Jabulani Project

Gap Year Students

Group 1: Isaac, Emma, Fiona, Nathaniel ft. Alex Wallace

A very productive and successful day. Alex came with us today to see our usual Umthombo Thursday routine and also to come along to our first day at SISCO street kids initiative. In the morning meeting we were offered the opportunity to see the Umthombo aftercare programme so Isaac and Emma stayed to lead the activities at the centre and Fiona and Nathaniel went to aftercare.

Although there was the usual slow start we managed to get pretty much our full hour for our Umthombo drama programme. It is going from strength to strength. The children are getting used to the games and, more importantly, are warming to us each time they see us. The new game we played this week was “musical statues” which went down a treat.

We kept our time at Umthombo short and sweet as planned. After the session we went for lunch with an old friend of Alex’s, a former street child of Umthombo. He was telling us about his (very) new surf instruction business and we offered to help him by printing business cards and getting him a phone for the company. He was incredibly grateful and it was clear this would be more than a worthwhile investment of the Jabulani Project.

Fiona and Nathaniel left half way through the morning programme to observe an aftercare case with Biza. We got taken out to an area of the township we had never seen before.  The houses were a lot nicer than we’re used to seeing. The house we drew up at looked quite fancy but when we got closer it had an air of neglect. As we took the boy in he tried to convince us that there was no-one in and we should go away, but we went in to find his father in the living room. He looked surprised to see us with his son. We were welcomed in and given seats by his father. It wasn’t until Biza asked where the boys mother was that she came in. She sat down and didn’t say much while we were there. His father did all of the talking. Most of the discussion was done in Zulu so it was hard to follow what was going on, except for when the boy spoke as he talked only in English. He kept saying that everyone in the house hated him and that the children in this house spat on him. The boy didn’t want to stay but when the discussion was over Biza had a private word with him and he seemed to consent to stay. Once we had left Biza explained the story behind this boy and what had happened in the meeting. Apparently the family had once had a lot of money but recently it had dried up and the boy couldn’t get what he wanted all the time. They said that this had driven him crazy and he had run away. He had only recently been approached by Umthombo and he is too old for them to properly work with him so they were taking him back to his family. His father was happy to take him back in and said he would try and take him somewhere to help him. It was interesting to observe the meeting and especially how Biza talked to the family. It’s a side of Umthombo we hadn’t seen before.

It was then time for us to actually do some work with SISCO, something which Isaac had been planning over the past couple of weeks. When we arrived they were ready for us on time, which was quite surprising in comparison to Umthombo and other organisations that we have worked with. They told us a little about the work they have been doing over the past four years and then briefed us on what we would do today – basically we would talk to the street children, hand out some food, and take down their names so that they can get IDs. These IDs would allow them to apply for jobs but would also give the police fewer reasons to give them any trouble. We were given SISCO’s bright orange t-shirts and then set out around the city. We found it really moving to talk to the kids, particularly seeing how cheerful many of them were, especially given how long some of them had been on the streets. One of them had been there for five years. We found SISCO impressive because we could actually see the work they were doing and the difference that it was making. At the end of the session we booked another for Monday when we would follow up the ID cards.