Terence is for Tha Children

and the good young youths of the world + so i signed up for SHAWCO which stands for student help and welfare capetown organization (or somthing like that) + and basically im gonna go to kyleisha ( a black, xhosa speaking township, i know i spelled it wrong ) + every monday + and do art with the chirrens + they aren't kids! + kids are goats + these are children + and i think the first day is today + we had training all day saturday and it was...ehhh. +

i had one of many "not proud to be american moments" in one of the training sessions + so of course we are talking about the kids and what to expect and the AIDS question rises like black smoke from a burnin pile of tires + this girl in my program sets it off by asking + "if a child gets a scrape or a cut - what do we do?" + now a few of the africans laughed - thank god it was a big room - to me it wasn't really that the question was so bad because given another context she coulda just wanted to know where the first aid kit was located + but it was the way she said it + she sounded kinda distraught like she thought the aids was gonna jump outta the kids vein and slither down her throat like in the alien movie + they told her the first aid kit had rubber gloves + but that she just needed to make sure she didn't have opens sores on her hands and she would be OK! + more mind numbing dumbness followed + including --"is there an appropriate way to physically handle the kids?" + or something like that + then we moved to TB + and the hep and the herp and everything else + i was waitin for someone to ask about smallpox (PUNCHLINE!) + it became a really funny thing for all the returning councelors and african employees but for me it was kinda like watching soul plane or bringin down the house but worse cause no one was getting paid.

Then this girl from england went on the longest tangent ever about expectations i think + anyway + she created this long fictional narrative about a child that she had created in her mind that she expected to encounter when she got to kyleisha who couldn't read or speak english + was an aids orphan + had a skin disease + no pants + 8 yrs old and not potty trained + head of the household + job in a textile mill 2 rand per day + stole bread just ta get by just ta get buy + she was almost crying by the end of this description + and she said it all in this marry poppins accent + it was so cinematic + i was trying to hide my face this whole time + so maybe i would become invisible and thus dissassociated with these ppl + not that they were bad ppl + they were just trippin.