Kids' Club - Water

On Tuesday I only saw my younger group for half a session as some nice people from the water board came to do a special assembly to explain about 'Safe Water'.

South Africa has some of the cleanest water in the world and yet for a lot of people in the valley, there's no access to it. For instance, at Sithembakuye, they had running mains water which strangely stopped working when the water board were doing some work in the ridge in Botha's Hill. Since then they've relied upon the daily delivery by the water lorry who drives around the valley. For a family with nearly 20 people in one house plus a lot of little people in the day care centre, collecting water is a big job. At least there are enough people around to help carry it. Still, whatever the water board did to 'improve' the availability of water to the valley has obviously not been that successful. Someone's water somewhere might be sorted, but a whole stretch of the valley has been left dry, literally.

Anyway, Assembly.

The younger children gathered under a big tree and stood to hear what the water board lady had to say. As it was in Zulu, I only understood about half of it. I think she was explaining to them the water cycle and also which water you can drink and what to avoid. It's good they go round explaining this to children, some of whom might only have the choice of the river or the river as their water source. The river that runs through the valley is a very dark sludgy green colour. Lovely. And they wonder why people construct pipes to tap into other people's sources of water...

Lionsraw Building Projects - Foundations 2

The boys are still hard at work with the Foundations. A couple of frustrations have set them back a little, but hey, this is Africa so it's only to be expected. They had a whole day of waiting for some sand to be delivered to make cement but as soon as that came they cracked on with filling the foundations at Sithembakuye.

The process of building a house is fascinating for the children there, who gather round to watch the boys' every move. There's a daycare centre which is open every weekday so there are always a lot of little kids around. The little ones have always loved jumping in the back of mine or Steve's car and playing in there, so to have a car around for the whole day is magical for them.

Another project is a couple of toilet blocks for Inchanga School and another local charity of builders are helping out to get that started. They've finished one hole for the septic tank and are onto the other one. For too long the school of 1000+ pupils has had 2 small (and very smelly) toilet blocks to use and these new ones will have lovely new flush toilets for the children to enjoy.

The other 2 projects are putting the roof onto a school classroom down in the valley, so that some of the younger children don't have to trek up a very big hill every day for school, and building some changing rooms at another local orphanage to go next to a new soccer pitch.

Despite the few hiccups so far, due to delayed deliveries, the boys are doing really well and making progress. It's also amazing to see my housemates get up so early in the morning - quite a shock to the system!! ;-)

Lionsraw Building Projects - Foundations

tools for cutting grass -a machete - very effective albeit a bit primitive

Ephraim and Petrus at Ehlanzeni, having cleared the way into the school

The JCB clearing land at Sithembakye ready for new house

In about 3 weeks 140 football fans from the UK will descend on this area for Lionsraw Special Project to South Africa 2010. They will make the most of enjoying the World Cup but in between the Durban matches they will be giving something back to the community out here.

There'll be several soccer camps running around the Valley and also 4 building projects. The foundations team for these projects is here now and ready to start! Over the past month or so, the team here already have been getting things ready for them.

One of the projects is to build a new house for the Children's home at Sithembakuye. There are about 12 kids sleeping on bunk beds in one small room at the moment and they desperately need more space. The JCB came a few weeks' ago to clear some more land ready for the foundation digging. It was one of the hottest days of recent weeks and everyone was completely covered in red dust by the end of it. Still, it was very exciting for the kids to watch a digger in action!


Another project is to put a roof onto a primary school building in the valley in Ehlanzeni. There's an existing building structure which needs finishing to provide a school for Grades R-2 within walking distance of most of the kids's homes. At present some of the children take the long hike up the mountain to the primary school where I work, others cram into a community hall with one teacher and a lot of kids! In order to start work there, the high grasses and weeds needed to be removed first of all and we asked the local parents and community to help out with this. It didn't take 2 of them long to cut down the grasses that surrounded the building and that project is now all ready to go as soon as the team gets here in June.

I'll be writing more about these projects as they happen, and about the soccer camps. I'll be helping out the team by taking photos so there'll be much to report on! It's only 21 days now till kick-off....

Mother's Day Weekend

making mother's day cards

Saturday - our beautiful and friendly waitress!

Mother's Day is a really big deal here in South Africa, with as much advertising and hype around it as the forthcoming World Cup (almost!). It was fun to spend a lot of this weekend with my children from GGA.

On Saturday I went to a Mother's Day tea organised by the Grade 11 pupils at a High School in Pietermaritzberg. One of the teenage girls from GGA was waitressing as part of her hospitality course and I went with a couple of German volunteers to be her guests there. We had to give her marks as to how she presented her table and served us. The morning was packed with mothers and grannies and everyone got a lot of presents and a lot of cake! Other pupils from the school performed poems, monologues and songs, all dedicated to the mothers. Another boy from GGA played his guitar and sang and performed very well. It was an enjoyable morning, which made up for the 7am start to get there in time!!

