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 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 31st 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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| Halloween masks and pumpkin oranges! Grrrrr. |
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| Nelsiwe and Baby Ciara (Sierra), and Ciara looks happy! She never looks happy, clearly loving Halloween :D |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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
ALSO MY PARCELS ARRIVED. YAY.
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.
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.
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
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| Ashley, Idumiso (works at Sisekelo) and Myself :) |
ALSO MY PARCELS ARRIVED. YAY.
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| 2 out of the 3 that should be here - result for the moment ;) |
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| Buzzing when you find Christmas Presents from your Grandparents <3 |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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!
spent like the last hour reading your blog, sounds incredible and the work you been doing is epic, gutted didn't know about the christmas appeal or would've tried to get £10 to you especially after hearing what it provides:),, and a note about teaching the Americans to speak properly!? swear we tried to get you lot to talk properly at newquay ;);)aha,, look forward to more pics and stories, sounds incredible, Carl smith is proud!! ;)x
ReplyDeleteAaaah Steve, I wouldn't have known who this was if you hadn't put Carl Smith down!
ReplyDeleteDo not fret, we are still collecting money! We're collecting/buying new clothes and shoes for the orphans at soup kitchen, so if you still want to give money you could message my Mum on facebook and sort out a transaction between your accounts and then she can get the money to me :)
Thank you for reading my blog too! That must have been one hell of reading session, this page is long :P I think you'll find that I can already speak properly, and I go to the shop rather than go t'shop ;) x