I don’t think I have ever had a busier week in my life.
Ever. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever had a busier week.
There’s so much to write I’m just going to bullet point day by day, try to give
you an idea of what it’s like having run a preschool having its first
graduation, on top of trying to feed and clothe 60 children and also preparing
Christmas presents for children of another preschool! That’s not even
mentioning the fact that everything you want to do comes up against a problem
preventing you from doing it! Gah.
Monday 26th November
·
Sort out clothes and toys left by missionaries
and wrap up into parcels for all of the children at Moriah Centre.
·
Injabulo graduation practice – trying to
organise 35 children into their groups and have a full run through ALL in
English because Nelsiwe decided she didn’t fancy coming to preschool today!
·
Big Bend Prison – try to find out if they have a
large tent/gazebo we could borrow for graduation. Big Bend Prison is
terrifying, the prisoners wander around doing odd jobs like gardening and they
just sit in groups and chill together – it’s not like they’re in prison at all!
Safe to say Ashley and I were crapping ourselves as we were driving through the
prison grounds and all the prisoners were staring at us in the truck cab.
They’re not even minor criminals!
·
Hit Matata and PEP again – this is becoming a
pretty regular pattern! We put loads more shoes aside for soup kitchen, but the
bank wasn’t working so I couldn’t withdraw money to pay, we’ll be going back
there again tomorrow to pay.
·
Cafe 1985 with Mike and his brothers to chill
with them for the last time in 6 weeks!
Tuesday 27th November
·
Graduation practice at Injabulo again, it’s
looking pretty good so we’ve got high hopes for the big day!
·
Matata – PEP to buy the shoes for soup kitchen
and lunchbox/juice bottle combos because most of the children don’t have
anything to put their food in apart from old dirty lids. Some even have to
share bowls, and when we give out seconds they come to you with their bare
hands. Spar for cake ingredients for Injabulo Christmas party.
·
PANIC AT HOSTEL – we thought that the soup
kitchen tub had gone missing with all the food in, so Ashley and I were running
around all over like crazy ladies. Turns out the Aunties had cooked it for us
and it was sat nicely simmering away on the stove, phew.
·
Claire (an American and our friend from the
church we attend on Sundays), Aunty Winnie and her child and four grade 11’s
from Sisekelo all piled into the bucky to come with us to soup kitchen. We
handed out the shoes we had bought, and make a list of the people’s names and
sizes who didn’t get any.
Wednesday 28th November
·
Again with the graduation practice, I think the
kids are getting a bit bored of running through the whole thing again and again
but they don’t seem to understand the concept of STAYING IN YOUR LINE. Once
they learn how to stay in between the person in front and the person behind I
think I’ll pass out with shock.
·
Matata for shopping for graduation food!
Possibly the largest food shop of my entire life, we had 3 trollies full of
food, about 40 dead chickens and an overfriendly floor worker who was prepared
to do anything for Ashley’s phone number. We spent E3515 (£250) and gained a
E50 (£3.50) voucher at the till, ooo the savings! Thanks Spar, I’ll definitely
be back with my E50 voucher, I wonder how I am going to spend it ALL, how nice
of you to splash out on me after I spent s**tloads of money in your shop.
·
Back at hostel we spent 4 hours in the sauna of
a kitchen, the main activity was sweating and the secondary activity was making
cakes and sandwiches for soup kitchen. We must have baked about 300 cupcakes
before giving up and chucking the rest of the cake mixture into a tray and
making one massive tray bake!
Thursday 29th November
·
Final Injabulo practice, ran it by myself as
Ashley was off with the parents collecting firewood in the bush for cooking at
graduation. Turns out they walked for an hour over a massive hill carrying
saws, axes, babies and Ashley carted 10 litres of water in the blazing sun...
Then to proceed to hack down some trees before paying off some guy to bring
them and all the wood back in a truck. They were gone for 4 ½ hours! I would
have died in that sun.
·
While they were all away contributing to
deforestation of the world I realised that the truck tyre had another puncture.
WHY WHY WHY. Our truck hates us, and Richard was going to hate us even more! In
desperation I racked my mind for my car maintenance knowledge and jacked up the
truck from the ground and attached the pump to the engine to blow up the tyre
so we could drive home on it. The Mothers of the children at Injabulo had
stayed at the preschool to clean it while the others were collecting firewood;
I now think that they think Ashley and I are crazy. Ashley was out in the bush
collecting firewood and I was crawling under a truck with my face in the dirt
jacking it up off the floor... Definitely normal behaviour.
·
To top off our bad situation we had to pick up
250 glass bottles of soft drinks for graduation on the way back to Sisekelo,
all that extra weight squished down the tyre even more and we were pretty
nervous about what Richard was going to say. Luckily it was fine and he managed
to get it sorted no problem.
·
BOTSWANA BOYS ARRIVE! Sam and Sam are here, they
indicate (almost) the start of our Christmas travelling, buzzinggg.
