On the 7th of December 2007 we started with a nice breakfast. Marie, the owner of Uitvlugt Guest House made sure all of us got a nice start to the day.
We had to split into two groups since one set of facilitators had to go to Brandvlei Prison, where Dierdre Johnson, the social worker there, had arranged a workshop for 13 wardens while another set had to go to a farm. Flo, Jemina and Michelle were the facilitators of that workshop at Brandvlei.
Dierdre told us she had been waiting for the bus since last year and she was very happy that we finally came. In the workshop they discussed the problems in the prison; the gangs control a large part of the prison, there is a lot of rape happening and the prison itself is very short staffed. There is currently only one warder for every 40 inmates and one social worker for 300 inmates.
Johanna, Joyce, Maxi and Pil went to Rawsonville to Merwida farm, where they had two hours to speak about rape, alcohol abuse and HIV.
The crowd at the farm were a mix of Afrikaan and Xlosa speakers, so Johanna and Joyce took turns at speaking. The participants were very active and had a lot of good questions.
Maxi spoke to Mr. Wagenaar who is a development worker in the area and he told her that they had a lot of problems with rape in this area and that he would like to arrange a workshop with Rape Crisis in the future.
At the end we handed out pamphlets and people seemed very interested in the information that was in the pamphlets. We drove into Worcester afterwards to have some lunch. After lunch we drove to Cilmor farm, where the team did another two hour talk on rape, alcohol abuse and HIV.
At 5 o´clock the team were all together again and we drove back to Uitvlugt guest house.
We had a debriefing at 7 o’clock - our last one on this trip. We talked about the day, and how the trip had been for all of us. We all agreed that it had been an incredible learning experience and that because the team remained positive throughout and were all there for each other it had been a fantastic trip.
