Intern Insights

John Steinbeck once wrote, “Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.” I think he was right. My trip will be over in just five short days but the experiences I’ve had, friends I’ve made and lessons I have learned will continue to shape who I become long after I have left this beautiful country. There are honestly no words that could adequately encompass and describe all of the experiences and lessons I have inherited while working for the Adonis Musati Project during these past three months. Maybe that is because no matter how much one studies refugees in books, there are no words that can describe the feeling one gets when they are put face to face with an individual who has travelled long distances from war torn or unstable countries only to be met with hostility and harsh living conditions.

Nothing can describe the faces of hungry Zimbabwean men queuing in a line on the side of the road ecstatic to receive only a half a loaf of bread and some cheese, or the face of a young mother as she receives clothing and blankets for her children.

One of the most inspiring things to me about the individuals who work at AMP are the small acts of kindness that they always manage to muster every single day. Whether it is simply giving a hug, a smile, or lending a listening ear to hear someone’s story- the impact that this organization makes in peoples’ lives reaches far beyond the scope of simply interviewing an individual and providing material assistance. While I have worked here I have learned that sometimes the smallest acts of kindness have the largest impacts on peoples’ lives. I have learned that the difference an organization can make is not so much contingent upon how old or well funded it is, but rather by how dedicated, caring and compassionate the individuals who work for it are.  I have learned the ways in which an organization can grow and develop and most importantly I have learned to be more a more caring and kind individual.

The experiences I have had at the office will continue to affect me in ways that I cannot foresee. Nothing could ever compare, however, to all that I have learned from working at the Musati House.

The individuals living there are easily some of the strongest, kindest and all around most inspiring people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. They have all become dear friends to me and I am certain that I have gained more from knowing them than they have from knowing me. Each one has changed me in ways that they could never imagine and for that I will always be grateful. As I am preparing to leave the Adonis Musati Project and South Africa (at least for now), I know that my trip is far from over; the people that I’ve met will forever live in my heart and will continue to shape me long after I am gone.

Katherine Bowlby

Michigan State University

AMP Intern

“The whole reason why I chose the major I chose was, in short, to help people, to try and make the world a better place. I feel that in my own small way, The Adonis Musati Project has helped me do that. I will never forget this place and these people who mean so much to me. Every person that I have met, and worked with has made a difference in my life, meeting them has made me a better person and for that I will be forever grateful."

Tyler M. Gaston

Global and Area Studies and International Development

Michigan State University

AMP Intern

In the beginning of 2009 I realized that I had the chance to graduate from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, a semester earlier than most students. My course work in Sociology and International Relations had been completed and I was able to finish college in three and a half years. Part of my international relations studies emphasized Peace and Conflict research, and as a result I was able to round out my coursework with an internship in the field.

Most students work for the Red Cross or the United Nations, many stay in Los Angeles or move Eastward to Washington D.C. or New York for a few months. I was born with a travel-bug. Every so often I need to pick up my life and transport it somewhere new- maybe it is a blessing, but maybe a curse…I haven’t quite decided. I met with my academic advisor and told him that I wanted to study in Africa, that I was hoping to do humanitarian work somewhere far away; that was all it took. I suppose I really could have ended up anywhere with such loose requirements, but Africa (with the exception of Antarctica) remained the one continent I had yet to explore.

In the fall I had taken a course that honed in on the implementation of peacemaking tactics and conflict research around the world. We had to write a term paper on something that has an inadvertent influence on conflict-for better or for worse. Some students wrote about the Olympics and the ability of a sport to unify peoples in times of great divide. Others wrote about music, or art. I wrote about refugees. I wrote about the issues of relocation and repatriation and how often times this negatively impacts conflict in that diaspora communities develop, resentments form, and violence often times follows the removal of a group of people from one place and mass arrival of that group in another. Case and point- South Africa and Zimbabweans.

Being a big-city girl (born and raised in San Francisco), I started to research Cape Town. I found a placement organization that helps students from abroad locate internships and housing internationally and they sent the names of four organizations in Cape Town that were in my area of interest.

I researched the four organizations that were sent my way, they all seemed promising- they were there to help. They all had big names with overwhelming and thorough websites…but each, for whatever reason, appeared to be detached from the issues at hand. They were politically charged and well known around the world, but quite truthfully they didn’t feel like something I wanted to be a part of. I couldn’t imagine myself being able to partake in their work on a personal and hands-on level. I felt as though their mission, and my mission, would be lost in the expansiveness of it all.

