Friday, June 7, 2013

Beginning our Service

Friday morning was finally the first day of our working at the Sinmlando Centre.  Now you are probably asking what is the Sinomlando Centre?  What does it do?  Well you're in luck because I was just about to tell you...

The Sinomlando Centre is an organization begun by Br. Philippe Denis, and run through the University of KwaZulu Natal that offers psychosocial support to children who have been affected by HIV and AIDS, having lost a parent to the illness or suffering from it themselves, in order to enhance their resilience and ability to cope with their hardships.  The centre's main focuses are on memory work and oral history, believing very strongly in the facts that everyone has a history, no matter where they come from or how young they are, and that children are never to young to know or remember.  In fact, The word sinomlando means "we have a history" in Zulu.

So, at 8:15am, we were picked up by Marie-Chantal who drove us to the Sinomlando office at UKZN so that we would not have to walk on our first day, where we met Nokhaya and Cliford again, as well as Lois, who taught us our first Zulu words, how to say hello.  (The greeting is Sawubona to one person, and Sanibona to multiple people, and the response is Yebo.  It is essentially saying good day, and agreeing that yes, it is a good day.)

We hopped in the van and drove to the office located at 50 Langalibelele Street where we would be walking every day, where we had a bit of any orientation to the program and what they did.  So as to not overwhelm us, they finished around noon, but left us at the office to get to know Delphine, a French intern who would be our colleague for the next 5 weeks, and the workspace better.  We worked on our Zulu, learning another greeting from Philisiwe.  ('Unjani,' for one, or 'ninjani,' for many, means 'how are you?', to which you respond 'ngiyaphila' or 'siyaphila,' respectively.)

After work, we returned to the priory for dinner with the brothers, and though many of them were getting ready to let loose and have some fun as any twenty-somethings would do on a Friday night, Heidi and I were thoroughly exhausted and turned in early yet again, crawling into a bed that was finally beginning to feel like home.

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