FANTA GRAPE

Time to explore further than the borders of Swaziland! On Monday we hopped on a kombi to Manzini full of excitement for our holiday travels; we then reached Manzini and sat in the Durban kombi for over 2 hours while they waited for it to fill up. Angry, cramped and annoyed we finally set off – so 4 ½ hours after departing from Big Bend we found ourselves passing the exact spot we got the kombi from that morning... Damn Swaziland and its one tar road!
The excitement started kicking in again and I’m pretty sure we might have been those annoying people at the back of buses who make more noise than is actually necessary... oh well.
We had a lovely surprise at the border gate; a man with the world’s longest and dirtiest fingernails came to stand at our open kombi door asking for money. The front of his jeans was also non-existent; they might as well have been crotch-less chaps so we had a lovely view of everything hanging out. We all failed spectacularly when it came to keeping a straight face, so we left pretty promptly to walk to the border gate to hand over our passports to be scrutinised and questioned.

Entering South Africa wasn’t what we expected at all; the kombi was getting pummelled by torrential rain and thunderstorms, visibility must have been down to about 20% and we were getting nowhere fast... which is very surprising for a kombi!
Due to the slow going we were due to hit Durban at night... in the dark... not knowing where our backpackers was... with no alternate transport. F**k. Living in Swaziland we’ve been quite sheltered, but we’d been told that South Africa was much more dangerous, so we weren’t looking forward to wandering around Durban at night carrying everything that had any importance to us on our backs.
Luckily there was a couple on the kombi from Durban and they offered us a lift with them – thank god! The four of us crammed in the back of their truck with our massive backpacks and watched the Durban city lights pass us by. I felt like a fish out of water in the city; after being in Big Bend for 3 months the bright lights and large buildings felt overpowering and daunting. We drove past a huge casino complex that was lit up with LED lights and looked like it had been brought straight from Las Vegas, this felt more like America than Africa!
The couple entertained us on our travels with comforting anecdotes about living in Durban; “Yeah, I’ve been mugged twice, once with a knife to my throat and once with a gun in my face”, “Damn this area is risky, s**t, I don’t have my pepper spray either...” Great first impression of Durban.

We hit uShaka Marine World for the first tourist day of our holidays; dolphin shows, seal shows, the biggest aquarium EVER and a water park. uShaka boasts the tallest water slide in the Southern Hemisphere, so we were all buzzing for that! It was pretty high as well; you shoot over the edge at what I swear to be a 90 degree angle and by the time you reach the bottom you need surgical assistance to remove your bikini bottoms from unknown places.
That night we bought meat, rolls and ingredients to make a kick ass potato salad, and we set about having a braii on the roof of our backpackers. It was awesome. We had some spectacular views of the Durban lights, a few drinks, braii and some intelligent conversation with Jacob, a Canadian and the fifth person in our five person dorm.

Unfortunately for the next 3 days Ashley fell really ill and we had to cancel our plans to carry on down the coast and stay in Durban until she recovered; we took her to a private city hospital and after waiting for 4 hours we finally walked away with 5 bags of drugs that would hopefully pull her back around to reality!
Thankfully the medicine did its job and Ashley felt well enough to travel, so we each begrudgingly parted with E2500 (£180) for a Baz Bus ticket, and we set off for Port St John’s on Saturday morning.

Getting on the kombi was eventful in itself; Ashley and the Sam’s were already on the bus and I was trying to sort out a ticket problem with the driver outside. Then an actual kombi driver comes over and starts grabbing the Baz Bus drivers’ clip board, starts pushing him and is shouting for him to move the bus. “You need to learn how to respect another person” the Baz Bus driver keeps yelling, he wants to stand there and sort the tickets out before we set off... but this is getting pretty serious. There’s now an audience of people on the backpacker balcony watching the scene unfold below and I do not want to be involved in a street brawl between two fully grown African male kombi drivers. I politely tell them both to calm down, stop pushing each other and get the Baz Bus driver back on the bus to sort out the ticket problem when we have driven away.  Good call.

