Cape Town... Day four

I’m trying to blog quickly before dinner, because I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to blog again later. So I’ll just jump right into it, this morning we split into two groups. Part of us went back to Langa (a township we visited earlier with my jumping friends) and in the afternoon went to an HIV clinic… yet the other part of us stayed at the bed and breakfast to talk to a guy named Mark Williams, who flew in from Johannesburg, and in the afternoon they went to a school at a township called “Fillipe” (spelling?!) to do small group interviews. I was apart of the group that stayed at the bed and breakfast and went to the school to do interviews.

Mark Williams was an interesting fellow, he created a sort of business game aimed to teach individuals entrepreneurship. We talked a lot about “disguised learning” and how businesses in the area are figuring out that everyone is getting tired of learning the same ways. As interesting as this was, it wasn’t necessarily pertinent to the UN project I felt. It was sort of reminiscent of our talks from Learning 2007, which was great and made some possibilities for the EMC I feel but again I’m not sure if it really related to our project at the moment. We actually had an opportunity to play his game, called “Vantage Point” which was actually really fun! We kept trying to make under the table deals with each other and this social aspects to this game really made this so much fun. This sort of social interaction kind of gave us some inspiration towards game design… this may be something that may be incredibly effective for our audience who is already playing social games in the first place. This sort of social interaction also enables one to personalize the information a lot easier as well.

On the way the way to the high school Ann was telling us a story about how she was talking with one of the people who works at the bed and breakfast that we’re staying at. After explaining the point of the project the woman actually said “Thank you for coming to South Africa.” This sort of hit home for us =)

My experience today at the school was amazing, I’m really not sure where to begin. I don’t think that I’m going to post the name of the two boys that I had the opportunity to talk to, for confidentiality purposes. Yet we were really able to have an in depth conversation over the course of about an hour and a half. Surprisingly we talked about some pretty intense issues, media, sex, “Manhood”, peer pressure, and even home lives. I don’t think I’ll share my findings here right now, I don’t have much time before I sleep so I think I’ll move on. Perhaps later I’ll tell you more details of what sort of things that I heard. Either way I’m going back tomorrow to facilitate a large group discussion with seven or eight young males possibly. I’m excited to go back and make more connections with these kids.

My final memory of the evening was going to a UCT dorm and talking with some of the college students going there. It was really kind of fun to have a casual conversation with people our age and they really seemed to be interested in what we were working on. They also invited us to come look at their rooms, they kept calling it a hostel but it really didn’t fit my preconceived notion of what a hostel is. We looked at a single and really it was about the size of a normal double back at Champlain. It’s crazy just how big UCT is! We’re pretty tiny =) Although we’re small, we do a great many and big things… Something that was really funny was the fact that they invited a couple of us out to go party with them at a bar that sold 1R shots… which would be maybe 13 American cents. I couldn’t imagine a worst idea haha but it was funny to think about.

I feel as though I’m breezing through all of the events today and for that I apologize, but there really aren’t any words for how amazing this all is… I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go further in depth over all of my findings at some point but for now I must sleep. G’night and thank you all for your support =)