ST LUCIA ORPHANS AND AIDS EDUCATION PROJECT
Jenny Moore 2008
My experience in South Africa was simply amazing. I arrived with another volunteer, and after a few hours spent recovering from our flight at the house (which is much more luxurious than you'd expect!) we were thrown straight into the project; given a quick tour of Khula Village and shown each of the projects that we would be working on over the next few weeks, and the next day we started teaching the kids at the daycare - like nothing i have ever experienced before! The kids are all just excited to be learning and playing with volunteers from all over the world, and the Zulu teachers and staff at the house were all friendly and welcoming. There is nothing i can say to describe the kids that would be adequate – they’re so outgoing and just happy that you're there - within my first few minutes on my first day I had at least 4 around me wanting to be held or highfived!
An element of the project which I found I enjoyed beyond my expectations was the HIV education - we taught a small group of adults a set course about HIV, which was run every Tuesday - Friday, and then repeated with different people weekly. The way that the schedule was worked out meant that I took part on this afternoon project the majority of the time, and in this way I really got to know much more about the situation (especially in this specific part of South Africa), and felt that this project made a huge impact on the community. Me and one other volunteer also took time out of daycare in the morning to go and teach a similar syllabus to teenagers in the local primary school - set up in a similar way, but much more fun and interactive! And just the test results at the end of the courses were simple proof of the postive impact that this project has on the area.
The other afternoon projects were equally as rewarding - whether we spent our time helping to build the new daycare centre for the children (which is looking brilliant now!!), painting the mural in the village's church, farming in either the HIV Support Garden or plot or working on the lesson plans for the next week of daycare. Whilst working on these projects we were often joined by people from the village who came to help; we met some great people from the area this way!
There was also a huge range of things to do in our freetime, which helped to contribute to an all-around African experience - whether it was just going into St Lucia for a night in a bar (which we did frequently), or in the daytime to do some haggling at the local craft market, or bigger things like all-day safaris (me and a few of the other volunteers did this as well as an overnight stay in a safari-park, which was absolutely stunning!) . We also did whale-watching trips, tours of the estuary by boat in search for hippos and crocs (although a couple of the other volunteers saw hippos around the roads of St Lucia!), and even just walking around St Lucia, down to the beach and estuary, was well worth doing - we found an amazing art market, and by that I mean one man with his amazing paintings hanging on a washing line! I only went for a few weeks, but by the time I left I felt that I had found a second home in St Lucia - the place itself, and especially the people in Khula village, are just so friendly, and you get to know it all so quickly.