Port St John’s is beautiful and Amapondo backpackers has to be the most amazing backpackers in the world. Port St John’s itself looks like Brazil rather than Africa; large hills covered in dense jungle foliage make up 95% of your view, and just on the coast is a perfect bay with crystal blue waters. The backpackers itself is perched on the side of mountain, and you can see small homesteads everywhere, they look like Brazilian flavelas or small villages from a Pirates of the Caribbean film.  

That night we eat an amazing homemade Thai green curry, which turns out to be free because Sam Rutherford gets chatting to a guy at the bar and because Sam is Scottish he offers to pay for our meal!
Later on that night two ladies light up the firepoi and there’s a mesmerising impromptu fire show; it’s possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen so we all decide to have a bash at it! Not with the fire obviously, just with the practice ‘sockpoi’. Sam Thomas picks it up straight way and makes us really jealous with his skills; this infuriates me even further because I’m so uncoordinated and my left arm and hand are pretty much useless. Everyone goes to bed and I’m still stood there failing spectacularly but not willing to be defeated by these sock balls on string, it finally takes a flaming sambuca burn to the hand and I can’t carry on – so I call it a night and go to bed. 

Sunday brings English weather, so we hitch-hike into town to buy some food, and yet again have another KFC. I’ve eaten more takeaway food in Africa than I ever have in England – who would have thought.
Back at Amapondo I finally crack the sockpoi and my skills are on par with Sam’s, so I’m pretty chuffed with myself. We can’t do much though as a crazy thunderstorm lights up the whole valley, rain comes down in sheets and the power goes out. So we chill in the darkness and listen to the phenomena outside.

One week into travelling and I’ve seen some of the most beautiful places I may ever see in my life. Can’t wait to see some more!

Love Kate xx

(P.S. The way Ashley says fanta grape is really funny, so us impersonating her is now a running joke we have. So that’s the title for you. It’s not funny if you’re not here, sorry!) 

Strikes Ruin Everything

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 26^th 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 27^th 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 28^th 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 29^th 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 30^th 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 1^st 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 2^nd 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

SIZEZE

Let the festivities begin! Even though it is still ridiculously early to be thinking about Christmas, we have to. Because the schools finish before December even begins we have to fit all of the Christmas themed activities into November. At Injabulo we braved the paint for the first time (much more risky than crayons!) and my worries were confirmed – water was spilt everywhere, paints were wrecked, paint was splattered everywhere and it was a total disaster. I think the kids enjoyed themselves though!
They’ve successfully made stockings, Santa Claus on a wreath, cotton wool snowmen and Christmas baubles – quite impressive for a large bunch of easily distracted 3-5 year olds.

The people who work in PEP must be getting sick of us now, we’ve been back AGAIN for more shoes for soup kitchen, and we found they have a lunchbox/water bottle combination for about 60p so we bought up all the stock they had of them too!

We’re also becoming more and more Swazi by the day; the kombi that has been donated to Moriah Centre is now back on Swazi soil, and Ashley and I have been allocated as its drivers. You can’t get much more Swazi than driving a kombi around, however you do get lots of people trying to wave you over at the side of the road and then look at us confusedly when they realise that there are two white girls in charge of a kombi! Might pull into the kombi park next time and shout ‘MATATA MATATA’ for the banter, try and charge people for a journey, hahaa.

Soup Kitchen has been crazy this week; we’ve had an influx of new children and teenagers... Apparently word has been getting out that the two white girls at soup kitchen are buying everyone clothes and shoes, so people are starting to turn up thinking that they’re going to get some handouts. So our numbers have been bumped up from about 50-60 on an average day to around 80!
The tough decision is whether or not we actually do give them something, it would be nice if they made the effort to come to soup kitchen as regulars, but then again they might be looking after younger siblings at home and they can’t physically make it. Do we give them clothes and shoes even though they’re only turning up BECAUSE  they think they’re going to get clothes and shoes, or do we say ‘sorry, no you can’t have’?  Aunty Vina is well informed on people’s home situations, but then again we don’t have the money to clothe the whole of Mpolongeni community! However if Aunty Vina says they are needy (which most of them are), then I guess we buy for them... That’s what this work is all about, giving help to those who need it the most.
On the way to soup kitchen on Tuesday we were pulled over by police for the very first time! It was just a random maintenance vehicle check, but we were pretty nervous because we had Sisekelo students in the back of the truck... Luckily Ashley had her licence (sometimes we forget, but you’re meant to carry it everywhere with you when you’re driving) and everything was okay. She did get a little bit flustered though and when the Policewoman asked for her to test the indicators she accidently flicked on the windscreen wipers! Easy mistake.

