Happy Birthday Madiba!

Wednesday, July 18^th was a very special day for South Africa. Nelson Mandela, or more commonly known by South Africans as Madiba (his Xhosa clan name), turned 94 years old. For his birthday, Mandela asked everyone in the country to give 67 minutes of their time to help someone else. We were all very glad to be in South Africa for such an important day of the year, and we all got to experience Mandela Day in different ways. For those that work in more office jobs, they spent their 67 minutes helping others. John picked up trash outside of the SDCEA office, and Michael went with SDB to help out at a crèche (day care). Those who work at children’s homes, like Amit and Sam, got to experience the receiving end of the 67 minutes movement, as big companies in the area brought lunch to the home or came to hang out with the children. For the past few weeks, with my work at WHOC finished, I have worked at Oceanview Place of Safety, which is a temporary home for children ages 7-17 who cannot safely live with their families, because of abuse or violence. There is also no juvenile hall system in Durban, so when young boys break the law, they are sent straight to jail. When young girls break the law, however, they are sent to the Place of Safety. I work there every day, and Marcayla joins me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Lauren also worked there during the holidays, but is now back at Assegai Primary School. Last Wednesday, Marcayla and I were fortunate enough to be at Oceanview for Mandela day. The day started a little slow, but you could feel the excitement growing as it neared lunchtime. The had been preparing all week for a presentation to honor Mandela, and to thank Woolworths (a clothing store chain) for donating lunch and gift bags to the kids.

            Around 12pm, the director of Oceanview, Mr. Moodley, gave a speech and kicked off the presentation. Each grade had prepared a small piece for the audience, which consisted of Woolworths staff, Oceanview staff, all the Oceanview kids, the kids from St. Monica’s home who go to school at Oceanview, and the volunteers including Marcayla, myself and two girls from UKZN who were serving their 67 minutes there. Some presentations were short, like reciting poetry, or singing pieces of a song. Others were longer, like an unbelievable song and dance performance from the girls, or a thank you speech. The crowd favorite was definitely a condensed Mandela biography reading done by an 11-year-old white boy named Brayden. The reading was complete with pictures as well as off-script ad-libs, which made the whole presentation. Some of them included “politicians are those people that stop other people from throwing rocks at white people’s houses”, and a nice, but slightly irrelevant story about that one time Mandela rode a bus. The whole staff, who is mostly black, as well as Marcayla and I could not contain our laughter, especially when Brayden went off on tangents talking about “white people back then”.

            After the presentation, we had a delicious lunch of chicken stew with rice, and celebrated with cutting a cake and eating ice cream. I feel really lucky to have been able to experience Mandela Day in South Africa, but more specifically, to have experienced it at Oceanview.