Reflection on Internship at Cape Town Refugee Center - Kelsey Smith

Week One of our internship? Check! Everyday this week, we have all
gotten up early (some earlier than others) and travelled to various
NGO’s across Cape Town and into the townships. Our dinner
conversations this week have consisted of mainly of what went on at
our various work places everyday. While there are various amounts of
happiness with different interns, I personally feel I have scored the
best one. Though I may be a tad biased. Also, there are definitely
positives and negatives to each one. But overall, I have to say I am
so so lucky to have been assigned to the Cape Town Refugee Centre. My
first impression was not exactly a happy one. I felt a little as if
the centre was not ready for me nor Abby, who is also working there.
But now that I have moved in, I have discovered that the Centre
actually deals with so many people and that it is just a little on the
disheveled side. While there are times that this disorganization is
nerve-wracking or annoying, it also gives the place a little bit of
charm. How boring would it be to just go to work every single day and
never have to do anything different? The slight disorganization
teaches me so many better skills, like going with the flow, which
Capetonians are apparently exceptional at.
So far at my internship, I have been given my own clients, who come to
the refugee centre to ask for assistance in paying for courses that
they would like to take in order to help improve their chances at
landing a job, my own problems to solve, and have created a new
database to search for different types of clients for myself. I have
also attended both a home visit and a business visit, in which staff
from the CTRC check out both the homes and businesses of clients who
they are looking in to assisting with rent to make sure the client
qualifies for aid. Also, on Wednesday the CTRC helped hold an event
for a holiday known as Africa Day, which is a celebration across the
entire continent of Africa to raise awareness for the countries of
Africa and create a bond across all of the African people. The event
had an audience of over 100 people, many of them clothed in
traditional African clothing, music, poetry reading, dancing,
speeches, and djembe drum playing. The whole event was just an eye
opening cultural experience for me and I thoroughly enjoyed watching
the excitement and bond that reached across the people in the audience
while they chanted and danced together.
I am looking forward to two more full weeks of working at my
internship and I am also excited to see the kinds of things other
people are doing.