When I arrived at Oakhaven on Thursday, I asked Lucy, the occupational therapist if we should begin setting up the chairs for yoga. She said no, that she was doing the regular exercises with the residents. I said, "Oh, so when do you want me to do yoga?", thinking that she would say every other day or something. She said, "I have to do my exercises with them every day." I said, "So you never want me to do yoga?" And she said, "Well, you can do it when I am not here." She had already told me she would be away the last week of my stay but she also told me it would be absolutely fine to do yoga instead of the regular exercises each day. So I have no idea what happened, but it was kind of hurtful.
I participated with the exercises and then asked her what I could do to help. She said nothing really, I could just participate with the sport activity if I wanted. So I sat in a chair all morning while she went around the room setting up hoops and getting the residents to throw various objects into them. It took a long time for everyone to have their turn. I was really quite bored and got a good perspective of how it is for the residents. The only thing I did in between turns was talk to the residents on either side of me, which was nice.
At the end of the day, I approached Lucy and told her I had a few ideas about how I could help. I said that perhaps we could break the residents into two groups and I could do activities with one group so that everyone would not have to wait so long for their turn. She said that they liked waiting for their turn. I then said another idea I had was that I could take individuals out of the group during the morning and do manicures with them. I had read some other volunteers' comments about the placement that said the residents loved manicures. She kind of shrugged and said she didn't think that would work because they might miss their turn. I then said I would really like to figure out how I could be of assistance to her while I was here. She said she would think about it.
When I got back to the home base, I told the volunteer coordinator what happened. I said that I didn't think Lucy was telling me everything. She said to give it one more day and see what happened. Today, again we did the exercises and again I asked Lucy how I can help. She said she was taking just some of the residents into another room for bingo so I could either participate with them or if I wanted to be with the leftover residents I could. Luckily, I had put some nail polish and files in my bag so I said - "Would it be okay if I did manicures with them?" She said "Yes". Phewww! I am not sure what else I would have done besides chat all morning because I had no activities planned. Anyways it was loads of fun. They all wanted their nails either just cut or cut and polished. Some of them were pretty quiet while I did it but some were talking and talking. Great fun! We'll see what next week brings.
To top the day off, after work Erica and I hiked up Table Mountain which is this huge mountain overlooking Cape Town. The hike consisted of stairs made out of these giant boulders. The stairs were really steep. Erica had an easier time of it than I because she is so tall but I was happy for the workout. It took us 1 1/4 hours. It was so beautiful at the top! We had a drink, looked around for a while and then took this amazing cable car down.
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