Day 9 at Tshikululu

Thursday 23-02: Today will be a busy day. We will have two big site visits, but I need to work on my paper too.. Thursday was again a very rainy day. It was pouring down, and the streets were pretty much a swimming bath. I would spend the day only with Tsepo, as Busi had other things to do. First we went to the Wits University, doing a research about multilangualism concerning education. Especially South Africa has a lot of difficulties concerning language, as they have 11 official ones, and a lot more dialects too. The research was primarily focused on mathematics, as the system around this subject was very complicated (too difficualt to explain). After some talk, Tsepo and I were guided through the university; what a building! There was an enormous swimming bath, an auditorium, multiple cantines etc. Eventhough it was a great site visit, we had to hurry up because we had to go to Soweto; the Chiowelo Community Practice. This was a local 'hospital' you could say, in which they did all different kinds of treatments. From diabetes till HIV or Chronic diseases. It was all done here. It was amazing, becuase Soweto is poor, but now at least it has some primary healthcare. The whole project was funded by Discovery, and the purpose of this visit was because of an app the community practice wanted to develop. I myself was pretty sceptical about the idea, but maybe it will work out fine. I dont know. After visiting the practice we did a little tour around Soweto; the Mandela house, Hector Pieterson memorial, and the two towers of the former electricity company. Soweto has some cool things/sightings, and progress is definetely being done here. There still remains severe poverty though. We called Simba a little too late, however Tsepo and I killed time at a snackbar. It was a great day.

- Eerde