Christmas Day 2009

Russell and Precious marvelling at their new laptop!

The kids with Santa before they opened their gifts.

Fun in the pool!

Apologies for the delay, but at least I'm getting this in before New Year tomorrow!!

We've had a busy week with some friends from the UK who are out here with Lionsraw. The Flint family have been raising money and awareness all year for the work out here and especially for Sithembakuye Orphanage. They arrived on Christmas Eve and we brought all the kids, Russell and Precious (who run the place), and a couple of Gogos up to our house for Christmas Day for a party they'll not forget in a hurry.

The children had never been to our house and they were over the moon to see a swimming pool, and even more excited to be given swimming costumes and allowed in to play. Hardly any of them can swim but they enjoyed being in there. One of the boys got into difficulties in the deep end almost immediately causing Steve to dive in and rescue him, but that didn't keep him out of the pool and he was soon back in having fun.

The mist was moving in though and after a while we had to get the kids out of the pool and stick them in front of 'Santa Claus - the Movie' whilst the braai was cooking. Lunch was borewors, steak, burgers, baked beans and mayo mix (cold, but actually quite nice), salad and bread. It went down very well, as did the cake, ice cream and fruit for dessert. Every child finished what was on their plate and came back for seconds. Not a bit was wasted. No fussy children here!

Even small touches like letting off party poppers and pulling crackers were greatly enjoyed by the kids and they were very excited when Santa came in to give them all their presents. The whole group of children, with ages ranging from 2 to 17, got excited for each child as he or she went up for their presents. The joy in the room was almost tangible. However, nothing could beat the amazed reaction from Russell when he was presented with the one thing he'd been praying for - a new laptop. His old one had been stolen at knifepoint a short time ago and he'd been struggling to work without one. There was certainly a lot of celebration when he opened that present!

We'd taken Russell and Precious to ToysRUs a few days before to get a big present for each child (which was an adventure in itself!) and they also got lots of little presents from the UK. The brilliant thing to see was that each child shared their toys with others and also respected their own stuff. Even a few days after when we've been down to the Valley to see them, they are still excited at what Santa brought them!

To see the joy and happiness that this day brought to these children was quite overwhelming and the sense of euphoria and Christmas joy was everywhere in our house. It truly was an excellent day!

Feeding the kids 2 - Christmas Party

It's odd doing a party at 10.30am in the morning when it's blisteringly hot.

However, not if you are a primary school child on holiday with nothing much to do...

Yesterday I cooked up a big vat of beef curry and we served that to the kids today, along with bread, juice and cake for dessert. I've never seen those kids get so excited as when I offered them seconds of cake! Today we had 22 children come to eat, and some of them were new so my total of orphans on my list is now 73...

After they'd eaten, we played Pass the Parcel (an essential at any party!). It took a little bit of explaining but once they'd got the hang of it they loved it. We have children from Grade R up to Grade 7 and they worked well at helping each other. The little boy from Grade R was especially excited every time the parcel came anywhere near him and he managed to open it twice I think, winning 2 lollies.

After this we gave out their presents. We'd got a small bag of sweets, a balloon, an apple (keeping it healthy!!), bag of crisps and a 'lucky packet' which was either Disney, WWE, Spiderman, High School Musical etc and proved to be very popular. Not hugely expensive gifts but they were well received and the children went home happy.

Thank you to all the people who donated money to make this possible. It's great to see kids get excited about life and I'm starting to build relationships with some of the children which will be a good starting place when term starts to visit them at 'home' and see how I can help them further.

African Sunrise

People always say how awesome the sunrise is in Africa but up until this week I'd never experienced one myself. However, when we got in quite late from a Christmas Party on Tuesday we thought we'd stay up and see the dawn from the viewpoint (it's easy when you live on top of a mountain with a convenient 'tourist' viewpoint only a stone's throw away!). It's also easy because dawn here is at about 4am (so it's not really staying up all night..)

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the amazing sight, and it's true, African sunrises really are magnificent. We had the added benefit of being above the clouds with inspiring views over the Valley of 1000 Hills too. I really love living here sometimes...

