good bye!

goodbye capetown, capequad & social work dept at victoria hospital. it's been well worth it!!

safari

i'm gonna be at the kruger national park this weekend!!!! i'm getting
super pumped about it. kruger is the largest game reserve in south
africa. it's roughly the same in size as israel. i'll be camping in
the wild, stayin together with the lions and elephants!! hahaha...j/k.

i'm counting on an amazing experience to report!! i can't wait. :D

victoria hospital

i can’t believe it’s my last week of placement already. yes, this is the reason why i’ve come to south africa in the first place -- to practice social work in a foreign setting.

how different are the cases here when compared to hospital social work in canada?

well, i'd like to think that people in canada don't abandon their children as often as i'm seeing here. i also find myself calling for homeless shelters for my clients upon discharge quite often. two weeks ago, i worked with a guy in his 40s who was abducted by 3 men at an ATM one evening and was subsequently drugged up and threatened at knife point before getting dropped off the next day at his ex-wife's flat. today, there was a 15 years old guy in his school uniform bringing to us his mother who suffers from mental illness. apparently she has been wandering the streets as of late, and he wanted to get help for her. perhaps those are the exceptions to the pre-discharge planning that i spend most of my days doing, but yea, i find the exceptions do seem to creep up and get treated as the norm around here sometimes.

i guess not all of cape town is as beautiful as i’ve painted thus far. cape town looks different depending on the pair of lens you put on… and where you look too i guess. there are times and places where it’s inappropriate for my camera to see what i see. but if photography is about capturing what you want to see over and over again, then perhaps there are memories and documentations that i could do without!

(picture of protea: south africa’s flower)

MyDadRich Resources

hehee... my dad will get a kick out of this i'm sure!

instead of reading a "traditional devotional" or perhaps even the daily
drucker, i'm now reading my dad's new book as
my daily meditation, one article at a time!

it's what i've been reading this past week on my train ride out to work. it's a 30minute train ride, so there's ample time for prayer &
reflection as well! what i surprised myself was that IT'S SATURDAY today and i'm still continuing with the daily reading! :D

19 more articles; and 19 days left in south africa!

lion's head

hmm... it’s been a while since i last wrote. i’m enjoying the summer days too much here, thus leaving no time for the internet café.

so we finally hiked up the lion’s head! it was the ideal city hike we wanted to do for mid-autumn festival, but it was rainy and windy that night. so one month later, here we are:

there's six of us going up: 3 housemates, 2 norwegian students from work, & me!

this is the short cut up...

an evening view of the city

12 apostles

top of the head at sunset

and here's what lion's head looks like from the seapoint...



for more on the south african way of josh, do visit my housemates ryan & sarah's blog at We Wish To See! there, you actually get juicy stories of our weekend trips!!