Friday was the first day that we started handing out our wares at soup kitchen; we decided to shift all of the second hand clothes that we had been collecting from the Sisekelo students so we had more time to hand out the nice things that we had actually bought with money. 

The girls were really civilised about taking the clothes, however they got embarrassed when we were handing out the bras that we’d been given, none of them wanted any! Ashley and I thought that it was really strange because surely teenage girls would be grateful for a bra, but it seems that that isn’t the case.
The boys were the opposite of the girls, they were mental. Pushing, screaming, fighting, snatching... everything. We’d even explained that everyone was going to get something, but they just didn’t want to be polite about it. Every time I lifted up an item of clothing to have a look at the size about 20 hands all came up and started grabbing and pulling the clothes; it wasn’t nice at all.
Sometimes when we try to do something nice for soup kitchen I still don’t feel good about it; giving out the clothes should make me feel happy because we’re giving the children something that they don’t have something that will benefit them... but it makes me feel awful. The way they desperately snatch clothes from you and from one another makes me realise they’re in such a dire situation they’re willing to do anything to gain. Larger boys pull clothes off the smaller boys, clothes that won’t even fit them, JUST so that they have something. It breaks my heart and makes me wonder what sort of effects poverty really has on a person. Just how far would they go to try and improve their own situation? Here they are pulling clothes off each other like wild animals, even though they are all friends and they all know how hard they have it, how tough their lives are. Something takes over them and they aren’t the same children I know and love and see every week, which is a shame because I want to feel good when we give them surprises, not feel shocked.

Injabulo Christmas party was also this week! We had so much fun with the kids, they all made little party hats to wear and then they all sat down at their little tables to have some party food; cheese and ham sandwiches, crisps, biscuits and icing, jelly and lolly pops... Lots of really healthy food obviously. Shoprite  doesn’t sell straws and they wouldn’t  donate us any of the free ones you get when you buy a drink so Ashley and I had stolen loads of them just to make a point that we couldn’t be defeated and we used them in a sucking Jelly race at Injabulo. It was the funniest thing ever watching 50 kids all with their faces in plates of jelly trying desperately to finish first, and the SOUND, wow.

This Saturday brought the Swaziland vs. Botswana National Rugby match! We caught a kombi to Manzini and walked to the Mavuso Sports Centre – our friend Mike is the Captain of the rugby team and his two brothers are also part of the team. It was Swaziland’s first National home game in 6 years, and we started off with high hopes for them. Then we saw the Botswana team... they dwarfed Swaziland’s team with their massive guys and we became more doubtful of how the game was going to go.
Unfortunately Swaziland were creamed by Botswana, but they’re a young team and it was the first time they had all played together, so there’s room for improvement!
Mike’s parents gave us free ‘Sizeze vs. Botswana’ t-shirts though, so that was pretty awesome! Sizeze is the rugby teams nickname, and also the name of the Swaziland spear.

Looking fat but whatever... This is Mike (on the right) and one of his brothers.

The Dos Santos Family! Mikes family, they are actual legends.

Next week is going to be stressful as hell, but it’s almost the Christmas holidays so it’s time to really knuckle down before we have 6 weeks of travelling!

Kate xx

Belated Halloween, Baby Birds and Bust Tyres

This week has been a true Big Bend scorcher; it’s so hot I’m sure that I sweat even as I shower – there’s a nice image for you all. The kids at Injabulo have taken to stripping off in class, so they all run around in basically no clothes and I’ve taken to fanning them with sheets of A3 laminated paper. Air-con Swazi style!

