Youth Day

I would like to wish everyone out there a Happy Youth Day, which is a public holiday today in South Africa. Unlike the more joyful Youth Days around the world that celebrate children just as they do fathers and mothers, South Africa's Youth Day actually stems from darker apartheid times. This day seems to be more a day of remembrance than one of celebration, but a holiday that will show that young people can change our world.
Youth Day commemorates the start of the Soweto riots of 1976, initially sparked by a government edict that all instruction in black schools would be held in Afrikaans. The iconic picture of Hector Pieterson, a black schoolchild shot by the police, brought home to many people within and outside South Africa the brutalities of the Apartheid regime.

I know it might be a lot to read, but it is very interesting-- a quick history, provided by Wikipedia:
The origin of the protests are traced back to 1949 and the Eiselen Commission's inquiry into the edification of non-whites. The commission recommended drastic changes, which were implemented through the Bantu Education Act of 1953. The legislation caused many mission schools, through which the majority of black children were educated, to lose government aid and close. Funding for black schools was drawn from taxes paid by black people, who were generally impoverished. The result was a very uneven distribution of teaching resources in black and white schools.

Black students in Soweto protested against the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 which forced all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50-50 mix as languages of instruction. A 1972 poll had found that 98% of young Sowetans did not want to be taught in Afrikaans.^{[citation needed]} The association of Afrikaans with apartheid prompted black South Africans to prefer English. Even the homelands regimes chose English and an indigenous African language as official languages. In addition, English was gaining prominence as the language most often used in commerce and industry. The 1974 decree was intended to forcibly reverse the decline of Afrikaans among black Africans. The Afrikaner-dominated government used the clause of the 1909 Constitution that recognized only English and Afrikaans as official languages as pretext to do so. Punt Janson, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Education at the time, was quoted as saying: "I have not consulted the African people on the language issue and I'm not going to." The decree was resented deeply by blacks as Afrikaans was widely viewed, in the words of Desmond Tutu, then Dean of Johannesburg as "the language of the oppressor". Teacher organizations such as the African Teachers Association of South Africa objected to the decree.
The resentment grew until April 30, 1976, when children at Orlando West Junior School in Soweto went on strike, refusing to go to school. Their rebellion then spread to many other schools in Soweto. A student from Morris Isaacson High School, Teboho 'Tsietsi' Mashinini, proposed a meeting on June 13, 1976, to discuss what should be done. Students formed an Action Committee (later known as the Soweto Students’ Representative Council)^[4] that organized a mass rally for June 16 to make themselves heard.
On the morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of black students walked from their schools to Orlando Stadium for a rally to protest against having to learn through Afrikaans in school. The protest was intended to be peaceful and had been carefully planned by the Soweto Students’ Representative Council’s (SSRC) Action Committee, with support from the wider Black Consciousness Movement. Teachers in Soweto also supported the march after the Action Committee emphasized good discipline and peaceful action.
Tsietsi Mashininini led students from Morris Isaacson High School to join up with others who walked from Naledi High School ^[6]. The students began the march only to find out that police had barricaded the road along their intended route. The leader of the action committee asked the crowd not to provoke the police and the march continued on another route, eventually ending up near Orlando High School. The crowd of between 3,000 and 10,000 students made their way towards the area of the school. Students sang and wove placards with slogans such as, "Down with Afrikaans", "Viva Azania" and "If we must do Afrikaans, Vorster must do Zulu".
The rioting continued and 23 people, including two white people, died on the first day in Soweto. Emergency clinics were swamped with injured and bloody children. It is not known how many injured children sustained bullet wounds because doctors refused to collect such details for fear that police would target the families of such children. In many cases bullet wounds were indicated on hospital records as abscesses. Emotions ran high after the massacre on June 16. Hostility between students and the police was intense, with officers shooting at random and more people joining the protesters. The township youth had been frustrated and angry for a long time and the riots became the opportunity to bring to light their grievances. The 1,500 heavily armed police officers deployed to Soweto on June 17 carried weapons including automatic rifles, stun guns, and carbines. Crowd control methods used by South African police at the time included mainly dispersement techniques, and many of the officers shot indiscriminately, killing many people.
The accounts of how many people died vary from 200 to 600. The original government figure claimed only 23 students were killed. The number of wounded was estimated to be over a thousand men, women, and children.
The aftermath of the uprising established the leading role of the ANC [African National Congress, the current ruling party with Mandela as the first president] in the liberation struggle, as it was the body best able to channel and organize students seeking the overthrow of apartheid. So, although the BCM's ideas had been important in creating the climate that gave the students the confidence to strike out, it was the ANC's non-racialism which came to dominate the discourse of liberation amongst blacks.
Happy Youth Day, everyone.

