Umlungu

It’s getting to that point now where we’re well settled in on the projects and everything we do comes as second nature. There’s no stressing out about how to do things or fighting with language barriers that you don’t understand. We can now pretty much comprehend most of the SiSwati that the children use when talking to us, and their English is coming on very nicely so they can ask us for things and we actually know what they mean!

My class at Injabulo are coming along in leaps and bounds, I have the crocodiles (the older class) therefore I have some of the children who were with us last year too. This makes my life 10 times easier because the ones who know the answers always repeat them and the new children copy – so when it comes to teaching there’s a lot less work that I need to put in on some topics. Maths however is disappointing; they don’t understand simple addition so that’s going to be something that I’ll need to work on!
The original plan for Injabulo was to use an immersion method with the children; i.e. we speak English and only English, and if you can’t ask for something in English you don’t ask for it at all. However we came to realise that this wasn’t feasible; trying to run a classroom totally in a language that none of the children really understand is impossible, you achieve very little and become highly stressed. Either way they are still picking up the language very quickly, they’re like little sponges! They know all the shapes/colours/body parts/numbers/animals/days of the week/months/seasons/clothing in English and they’re picking up some helpful sentences and phrases too; they all ask to go to the toilet in English, ask for a drink in English, say they’re hungry and ask for food in English... and this is only the beginning.

We’ve had a little bit of drama at Moriah this week; on Wednesday one of the little boys’ poo’d himself and somehow Ashley and I ended up to be the ones dealing with it! We had to get him to take all his clothes off and put him in the outside shower to wash down, Ashley was hilarious because as soon as she got one whiff as he stepped out of his pants she ran off to a nearby tree coughing and spluttering with streaming eyes and ‘chundered everyyywhaaaar!’ It was pretty bad, I had to get a medical glove and poop-a-scoop his soiled clothes up into a bag to send home as a lovely surprise for his Mum.
Just to make the whole ordeal less embarrassing for the poor lad his teacher decided to bring his whole class out to the garden in full view of us washing him, and two workmen on break on the other side of the preschool fence decided that this was an interesting watch and basically perved on the entire thing. Weirdos.

Everyday we’re constantly trying and trying to come up with new ways of improving things at soup kitchen; so we’ve taken it upon ourselves to sell snacks to the girls in hostel so that we can give Aunty Vinah the money to help out with feeding the children/bus fares to school. We’re selling crisps and ices, which are only bringing in a small profit but I’m sure it will soon add up!
This week at soup kitchen we also handed out some baby clothes to the Mothers who come with their little ones; the clothes had been kindly donated by one of the female teachers at Sisekelo, and I’m pretty sure they were brand new and had never been worn. There’s nothing else to really say on this subject but OMG LOOK AT HOW CUTE THE BABIES ARE... awwwwwwwww.

On Friday night Ashley, three prefects from Sisekelo and myself had been summoned to UPS (Ubombo Primary School) for the honour of helping out at their annual camp-out for their Grade R to Grade 3’s (in terms you will understand, that’s reception to year 3).
Our assigned task was to make sure that all the kids were having fun, supervise them and make sure no one died... which was an incredibly difficult task seeing as I was supervising the bouncy castle (or as they call it in Swaziland – the ‘jumpy’ castle). All of these children can speak fluent English, so either; they couldn’t understand my accent (not very likely) or they completely ignored me, which is definitely more realistic.
There were about 20 kids all on the bouncy castle and they all wanted to come down the slide at the same time – this resulted in large Grade 3 boys landing on the heads of petite Grade R girls, and there were a fair few tears. Due to the congestion at the top of the slide, the sides of the castle started pulling in and became soft, so a boy and a girl tumbled head first from the top of the slide and narrowly missed impaling themselves on the electric pump attached to the castle, but they managed to scrape themselves on a few wooden barrier poles. Well done. And I had to scrape them up off the field; luckily I was prepared for the next two to do it, and I caught both of them... saving my reputation with the parents, ha!

Later on that night there was a braii for all the kids and parents; in preparation for this Ashley and I carried a 5 foot long cooler box packed with steak for the equivalent of 100m, but with added stairs. This thing was HEAVY – I swear that there was a full cow in there... and thanks to information provided afterwards we found out that a cow actually had been donated for the braii at the campout. So yeah, I bet you’ve never carried a cow.
After the braii the kids put on a talent show for everyone to watch; this involved groups of girls around the ages of 5-7 shaking everything their Mamma gave them in a more provocative way than 19 year olds do when they’re ‘oot on the toon’ in Newcastle. Rather disturbing but I have to give it to them; I wish I could do that.
Our main job description was to ‘make the children tired’; we might as well have been told to make pigs fly. CHILDREN DO NOT GET TIRED. They’ve been eating sweets all day, drinking fizzy drinks and they’re covered in face-paint pretending to be spider man – they’re on a constant sugar rush, and the later it gets the more hyper they become. Their unyielding love and enthusiasm for Gangnam Style means that it is basically played on loop for the whole night and every time that tune reaches their ears it turns them into a screaming, invisible horse riding frenzy.

Glorified Babysitters ;)

Getting into the spirit of things!

It’s 1:30am and they’re still playing a mass game of musical chairs; the three prefects have given up and gone to sleep in the tent, Ashley somehow still has energy to conduct the game of musical chairs and I’m struggling to press pause and play on the iPod... finally they’re told to go to bed and we crash on the floor of our tent around 2am to the screams of the still awake children.

On Sunday we had another farewell braii for a couple that attend the church we go to; they’re retiring and moving to South Africa so we were all invited round for a braii in the garden and a short service. They had a trampoline inset into the ground which some of the children were playing on; then Ashley went over to have a go... this trampoline had many springs missing, the remaining ones were brown with rust and the actual trampoline itself was sun bleached and threadbare. You guessed it, she went right through! Tore a hole in it the heifer.

On return to hostel we found out that we’d missed out on the most dramatic dinner ever; a girl had thrown up on another girls’ food. Always missing out on the banter!

We have a long weekend this week – looking forward to it!

UNIVERSITY OF YORK ACCEPTED ME – too happy. Had a little cry on the phone to Mum when she rang me and told me, ha, what a baby I am.

Hope you’re all enjoying life :)

Kate xx

P.S. ‘Umlungu’ means white person in SiSwati; two little boys shouted it as us as we were getting on a kombi at Matata. It’s not offensive though.