Happy to have some lunch, not so happy about the rain!The end of term is here and the playground was filled with children in their coats and hats and scarves blowing on their vuvuzelas and generally making a lot of holiday noise this morning!
I took some food down for my 40 orphans for the end of term. As I was leaving from my house there was a man scavenging through our binbags at the end of the drive. I stopped to chat to him and then drove off but then decided to turn back and gave him a couple of pieces of fruit and a few bread rolls that were extra from the kids' food. He looked bewildered but thanked me and shuffled off to the next house's binbags. He can't have been more than about 20 years' old. We live on top of a mountain in a village of big houses and mostly inhabited by whites. He would have had to walk a long way out of the valley to get to our house. An all too familiar reality here in South Africa.
After that, I made my way down to the school where my car was quickly surrounded by eager children. There are many hungry kids in the school and there was no lunch today as it's the end of term. With the translation help of one of my older boys we managed to get the children I worked with into one area and all the other kids somewhere else, but it was too exciting for the children to see what was happening and they still pressed in to see if they could get something.
I took a basic lunch for the children today. They had a bread roll, cheese triangle, packet of crisps, orange and apple. It's not much but anything is welcome to them. The school also gave all the 300 orphans some morvite porridge and some future life porridge, both of which had been donated by other organisations. My children lined up beautifully and waited patiently afterwards for me to take the above photo. Halfway through giving out the bags the heavens opened and it chucked it down with rain so the kids were eager for me to take the photo and let them shelter! It's the first time it's rained here for a very long time and it was strange to see the kids all dressed up with coats and jumpers.
28 of the 40 got a bag today. The others were absent, but word of mouth will let them know when and where to come for more food later this week. I gave the leftover food to Mrs Msomi, who oversees the orphans and she distributed it to other needy children, so nothing went to waste. Although other kids were pressing in to see what they could get out of me, they didn't mind not having anything and just mooched off when told to disappear by a teacher!
Seeing all the kids' hungry faces, I wished I had the funds and the manpower to feed all 300 kids, but I can only do so much. If anyone would like to donate money towards feeding kids during the holiday please get in touch with me at grapevinemanager@gmail.com Food for them will come from various sources but I'll be feeding my kids at least once a week during the next few weeks. If you can't donate, please pray for them during this World Cup holiday. Pray for protection as they play, especially from traffikers who are reported to be lurking as the football brings the world here. As the weather turns colder, pray too for them to keep warm in their places of residences, many of the homes are simple mudhuts that don't cope well with rain and get damaged easily, with big holes in the corrugated roofs. This is a stark difference from the beautiful hotel rooms and guest houses that our foreign football fans will be enjoying over the next few weeks.