On Tuesday we took the Americans to soup kitchen with us, however I should probably stop referring to them as ‘The Americans’ because they all have names. We took the ‘young ones’ along with us; Kahlie (pronounced as Kayleigh), Blas (pronounced like the ‘blos’ from blossom) and Kent (nice easy name!) all in their twenties. They absolutely loved hanging out with the kids at soup kitchen and we handed out blankets that had been donated by their church years ago to The Moriah Centre... but had never been used! Aunty Vina was chuffed with the blankets for the orphans, and they all sang a thank you song to us, bless them.

On the same night we decided that we were going to join in on something that the Missionaries were doing, so after soup kitchen Ashley, Kahlie, Blas, Kent and myself all piled into a small bucky with a South African man named Eurie (who is an absolute legend and possibly one of the funniest men ever) and we drove out to some community in the middle of nowhere. It was dark, cold and the community was half way up the side of a hill, so it was windy as anything. Not knowing this previously I was sat there in cut-offs, a t-shirt and wearing no mosquito spray – I was in for a treat tonight.  The Missionaries were projecting ‘The Jesus Film’ onto the side of a building for the community to watch, luckily it was a remake of the original (the original is over 3 hours long), so I only had to endure being a mosquito’s midnight snack for around 1 hour and 30 minutes. It was interesting to watch though, and since we’ve been attending church every Sunday and one of the preschools we teach at is a Christian preschool there was quite a hefty amount of quotes that I could recognise for everything we’ve been teaching... I’m learning and I didn’t even realise ;) 

This week was also Halloween! Okay, Halloween was ‘officially’ last week, but we’d punctured the truck tyre so we missed the 31^st October at Injabulo. But we’d put so much effort into the lesson plan; we had printed off 60 masks, bought apples and oranges and ‘borrowed’ black bin liners from the kitchen so that we could black out the windows – couldn’t let all that work go to waste. Plus, as I’ve made you all aware Swaziland isn’t exactly a massive Halloween celebrator, I could tell them that Halloween runs alongside Easter and they’d probably just believe me ;)
We had so much fun with the kids making masks, playing ‘Stick the Spider on the Web’, apple bobbing and colouring pumpkin faces onto oranges... They loved it and Ashley even hid in the corner of the classroom with a scary mask on and jumped out on them all! There’s a fantastic video of it and they are reduced to screaming wrecks and all pile on top of one another on the floor.

Halloween masks and pumpkin oranges! Grrrrr.

Nelsiwe and Baby Ciara (Sierra), and Ciara looks happy!
She never looks happy, clearly loving Halloween :D

APPLE BOBBING!

The drive back from Injabulo turned a brilliant day slightly less brilliant; the previously punctured (then fixed) tyre decided to blow. We had to rope in some Swazi men to help us jack it up and try to pump the tyre; unfortunately the tyre was a complete goner and they said we’d have to change it. Shame that the spare tyre under the TOYOTA hasn’t seen daylight for a good few years, and they had a right hassle trying to free it! Richard and his Gardner came to the rescue after we’d called him and explained the situation... he wasn’t too happy about the wrecked tyre.

Whaaaaaaaaaat.

After we crawled back on the newly attached, old spare tyre at 40km/h we decided that we should wash the truck. We’d broken it again so the least we could do was make it look presentable. Right on time the Swazi weather kicked in and a thunderstorm and rainstorm hit us at full pelt – it was warm rain though so we had fun being out in the rain washing the truck. Ashley didn’t want her hair to get wet though, so tapping into her Swazi roots she took a bright yellow Shoprite bag and tied it around her head, sexy look! 

True Swazi right here....