Holiday Feeds - Number 1

The kids at Sithembakuye enjoying the left-over porridge, watched over by the Gogo!

Steve and Sean giving out many bags of porridge at the school.

One of the kids enjoying his porridge, he'd even found a newspaper to read and was relaxing as if in a cafe!

Today was our first attempt at feeding the orphans at Inchanga School. I say 'attempt' as we really had no idea who was going to turn up, but we were prepared for about 40 kids. When we arrived most of the children were already at the school waiting for us and in total we fed 27 children today. However, a lot of these were not the ones who'd come to see me on Thursday and so my list of children has now risen to 65! We fed anyone who was there today, even managing to give some to the older siblings who had come with their family.

At the advice of George the Principal we'd prepared a vat of porridge for the kids, which seemed to go down well. In addition to this we gave the kids some bags of porridge to take home. This mixture has lots of added vitamins and minerals and keeps the kids full for longer, which helps when they are not sure when their next meal is coming from. Also, it's really easy to make and requires minimal cooking, just adding milk or water. Another donor had given many bags of the stuff to the school so this morning we gave the kids from that supply, which means the 40 bags that I've bought have yet again travelled round for nothing (I will manage to give them away eventually!!)

Next Tuesday we're going to get some meat and bread and make it into a Christmas Party for the kids. We're just starting to get to know them and a lot of them were a bit nervous about English people giving them food, but it's a start and hopefully through these feeds the children will get to know me a bit better and then next term when I start visiting them and working with them in the school the relationships will deepen and grow.

Having a bit of food left, we took it down to our friends' orphanage - Sithembakuye - in the valley near our house. The kids there appreciated it very much, and the Gogo was very keen to be in one of the photos I took, so I had to put that on here!!

Last day of term!

Some of my lovely boys, ready for the long holiday!

View from the top of the hill by the church, the cliff in the distance on the right is where we live.

Inchanga Primary closed for Christmas today and there was definitely an air of 'end of term' excitement in the playground when we arrived this morning. They celebrated the last day with a Mass and First Communion for about 10 pupils and we popped up to the church to see the end of that. The church is a little further up the hill with amazing views over the valley. (see photo above) There's even a huge window along the side of the modern church building giving a wide and inspiring viewpoint over the valley below, inspiring praise to our Creator God, no doubt!

However, this end of term is twinged with sadness as one of the orphans in Grade 4 was tragically swept away in a stream during the most torrential rain on Tuesday night. We've had 4 major thunderstorms over 4 consecutive evenings, but Tuesday was much worse than the others, with what felt like hurricane winds, rain, thunder rolling round the hills and almost constant lightening for 2 hours as well as powercuts. Some parts of the valley still haven't been reconnected. Some of the children found themselves in trouble when the storm started and one girl sadly didn't make it. They found her body yesterday.

The storms here are impressive and because we live on top of a mountain, we see the lightening strike places in the valley and all around our property. They really do make UK storms seem a bit feeble! The storms can last up to 2 hours, sometimes longer. During the major storm on Tuesday evening we had rainwater gushing off our roof and creating a flood around the house and even dripping in through the living room roof!! But that is nothing compared to the devastation that it caused in the valley. Not only was that child killed, but driving past one of my children's houses today, it looks like large parts of the mud wall have been washed completely away leaving huge gaps in the wall and probably making the house unstable. Zulus are understandibly terrified of storms and you can understand why.

The roads are eroding too and the road to the school is getting pretty bad. As I'm looking for a car right now I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I need something bigger than just a car. I've hired a car for 2 weeks but after that I need to get something better. However, funds are extremely low for a car and at the moment I can't afford anything decent, except to rent for longer, which is expensive and counter-productive. Please pray for the provision of a vehicle. I've seen a reasonable one for 65000 Rand, which is about £5300 but would be perfect for the work here. It's absolutely essential that I get a vehicle somehow, so I know that God WILL provide, pray that He does so soon!! (and if you are part of that answer to prayer, please get in touch!!)

