Despite the difficulties they have faced, their messages to us were ones of hope and inspiration, perseverance and possibility. They were engaging public speakers, comfortably and candidly swinging between serious topics like apartheid or Matric exams and playful commentary on their personal lives. It was impossible to walk away from our conversation without a great respect for all they have accomplished (both have found ways to pursue higher education, despite their difficult financial situations) and the attitudes they have maintained towards their futures and their country and communities.
As we spend this semester in South Africa, the Honors in Cape Town program requires that we take part in three specific academic components, two of which are classes and internships. The third is an activist project, which essentially consists of volunteering (usually on Fridays) at a community organization of our choice, and ultimately writing a paper summarizing the organization’s function and our role within it. The minimum time requirement is 12 hours, but most of us will be spending far longer at our chosen locations as we get involved in projects and programs. Our proposals for activist projects were due by this weekend, and many of us struggled during the week to narrow down our dozens of interesting options, deciding at which organizations we’d have the most gratifying or personally relevant experiences.
So this morning, five of us headed off to Fish Hoek (about 50 minutes south by train) to do our first day of our activist projects at the same organization: The Emma Animal Rescue Society. We’d been drawn to TEARS because of the fact that all five of us are devoted animal lovers who’ve spent the majority of the last month missing our respective pets and fretting over the number of stray, starving, and mistreated animals we’ve encountered in the townships. We’d been in touch with the organization earlier in the week to set up our volunteer hours, and they had been more than happy to have us, as they are a no-kill shelter that is constantly expanding its capacity to accommodate new rescues. They have a 24-person staff, but rely heavily on volunteers for daily care and cleaning.
We knew the address and the general location of TEARS once we arrived in Fish Hoek, but because of the minibus taxi strike (in its third and final day, today) we weren’t sure exactly how we were going to make the connection from the coastal train station to the inland Lekkerwater Rd compound. In the future, we’ll be able to hop on a minibus right outside the station and take it to our destination, but today we figured we’d stop to get an early lunch along the main stretch of road by the station and ask the waitresses how they’d suggest we travel out of the center of town. Unfortunately, the women from the café told us flatly that we could not head out toward the edge of the townships – where TEARS is located – because of the potential violence from the taxi strikes. The public buses won’t even stop there, right now, they told us, so you can’t go.Disappointed but not discouraged, we walked down the street to an internet café to get the phone number for TEARS, and then called them to ask what they suggested we do. One of the things we’ve learned during our time in Cape Town is that advice about safety and modes of transportation vary widely depending on the people you talk to. The woman who answered the phone told us someone would come by soon to pick us up, and we graciously thanked her and returned to the train station to wait for the ride. We waited about half an hour outside the dingy cement building until a little red hatchback pulled up a few meters away, an arm waving out the driver’s side window and a column of traffic beeping in front of it – the car had pulled the wrong way down a one way street.
Somehow we managed to fit all of us into the little car for the fifteen minute drive. We parked in a field across the street from the fenced compound, which was situated in a relatively rural area near the edge of several townships and informal settlements, The woman who’d picked us up was quite young and very friendly (she’d asked us all about our impressions of SA and post-Apartheid society on the drive in) and she gave us a quick tour of the place, complete with a stop at the hectic front office, the cattery, and the dog kennel. The appearance – and smell – was very similar to a veterinary hospital, but far livelier and filled with volunteer dog walkers, cleaning/washing staff, and more than a hundred dogs and cats.
After the brief introduction, we were encouraged to simply jump into the midday activity. The puppies and kittens in particular required a lot of personal attention and human contact, so it was suggested that we start there. Four of us headed straight for the puppy pens, and the fifth opted for the kittens in the cattery. The kennel pens had a certain thrown-together look, with chain link and chicken wire fencing jutting at less-than-perfect angles and secured to small, wooden shack-rooms which were furnished with “household” items salvaged from trash heaps. However, this description isn’t to suggest that the facilities were subpar – in fact they were quite well organized, and all of the animals were efficiently tended to – only to paint a picture of the ever-expanding compound.
We spent the next three hours surrounded by playful, attention-starved puppies that nipped and jumped and rolled around in the sunny dirt. We made a point to visit each of the pens by 2:00, and though all the dogs had been walked and fed, we did get to watch the staff wash some of the puppies and prepare one dog for surgery. Fortunately, we were not wary of bugs or dirt, since many of the dogs we pet and cuddled were visibly infected with fleas – we just made a bee-line for the shower when we returned home, afterward. We finished the afternoon sitting in the caged walkway in the cattery and providing human-cushions and scratching posts for the dozens of cats that weaved and purred around us.
Finding a ride back to the train station was a little tricky, but once again, someone from TEARS was heading out in that direction by car, so we were back to the train around 3:30, and dozed on the ride back to Rondebosch. It had been an exhausting day running around after the animals under the relentless sun, but despite the exhaustion we felt on the twenty minute walk back to the house, none of us could deny that it had been one of the best (and most gratifying) afternoons we’d spent on the trip so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment