Day 14 - September 12, 2006

Today since we are traveling to the City Council chambers, we got to sleep in to 7:30am. Unfortunately, everyone in my flat slept through the first alarm, and I woke up at 8:05am and had to hastily wake everyone up, since we only had 25 minutes to get ready and make the bus. Fortunately, we were all fast and were at the bus in front of Ivydene on time. Today was a lot colder than the other days, and the wind was fiercely blowing.

We arrived at the City Hall around 8:45am and checked in. We were met there by Dee Smythe, who took us up to the 6th floor - the Office of the Mayor. We met in one of the council meeting chambers with one of the top urban planners of the city. He showed us several powerpoint presentations of projects the city was working on in the townships of Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain, in an effort to encourage economic growth in these areas. It was great to finally be able to see maps and designs of projects, instead of just hearing grand plans and theories.

Then at 11am, the Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille walked in. She was something on an anomaly because she was not a member of the ruling ANC, but instead an opposition party, the DA or Democratic Alliance. Her party won the post in a groundbreaking election in Cape Town, although the ANC is still contesting the election. I, for one, was very impressed by the mayor. She was a no-nonsense personality and answered our questions straight to the point. I appreciated her brutal honesty, as she even told us about times when she was hijacked, attacked, and held at knifepoint - all at separate times! She also told us that the two biggest problems in South Africa were crime and education and that problems like HIV/AIDS could not be solved before addressing these previous concerns. I really enjoyed her commentary.

At 12pm, we left the City Centre for the township of Khayelitsha. We had lunch there at Star Catering, a township run restaurant in the training centre. The food was pretty good, but the meat was not halal, so I could only eat veggies. Then, we were greeted by volunteers and participants in the Mothers2Mothers Programme, an organization that helps prevent mother to child HIV transmission. They talked about their success and then took us to a workplace, where they teach mothers in the program bead-making skills, so they could make money on their own. Then, we went to the program shop, and I bought a beaded AIDS pin. We stayed there until 4pm and then headed back to Ivydene. I wished we had the chance to walk around Khayelitsha, like we did with Ocean View and like we did this past weekend in the small group, but unfortunately, we just stayed in the training centre area.

We were all really tired on the bus ride back to Ivydene, but I finished "Buckingham Palace" - our required reading - on the trip, so I felt productive. We had some time to rest in our flats before dinner. Katherine came and served us hake - a typical, South African fish, for dinner along with yummy vegetables and another amazing dessert. She is a great caterer, plus she brought her young daughter along, who was really cute. After dinner we had a short discussion about the day's events and then watched a movie, Yesterday, about the AIDS crisis in South Africa. We worked on our wikis for a bit before going to sleep.