We wanted to give my 40 orphans some porridge to take away for this week. However someone else had donated food for all 300 orphans and so we're keeping ours for next week as they had enough to carry today. I gathered my kids together though and am starting to recognise them. The problem at the school is that there are lots of orphans and I am only working with some of the most desperate. I had several more children come to register with me today so we could be feeding about 50 next week. We'll see who turns up!

Christmas soccer fun

Yesterday there was a huge party for 500 orphans at a local orphanage organised by FNB (one of the main banks over here). We went along to run a 5-a-side soccer tournament for the kids. I say 'we', I mean the Lionsraw boys - but they made me official time-keeper for the matches. This was a brilliant job because I got to use the emergency hooter thing and give everyone around me a shock every few minutes! (next time I'd like a megaphone as well, just for the fun of it!)

We got there early to set up and watched all the marquees and jumping castles being put up. This was a big event, they had about 8 inflatables there, 3 of which were waterslides and involved much soapy water and mud. As the kids fell off the end they created a lovely pool of mud which was gradually carried onto the slides as they rushed back on. But they didn't care, it was baking hot and sunny and waterslides were very popular. Good job too that FNB gave each child a towel as they arrived!

There was also a marquee with a talent show stage, another place for face-painting and popcorn, and several clowns wandering around, one of whom was on stilts and too tall to get into the shade of the marquees!

We had almost as many girls wanting to play soccer as boys, but with all the excitement of the other attractions (notably the inflatables), getting the rights teams ready and in place was something of an organisational nightmare - but we eventually got some kids playing and they loved it. They didn't get as far as playing for a trophy though, as the lovely people from FNB had yet more gifts for them and then they were all packed off home. But all in all, the kids seemed to have a fabulous day and it was nice to finally be out in the sunshine (instead of the constant rain of the previous week!).

Cow's stomach stew, anyone??

I'm writing this from my new home in South Africa, surrounded by cloud. It was quite surreal to arrive here after leaving Birmingham at 2 degrees, where they had to defrost the plane before we could take off. After going via the heat of Dubai, I arrived to rain. However I was happy because at least it wasn't cold. The temperature is in the low 20 degrees C. Nice.

Yesterday I was straight into Inchanga School to see what's going on there. It was the Christmas party for Grades R to 3 (the rest of the school get a party tomorrow) and there was much dancing and loud music blaring out. Thankfully the rain held off all morning as the whole event was outside.

Lionsraw had donated money to the school to buy a cow's stomach to cook for the children, which is a special treat for them. A small group of Grade 1 and grade R children gathered around me as soon as I got there, including Sanele and Nontobekho (whose house I visited back in August) and they insisted on giving me a tour of their school. However when we approached the kitchen, even they commented on the ghastly smell coming out from there.

When it came to eating it the children had to line up with their bowls and most of them ate with their hands. The smell was kind of like really really smelly cheese, and thankfully the staff knew that we English people couldn't cope with hardcore stews like that so we weren't given any! Most of the children seemed to enjoy it, although a few of the littler ones didn't really want to have it. We managed to retreat away from the kitchen, and therefore also the smell, but when the kids gathered around us afterwards with little paws fresh from lunch, the smell came with them and lingered on my fleece long into the evening yesterday!!

It was great to catch up with a few of my Grapevine children. So far there are 40 children who have filled in a profile and with whom I will start working. They weren't all there though and I also came across a few other children who looked very much like they didn't have much at home. As it was a day when they didn't wear uniform, it was easy to see whose family had money to buy clothes and who was still in the usual outfit they wore to school every day.

Little Sanele, who I visited back in August, was doing well. Although he did tell me that he is still ill and then went on to say he'd had swine flu recently. He looked reasonably well and nothing stopped him from dancing away to the music later on in the party. These children don't have meat often and there was much celebratory dancing before they went off to have seconds.

Sitting with a small group of kids, overlooking some kids dancing and other ones having an impromptu game of soccer on the school pitch, with the sun breaking through the clouds, I remembered how much I love being in this place and how excited I am to see what God is going to do in this place and with these children, each one precious to him.