WAIT Training and Performing Continues in SA

The past fews days have been very active. On Sunday, July 12, a few of us went to a very proper Anglican church, elegant and with tons of choir singing. They asked us to speak, and we did a little 2 minute elevator speech, and had a good connection there.

Then, we went back to the Peace Embassy and Aunt Kate gave the message at the Sunday Service. It was pretty funny, and the families seemed to really enjoy it. Then, we did a WAIT training that afternoon, and Aunt Kate worked with the parents. (By the way, in between all these things we have been interviewing all kinds of people for the documentary.)

Earlier this week the WAIT team split up into two groups, one team, staying in Johannesburg and the second catching a plane to Cape Town. Michelle, Ilsuek, Harmony and Sarah remained in Johannesburg to accompany the team there to performances arranged in Soweto and Pretoria. Aunt Kate, Mie, Kensei and Sun Jae caught an early flight to Cape Town on Monday July 13 and woke at 3:30 a.m. to leave. Moruti drove us (he's up at 4 a.m. everyday) and got us there early! (probably the first thing we were early for since arriving here!).

The flight was fine, and then we met Khumi and Safi at the airport. We got a rental car (much easier to drive than the van in Jo-burg) and started driving back to their house. The team here already had t-shirts printed, bought a sound system, bought a guitar, and had learned a lot of the skit and dances.

It was surprising to hear that the team here in Cape Town had been training already for two years! In 2007, Kuhmi and Safi, the WAIT team parents in Cape Town emailed Aunt Kate asking for materials to learn about HIV/AIDS. After receiving the Full WAIT Performance DVD, several families got together to start learning the dances, skit, game show and more! Just before the US WAIT team arrived they had their first performance in June 2009.

After just two hours of practice, we were off to one of the most difficult poor townships here. It was a bit funny. They wanted to make a more "theatrical" venue for us, so they blocked all the light out of the windows, and hung a single red bulb over the stage area, so it was really dim and hard to see anything.

After watching about 5 or 6 groups sing and dance, we did our performance (we turned on a few of the lights so people could actually see!)

It was really well received, and several groups wanted to work with us again.

Then today, we went back to the same area to visit the Baphumalele Children's home, an AIDS orphanage. It started with one lady who had an AIDS orphan left on her doorstep. Now there are 167 kids there--almost all HIV positive. Little babies get left there every day, so they made a sort of "mailbox" for people to leave the babies, where at least the baby will be safe and warm and an alarm lets the watchers know there's a new one there.

At our performance, the kids came out and began dancing with us and having a really wonderful experience at the end.

Then we had another performance in Wynberg, in a rented hall to which a lot of good contacts and AIDS workers had been invited. Another church group sang a song, and we had a talk by another social worker director who talked about the work he did with education, prevention, testing, and counseling.

As that was happening, we got word the other team has been having too many kids joining them, and are really getting overwhelmed. They've been working hard in Pretoria today, and yesterday, in Soweto.

We're doing parent and team training tomorrow, then being interviewed by the SABC (South African Broadcasting Channel) tomorrow night.

It's amazing. I was holding these beautiful babies with AIDS...and realizing that unless we really do something, this will be everywhere.

We're all really tired, but it's definitely worth it.