Water

One thing I've been thinking about recently is water and how we should never take it for granted. I was so miffed yesterday because I didn't take my camera with me when we went down to visit our friends in the valley as I could have taken pictures of just how difficult it is for some people to obtain water!

Our friends have an orphanage and 13 kids live with them in a very small house. For about 4 months now their mains water supply has been erratic, mostly cut off, with occasional times when it's on... They have a big water tank in the yard and a smaller one too. They haven't not paid the bill or anything, the water should be free for them, and for everyone in the valley. There's a certain amount of water allowed for free.

So, a big water truck has been coming round to give them water. Yesterday it came around while we were there. It stopped up the hill from the house and we had to take big buckets (probably 20Litre capacity) up to the lorry to fill up. They have a bigger water container which they filled from the smaller buckets from the lorry and then decant back into the medium tank, via the smaller buckets, walking back and forth up the hill each time. Sounds like a lot of faffing around? It was. And the annoying thing is if the lorry stopped just 10 metres down the road at the gate, that would have taken a lot of stress out of it. And the even more annoying thing is that the lorry driver promised to stop on his way out of the valley and fill the big tank for them. But he didn't.

This is a family of 15 who obviously need water to wash, and drink and cook and all the normal things you'd expect. The water from the lorry is mostly used for washing, it didn't look that clean. Recently the people delivering water from the municipality have started asking for R200 cash to fill up the tank. That might not sound like much but it's supposed to be free and it is a lot when you have not much money and many mouths to feed. R, who runs the place, has been to the offices to complain about it, but it seems the complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

Spending time down there is giving me a local's view of the life in the valley and the everyday frustrations. Even the simplest of things, like delivering water, are subject to corruption. And what choice do they have? They need water to live.

Inchanga latest...

A few days ago, I managed to set up our account with Givengain, check it out on www.grapevinesa.givengain.org
So far I've only put on the Home visiting programme and the Feeding programme. More will follow soon. It's also really easy to donate money through this website and it's safe and well-established.

The latest from the school is that the teacher responsible for the orphans is sorting out the names of the 40 most needy children for me to work with. When she's done that, hopefully by Monday, I can start to get alongside them. The way I'm going to do this is by going into the school twice a week and running clubs with them. On Tuesday I'll have Grade R and 1 for half an hour followed by Grades 2 and 3. On Thursday I'll have Grades 4-7 all together. These clubs will hopefully start the first week of February. We'll do some fun activities and I'll teach them more about Jesus and how much he loves them and give them an opportunity for them to encounter him for themselves. It should be VERY interesting to work with the smaller ones as their English is non-existent!! ;-) I love a challenge...

After a while, when I've got to know these kids better, I'll start visiting their homes. Some of them live right down in the valley, or right up on the mountainside, often fairly cut off from decent roads and it looks like I might have to walk a fair distance with them to get there. The teachers have expressed concern about how we might get there, but I really want to see where these kids call home so that will be an adventure when it happens! I'm still living in hope that we'll have a suitable car by then! Keep praying it in.. no sign of one on the horizon yet... I'll only visit the 40 to start with, and we'll go from there.

In addition, we're in discussion with the staff about them feeding the children on a Saturday. This would be for all the orphans in the school. Last year there were 300 of them, the final figure for this year has not been worked out yet but it will probably be somewhere in the same region as last year. This is exciting as the staff are getting themselves organised, all they need is some funding to get them going. If you'd like to help out, check out out givengain website!

As for the land that we're trying to get hold of for the Children's Village... it all seemed to be going so well when I managed to talk to the local Councillor last week, but then he asked me to call him back after 20 minutes and since then I've been put through to answerphone... Hmm, not happy... Politicians, eh... Now I'm going to have to go to his office and wait for him. It's in the middle of an area where few whites ever venture so that could be fun!

So, things are moving on and within a couple of weeks we'll be up and running...

First Day of School

Yesterday all the schools in South Africa opened their doors to welcome back the children of this country with open arms... It's the start of a new academic year, along with the usual reports in the news of establishments without any equipment, overcrowding and disputed exam papers etc.

However, down at Inchanga, there were none of those problems. The first thing I noticed when I popped in at lunch time was that there were so many kids milling around and yet it was so quiet! It was like a reverent hush was over the place. I imagine it's the awe of being back in a place of learning, or the new experiences for the Grade R's just starting. Or maybe they were all just in shock at being back at school!

In any case, I managed to track down a few of the children on Grapevine Foundation's programme to say hello and check they are ok. We're still establishing who exactly is on my programme. I started with a list of 40, over Christmas that number of names went up to 100. Some will have moved up to High School and there will be new children joining the school right up to Easter who might need help. As there are over 300 orphans in the school, there's no shortage of kids to help. So next week, when term is underway, I'll be sitting down with the teacher responsible for the orphans and we'll work out who's on my programme. Despite the apparent confusion, there are still a few kids who I already know and so it was good to spend a little bit of time with them.

