People's Trail Part 2

This weekend Jane, Shep, and I took the majority of the Bridging Year (formerly Gap Year) interns on the overnight hike Lindsey and I made with all those Afrikaners last year. I think it was a meaningful experience for all of us to go past the classroom-hours relationship and spend two days living together, particularly in such a remote and beautiful spot. We did a number of leadership activities, hiked back up to this spot to watch the sun go down, and then had a fire/braai/marshmallow night, complete with provocative discussions about the ANC and more traditional aspects of Xhosa culture (such as paying lobolo, having multiple wives, sacrificing for the ancestors, initiation rituals - all of which most of them have observed or experienced first hand).

This is Simphiwe, an old-curriculum intern who hasn't been in any of my classes this year, but who will hopefully be working closely with me soon. He has the scariest story of anyone I've met here, by far, and has really been rescued by SAEP. I would like to see him fill in for Luzuko, who recently resigned on the ADT Teach project, for the rest of the year. He is hoping to study journalism in college in 2010, but if it doesn't work out the job with ADT/SAEP would be a great fallback.