Our Arrival:
I remember the green of it first. Lush foliage like I have never known before, spread out in shades of lime and sage coating the dusty dirt below. Inseparable from the foliage, the land was smothered with the scent of Earth. It was the most natural smell I could imagine of the outdoors, and yet it was so unfamiliar to me. These weren’t the standard-issue sod sold en-masse in the farmlands of suburbia near my house. These were native grasses, lush and tall and alive.
I had just entered South Africa. Michelle, a classmate, and I were at the start of our ten-week internship program for the partial completion of our respective Master of Science in Global Health degrees. We were both interning with Pact, an international non-profit with a headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa, whose mission focuses on reducing HIV incidence in orphans, vulnerable children, and youth across the country. This was my first time leaving the United States in 7 years, and my first time living in another country for an extended period. I was glad I wasn’t alone.
My first week in South Africa was a myriad of adjustments. Some were small: learning to walk 20 minutes through the neighborhood without sidewalks, adjusting to the exchange rate, cars driving on the opposite side of the road. Others were greater, like learning to live 16 hours and 8,000 miles away from those I love and adjusting to the 7-hour time difference that went along with it. It took a full week and 3 nauseating episodic migraines just to feel like myself again. On our third day in South Africa, Michelle and I made our first commute to the Pact office. We dressed ourselves up and hailed a $3.00 Uber to trek the 15-minute drive to HQ. We had picked out our hotel to be close to where we’d be working, but quickly realized that even the smallest distances on a map were simply unwalkable, which was a combination of the city’s lack of sidewalks and the large and complex roadways which made the journey on foot much longer than it appeared. Squeezed into a VW, we watched through the spiderweb-like cracks of the front window as we passed shopping malls and suburban complexes, secured with gates and electric fences. As we slowed to a stop at one of the lights, locally known as robots, I stared out the window as street vendors, women with children, and business employees walked between the stopped cars, selling car chargers and surgical masks, begging for money, or handing out flyers. Our driver closed the windows, and I turned to stare at the seat ahead
Working at Pact:
I remember the Pact office next. Michelle and I arrived excited but exhausted, still sloughing off the remnants of jetlag. Despite our exhaustion and confusion, we were greeted by every single person in the Pact office, who were all genuinely excited and pleased to meet us.
Christel, our supervisor and liaison with Georgetown, led us around the office and showed us to our two adjacent office spaces near the break room. After receiving our access key, the Wi-Fi password, and a new notebook, I ventured to the kitchen and had my first taste of a South African specialty: rooibos tea.
Despite the excitement of my arrival in an unfamiliar office, there was an aura of calm that surrounded the work life here. As someone used to the harried speed of employment in an American office, I was disquieted by the peace at which the faculty moved about in this space. Though the attitude was leisurely, it was clear everyone still valued the quality of their work equal to that of their personal lives, and everyone on the team was courteous and accommodating. Though Michelle and I needed to jump several hurdles to complete our projects, every member of the Pact team worked with us to help us succeed. Whether that meant ensuring access to data, driving us to research sites, or providing feedback on our papers, everyone was eager to collaborate even if it meant putting other projects on hold. This genuine passion for work every day is something I know I want to take with me as I move into positions in the future.
Exploring South Africa:
The third thing I remember is the wildlife. When I was 16 years old, I worked my first job as a staff member for the Long Island Game Farm, a petting zoo that boasted pony rides, donkeys, zebra, and a giraffe. I saw these animals every day during the summer I worked there, but they were always enclosed, and moved like clockwork, slowly walking a memorized path around their pen.
During our stay in South Africa, Michelle and I ventured on at least half a dozen hikes across Pretoria and Cape Town. I was astonished during the first of our hikes when we were able to walk, without fences or barriers, next to a herd of zebra and ostriches, left free to roam the reserve. Seeing these animals in their element: surrounded by fields of grasses with room to roam and explore at-will is an experience I will never forget. Every hike I took in South Africa I hoped to catch a glimpse of more wildlife. On one walk, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a pair of giraffes underneath the shade of a nearby tree. Though I had seen giraffes before, I found a simple pleasure in seeing these magnificent creatures roaming on their own; I remembered they are real and beautiful creatures, not just spectacles kept to be watched.
In addition to the various hikes I went on during my stay, I also had the pleasure of going on a couple of game drives at a nearby wildlife reserve. Though this game drive was a much more guided experience than our walks, I still had the pleasure of finding a group of rhinos or a buffalo through the coverage of the bush. These tours were not the planned promenades around different mass enclosures like any safari I had experienced in the States. It was a 2.5-hour drive, sometimes on dirt roads and sometimes off them, trying to track down lions or elephants who had their own travel agenda. On these drives I saw rhinos, lions, buffalo, wildebeests, zebra, kudu, monkeys, water monitors, guinea fowl, and springbok. (I even saw a few penguins during my visit to Cape Town). All of which, I could never hope to see outside a zoo back home.
Finishing my Research:
The last thing I’ll remember about South Africa is completing my scholarly paper. During my ten-week internship with Pact, I had the opportunity to complete a research protocol which would constitute my final assignment to earn my master’s degree from Georgetown University. My project was to complete the first analysis of Pact’s Pilot Girl/Boy Index Survey.
The Girl/Boy Index was launched in 2018 to several schools across the Gauteng and Northwest Provinces of South Africa to assess children’s behaviors and circumstances surrounding topics like nutrition, education, psycho-social support, and HIV/AIDS. For my project, I analyzed children’s responses to these questions, and specifically how they were impacted by factors like gender, location, and age, and how some of these answers might be related to knowledge of a child’s own HIV status and childhood/teen pregnancy.
Though I am grateful for every step of completing this project, there were certainly times at which I was hit by the weight of the analyses I was completing. Many of these children were facing harsh challenges and circumstances I can barely imagine handling myself. In one section of the survey, students were permitted to write a free response to expand on any aspects of their home life they felt they need support for. While some students wrote about how they needed uniforms or equipment to join the local soccer team, other students had more emotional requests:
“I need help so that I can concentrate at school. I fail to concentrate at school since I got a baby boy because I have to look after him and the schoolwork as well. I cannot do everything, so I need someone to help me get through this and how to manage everything on my own.”
Writing a paper that will hopefully be used to empower programs for students and disadvantaged youth, like those run by Pact, was a sincere honor. While I was able to learn new skills and methods to use to better myself and advise my future projects, I am most proud at the notion that my research might have an impact on the school children of South Africa. Completing this project and working with the people at Pact reminded me of a simple truth: good science means nothing if it can’t be used for the greater good.
