Catching Up

I’ve been slacking off on my blog-posting because of a hectic couple of weeks at work. It has been invigorating and a tad scary to be challenged in ways completely different from what I encountered at Princeton. One of my projects has gone “live”, which basically means that SA has its first PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV) phone helpline. I’ve been managing between 5 and 8 women who are doing the work of actually fielding the calls. There is a small language barrier: they understand English, but have some difficulty with it and with my accent. They are all former m2m Mentor Mothers, which means they are HIV+ and have babies, and were employed by m2m to counsel other women like them. It also means that though they are mostly in their 20s as I am, we couldn’t be more different. Sometimes I can feel that fact hang in the air between us. Of course, bigger than that is the fact that all of us are interested in the same thing: helping pregnant, HIV+ women, and that pushes us forward.

I hear about how amazing these women are, how far they have come and how empowered they are, all the time. Having worked with them, it seems patronizing to repeat that, even though it is all true. The first day I worked their shift, one of the ladies came up to me asking to take a break to take her pills. I was preoccupied with some humdrum incident, but her request knocked the breath out of me—it is so easy for me to forget that I am dealing with sick women. It’s a good thing they don’t seem so all the time, but yet, they are, and sometimes I’m at a loss at how to deal with that. I guess it is another privilege to add to my long list: the privilege of never really having to deal with disease.

For pictures of the call centre, click here.

Even other than the phone-line project, work has picked up pace. I spent Friday morning on the phone, and was asked where I am from by two different women. One of them was being friendly—she told me about her trip to India and waxed eloquent about the heat. The other was being snarky, so I told her my nationality has nothing to do with the matter at hand. But the question infuriated me!

But, I should count my blessings. Jevon, who is in Delhi right now, reminded me of that. At least I can speak the local language, English, fluently and for the most part I blend into Cape Town. My accent is sufficiently vague for me to not get totally ripped-off by street vendors. Being US-like and India-like in equal parts, Cape Town itself has not been hard to live in. In fact, the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup is coming to town this weekend, and I’m SO excited! I have tickets to the SA-Bangladesh game, and have plans to be glued to the TV for the India-Pak match in Durban.

Strangely, I am being a huge sports fan these days. For the most part, it has to do with the fact that I live right next door to the cricket, rugby and football stadiums of Cape Town. In fact, I walk past them everyday on my way to work. And tickets are relatively cheap, so in all it makes for an entertaining way to spend afternoons/soak up the culture. And you would be surprised at how much one can learn from a game.

In the last two weeks, I have seen one Springboks (national rugby team) and one Bafana Bafana (national soccer team) match. Radically different experiences, those two. As I have mentioned before, rugby is a preppy affair; it could have been at football at Princeton. The Bafana Bafana game, however, was incredible in its sheer energy. For one, the stadium was packed. Every third person had a vuvuzela (a plastic trumpet that sounds like an elephant and is a football essential), and did not shirk from using it. People around us were singing: the folk song “ShoSholoza” was sung over and over again. Someone would start it in one corner of the stadium and it would work its way over to us. I really like it actually, even though I’ve only heard it being sung off-tune. There was a group off to our right that was particularly raucous. They had a bunch of flags, and one of them was in costume with a gorilla mask on—I’m not sure what that was about. Everybody was just so enthusiastic, it’s a shame SA lost!

Click here for pictures

And as you can tell from the pictures, all my roommates are now here. The house is pleasantly full and it has a slight college-feel to it, which is really fun.