As I wandered around the playground, it was amusing to hear the littlest pupils gasp when they saw me and whisper 'umlungu' (white person) to their friends. These children live right in the valley and there aren't that many white people around, so it really could be a shock for some of them. (Incidentally, they are always fascinated by the veins in my arms, as they can't see them on their arms. Also, my fingernails seemed to be popular yesterday for some reason... ) A few of the children were bold enough to just come up and start talking to me, or touching my hand to see if I was real. Wherever I walked, there would be a small train of children desperate to be in a photo - they shout out 'shooter' which means photo/camera in Zulu (nothing to do with guns!) and then all pose. There's a fair bit of pushing around and shouting at each other to smile but it's usually good-humoured.

It looked like the majority of kids were happy to be back. For the orphans, school is a source of regular food and some of them can get their clothes washed too, so they would be especially happy that term has started. Children were chatting with their friends, climbing on the mound of gravel (supposed to be on the road but it's not been finished yet), scavenging in the rubbish pit for interesting papers, looking longingly at the soccer pitch or just cleaning up after lunch. The Gogos who sit on the peripheries of the playground to sell the kids little bags of sweets and crisps were back in force and doing a roaring trade already. Children were making the most of whatever they could find to play with, writing in the dirt with sticks or practising a bit of zulu dancing. School is definitely underway!

Newsletter Jan-March

I've just put out my latest newsletter by email and also as a note on facebook. For some annoying reason I can't cut and paste it onto this blog anymore. If you follow me on this and you'd like to receive the newsletter but don't at the moment, please send me an email to:

grapevinemanager@gmail.com

and I'll get one to you!

Feeding the kids 4 - the last one before school starts!

We were so busy today that I only managed to take ONE photo...

Today was the last time we fed the kids before school starts next week. As I had frozen the left-over beef stew from 2 weeks ago I added to that with potatoes, sugar beans and mixed veg. I ended up adding more frozen veg than I had originally planned as my fridge/freezer took a beating during an electrical storm on Sunday night and all my frozen peas had defrosted!! (one of the drawbacks of living on top of a mountain, we also had buy a new modem as that blew up, and most of my plug sockets have died!! Have to work out an insurance claim now...)

Obviously, word about the bumper week last week had got out as we arrived to 50 CHILDREN waiting for us, that's double what we have been feeding. We'd kind of planned on feeding 30 kids this week as that had been roughly the number we've been getting. A lot of kids on my original list returned today. I think that possibly they've run out of the food given them at the beginning of the holiday, or else they'd just heard there was food. In any case, I now have 100 children on my list to follow up. That's a third of the total orphans in the school.

However, the beef and beans seemed to go round and be just enough. They had some bread too and we had just enough lemon biscuits to give them one each. There wasn't enough porridge but they were incredibly patient in waiting and accepting whatever was given to them. I made sure that the younger children all got some porridge to take away, everyone in Grade 3 and under got some. They also had some apples and bananas so no-one went away empty-handed. Praise God that each child got something to eat and was happy!

These few weeks have been great to get to know the children a little bit better. When such a lot come it's difficult to catch up with each one, but some children have been coming regularly and I'll start off by following them up when term gets underway. From Monday, when they return to school, they'll be getting 2 meals a day (Monday to Friday) and we'll be looking into what we can do to help out with the other meals. Now I've got some thinking to do about how to approach the next stage of caring for these lovely kids.

Feeding the Kids 3 - Flint Family Special!!

Getting the take-away food ready to hand out.

Mmm, polony sandwiches... ;-)

Ready to head home with heavy packets... Thank you Flint Family!!

The Flint family (from Lionsraw) helped out with feeding the kids last Tuesday (29th Dec) and generously provided all the food and drink for the kids. It was a veritable feast for them!

On the menu were polony sandwiches, which is kind of a pink luncheon meat with a label 'no pork' on the side of the packet (I guess that's for those who don't eat pork, but it does make me wonder just what it is made of!!), cold baked beans and mayo mix, crisps, apples and bananas, and milk to drink. To take home the kids had cabbage, onions, potatoes, carrots, soya mix, maize meal, porridge and more fruit. Seeing them heading off with their heavy bags was great. Some of them have perfected the art of carrying bags on their heads and set off like that.

27 children turned up, which took my total of kids on my list to 85. Each week new children turn up and we'll feed anyone who comes. We even gave some to a child from another school who was loitering and Neil managed to pray for him too.

For the first week or two the children had been quite shy and had just eaten, taken whatever we could give them and then left. This week they were a little more relaxed and chatty. My communication in Zulu is improving too and I managed to give a whole set of directions to them and they understood - hurrah! I can't wait to get back to studying more Zulu when customs finally release my box of belongings later this week (a month late - that's not bad for this country... but seeing as the majority of my clothes are also in the box, I'm looking forward to getting it soon!!)

Outside, as they were posing for a photo, the boys were telling me that they are going to call me 'umlungu', which translates as 'white person'. I told them to call me Caroline but little Sanele called me over and in Zulu said to me something along the lines of 'But you are MY umlungu'!! Sweet.

Everyone left happy and full. Thanks again to Neil, Debbie and Alexandra for all their help this week... Siyabonga Kakhulu!