Time out

Just realised I haven't blogged for a few weeks. Here's why...

I got diagnosed with severe neck problem brought on by extreme stress. Doctors orders to chill out! The tension in my neck caused it to straighten completely and lose the natural curve that you are supposed to have. This caused muscle spasms which were painful and gave me headaches and shoulder aches etc. So I've been trying to shift that over the past few weeks and it's improving slowly. Trying to remove stress from your life is quite difficult, especially as most of it is outside of my control...

At the end of January I went on the Young Adults Weekend Away from my church. We drove up to the Drakensburg mountains and stayed in a Scripture Union camp called Glenhaven. The track to get in was somewhat muddy and the experience of being on the back seat (minus seatbelt!) of what could be the smallest car in the world, sliding and bumping our way into the site will remain with me for quite a while. The centre is really cut off from the world and by a beautiful river, surrounded by hills. It's quite idyllic.

The main activities for the weekend were tubing and rafting on the river and going over the rapids. I chose to be photographer and not to venture into the icy depths of the fast flowing river. I'm not the best swimmer and didn't want to get some bug from a foreign river either (although the water up there is quite pure and clear) But it was a good time to relax with friends and to make new ones.

I did feel a little bit old at times, most of the others there were early to mid-20s and I'm slightly older than that now! The antics on Saturday night (there always has to be some apparently) left me more than a little irrate... Apparently it's amusing to break into the wooden wendy house, where girls are sleeping, by leaping James Bond style through a tiny window, waking up said sleeping girls and shoving shaving foam in their faces!!! Cheap and nasty shaving foam at that! I was so annoyed I was ready to physically hurt the perpetrators if and when they came back.. (not so good for someone who is trying to de-stress!) In any case, the guys in question thought it was funny the next morning when weren't so happy with them. However, apparently, at about 4am someone in the boys' dorm shouted 'the girls are coming' and all the guys leapt out of bed and got scared. As far as I can tell, we were all fast asleep. So the fear is still there. We didn't have to actually 'do' anything... ;-)

I was refreshed by being in the mountains, but on my return my neck got worse and I had to wear a neck collar to help me relax! It's all got a little bit ridiculous. Thankfully the sun has finally arrived and it's too hot to rush around getting stressed and I am making the most of relaxing in the pool and a little bit of sunbathing, which is helping my situation.

Grapevine-wise, I've been continuing to sort out the land that was offered to us and making little progress. The problem is (and this is typical Africa!) I have to meet with the councillor and he answered his phone a few weeks ago and we chatted, he agreed to meet and told me to call back the following week, which I did. He was in a meeting and told me to call back 20 minutes later. At which point I got his answerphone and have had it ever since. I've been to his office and his 'helpful' staff tell me he doesn't have set office hours I just need to pop in and try to catch him. He never listens to his answerphone apparently, he's a politician. (that's what everyone else here tells me). So getting hold of this man is quite frustrating. In the meantime there's another bit of land near the school so I'm making enquiries about that one instead... the saga continues..

I've finally got my list of 40 children from the school. It took only a week longer than planned, and that was with me going in every day to encourage the teachers to hand over information. TIA (This is Africa). With all this going on, I haven't managed to get the kids together until today, but today I start doing Kid's Club with them. I've got 4 groups and the school has given me time during the day to see them. Today it's Grade R-1 and Grade 2-3, most of whom don't speak more than 2 words of English, should be fun! More on that later...