I got to sit in on a meeting they had for about 6 of the guys in the project. They all went around and talked about good things that had happened in their lives in the past week, some of the things they wanted to work on in the next year, and what they felt was their biggest challenge.
They all were very open (even with me there!) and you could really feel how great of a program this was for the guys. The group serves as such an incredible source of support for them and a way to be able to grow in their lives when it is so easy to just sit back and let life happen to them instead of taking some control over it. They all seem to want so much for their lives but the circumstances in which they have been placed in, community influences etc, have created so many barriers. Clinton and Gerald provide these guys with not only positive adult influences who they can go to with their problems, but people who are there to provide the tools and direction these guys need to go forward with their lives. Right now they are working to create individual plans with each guy for the year. These plans are very detailed and include set timelines for goals to be met so that the guys are held accountable. They also include individualized goals and the ways that they plan to reach these goals. Most of them included getting a job as one of their goals—followed with a step by step plan of what they must do to try and achieve this—but some of the other goals were more personal like one boy said he wanted to get to know himself better over the next year. With Gerald’s help, they decided that he would keep a journal, beginning Monday, that he could read over to help to achieve this goal.
Setting goals for the year (as well as long term goals like what do you want to do/be in the next ten years) is good for the guys in getting them to think about the bigger picture of life and setting up detailed plans to achieve these goals make them achievable and more concrete.
As they met individually with the guys to make these plans, I was taken on a tour of Homestead by a kid named Cairo (or something along that line…I’m still trying to understand the accent). There are about 60 boys living in the home and there are maybe like 6 different dorms (rooms) with bunk beds for the boys. Each dorm has a leader (one or two) that is an older boy and is in charge of the room. Some of the rooms have pictures hung on the wall. One room Cairo said all the boys like soccer and rugby so the wall was covered in magazine pictures of soccer and rugby players. Another room I noticed there was a bed along the wall that had magazine and calendar pictures of girls in swimsuits. It reminded me of my friends’ rooms in middle school and high school. Boys are boys no matter where you go around the world.
Aside from offices, there is also a kitchen, dining room, tv room and laundry room inside the house. Outside they have a garden in front, and in the back yard they have a lawn to play soccer, a cement patio and wall where they play soccer or some game with a tennis ball and a structure where I guess they have punching bags up sometime for muay thai training. It seemed like a really cool place for the guys.
Cairo has been living at homestead for six years he said. I asked him how old he was and he said 17—he looked like he was 14 though. He asked how old I was and when I said 21 he was surprised and said I looked young (shooooot…boy was tryin’ to get some). He also asked if I had aboyfriend and proceeded to tell me how in South Africa age was not important. So anyways, I’m shacking up in a boys home with my new 17 year old boy Cairo. He was wearing these white thick framed plastic sunglasses with the lenses popped out and had one headphone in the whole time listening to music, and occasionally mouthing along to what I assumed was Neo after he told me that was his favourite singer. A couple times he would go to talk with a friend or something and when I went back into the room to sit in on a talk Gerald was having with one of the guys, Cairo would come back and stand at the door waiting for me to come back out. It was really cute.
I was talking with one of the older guys as we waited for them to finish up the meetings and he was asking me questions about America and stuff. One of the things he asked me was if we have shacks like they do. Looking outside the window, I saw a world of homes in conditions that if people lived in them in the States we would consider that person homeless. I said there weren’t very many. I didn’t know how or want to tell him that nothing like Khayelitsha exists in the States. In all fairness I know there are places of extreme poverty at home, I just haven’t experienced it and for that I know I am truly lucky. He went on to say yeah, and that he knew it was a lot about the government in South Africa. They have just finished this 6 billion dollar soccer stadium and yet driving through Khayelitsha you wouldn’t believe the way that people have to live. The priorities are truly skewed. The millions of people who watch the world cup will see the wonderful stadium, the gorgeous beaches and mountains that surround it, but they will never see the people of South Africa living just outside the city who are barely able to survive.