The pupils also praised the Home Economics teacher at the end of the morning. She'd co-ordinated the whole thing. It was quite moving to hear from some of the students how this lady went the extra mile and really took an interest in the children. If any of them had problems she'd even take them into her home to make sure they are ok. That's a dedicated teacher and one who is so needed in this country where so many children are needing that extra help.

Then on Sunday I went up to GGA to do church, but as most of the older children had been taken to the beach on a trip with the volunteers, I only had the smaller children for once. This gave me an opportunity to teach them some action songs, which they absolutely loved. Then we talked a bit about our mothers and the other people who care for them. Nearly all of these children have lost their mothers but none of them were upset about it on mother's day, they just accepted it and remembered the Gogos, Aunties and Volunteers who care for them instead.

Afterwards, the children drew pictures and decorated cards for their carers and one girl actually wrote 'Happy Aunty's Day' instead of Mother's Day. These children are grateful for what they have and it's lovely to see and to spend time with them. It was great to spend a bit of time with sponsor daughter too on Mother's Day, even if she is still a little bit small to understand it all.

Kids' Club - Tidying

BEFORE

AFTER

My older kids were in the same classroom as on Tuesday. As a 'team-building' exercise, I got the kids today to take ownership and tidy the place up. There wasn't room for them all before anyway. The kids set about their task with gusto.

Every Friday after lunch the children are used to tidying and cleaning their classrooms so they knew exactly what to do and did really well at clearing away the mess. Most of it was just put to one side and I didn't dare attempt to sort out the mountain of desks, but we reclaimed a couple to use in future sessions.

School in SA is quite informal and various kids wandered in to help move things as well as looking hopefully at all the stuff. I instructed them not to steal anything and I think this was adhered to, although you never know! A couple of kids came to ask me if they could take stuff, but all they wanted was rubbish so it was fine! Even 'rubbish' can be exciting when you don't have much...

Kids' Club - Pompoms...

check out the pile of desks behind!!

today was pompom-tastic!!

After several weeks off, due to various holidays, I finally got to reconnect with my younger group today. Their normal classroom is being refurbished still so we were put into a hall that is full of school stuff - mostly thrown in there! It was like walking into Aladdin's cave for the kids and I had to check all of their pockets on the way out to remove various chalks and pens that they were trying to swipe...

I only saw the kids for half an hour as they'd had samp and beans for lunch as a special, but it had taken longer than planned to cook and so lunch time ran into lesson time. The children quickly picked up on how to make pompoms when I showed them the craft activity that we are doing for a couple of weeks. Even the Grade R child was making good progress. There was a concentrated hush in the room as they focused on winding the wool onto the cardboard disks and all were amazed when I demonstrated how to wind on a new bit of wool and change colour. How great to be a small child and to marvel at something so simple! These children don't have many toys and I'm sure these pompoms, once finished, will be treasured and not trashed...

Zulu Wedding

Umabo - Day 2 of the wedding, the bride throwns sweets out for all to catch!

Dancing out of the hall at the white wedding!

This weekend we were invited to celebrate Chris and Sissy's wedding, a white wedding followed by traditional Zulu wedding in the valley. Chris is well-known in the valley and it turned out to be quite an event.

On Saturday, we arrived at the hall where the white wedding was to take place at 9am, as it said on the invitation. This being Africa, nobody else turned up until at least 10.30am! Typical. There was a further delay when the bus transporting most of the wedding guests, and the man who was giving the bride away, didn't turn up until about midday. Everybody was good humoured though.

Soon enough though, the ceremony was underway, with many many speeches in Zulu. Thankfully they brought the food out at the same time so we could feast on the usual beef curry, rice, and beans and mayonaise mix (my favourite!), followed by ice cream, fruit cocktail and custard. To the Zulus this is special occasion food. Delicious on any occasion. I remain constantly thankful that stinky cow's stomach is not the food of choice for weddings!!

The highlight of the white wedding was the bridal party who danced their way down the aisle out of the hall and then danced back in to sit at top table. It was a cross between zulu dancing and line-dancing and was brilliant. All bridal parties should be made to dance in and out, it adds to the fun! I'll upload the video onto youtube.com soon enough. It was hilarious.

After the white wedding, everyone headed to the valley for the traditional part of the wedding. Unfortunately, being slightly behind schedule, the festivities didn't quite go to plan as it got dark, but before the light went completely, we all headed to a local soccer field and there was a lot of dancing by the bride's party, complete with girls in traditional beaded costumes which were more than revealing. The groom's party marched on to the field with their shields and sticks and gave an impressive display of strength. Part of the tradition is that 5 virgins are paraded in front of the groom in case he wants to choose one of them instead. These girls were clad in only a small belt of white beads and walked across the middle of the field in a line with their heads down as a sign of respect and submission. Not the kind of thing you'd expect at a wedding, it was a bit weird. But for the Zulu people, breasts and nudity are not a problem and so nobody seemed in the slightest bit perturbed by this display.

