Staff Meeting

We are all assembled in Miranda’s office. Miranda is the executive director of the Scalabrini Centre. One of the large windows overlooks the rest of the office, the other the street, and there are several pieces of art including a wooden giraffe that must be 2 meters tall, a poster painted to look like stained glass that demands “why are we indifferent?”, and a tan cardboard silhouette of a curvaceous woman carrying a basket on her head.

Miranda herself has short dark hair and wears an expression that, to me, is perpetually mischievous. A scarf (or 3) wrapped lazily around her neck and shoulders seems to be her one wardrobe staple. She’s sitting on her swivel chair with one leg tucked under and the other knee up, her hands clasped on it. The rest of us are sitting in a semi-circle around her. Miranda comments on the gender imbalance in the room.

“I guess you can see how much I love women!” she says, with a goofy smile.

Barbara is sitting to my left taking minutes. Barbara is so nice. Drop a pencil within 10 feet of her and she will predictably say “sorry!” I know that Barbara is Zimbabwean, that her husband is her best friend, and that they live together in Gugulethu, one of the larger townships. She prefers township life to suburban life because what the township lacks in security and solid structures it makes up for in community.

We get updates from all the project managers. The counselors report that the HIV/AIDS support group has made over 150 key rings which will be sold somewhere in Europe as soon as the ladies have beaded 250. The Employment Helpdesk, my area, is thriving, serving over 500 people each month. I feel proud because I’ve been working hard for over a month now and a lot of it has not been fun or exciting. The welfare department is doing its first food and formula package for HIV+ mothers with babies over 6 months old, and Desire apologizes because he has bought a whole lot of the wrong kind of formula. He bought the kind for babies under 6 months, oops. Miranda looks down her nose at him as a scolding, and it’s not a joke.