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Published: February 24th 2008
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Hallo! Goeiemiddag, my naam is Ashley. Hoe gaan dit met jou? Ek leer Afrikaans. Aangename kennis!
(Hello! Good afternoon, my name is Ashley. How are you? I am learning Afrikaans. Pleased to meet you!)
These are some of the phrases that I use as much as I can. Also I have decided that my favorite word to say in Afrikaans is "gogga" which means "bug". Speaking afrikaans is a lot like german - the g's you pronounce like you are gargling in the back of your throat. I am actually very happy with how easily I have learned to pronounce most of the words and my Afrikaans teacher is so much fun! She plays a lot of music and will dance around the room singing in Afrikaans...we play games and in the last class we made posters and we had to choose an animal and two adjectives that describe us and draw a picture of the animal. I wrote: "Ek is 'n bloedrooi ibis want ek is liefdevol en veranderlik" which means "I am a scarlet ibis because I am loving and always changing". :P
Oohh and I'll count for you in Afrikaans - een, twee, drie, vier, vyf, ses,
sewe, agt, nege, tien!
On Wednedsay I had my first day at my site placement for my service learning programme. The plan is to do service work with Pebbles Project at Delheim Wine Farm for the next four weeks Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30-5pm. During this time there will be a paper-making project going on that I have been asked to observe and record what materials are needed, how much time it will take and so on. I then will be reporting back to Marilize, the project manager, and then after autumn break in April I will be working at Eikendal Wine Farm on Tuesdays and lead the paper-making project at this farm. At this time I will also be placed at Villieria Wine Farm on Thursday mornings. phew! For now however I will be just at Delheim. Well, let me tell you more about the Pebbles Project.
Pebbles is a very new program and officially launched in August 2005. It's currently run by three women and they are at the time working with five wine farms all 15 minutes outside of Stellenbosch. At each wine farm there is an after-school club that provides a safe enviroment for
Sunset
Walking into town one evening and caught this... the older children to do homework, play sports, and day-care for the younger children while their parents work on the farm. My service work will be assisting in these after-school clubs. Pebbles also provides educational programmes for parents as well as life-skill programmes that seek to empower and build trust within the farm community. The vision of the Pebbles Project is: "To enrich the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds with special educational needs, especially those whose lives are affected by alcohol, through providing support and training to local wine farm and township creches and establishing after-school provision for older children."
A sad reality on the wine farms is that many farm workers are given wine as a form of payment which as you can imagine has led to many issues with alcoholism...this also contributes to many children suffering from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and learning difficulties in result of maternal drinking. Even children who don't have learning disabilities suffer from the effects of the abuse of alcohol in their community.
I am not gonna lie - I am way excited and thankful to have the opportunity to work with the Pebbles Project. I am considering drug and alcohol addiction as my focus for social work, so I feel this is a great time to find out if it's what I want to do with my career.
So my first day at Delheim Farm...I was sooooo nervous and had no idea what to expect. When I arrived the young children were just waking up from their naps. I met Geraldeen, one of the teachers hired by Pebbles to work for the after-school program who was very friendly and one of the two people I met who speak English. The other person I met that I was able to chat with was Colleen, a very intelligent and sweet girl who is 19 and is filling in for a few weeks because the other teacher that was working with Geraldeen became sick with TB. I spent some time playing with the young children which was an interesting experience - none of them spoke English but we were able to use our hands and act out what we wanted to say. We played tag, jump rope, and basketball. I had a fun experience when Geraldeen asked me to read aloud to a group of three students a story and questions that followed that the students had to write in their journals - and of course all of it was in Afrikaans...I soon found myself laughing with the kids as I stumbled along trying my best to pronounce words and understand what I was even reading. The children were all very kind and at one point Colleen took me aside and for an hour wrote out basic phrases, body parts, numbers, and colors to learn. She was very patient with me and I couldn't help but give her a huge hug and a heartfelt "dankie!" when I left at 5.
One last thing... went to Kirstenbosch, the botanical gardens in Cape Town last Sunday and saw The Rudimentals perform-sooo awesome! bought their CD which I'm listening to as I write...
Yikes so much more I wish to write but no time . . . I have reading to catch up on and then church this evening. I love all of you so much and I will write in the next few days and tell you more about my service learning and other adventures. 😉
Totsiens!
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