New Years Week at Lily of the Valley

Volunteering at Lily of the Valley has been fun, especially because it is nice to do something a little different. Nothing too exciting this week, just doing the normal volunteer duties—distributing food to all the houses, playing with the kids, monitoring pool time, doing reading club, conducting chest physio, going on the hospital trips… pretty standard. I enjoy chest physio even when some of the kids don’t—chest physio is for the kids that have or are recovering from TB; we have them do exercises [such as blowing bubbles through a straw and jumping on a trampoline] that are supposed to help increase their now little lung capacity. Even the most reluctant kid [I guess it is not so much fun when you have to do it every few days] gets excited in the end when they get to put a sticker on the chart.

The hospital visits happen 2-3 times a week—it is the time for the kids to get their AIDS/TB checked out and see how it is progressing. I went on a trip last Wednesday with 4 kids, and it took 8 hours. Greys Hospital is one of the best hospitals in the area, yet the entire clinic had only one doctor for children and one doctor for adults that day. You could see the need for there to be more people on staff as soon as you drove onto the hospital grounds and saw the mass of people trying to find shade against the wall with casts on their legs, bandages on their arms, and braces around their necks. Just sitting out there in the sweltering heat, hoping that someone would see them that day. I never went inside, but I hear of the rat problem in the Northdale and Edendale hospitals, and hope that this “good” one doesn’t have the same problem.

Although I am celebrating the holidays at Lily, it is weird how Christmas and New Years just seems to come and go because I am not at home like I am used to and not exposed to all the hype of the holidays. Either way, I am still enjoying myself. For New Years Eve we had a midnight braai [barbeque] and had some fireworks. It seemed just like the 4^th of July—barbeque and shooting somewhat illegal [although perhaps legal here] fireworks in the air for the pleasure of hearing all the kids say “Ooooh!” I said “Oooh!,” too. There was a huddle of small boys that were motionless the whole time, watching the firecrackers get lit on the ground, following the light into the sky with the tilt of their heads. It was a beautiful full moon and after a brief storm scare, it was perfect for New Years Eve. Of course there was music, and after the teenage boys controlling the stereo got tired of the American hip-hop, they put on some popular [contemporary] South African Zulu dance music. I had no idea what the music was saying, but figured out that “Jiga! Jiga!” means “turn around.” I was the only volunteer willing to walk over and attempt to join them… but these kids have moves that I cannot match. I had them on the floor… laughing…. But they loved it and that is what counts, right? Maybe I will bring these moves back to America.

Holiday at Port Edward

This weekend I went on holiday with Therusha, the receptionist at Thandanani, and her family and friends. It was in celebration of her 10th wedding anniversary, which you would think she would want to keep to just her and her husband, but in traditional Indian fashion the celebration meant having lots of people over [and I would be a good babysitter for her daughters while they did have alone time]. We went to Port Edward, a beach at/near Durban and stayed there for the weekend. I love love love being at the beach [possibly because I am Californian?]!

It was a nice weekend to be away from the usual place. I felt guilty about being a little [internally] grumpy, because it was hard for me to be around a large group of people who 1. I don't know, 2. drink, swear and smoke a lot [which I didn't do, didn't like that they did around kids, and made me feel like I was going to get lung cancer before the end of the weekend], and 3. didn't want to go to the beach! They didn't want to go outside too much in fear of their skin getting darker, which made for a very interesting day when the power went out on Sunday. But I am not complaining-- I was very happy to go on this trip! I took the power outage as an opportunity to go on an hour+ long walk on the beach by myself, take some pictures, and pick up seashells like a child who has just found a new treasure. I really enjoyed my time at Port Edward, and it made me a bit homesick thinking of the last few times I was at the beach with friends/boyfriend-- I miss them/him! It was beautiful, though and I stood a very long time just watching the HUGE waves [reason I never went into the water] crash into the rocks and slide down back into the ocean.

Therusha was also very excited to take me to Wild Coast: "Oh! You will love it! We have a casino and the lights! Oh, the lights are so amazing. And there are so many gambling machines! I love going there." So I went, expecting to see South Africa's Las Vegas.. well, it was South Africa's Vegas, but it was one casino that would have been the smallest casino I would have ever seen in Vegas, haha. I tried to act very impressed, but we all know the secret!