Blood Pressure Battles

3/6/12

“Oh, you’re here now,” said the security guard as I was walking up the steps to our seminar room. “Yes…yes I am,” I responded in confusion. “You were in Kwanokuthula this morning,” he explained. “Oh, yes I’m in Kwanokuthula every morning.” The same exact thing happened three days later with a waiter outside of the Pilates studio. I never realized that we stood out in the townships. No one stares, gawks, or takes pictures of us like in India and China. I figured they were just used to seeing white people. Perhaps we make more of an impression than I thought. I guess they just have better manners (by American standards) here than in China and India.

I spent the morning fighting with the blood pressure machine. It’s absolutely ridiculous! It will take my blood pressure, it will take Margaret’s blood pressure, but heaven forbid you should put it on an actual patient, and it flips out. We’re guessing that it will only take healthy blood pressures. Now if it refuses to take a patient’s blood pressure we just have to infer that it’s too high. It’s incredibly frustrating. Funny how my frustrations have changed since last year. My battles with the high school computers seem so distant compared to my more recent technology struggles.

It was a strange day. I realized that all of the children of the Crech call me “Mama.” I know that it’s just a Xhosa sign of respect for your elders, but it’s still weird for me being called “Mama” at only eighteen. Then I found out that Margaret’s been fibbing to the township about me. Half the men think I have a large older brother in town, and half of them just flat out think I’m married. Margaret never told me this until I got proposed to two and a half times today. What’s half a proposal you ask? Well it goes a little something like this: (to Margaret) “I want to marry your daughter, but if I can’t have her I’ll take that one (“that one” being me) instead.” You can imagine how flattered “that one” was. It was almost as flattering as, “I neeeed a white woman.”

As we were walking up a hill that also serves as a dump, Margaret pointed out a broken, dirty, faded red plastic, seemingly useless, turtle shaped kiddy pool.  “On my way back I’m going to take that,” she told me, “and then I’m going to clean it and fill it with sand for the children.” I was impressed by her resourcefulness, but depressed by the necessity of it. These children deserve better than a decrepit sandbox that’s going to split in half the moment somebody plays the tiniest bit too rough.

I suppose it’s fair to wonder why a sandbox is of any great importance, but for me it’s about what the sandbox represents.  If not for the breakfast and lunch provided at the Crech, many of the children would rarely receive three meals a day. For only 100 Rand ($14) a month, the Crech provides each child with two meals a day, potty training, English lessons, a safe place to play, and the invaluable experience of interaction with other children. Donors provide 750 Rand ($107) a month for food, but it’s a struggle to feed 25 kids nutritiously with so little. As Margaret would call it, the school is pretty much a “shack behind the house.” Currently, she is raising funds to build a six-room brick preschool next to the church. With more room she could hire more teachers, and more students could enroll and benefit.

In each core country, TBB has us complete a media project. For my South African media project I am going to make a donations website for the Crech and the non-profit nursing home that Margaret wants to start. Margaret was extremely excited when I told her, and I’m very happy to have a project where I feel like I’m actually doing something. I just hope I can make the site look official enough to not seem like a scam. Did you know that you can purchase a .org on GoDaddy.com? And most of all I hope that we can raise enough money to really make a difference.  It’s nice to be able to productively channel my passion. In India I was so frustrated because I was so passionate about women’s rights, but felt so helpless in my situation. This is much better for my emotional stability.

Love,

Katherine

P.S. I will post the link here when the website is complete.