The final website I looked at was immediately more appealing. It wasn’t dramatic or fancy, it was real: “here is the problem, here is what we’re doing to help, here we are,” is what it said to me. There were photos and stories and the organization was young, it had the energy to move forward and I felt that I would be used there, that just maybe I would be needed.

I have now been interning for the Adonis Musati Project for three months. I have never been a part of something that was more real. It truly is a grass-roots organization that is comprised of dedicated, selfless, and unbreakable people who have let the death of one man, and struggle of thousands inspire a movement towards equality and humanity for all refugees in Cape Town. I have heard the stories of those who come in, each is different in disparity and horror but all are alike in their bravery and stoic perseverance. Families with nothing- no clothing, no food, no home- come in to our offices and somehow manage to smile as they ask for assistance. Almost always do they ask for much less than they really need or could use, all they are searching for is help in any form. Professional counseling, spiritual guidance, health care, answers,  sometimes things that that we can’t offer, but someone who will listen, a person who cares, and hopefully some food for their bellies and clothing for their backs- that is what AMP tries to always provide, no matter what.

I came to the Adonis Musati Project at a time of much needed change. The Salt River Office has just started to operate in a new way and I have been so happy to be a part of the shift towards an efficient system that offers a more dedicated form of assistance. My time here has been short, too short to be quite honest. I fear that in departing I am taking so much more with me than I am leaving behind. I have seen beauty, humility, devotion, and committed benevolence in both the refugees who I’ve met and the women who run the Adonis Musati Project. Everyday I am inspired. I am going back to the United States with much faith in the good of people and hope for change in troubled times. I am also returning content with a family that stretches the face of the globe.

There is a famous song lyric, “I left my heart in San Francisco,”… as I return home to San Francisco I want the people I’ve met in South Africa to know that I am leaving my heart in Cape Town.

Caroline Stone

University of Southern California

AMP Intern (USA)

'What I want to know is, why do you need to go all the way over to the other side of the world to help people, when there are plenty of people here in the U.S. who need help also?’

This is the question that my uncle asked me in response to my letter of appeal for financial sponsorship for a 3-month internship with the Adonis Musati Project. Since May, when I arrived in Cape Town for the internship, I’ve been revisiting this question and my experience has provided me with some answers.  

While working with AMP I’ve seen poverty so much more extreme, and on such a larger scale than I have ever seen in the U.S.  I’ve seen able-bodied and highly intelligent people desperate, and struggling to survive.  Every day spent in the AMP office has revealed more and more reasons why I should be here and helping.  But just recently, as younger and younger refugee boys have been coming through the office, has the severity of the refugee crisis in Africa, and the importance of helping, really hit home.  As the boys took a seat in the office and began recounting their life stories from Zimbabwe and their journey to Cape Town, my jaw dropped in disbelief and I immediately thought back to my own life and what I was doing at their age. At age 15 I was going to summer camp with my friends on a beautiful lake in Wisconsin, whereas Goldman was orphaned in Zimbabwe desperately trying to sell vegetables to support his younger sister.  At age 16 I was giggling in the back of driver’s ed class with my friends, while Tafa was alone in Cape Town, having just been stabbed by gangsters and stripped of his only money that would put a roof over his head.  At age 17 I was taking pricey dance classes that my parents had willingly financed, while Douglas was jumping the border and dodging the bullets of advancing soldiers. At age 18 I was touring universities with my parents, trying to choose one from the many options I had, while Christian was living on the streets outside of home affairs desperately trying to get asylum papers. 

These are childrenwe are talking about, who were forced to make life-changing decisions, completely on their own.  These kids have gone through traumatizing experiences that even an adult could not imagine going through. They’ve jumped from one devastating experience to the next, and yet they still persevere. With the motivation, intelligence, and determination that I’ve seen in them, they would have had opportunities long ago, had they been living in the U.S. 

But in reality, these boys are stuck in a country that is still struggling to help its own people, with a competition for resources that has generated a hostile environment for foreigners.  Having experienced a world with so much inequality, this is why I came to Cape Town.  To respond to a problem that has received minimal solutions from an overstretched and indifferent government.  To take my own experiences from a privileged life in the U.S. and try to provide even a piece of them to a suffering refugee child.  To gain perspective on life, and then return back to the U.S. and share with others why it is so important to help those on the other side of the world.        

Emily Westerlund

University of Wisconsin Madison

AMP Intern