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!!