Friday and Saturday were shopping days! We have finally bought all 60 Christmas presents for all the children at Injabulo, and we’re now popular customers in PEP (Swaziland’s answer to Primark, but it’s even CHEAPER). There’s not a new tyre for the truck yet, so we had to take a public Kombi to Injabulo on Friday, therefore when we did our shopping on the way back there was no way we could fit into a Kombi again with 60 backpacks and 60 pairs of shoes! Luckily the manager of PEP was lovely to us as we were big spenders (around E4000 between us, nearly £300), and she wangled us a lift back to Big Bend with someone she knew. She also let us have E100 worth of free stuff each from the shop as a thank you for pretty much clearing the shelves, haha... So we both got new pillows to replace the lame excuses for pillows that we have at hostel, and I chose some new sandals. Pretty decent, that would never happen back home.

Only 1/4 of all the shoes we bought - CUTE

Saturday we were back in PEP, all the staff said hello to us and I’m pretty sure we will be remembered in that shop from now on. This time we were buying the clothes for the children, it was so fun choosing out all the cute little tops for the girls and there are some gorgeous little shorts and vests for the boys!

Back in Big Bend we bought toys and sweets for their presents too; every £10 donated bought a child a new backpack, a pair of shoes, clothes, toys, sweets, a pencil case (with pens, colours, ruler, scissors, rubber, sharpener etc) and a folder for all of their work to go in. LIKE I SAID, SWAZILAND IS CHEAP.

So I would just like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who donated to us, you are going to make these children very happy – and I’ll make sure we get lots of pictures of them with their new presents for you all to see!

After a busy weekend we had Saturday night out to have some fun! £6, 7 drinks and two bars down we rolled up to a house party – don’t ask me who’s I have no idea. There were massive speakers in the garden blaring out African House music and there was food on, it was perfect. I tried out my African House dancing in the garden with some of the friends that we’ve made here, luckily it was dark and I’m sure people’s memories are a bit blurry, so I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much!
The late night food was salad, pap and beef – typically Swazi; the beef was spiced and it was amazing, I cannot stress how good this beef was. Everyone keeps telling me how I was going on and on about the beef, but compared to hostel beef it was heaven. It was heaven regardless. We got back around 3:30 and tucked into a doughnut that I’d bought earlier that day, and some salted crackers that were floating about my room... Need to get some decent food in for such occasions!
Either way it was a great night and took some of the stress off from our busy week, if you look really hard there are things to do in Big Bend :P

Ashley, Idumiso (works at Sisekelo) and Myself :)

ALSO MY PARCELS ARRIVED. YAY.

2 out of the 3 that should be here - result for the moment ;)

Buzzing when you find Christmas Presents from your Grandparents <3

THE AFTERMATH

I feel like I should explain the title of this post; the only mystery now is the ‘baby bird’ section of the title. At Moriah Centre on Thursday one of the boys had something in his hand, Ashley walked over to see what it was and he threw what was in his hand at her face! Turns out it was a traumatised baby bird and it flapped frantically, causing Ashley to absolutely soil her pants, scream the place down and leg it to the other side of the room. Apart from suffering only a minor heart attack she was okay, but I couldn’t believe how mean they were to this tiny bird; they kept picking it up by its wings and chucking it on the floor. So I saved it and went to hide it away from their mean little hands – there’s definitely a different attitude to animals here than there is back home.

Evil Children :( Traumatised and half dead bird.

Also this week I caught a few our boys at Injabulo throwing rocks at passing herds of cows; one it’s mean, and two it’s dangerous! The cows literally walk right through the playground area and if one of them spooked we could have a dead child on our hands. They knew I wasn’t happy with them, you should see their faces when they’re getting told off – they look like butter wouldn’t melt.

Love to you all, start sending my Christmas presents now ;)

Kate xx

P.S. I regret to inform you all that I’ve become a true Swazi and gone to the toilet out in the open. Ashley and I were desperate at Injabulo and the toilets themselves are vile, so we had to wee around the back of the toilet block. Some of the kids followed us around too (they never leave you alone!) and I’m pretty sure one of the little girls has now seen my white bum exposed to the world. How embarrassing.
It’s not even like I’ve never had a wee outside before, I have, plenty of times. But you hide to do it! There’s nowhere to hide here, and the toilet block is right next to a homestead. People might walk past and any moment and if someone looked out of their window at the right moment I’m sure they received a lovely eyeful!