Lack of Posting

Hey hey –

A thousand apologies for abandoning you all for one week… Procrastination, the first pillar of IB, took hold this past week. Or rather, I procrastinated on my blog to make room for schoolwork, CAS, etc (so there’s no need to freak out, mom :)

There have been two main highlights of these past two weeks: getting a care package in the mail, and UWC day. So let me start with the former…

Man, I wish you guys could have seen my face as I tore into that package. I was beaming. Everything was perfect, all the way down to the newspaper articles and cartoons. And yes Grandma, you did get the right kind of jellybeans :) And Girl Scout cookies! When I saw the box my train of thought went something like this:

I’m only going to get a package every once in a blue moon. I should savor these cookies. I’ll only eat one a day.

15 minutes later…

Man, I miss those Girl Scout cookies.

(I shared… reluctantly)

Thank you to everyone involved in constructing the package – everything was absolutely perfect, down to the bandana with the American flag.

And speaking of this…

The timing for the package could not have been better, because the day after I received the aforementioned patriotic bandana was UWC day. Basically, UWC day is a chance for everyone in the school to express their home culture by making food, dressing up, dancing, singing, reading poetry, etc. And it’s really fun, because we have about fifty countries represented at Waterford – that’s a lot of great food and awesome outfits. We started the day off with an assembly where people from each nation came out in front of the school, paraded their outfits, and told everyone their home country. Anne Caroline and I were reppin’ the US as cowboys (ye haw?). My outfit was over-the-top patriotic… most people got the joke, but for some I just looked like an asshole. Oops.

After assembly everyone went to set up their country stalls – basically, all around the school people set up booths where they sold food characteristic of their home country. The Norwegians made some killer waffles, the Germans had meatballs and pretzels, I’m pretty sure I saw the Swazi’s grilling up some intestines... the U.S. had chocolate chip cookies and lemonade (although we had a lot of requests for corn dogs… perhaps next year). I spent a good portion of the day running the stall for Young Heroes, a fundraising community service I’m a member of, although I still got the chance to stuff my face with some delish food.

Anyways, UWC day was really awesome. I know it sounds really cheesy, but it was great to see everyone expressing and embracing their own culture. Folks were really super proud to be… themselves. Which is always a pleasant sight.

What else. There was recently a strike in Swaziland – teachers, shop workers, nurses, and pretty much everyone else refused to work last Friday (although we still had school, rats). I wasn’t really that inconvenienced, sheltered here on the hill.

HOWEVER, the strike did have one huge impact on me – the nurses at Ward 8 decided to take off on the day that we had community service there. So I arrive at the hospital with my group on Wednesday and there’s nobody there with the children. One is on the floor and the other is in his stroller. Neither has been changed. It was… really stunning. The fact that Ward 8 is supposed to be a facility that cares for abandoned children, but instead it was like they had been re-abandoned. I asked my supervisor – surely somebody must be staying with them at night? She said they were probably staying alone. That hit me really hard. More than anything, it made me realize the importance of our commserve. Even if we’re just taking the kids outside and around the town, at least they’re getting some fresh air and, moreover, some attention. Being touched, talked to, cared for… these are all extremely important things that we take for granted. So we talk to the kids and rub their backs, sometimes I sing to them (perhaps a little goopy, but imagine a life where your parents never sang to you). It may not be much, but I’m beginning to think more and more of it.

Today at Waterford we celebrated Human Rights Day with an early day out, followed by an assembly and various workshops around campus. A representative from UNICEF and the High Commissioner of South Africa came to our school and spoke about human rights in relation to the history of South Africa – in particular, the High Commissioner said something that I found very interesting. It was something like this:

Many of you are from different nations around the world where violations of human rights are not at the forefront of your problems. But human rights violations have been very significant in the development of conflict in South Africa over the last half-century.

Maybe I’m quoting it wrong because I look back and it doesn’t look like it does her justice, but the gist was that I’m now in a place where human rights violations are of much more pivotal importance. I mean, they’re important everywhere… but it seems to be a very omnipresent issue here. But perhaps I’m just not paying enough attention in the states, eh?

I sang in assembly with the choir and ran a workshop for Amnesty International, another commserve I’m doing. Basically we brought students into a room that was very dimly lit (it was supposed to be really dark but that didn’t really pan out) with a few candles in the middle and asked them about their perceptions of human rights. Then we read out loud a story about the violation of human rights somewhere in the world; the death penalty by stoning in Iran, the abuse of migrant workers in Malaysia, acts of sexual violence against Nicaraguan girls. Then we asked them more questions about human rights – how have their perceptions changed (if at all), what can we do to protect human rights, do we see any examples of these violations in our own nations? The whole thing was done with a lot of silence, reminiscent of Quaker meeting almost. However, because the students we had were a little younger (about freshman age), we had to coax them a bit into discussion… but on the whole the workshop went really well. Students in all three workshops said the best way to work towards protecting human rights is to talk about it and make people’s stories heard… and that’s exactly what we did. So I’m guessing the world will be cured within the next few days ;)

Like I mentioned before, I’ve been getting increasing amounts of schoolwork lately. I’m not really that stressed (yet; you’re not allowed to be stressed in IB1), but I think this coming week will be kind of… inconvenient. I just turned in today a poetry anthology for English, containing commentaries on five poems and one song (I analyze schemes and tropes, including anaphora, climax, triple construction, repetition, and hyperbole, in Fergie’s “Fergalicious”) – the anthology came out to about nineteen pages. Tomorrow I have a maths test, plus a biology lab, biology test, English commentary, and SiSwati test on Friday. Woo!

As a treat for taking so long to update the blog, I wanna throw some photos of UWC day up on the blog. I’ll get them as soon as possible and show you all my excessive cowboyness (if the internet gods here see it fit).

Until then, stay well friends. Hope all is well, wherever you may be. Know that things are awesome here in S-Deezy.

Lots of love,

Eli