Shortened School Week

Molweni,

It has been about a week since I last posted and quiet a bit has happened since then. I started my second week of service at Equal Education. On Tuesday I helped organize leafleting and petitioning in Cape Town for the current libraries campaign. We sent a group of our youth volunteers out into the community to raise awareness about our campaign to raise funds for Libraries in Khayelitsha. On Wednesday, I worked on finding a price for stickers that we can give out for the library campaign. We hope to be able to print out these stickers for our members, so that people can show support for Equal Education. We also went to a bowling alley as a get together for our whole staff. It was a good way to get to know the people in the office. I had the highest score of about 20 people playing, however, the majority of the people had never bowled before. Everyone on the staff really enjoyed it though, so it was a lot of fun. I hadn't seen people have that much fun bowling in a while.

That night everyone in the house went out for a stand up comedy show in Rondebosch (the neighborhood where we live). There was about 6 comedians, some better than others, but we all enjoyed the show. Two of the girls in our group were the target of quite a few jokes, which is to be expected as Americans in a South African comedy club.On Thursday we had a lecture at the University of the Western Cape. After the lecture I got dropped off at a restaurant called Don Pedro. There I had to do some work for Equal Education. I am in charge of setting up a company event where we are inviting all of our donors and friends. The event is to get everyone energized and excited for the last/largest event of the campaign. The last event is mobilizing over 2,000 students to walk on September 2 for school libraries. Nevertheless, I was at Don Pedro to book the venue for the party. So we will be having the event there on Aug. 24 as a part of the final push of the campaign. That night, we had people over to watch movies and relaxed.

On Friday, we had a lecture about diversity in South Africa and we took a trip to Bo-Kaap (a Muslim neighborhood in Cape Town). We returned home and I went to play basketball with Simon. I ended up playing with an intramural team that needed an extra player. It was a good time and we ended up winning. I returned home and began cooking. We had a potluck dinner. We invited a bunch of people and we each cooked something for dinner. We had a ton of food and Eva and I made fried rice. The food was so good and we had a lot of leftovers.

We woke up the next day and watched movies and laid around. Besides a trip into Claremont (a nearby neighborhood) it was a pretty lazy day.

Today was a pretty eventful day. We started off by going to the South Africa History Museum. There we saw a planetarium show, which was really cool. Its one of those things where you recline and there is a dome and stars are depicted on the ceiling. We learned about the length of days. We were also treated to a special show following the main show. Six of us from the group stayed behind and the guy there showed us the constellations in the sky tonight and how they differ from how we see them in the US. From there we went to the V&A Waterfront where we saw the sun go down. We followed that up with dinner and dessert at the waterfront.

It has been a good week and I am prepared to get to work this coming week. Hopefully this week my computer will be fixed as well, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I will write soon and I hope you are all enjoying the summer.

Lalani Kakuhle.

-Pat