Where there’s South Africans, there’s always a braii.

Firstly I would like to apologise, my last blog was incomplete. It was such a long one I forgot to include a weekends worth of information! Ashley and I headed to Build It Hardware Store with the 89 on Saturday 9^th armed with big ideas and Injabulo money. We had decided that we were going to paint the outside of the preschool building to get rid of the years and years worth of orange and brown dirt. The equivalent of £14 poorer we left Build It with a huge tub of cream paint and headed for Injabulo. We were rather ingenious exterior decorators and used flattened cereal boxes as painting palettes, 3 hours later we had finished the front of the school and were contemplating how we were going to tackle the high sides and back walls... Luckily at this point half of the male Mndobandoba population turned up on our doorstep wanting to help. So 12 Swazi men equipped with two brushes, a long broom handle and one roller did three-quarters of our workload for us! With all the free time on our hands we utilised our creativity and designed a stained glass window in our store room to prevent any peeking eyes from seeing our resources. 

 A job half well done (they really rushed the painting so everything is a little bit patchy, but this is Africa so oh well, YOLO) we rewarded our workers with E70 (£5) to split between them all and E6 (40p) for cigarettes for the 6 smokers in the group. Fair deal if you ask me. We also gave them some litchi’s and Pepsi as refreshments, we are top employers.

Genius.

Part of our crew ;)

So this week we started doing some coaching for Ubombo Primary School in the afternoons; well, this was my first time doing so, but Ashley has done a few sessions before. I was helping out with the swimmers, or rather the ‘non-swimmers’ to be precise. I’ve never coached swimming before and had no idea what I was doing, but I wasn’t worried because there was another teacher helping out with the non-swimmers too... until I found out they had never coached it either, they were just winging it this one time.

Quite a few events transpired within that one hour at the swimming pool so I will summarise it for you with a helpful hint; if I child tells you that they can swim without a sponge board, don’t believe them until you have seen them use it first. Two kids told me they could swim, and I realised when they were in the middle of the pool, splashing frantically and breathing heavily that, in fact, they could not swim without a sponge board despite their own beliefs. First day on the job and I nearly drown two primary schoolers, I’m sure I’ll get better. 

As we all know, this week has been all about luuurrrve, February 14^th brings Valentine’s Day. An excuse for greetings card companies to make a whole load of money, an increase in the world sales of teddy bears and chocolates in heart shaped boxes, and a pruning massacre of red roses.
We utilised the day by teaching our preschoolers the heart shape and made some heart crafts!

On the evening hostel was hosting their annual Valentine’s dinner, queue fancy dresses, standard hostel food, loud music and LOTS of screaming. Honestly, these kids are unbelievable; some of the dresses they were wearing were on the level of prom dresses, which if you ask me is completely unnecessary. There was one guy in a head to toe silver suit, wearing shades, with two dates to the dinner and a silver pimp cane to top the whole charade off.  This is what we live with. Honestly, there are a few who are too spoilt for their own good but on the whole they are decent kids, they’re great banter and to be honest some of the ‘over-the-top’ things they do are just hilarious.

February 14^th was also meant to bring us something special for our Valentine’s Day... namely our desk officer and the one and only director of Project Trust, INGRID!
To cut a very long story short we didn’t actually see Ingrid until the next morning; she was travelling with Dave (the new South Africa Desk Officer) and Jen (the new Senior Desk Officer). From their friendly squabbling I have gathered that Dave was navigating the car from J’burg, he fell asleep, they missed the turning to get to the border gate and after realising the mistake it wasn’t worth it to turn back. So they carried on to the north border, arriving at 6:10pm they were 10 minutes too late and weren’t going to be let through. So they jumped back into the car and made a quick dash through the dark, dodging cattle to the border gate on the east side of Swaziland... arriving at 7:57pm they had scraped through with only 3 minutes to closing time. Hence they arrived in Big Bend at 11:30 and it was too late to do anything but use Dave as a scapegoat for the mess up and go to sleep. 

Having Ingrid, Jen and Dave here was lovely, we showed them all of our projects and I was proud of what we have achieved here so far that I just wanted to tell them every tiny thing that we have done! The kids at Injabulo absolutely loved them and wanted hugs all the time, they also particularly enjoyed stroking Dave’s arm hair, they really are easily entertained. Unfortunately on their visit one of our girls decided it was the right time to projectile vomit all over the steps to the preschool, she managed to splash herself and Ashley and cover another girls bag in vomit, which lead to about 15 minutes of crying about the smelly bag. Well, we never have an uneventful day at Injabulo.
Ingrid treats us to lunch at Cafe 1985, and hands me a little package from my Mum, SCORE! I get a nice top to replace one of my favourites that was in the package that has still never arrived, a letter and some Percy Pigs. Life is Complete. M&S sweets, I didn’t realise until now that I missed you.
We also both get some treats off Ingrid, including some decent cheese (OMG, thanks for giving Ingrid the heads up on that one Mum!), Creme Eggs, Mini Eggs, Cadbury’s Chocolates and a British magazine. Getting visits is the best.

