FORMER Warwick Academy student Rowena Smith was so inspired by her time volunteering in South Africa, that she spoke to the Mid-Ocean News about her experience working with children who spend their lives fighting to survive on the streets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.Rowena signed up with African Impact and spent three weeks working at various organisations in Cape Town, South Africa.

The 18 year old said she wanted to do something “meaningful” with her time before going to school later this year, and travelling to Africa seemed like the right thing to do.

“I really wanted to know what I would do during my time, which is why I picked African Impact. They detailed how I would spend my three weeks and I liked the idea of working with children,” she explained.

But Rowena said nothing prepared her for the “culture shock” when she got to Cape Town: “I got picked up at the airport and driving into the city saw shacks lining the highway. It was a shock because it hit me that I’ve never been in a country with so much poverty.”

On her second day, she was taken on a tour of Langa, one of the largest townships in Cape Town. “It was amazing to see how privileged we are here and I saw this woman cooking a sheep’s head along the side of the road and just thought to myself, ‘We’re not in Bermuda any more’.”

Rowena shared a room at a city lodge with another volunteer from England, Ally Maniscalo, and the women spent the next three weeks dividing their time between Lawrence House, an orphanage housing about 24 refugee children aged six to 19 from war-torn countries including the Congo, Angola and Zimbabwe, St. Anne’s Shelter for Women and the Learn to Live Centre for Disadvantaged Children, which provides a safe refuge and education centre for street children.

Rowena said her activities included preparing food, helping children with their homework and helping staff with the babies.

She realised from the start that there was a tremendous need, not only for volunteers, but also for various items that she had always taken for granted back home.

“They wear gloves when they change diapers and they will use those gloves for the rest of the day because they don’t have enough. It kind of defeats the purpose because they would pick up the children wearing those gloves,” she said of the dire shortage of supplies at both the orphanage and the shelter.

She added that if mothers forgot to include “wet wipes”, staff would have no choice but to use the same face cloth on all the children.

Rowena believed because of the “hygienic” situation and also because some of the children were ill, she became “very sick” during her first week, although she admitted it could also have been because of something she ate. The Learn to Live Centre houses about 100 street children during the day and Rowena helped the youngsters become computer savvy and also spent time helping them to read.

“It was a pretty rough place because they’re street kids that I would see while walking in the city and a lot of them are abused. I was in the computer room helping one of the kids and he smelt a bit like smoke, but I didn’t think anything of it, until I saw him outside at break having a cigarette.

“He looked about the same age as my younger brother, who’s only eight. You don’t see that in Bermuda where we live a very sheltered life,” she said

She recalled another incident where one boy threw water at another, who obviously didn’t think it was funny and in turn threw a hammer back at the child.

But there were also moments that made her realise it was worth it: “I started reading with one boy, who didn’t want to at first, but when I was getting ready to leave, he started reading by himself.” Rowena said she felt volunteers needed to spend more time with the children in order to make a difference. “Being there for only three weeks, you’re just starting to get to know them.

“A lot of them are abused and you need time to understand where they are coming from and what they are going through,” she added.

While she would love the public to help these charities, she felt it would be hard to pick just one “when there is so much need”.

What impact did all this poverty have on her?

Rowena said that seeing children come to the centres with no shoes made her realise how the youth in Bermuda took things for granted, like having designer shoes, or the newest cell phone.

“People tell you all the time that there are people less fortunate than you, but when you see it, it really hits you,” she said.

After all that, would she do it again?

“Yes, definitely, I would go back to South Africa and this time would take more time to travel around and go back to some of the places I didn’t get to see, but it would have to be after school,” added Rowena, who will study hotel management at a school in Switzerland in August.

Rowena makes ‘meaningful contribution’