GDA meets Office Intern
Postedy by Jessica Schwartz, Intern
The GDA to South Africa was an amazing way to spend my last spring break in college. SMRC provided the GDA participants with the ability to fully immerse in the culture and life style of rural South Africa. While on the GDA we experienced more in a week then most do in a trip for three weeks. During the GDA there is never a moment when you feel like you are wasting your time or you could be doing something else. This had a lot to with the home stay experience. Andrea, Katie, and I stayed in Richard Siwela’s brother’s home, which is across the street from Richard. The house was beautiful and you could tell the family had put a lot of hard work into it. They had four or five bed rooms with nicely tiled floor, a newly renovated kitchen with large counter-tops and a nice sitting area with a TV and couches. They also had a really nice bathroom with a toilet, sink, and bathtub. Unfortunately because of the lack of running water the toilet and sink did not work. The family was so welcoming and was really interesting to talk to about their jobs and daily life. We found out our host was the first women in the community to go to college!
One of the best parts about staying in Uta was that over the few days we were there we really got to know different members of the community. I just remember the first day we arrived we decided to walk as a group over to Shiviti Primary School. When we started walking we had about ten kids from the community walking with us, but the farther we walked the more kids and members of the community joined us. It was also amazing to watch Saul and Megan run into old friends from past trips to South Africa. It was just so exciting to observe the relationships that years of being a part of this community had established. By the time we got to the school we had 25 or so kids walking with us, and they were so excited to show us their school!
The pride they had about their school and their community was remarkable. The school was closed because it was a Sunday, but later in the week we were given the opportunity to go back and visit. When we went back to Shiviti it was late in the afternoon and students had already left for the day. So we decided to go see the library Megan and the interns had worked on. When we walked in the brightly painted room we saw a class of students each with a book quietly reading to themselves. It was almost unbelievable. The library was no longer an SMRC run project but a resource 100% utilized by the school and the students. While talking to the children of Uta, they tell you about their dreams and hopes for the future. Even the answers given by children as young as 8, clearly showed the success of SMRC projects. These children are empowered and believe in their futures, they want to be lawyers, doctors, and teachers. Which is amazing in anof itself, but the truly inspiring thing is that they all want to receive their degrees and then come back and work in their community.
Being an intern for SMRC in DC, I had read a lot about our work. But that never prepared me for what I saw in terms of our impact in the community. But the commitment to change and a future without poverty is two sided, the people in Dixie and Uta have taken it upon themselves to see results and development. This two sided commitment is what makes all the difference.
