... now it is clear at last: In the summer I go to South Africa!
In the spring of 2007 I left school success with a good to very good college degree. Now, almost a year later, my time goes as community service here in Hagen coming to an end and I have to look into the future. What
My career choice is concerned, I would like to be active later in development aid and cooperation. But I have no idea what area I would like to work. I would imagine, in Germany or in English speaking countries to complete an engineering study and then to work in developing countries. However, I'm not sure whether I such a study auc h appeals. Since I still have no experience about the life and work in a so-called "third world" country, I decided to first in the new program "weltwärts the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to participate.
The developmental voluntary service weltwärts "is the commitment to a world promoting sustainable and sees itself as a learning service that young people an intercultural exchange in developing countries, provides" it says about the weltwärts Secretariat, acting on behalf of. This year I want to find out if I wanted to live abroad and continue to work if I prefer to work in the economic or social wants or where else I can find my place in society. Not only the urge new countries and cultures to learn draws me to Africa. Since we often have the value of what we have here in our luxurious West do not appreciate everything more, it longs for us more. I want to know but what it is to live in modest circumstances, in order so the new home to appreciate. That is why I applied to an institution that offers the developmental voluntary service, at Friends of Waldorf Education Association. (And much more selection meeting in Kehl, near Strasbourg, preliminary meeting in Ulm) After much back and forth, I now have the desired point suffer in an orphanage for children to include AIDS or tuberculosis.
Baphumelele - Input Baphumelele Children's Home is one of the few orphanages in the townships of Cape Town. About 140 children live there. Also there is Educare Centre (kindergarten with integrated pre-school) which almost 300 children - from outside - now visit were with donations (including the famous British singer Sir Elton John) new cluster houses, a laundry, a soup kitchen and a baby-house, and a woodworking shop built. There are also the HIV Respite Care Centre , a peaceful environment where people provided in order to survive the harsh and often painful treatment for AIDS. There are always people who strengthened this rehabilitation center left, but not everyone leaves alive.
one of the Cluster Homes the Baby house there are about 40 children aged from a few hours up to four years. Many parents in the townships of South Africa do not even have the money for their own food and can not raise a child, and are additionally forced to suspend it.
South Africa is the country where the largest proportion of women are raped - it happens every three minutes somewhere ... and these are official figures, the estimated number still way higher! Children who emerge from such terrible circumstances come out, after Baphumelele and find a new home. Unfortunately there the children are not sufficiently promoted and challenged. The few staff are usually busy with cooking, washing, cleaning, give medicine or make the children clean, as there is no time for additional attention.
If the children four years or older, they get to kindergarten. There, they can play develop social skills and try to live their childhood as such. The children who live in their own families, is not doing necessarily better, they have no way be allowed to child. They must often behave like adults, are still not noticeable. The budget have to make the girls while hardly raise the younger siblings. Earn money - mostly through prostitution - is always more ... You have no way to determine their own lives. The boy, however, the only way to crime. They are violent, have to steal, take drugs and alcohol. Alcohol is anyway a big problem in the townships. Many parents are alcohol dependent, they are not able to take care around the family and it comes to violence or abuse. Actually, all looking for work, but there are not as good as in the township.
lives Some of the children in small cluster houses. There, try "house parents" like real parents to care for the children. The rest of them live in dormitories, where just the bed is their own private area - if at all, because not everyone has their own bed, sometimes sleeping up to three children in it.
view of the Township Khayelitsha is one of the largest townships in South Africa. The slums on the outskirts of Cape Town in the Cape Flats. The name means something like a new home. Long live there now about 2.5 million people in abject cardboard and corrugated iron huts (originally the Township for only 40,000 expected), 90 percent black and 10 percent of blacks. White, there are virtually none. Within the township is almost entirely Xhosa, one of the native languages of the blacks, said. Khayelitsha came into existence after 1950, the Group Areas Act was adopted. He forbade blacks to live in South African cities. The Western Cape was the preferred area for the colored population. After apartheid ended in 1994 hundreds of thousands of black came from rural areas in the city, hoping to find work.
The apartheid (Afrikaans: separated, especially) dominated the entire country. The black population is economically back much further, and without a good education - that depends on how much money you have to do to get a good school - the differences between black and white still remain in Africa. But most people are not so bad, but looks even to strangers who dare to in her township.
Initially, the orphanage, part of the Townshipgemeinschaft and highly regarded. However, there It is no longer only positive reactions from the environment, because the growing size of Baphumelele there are a lot of envy of the neighborhood. Baphumelele is after all of solid stone houses, there are some old computer, running water and electricity. Life for employees Baphumelele has become dangerous now than before, but so bad that the support we will send volunteers not there, it's not now.
The wall of Baphumelele protects against burglars We are this year, eight volunteers from Germany who go to Baphumelele (four girls and four boys). With this, fortunately, is also my girlfriend Johanna.
Our responsibility is to do janitorial work, medicine and prepare to make many travel services primarily to hospitals, day and night, but also drop-off and pick up pick-up trips and shopping, and donations. In South Africa the left, and TÜV expresses a blind eye when it comes to fitness to drive the cars ... so it will certainly be exciting! The best is that we can work there quite freely and we very much ownership is transferred. So we should, for example, afternoon various projects with the children make. It does not matter whether it comes to games, sports, music or homework help ... as we may think of something private. We will work from morning to evening and at weekends, at least two people stay by us for car service at Children's Home. be
In the five weeks of vacation, we want to Joan and I returned with the car in the Kruger National Park in eastern South Africa, and then from the Kalahari Desert (Botswana) to Windhoek (Namibia) from there again to go to Cape Town, a total of about 7000km. I have no idea if it will work ever (financially), but it would be easy incredibly beautiful! It is hardly possible to know the different country with all its different facets. There are many interesting national parks, wilderness areas and subtropics but wait, oceans, mountain and desert areas. (image)
View from Table Mountain to the coast I have this letter written here, to tell my friends, acquaintances and relatives that I summer will do, but also to raise funds for my project!
for my stay I need, like every other volunteers also pre-1800 Euro, so I can go to South Africa. This money should come together with donations from friends and acquaintances and from companies willing to pay. Thus, should the voluntary service each be enabled, which will make this - quite apart from his property or that of their parents. In order to finance my trip so I need at least 1800 €, which are per month 150 €. When weltwärts program in which I participate, it is so that the state is for every three to € and the program to promote. The funding ceiling is put at 580 € / month. The total is used for various seminars (Including travel costs), round-trip flight to Africa, all kinds of insurance, food allowance, accommodation, administration costs and € 100 spending money per month.
I am of course grateful for every € more, because with a bit more I am also able to do something, like my trip.
I am very grateful to all who is willing to support me and my project financially. If you want to promote me, eg with 10 € / month, so this would be only 120 €. I'm glad for every small amount. I need the money, however, have until July 2008, because everything has to be paid in advance. Of course I'll
South Africa will continue to report on my year. I will write regularly here on friedmut.blogspot.com a new report, so there remains the possibility to keep track of what I do and how I was made here.
Each donor receives a receipt of course for the income tax bill! There
More information is available to me:
Freddie Abel
freddie1987 [at] gmail [dot] com
further address, contact, and
account details please ask me!
