Our last full day in Cape Town.

As a group, we had an amazing day today. We started off by taking a wakl around the different townships and seeing the different houses that hte peopl lived in. It was so shocking to me to see that 3 families lived in a 2-room flat. It blew my mind to see this because there's nowhere near enough room for 15 or so people to be living in that little of space. It was also very shocking to walk through a little shack, maybe 10 ft or so long and 8 ft wide, that a whole family had to live in without electricity or water. It broke my heart to see these mile long stretches of shacks that were falling apart that people had to call home.

Once we left the township, we went to visit Mama Amelia who has about 100 kids (more or less) who live with her. Mama Amelia was a wonderful woman to meet and inspired me greatly to help others because as one woman, she's helping up to 100 kids every day by cothing and feeding them and making their lives so much better just by loving them. Seeing how happy those kids were just to see other people who took interest in them and played with them and loved them changed my life forever.

Another important experience was visiting the hospital here in Cape Town and going to the children's ward where they took care of HIV/AIDS patients. Talking with a pediatrician and listening to what he had to say was amazing. Hearing that 25% of infected patients die before age 1 was just shocking to hear. It completely amazed me. Listening to him made me so excited to be able to go home and find out what I can do to help prevent this growing disease.

After all that, we went to St. Cyprian's School and had a discussion forum about may different topics and aspects of both South Africa and America. This was very interesting to listen to because we were able to listen to perspectives from both our fellow American students and the South African students. THis day has been amazing and has been a life-changing experience that I will always remember for the rest of my life.

-- Lindsay E.


We started out the day with a township walking tour. It included seeing some of the basics of the South African recycling company. There was a great difference between streets. It was almost like a wall was built in between the two. There was a distinct difference over household goods in the area and the amount of trash. Even when we came into the area our cameras were even an amazement to most of the kids. ONe of the kids actually came up to me, inspecting the camera amazed because it was nothing they had ever seen before. Just that excitement from the kids really made you wonder what their everyday lives must be like. Even though some of the homes weren't in great shape, they were like castles to most people in the area. It would include 1 refrigerator and a room for sleeping. A lot different from what we get in America. With the usual average of 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and the most common: sinks, refrigerators, bathtubs, dishwashers. Many of which would seem like a dream to most of these people. It was such an enjoyable experience to notice the little things in life that we usually take for granted. OUr tour was supposed to be an hour but it ended up being two because of all the people we met. After that we hopped on the bus and went to lunch, and then headed to Mama Emilia's.

Mama Emilia hosts over 95 children that are unable to be taken care of by their parents or are orphaned. It was incredible in such a tiny house there was two washers and dryers, folded laundry and clean bedroms (approximately 7 bedrooms where all these kids shared beds. And only two bathrooms with two toilets and showers each and anoher room with one bath tub. We did a circle outside with the kids and played and danced with them for about 40 minutes. It was mazing how amused they were. AFter that we headed to the HIV hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital we had a South African doctor explain what some of the daily struggles were towards the children. Many cam in having AIDS rather than just HIV. Their mothers think it's just the flu and that it will be over with. Most of these children already live in poverty. They already deal with many hardships before the rality of AIDS hits them even harder. We learned that nearly 1 million infants are born every year with HIV and the disease orphans 1 child every 14 seconds. But what's even worse is most of the children that come in have already progressed in the disease and have AIDS. But what was so great about this hospital was that they have set up an organization called Kidzpositive. It has generated more than 1 million rand (which is roughly 6.2 rand for each US dollar) for over 90 women with HIV-positive children. Just 20 rands puts food on the table for 1 child for 2 weeks. We were able to participatein helping this organization by buying different pins in the shapes of flags, bracelets, keychains. Thisis how the organization has created such a name. These women bead all of these things to sell and over the past 3 years have generated over 1 million rand. These mothers generate between R100-R200 per week. Each AIDS beaded pin they make earns them 5 rand. In fact they even gave us a website were we can design our own beaded keychain and pre-order to sell at home. You can visit it at www.kidzpositive.org/beads. The hospital was amazing hbut we ended up not bein able to see the children. It was still worthwhile and after that we headed to the hotel for a little bit until we went to the St. Cyprian's School.

We ate a good dinner at the school and then had a forum discussing the topic of peace and main problems in the world today. We got to meet our paired African partners and got to know them even better then before. Afterwards we got to make a graffiti wall where we put whatever saying we wanted on our own brick. Afterwards we got to hang out with everyone for a while. Overall, the day was so worthwhile it's hard to even sum up but Africa is definately one of the most amazing places I have ever been.

-- Emily K.