·
Kathy rings us and says that the Ubombo Illovo
workers are having strikes on the gates to the village, so we can’t go to soup
kitchen. This is gutting because we have all the clothes, shoes, toys, nice
food and even toothbrushes and toothpaste for them! We also have over 100kg of
samp, rice, oil, tinned fish etc for Aunty Vina so she has supplies to feed the
children at soup kitchen while we are away over Christmas. Swaziland it really
making our lives difficult today.
·
Alternative plan is that we go to the club and
have a swim, chatting with the Botswana Boys is really interesting – finding
out what is similar in our countries but also realising that the culture is
completely different in other aspects!
Friday 30th November
·
EARLY START. Pick up the boys from Kathy and
Richards; head to Nelsiwe’s house to drop off the bottles of soft drink. Head
to Matata to do the shopping for the fresh food for Injabulo graduation.
·
Head back with Nelsiwe for Moriah Graduation!
Quickly run back to hostel to change clotes and pick up the tray bake that we
iced that morning, run back to Moriah Centre. The kids looked so cute in their
gowns and hats, but Ashley and I didn’t realise that the teachers did a dance
too, so we had to get up and dance along with the Moriah teachers – thanks for
telling us!
·
We’re allowed to go to soup kitchen today if we
break through the strike times; we hand out more clothes, shoes, toys the
toothpaste and brushes and we have party food! Give Aunty Vina her Christmas
supplies and we spend lots of time playing with the children – it’s really
lovely. The kids warm up to Sam and Sam so by the end they’re getting loads of
cuddles, cute.
·
Head to the club with the boys to meet Ayanda
and Nelo; we have a braii, play some pool and get caught in torrential rain.
Saturday 1st December
·
EARLY, LONG AND STRESSFUL DAY.
·
Matata for MASSIVE cakes for Injabulo
graduation, use the E50 voucher to get it out of our faces because it is quite
frankly an OFFENCE after how much we spent!
·
Arrive at graduation and the Mothers cooking say
that they need other food that we didn’t buy – it wasn’t on the list so that’s
why we didn’t buy it. I drive BACK to Matata to buy more food for them, and it
turns out we have to pay the electricity meter for the lady who’s house we
running electricity from. This turns into a problem at the post office because
we can’t just pay E50 for the electricity we want to use ourselves, we have to
pay off all of the ladies electricity debts BEFORE we can get our E50 –
brilliant. She’d better pay us back!
·
Once I get back with the truck Ashley and Sam
head off to the Royal Crawl for more chairs, unfortunately they get stuck in
the mud so have to free themselves and head back without the chairs... Sam’s
feet actually smell like poo from being in the mud.
·
Graduation goes amazing! The kids don’t get shy
and they speak well, they have lots of energy and dance and sing, plus they
look super cute in their all whites and their traditional dress! The Mothers
did an amazing job with the food and everyone is well fed.
 |
| Ummiso Cultural Dance |
We had also been so excited for weeks about giving the kids their presents and
finally the time was here! It was lovely seeing all their reactions to their
presents, unfortunately someone had to ruin it and they stole the bags that we
had put aside for the absent children for next year. What a disgrace, I don’t
think Ashley or myself have been angrier since we got here. We also gave
Nelsiwe her present, she knew it was coming though because she’d constantly
been saying “Have you bought me a present yet?” and totally ruining the whole
thing! I think she thought we weren’t getting her one so she kept going on
about it, but we had and it got a bit annoying after a while because she should
know that we’re not going to leave her out.
·
After graduation we have a mad rush back to
hostel for a shower and change and then we run up to the kombi park and luckily
catch the last kombi to Manzini for the Sisekelo Matrics after party, the big
AP. It’s dead when we arrive as they’re all still at prom so we hit Nando’s up
first.
·
When prom end the club hosting the AP gets
pretty busy and we all have a really good time, THIS IS THE START OF THE
HOLIDAYS! We hadn’t arranged any accommodation to stay in so we were planning
on pulling an all-nighter and catching the first kombi back to Big Bend at 5am.
By 4:30 we’re all pretty much passed out on the table because we’ve been up for
23 hours straight and we splash out on a taxi to get us back.
Sunday 2nd December
·
Wake up at 2pm, chill, eat, chill. Go to Cafe
1985 for dinner and walk back to Kathy and Richards; on the way I manage so
stand on a broken bit of wood in the dark and have a chunk of wood lodged in
the side of my foot! Ew. Sam has to piggy back me to Kathy and Richards where
Kathy wants to call the doctor to come and surgically remove it, but Richard
decides his pliers will do the job. OH MY GOD, having that piece of wood yanked
out of my foot fecking HURT. Brilliant timing Kate, how you going to carry your
massive backpack if you can’t even walk properly...
So that was my week. No big deal, not much happened ;) But
now it is officially time to do what Frankie says and R-E-L-A-X
DURBAN TOMORROW AYYYYYYYYYYYE!
Love to you all ma hunz,
Kate xx
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