Monday June 1st kicked off Global LEAD’s education week. Our group was fortunate enough to have Kevin Chaplin, the executive director of the Amy Biehl foundation, come speak to us on the importance of “The Power of Living. The Power of Giving.” He was an inspiring and relatable speaker – he mentioned many practical aspects of the business world and how one can be ethical and socially responsible while also running a successful business. When he took over the Amy Biehl foundation in order to try to save it from going under – he had to personally fund the program for a while but he knew that in time, things would turn around, and they did.
After Mr. Chaplin’s talk Garrett “the Rule Breaker” Gravesen (better known as GG) stood up to close out our day. Instead of breaking into our community groups to discuss our speaker’s lecture, as we have done before, Garrett announced that we would all be leaving in one hour for the slums. He announced that we were going to spend 24 hours in the slums in order to see what it’s like to live off a dollar a day. There were mixed emotions from the group at the news – some were very excited, some were apprehensive – no one knew what to expect. We were told that we would be safe and that we’d be splitting into small group to sleep in the soup mom’s houses. Soup moms are ladies who go to the school and cook for hundreds of children.
Stepping off the bus to children holding up notebooks to get my autograph isn’t the way I expected to be welcomed. The purpose of this visit was for us to get a glimpse of what their lives are like on a daily basis.…. to put on their shoes for a while. I wanted to help with chores and they wanted to treat us like celebrities or royalty of some kind – that part felt pretty wrong. Although a huge group of us just rolled up on a bus to invade their space for a bit I think that the intention of our visit was obvious – we came because we care and we would like to continue to bridge the racial, socioeconomic gap that plagues their country and ours too. We want to learn as much as we can while we’re here. Seeing the children (and adults) without teeth, proper health care, shoes, clothes, and other everyday essentials will hopefully weigh on the hearts of the group so that when our time here is through we’ll be able to give back… whether it’s in South Africa or Clarke County.
The experience was very interesting and also extremely overwhelming. I’ve seen poverty and worked with poor people my entire life but I haven’t been able to put myself in their shoes like I tried to over the last 24 hours. My group’s soup mom is Charmaine Steyn. She was wonderful and treated us like her own children. Her daughter Janine and her friend Jeremy walked us around the township and made sure we felt at home. Janine wanted to show us all the pictures from her 21st birthday and Jeremy is a talented guitarist and played for us. My group of four went to church with Janine and Jeremy which was different than anything we’d ever experienced. There is a major emphasis on family in the townships – everyone takes care of everyone else. It’s not uncommon to have grown children living with their parents, usually it’s for financial reasons but they operate as a strong unit in what most would consider dire circumstances.
My only regret about the entire trip is that because we had no notice about the overnight stay – we didn’t have substantial food to bring with us. We were only given two loaves of bread and some milk to give to our family. Next time, and hopefully we’ll get to visit over the next weeks that we are here, I’d like to bring more food and prepare a nice meal for them instead of using their food and having them prepare food for us. These 24 hours were important and I will never forget them. This time grounded the group and brought us back to why we are spending this time in Cape Town.
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