That evening they all come to hostel and help us cook for soup kitchen; strange to see them all sweating it out in the kitchen and Ashley and I think that it’s surprising cool for a change. Never thought I would see the day when something not over 32 degrees was ‘cool’. We pack everything into Ingrid’s hire car and set off along the terribly surfaced Siteki road to soup kitchen, luckily we have a really good haul of food and Ashley bought some sweets to hand out to the kids as well. When we pull up in the car soup kitchen is barely recognisable! Normally there are children running around, basically playing chicken in front of the truck and you have to be careful not to run over odd shoes, dogs and chickens. But not today. We pull up in the car and they are already stood in a neat group, containers on the table, and they start singing even before the engine is turned off! Aunty Vinah’s really made an effort to impress!
After everyone lends a helping hand to fill the swaying mountains of empty containers we play football, sing the hokey cokey and the girls do some cultural dancing – it’s a great thing to see, they all have so much fun performing for everyone and there’s one girl who loves the attention! She is a fantastic dancer though, so no one minds that she’s always up there.

We then drive straight from soup kitchen to Manzini to have dinner with Kathy and Richard, the banter in the car is brilliant and I couldn’t help feeling surprised at how relaxed and informal this visit seems to be. I thought it would be like selection and training all over again, feeling like you’re being watched and judged on everything but it really isn’t. Ingrid is just enjoying watching us do our thing and she’s having a fun time with the kids – not at all what I expected, but it is much better!
We were dubbed as the navigators and left responsible for getting the car to the restaurant where we would be meeting Kathy and Richard, can’t say we are all that familiar with getting around Manzini but we were the two in the car with the best knowledge on the subject, no matter how basic it may be. So after making a sneaky shortcut through a petrol station to overtake the slowest cane truck in the history of the world we went around a roundabout twice before realising there was only one exit, we finally arrived at the same Portuguese place that we had eaten dinner at about 2 weeks previous. Turns out that we have more social visits with Kathy and Richard when they live over an hour’s drive away rather than a 2 minute walk away!
After having a slightly questionable chicken carbonara and getting a case of the cheese sweats, I finished off the meal with an amazing slice of passion fruit cheesecake and high hopes about the future of our projects after the discussions that had taken place during the course of the meal.

The next morning we walked to Lebombo Villa for our one on one talks with Ingrid; Ashley goes first and Dave and I fill in the time with chatting, watching videos he took on his PT visit to China and playing pool. One of the videos I watched he described to me like this “so the Scottish volunteers taught the students how to Scottish dance, after performing a really regimented Scottish dance they said, ‘okay guys, now do your one!’, and all the Chinese students broke out into Gangnam Style.” I can tell you right now, that video did not disappoint.
After talking up my pool skills we decided to hit the table for a few games, and I have never played worse in my life. Extraneous factors such as the broken pool que, the sticky pool que, the absence of chalk, and the squint table all played against me rather than in my favour. Dave was laughing the whole way because he had been truthful about his pool skills (or rather the lack of them), and he was beating me. I have learned that you should never talk up your skill at something, rather keep it on the quiet side and allow your talents to shock and surprise people when everything is going in your favour... Otherwise you look like a right tw*t when you lose spectacularly.
Definitely keep things on the quiet side when you’re a girl and the game is pool; if you do badly it’s only expected, but if you do well then you’re in for some serious respect!  
For the record, I am good at pool. Just not on that table.

Sunday brought culinary delights to the lives of Ashley and I! We went to a braii (BBQ) in Nsoko with all of the people that are in our congregation at church. We were all saying goodbye to an amazing American family who have been working out here for 2 years as missionaries. They’ve been running different care points around the poor rural areas of Nsoko; and on top of that they’re in the process of adopting the most adorable little girl who was abandoned at the hospital by her young mother because she has cerebral palsy.
They really are brilliant people and they’ve done so much to help the people that they’re involved with, they will be sorely missed by many and we hope to see them again when they come back to Swaziland to collect Mumu (the little girl) when the adoption paperwork is finalised!

The braii was fantastic and there were about 5 different puddings, so I was having the time of my LIFE.

Mumu :)

Claire; daughter of the missionaries, photographer and only 14! Although, I am pretty sure she is still lying to me about her age... she's more like 16. 

Life is good; I hope yours is too...

Kate xx