Don't you forget about me...

So I’m sat in Johannesburg OR Tambo airport and I can’t actually believe that I’ve left Swaziland for the last time (in the foreseeable future). The last few days have been the most emotional time of my life; my heart has been dragged through happiness and sadness alike, memories have been made that I will cherish for the rest of my life yet the pain of leaving those that I love is still fresh, and I know that it will only heal with time.

Swaziland has made such a huge impact on my life in such a short space of time; 1 year seemed like forever when I was preparing to come out here, but now I realise just how short this time is in the grand scale of things. The culture, the people, the country and my children have all taken a special place in my heart and in my soul... they have changed me for better and I am never going to forget the experiences I have had here.

1 year is so short and fleeting and the children I have worked with are so young that the majority of them are going to grow up and not remember me, even if they don’t remember me I will always remember them and everything they taught me about loving others unconditionally. Despite everything that they go through (things that even adults shouldn’t be expected to handle) they still have the energy to express their love to you in every moment they are in your presence...

I am going to miss the hugs, the kisses on my hand as they leave the classroom, the hugging of my knees as I’m trying to walk and the playing with my hair. I will miss the cheeky smiles across the classroom and the giggles as they press my skin to watch the colour change, I will miss them calling me Aunty Katie and I will miss the pride in their eyes when they are confidently speaking English to me. I will miss the joyful singing and the energetic dancing, I will miss the unnecessarily loud talking and the bright colours, I will miss the dirty faces at soup kitchen and the thank you’s that we really don’t deserve, I will miss speaking in SiSwati and watching people’s reactions when they realise we understood them. I am going to miss the sun shining every day and I will miss Swazi time, I will miss the hard workers, the cheeky children, and the shy ones who you have to invest time in over a few months before earning their trust. I will miss making a sad child smile and I will miss the laughs with the happy ones. I will miss my African life. 

I am scared to go home. You know when you come back off holiday and sit on your bed and it doesn’t feel like you were sunbathing on a beach in Spain only yesterday... it feels like a dream, it feels like you were never away. I am afraid that when I get home my time in Africa will feel like a distant memory, like it isn’t real. This scares me because this has been the most REAL year of my life, I’ve experienced real lives and real people for the first time ever and everything that I have learned I want to keep with me, I don’t want to let it slip out of touch.

This year I have been blessed with a second home, second families, Swazi mothers, new brothers and sisters and too many children of my ‘own’ to count. Leaving Swaziland is difficult as I don’t know when I will be coming back; I don’t know who I will see again. Tears have been shed but it is time to move on, I have to step aside to allow someone else to begin their journey into what I hope will be the first real year of their life. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity; it has been an experience that only comes around once in a lifetime...

You are born and then you die, but in between you can do anything you want. You have to grasp life and shake it by the shoulders, make every mistake possible and learn from them, take risks and mess up... but most of all make sure you have fun. Make sure you never waste a day. Go to sleep with no regrets.

This HAS been the best year of my life, but now it’s in my hands to create more great years.

Kate xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A

“I just had s-s-s........” aaargh!

Good things never last forever, and now that our departure date is coming ever closer I am more and more aware of just how much I am going to miss this place when we do have to leave. I’ll just be contently working on project watching as my kids work away and all of a sudden the thought of the last day here hits me... The moment where I say bye to them for the last time, the moment where I’ve hugged the last child and put them down, the moment I turn around and have to walk away, and the moment I lose sight of them as we drive around the corner; my heart is breaking at the thought of these things and stopping impromptu crying in front of children has become quite a regular occurrence in my daily routine.

All our work at Injabulo is going great and the kids are even better, I actually feel like a proper teacher! The best thing is that we’ve had someone else instil their own opinion in us which has boosted our confidence of how brilliantly we are doing on project. It might seem obnoxious of me to say that we’re ‘brilliant’ but when we take a look at the progress we have made this year; the improvements to the school, the increased knowledge of the children and the more advanced English that they are learning there’s really only one word for it! Being at Injabulo makes me glow with pride, it is literally our school and we can do whatever we want with it, which means that it can go two ways; you either constantly make improvements or you let standards slide. I absolutely love being there and you get out twice as much as you put in, and we’ve really been throwing ourselves into the place, and the children are absolutely wonderful because of it. Their level of knowledge is wonderful, not their behaviour though! Haha.
Two workers from the Lutheran foundation came for visits to Injabulo and they congratulated us on the job we were doing there; they said that we were one of the smallest and least supported care points that they had visited but we were also one of the best! They thought that we did a fantastic job with the children and that their English was some of the best they had seen for their age group; we couldn’t have been happier.

I’m afraid this is another short one; I’ve just been so busy educating young minds ;)

Don’t hate on me :)

Kate xx

P.S. The title is from a rather unfortunate event at Injabulo; the Lutheran workers were over and holding a meeting with parents from the community. We had all the children playing outside and were playing music from my laptop for them to dance to... ALWAY BE WARY OF SHUFFLE. Anyway, a rather inappropriate song by The Lonely Island popped on the shuffle list and began to play out full blast in front of children, parents and well, basically everyone. I have never hurled myself at the pause button so fast! I made it just in time.