Zulu communities just out of the St Lucia Township. Some volunteers work with medical programs in the communities, we helped out with various community projects such as teaching in crèches, gardening, building, making play equipment, teaching adult literacy and rubbish collection, among a lot of other stuff. Our stint was quite short, only two weeks, but we could see that what we were doing was a part of something long-term and worthwhile.

The Zulu language, isiZulu, is pretty complex. We learnt a few basic things like 'Unjani' (how are you?), 'Ngiaphila' (I'm fine) and Ngiyajabula Ukukuazi (nice to meet you). These words look fairly complex written down on paper, but the thing that a basic English alphabet cannot illustrate is the various clicks, pops and rolled letters that are part of isiZulu. The Lonely Planet phrase book gives descriptions like 'k, but spat out', 'strong b with air sucked in', 'popping p' and 'spitting t'. There's no way you could learn to make these sounds without hearing them, and even then it's out of my league. The sounds are pronounced as a part of words; they don't stand alone in a sentence. It's really hard to get a sentence flowing because you tend to stop mid-word after each pop and click. Needless to say, our isiZulu is pretty poor, just like our isiXhosa, Afrikaans and Swahili. Maybe we'll be better at Portuguese, Malagasy and French.

The HIV rate in the communities we worked in is estimated to be between 70% and 90%. HIV education is a big part of the St Lucia project. This is one of those things I was a bit unsure about; whether the meddling of HIV-negative white people would be appreciated. But after hearing a bit about it I was convinced the project was doing the right thing. There is so much misinformation getting around about HIV and AIDS that the education programs run by African Impact are pretty essential if the infection rate is to drop in future generations. HIV is obviously a huge problem, it's not helped by the tendency of the locals to have multiple wives and/or girlfriends, or cheat on their partners, or both, and of course the misinformation is pretty damaging too. There is one story that suggests that HIV doesn't actually exist, it was made up by white people during apartheid to stop the black population having lots of sex and babies. Mon spent a week teaching HIV education to young teens, I really hope it makes a difference.

A typical day for us was a morning in one of the community crèches teaching ABCs, 123s, shapes, colours, animals etc. in English. We would also did teeth brushing and fire education; things like that. The crèches were great fun, really tiring, often smelly, very loud and great fun. Each day we'd run through a bunch of different stuff and try and test them to see if they were absorbing any of the information. Usually they were really good, but the rest of the time they just liked yelling the alphabet as loud as they could but had no idea what the difference between a K and a P was. It was all good fun though. Playtime was always exhausting, each and every kid wanted to climb all over me; snotty noses, high-pitched squeals and the occasional shit were all in a day's work for the volunteer human climbing frame. I didn't get bitten or punched in the face though, which was commonplace. In the afternoon we'd help out in one of the various community projects, whether it was weeding a veggie garden, reading with primary schoolers, building wheelchair ramps or one of many other activities.

Being a touristy town, there are heaps of activities to do in the St Lucia area. We had weekends off and fellow volunteers did trips to game parks, interacted with elephants, toured the croc and hippo infested estuary, went horse riding or hired cars for a bit of a self-guided tour or a trip to Durban. Mon and I hired a car and went to a place called Cape Vidal for a surf. The beach at St Lucia is supposed to be quite dangerous due to the numerous predators; Cape Vidal is apparently a little safer. To get there you need to drive through a national park which is supposed to be full of leopard and rhinos, but we didn't see any. The surf was awful, but it was nice to wash the week's snot and grime off.

 We had a great time in St Lucia; it's pretty rewarding to feel like you're helping out in the world. The project is really well set up and coordinated by a team of young ladies who do an exceptional job. While we were there all the volunteers were quite young, none over 24, some as young as 17, which was pretty cool. The last few weeks exceeded my expectations, there was a moment when we thought about pulling out because of the visa/Mozambique/flight change issues, I'm stoked that we didn't.

Pat

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal" - Albert Pike

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