For eight weeks this summer, I'm going to be working for the Tentelini Project in Africa, here's what I will be doing. I will be working as the Project Coordinator on a new project called the Low's Creek School's/ Orphanage Project in South Africa, with just three other women. During the eight weeks in which I will be working there, my time will be split between two placements; a school and an orphanage. From Mondays to Fridays I will be working alongside teachers in the Monile Combined School as a classroom assistant, instigating extra-curricular activities where possible. Throughout the project I will be living, but also working at a nearby orphanage called 'Esperado Farm' (more information can be found at www.host.co.za/esperado). During out of school hours I will be working at the orphanage on a purely non-formal basis, helping the approximately 20 orphans that the Farm is home to with extra tuition, extracurricular activities and giving them individual care and attention. This orphanage is unique in that it was founded by a white Afrikaans woman called Sophia Jardim in 1995, specifically for black children who have been orphaned through HIV/AIDs and many of whom had been abandoned or were very sick. This orphanage is symbolic of a post-apartheid ideal, because here both black and white (Sophia and her family) live together, speaking each others' languages, learning about each others' cultures and living in an atmosphere where skin colour and differences are irrelevant; each being an individual in their own right. The Low's Creek Schools/ Orphanage Project is a unique opportunity to live and work in a very intensive environment, which is precisely why this appealed to me so much. Shortly after I was accepted on this placement, I started thinking about the impact that this time was going to have both on the kids and on myself. So much of me wants to think that we will be doing some good in helping to teach these children the facts about their bodies, about sex, AIDS, HIV and transmission in a place where it is still very much taboo for such matters to be openly broached, despite it being part of the national curriculum, and where the HIV/Aids epidemic is still very much in existence. This, I believe, will be of use, but a small part of me wonders about this whole craze amongst the young Western middle-class, of going out to less developed countries in order to 'do their bit', or as some would say, to 'assuage our middle-class guilt' (particularly in light of the current popularity of 'gap years'). I wrote to BBC/North Yorkshire to see if they were interested in me documenting my time there, particularly from the perspective of a white middle class western student. However, I also want to write because HIV/AIDS is such an enormous problem in so many of the African countries, and I hope that perhaps through turning statistics into real people through writing, the reality of the situation might hit home to both myself and whomsoever I can persuade to read it! I would like through my middle class privilege, at the very least, to be able to write so that some of the stories of these kids can be told. Naomi | 
