MY TY WEEK: Chloe Quilty, Stella Maris, Tramore, Co. Waterford

‘SEEING IS believing. That was brought clearly home to me when I visited South Africa last week with six classmates, along with four students from Loreto Dalkey. As much as you can research the area you are going to, nothing can really prepare you for the level of poverty and appalling living conditions you witness.

“Despite this, all the local people I met last week seemed happy and friendly, very willing to help us with our work and really appreciative of anything we were doing. The main object of our visit to South Africa was to work on decorating and painting Respond’s Respite Centre in Hardenburg. The centre offers respite care for the many orphans of the area. Respond staff also asked us to prepare a vegetable garden so that they can begin to teach the local people the benefits of growing their own food.

“We visited a village called Zitipile. We only had to travel 35 miles to get there but it took us two hours on terrible roads. There’s a pre-school in the village, but it’s in terrible condition. The children and older adults entertained us with their singing and dancing. We met lots of children, many of them orphaned, their parents killed by HIV/Aids. We also visited a typical house in the area, nothing more than a single room with a thatched roof with no electricity and little sanitary conditions.

“Our trip to South Africa was a fantastic experience and made every one of us realise how lucky we are and how much we take for granted at home.”