As we walked back up the hill to the homestead, I was grabbed by the mother of the groom and helped her cope with the steep hill. Once at the top, she insisted I accompany her to a rondavel where she went on and on in Zulu about how wonderful I was and how she saw me as a daughter. Thankfully her grandson came in to translate and to explain that I wasn't interested in being married off to one of her sons. Steve and I managed to escape shortly after that as the party was rapidly descending into a drunken frenzy of dancing and zulu beer!

On the second day, for the traditional party called 'Umabo', we decided that the 9am start on the invitation was perhaps 'African time'... We arrived in the valley at around 11am and already most of the people we chatted to were extremely merry. On this day, the bride brought presents to her new husband's family. There was a blanket, pillow and reed mat for each member of the family. The blankets were all laid out in the cattle kraal, and as the bride's people handed over each one, there was much ululating and dancing by the women. The older women came in traditional beaded costume with extra padding to make their hips as huge as possible!

Whilst this was going on, men hacked up 2 cows which had been slaughtered for the occasion. There were bits of cow everywhere you looked and hopeful dogs loitered around to fight with the gathering flies. The meat was cooked for dinner later, but we'd left before it was ready. It was morbidly fascinating to see all the parts of a cow left out to dry in the sun and to watch the men try to crack the scull with a blunt axe! Hmm, lovely. The smell was just of beef, but it lingered in my clothes long into the evening. It was interesting too to see a fresh cow's stomach, having given them to the school on a couple of occasions to feed the children. It looks as disgusting as it smells!

After the present-giving, the bride presented a new double bed and toiletries to her husband and he lay down on it. However, pretty much as soon as he did so, all the young girls accompanying the bride chased him off with sticks and he had to run pretty fast to avoid a beating! Then the bride took bags of sweets and threw them out into the watching crowd of men, women and children, most of whom had been enjoying the sunshine and copious amounts of beer. The sweets were soon snatched up and not a single one lay on the ground. The bride's party then trouped around the various houses and rondavels, singing and dancing and leaving a small broom at the door of each building.

Later on, several groups of locals turned up in traditional dress, either Zulu warrior costume or just multicoloured trousers and tops. They performed all sorts of dances and everyone rejoiced! It was a real sight to see and great to be a part of it. Everyone was pleased to welcome us there as this was deep in the valley and white people are always welcome at Zulu feasts!

Nobody was worried about drunk people, especially the older women. Several extremely merry women accosted us and even the Zulus couldn't really decipher what they were trying to say. We ended up giving one woman and her bottle of stout a lift out of the valley to Inchanga although she couldn't really explain where she wanted to go to! We helped her a little bit on her way and hopefully she got home ok, although she couldn't tell us where home was...

It was a great weekend and a real insight into the whole wedding thing in Zulu culture. I'm thankful that I won't have to see another dead cow for a while though! ;-)

Elephant-tastic

For the Freedom Day Bank Holiday, we went up to Hluhluwe Game Reserve for a spot of safari. Steve's friends Jo and Chris were visiting from the UK and had never been to a Game reserve so it was a good opportunity to go.

As ever, my goal is to spot some big cats - lion, leopard or cheetah, I'm not fussed.

As usual, they were nowhere to be seen.

However, this particular trip was a good one for elephants. After the first hour of driving and seeing nothing, just as we were starting to get a bit disheartened, we turned the corner into one of the loop roads and came across a whole herd of elephants, big and small, about to cross the road in front of us.

Elephants are the most dangerous of the animals in the park, as there are more of them than big cats and they can turn your car over if they feel like it. The advice is to stay at least 50m away from them and not to annoy them. We were a bit close, and the car in front of us was closer still, and one of the big elephants was not too happy about us being here and made clear signs to stay put or back off to allow his family to cross. We were only too happy to oblige!

After that family had crossed and many photos had been snapped, we continued on to find another 2 herds of elephant wandering around the same area. A truly magnificent sight! Elephants are so big and so gentle looking, munching their way through the trees. They can run extremely fast if they decide to do so though and we didn't want to test them on that.

Further on, and back up the hillside, we looked down over that area to see a very large elephant completely blocking the little bridge that we'd crossed earlier, preventing any cars from proceeding. What those people couldn't see was that round the corner another herd was wandering up the middle of the road, maybe they got fed up of fighting with trees and fancied something firmer underfoot. It was fascinating to see the behaviour of these creatures, and to admire the way they watch out for each other.

Several hours later, and having seen lots of rhino, zebra, giraffe and warthog, but sadly no cats, we were losing light fast and headed for the exit. On the way out we passed an even larger elephant enjoying a feed on a little tree. This finished our elephant-tastic day off nicely!