South Africa 11 - falling over cliffs, emotions and other miscellaneous objects...

well, well, well...blogging has become secondary to everything else that's going on here!! For a while I was worried that it was going to become that thing that I always did on evenings, weekends etc - but true to my very good good intentions I have cut down on internet hours. Everyone else on the team would probably scoff at that (I have gained a reputation as being addicted to chocolate, sleep, the internet and talking too much...) - but if you're my parents (or my laptop) you would be impressed!

Here is the lovely run-down of my past week!

Tuesday 20/05
Spent most of the day at CCP driving around trying to find/dropping off/picking up posters to be laminated. Much fun....man at the shop wouldn't barter a price for us as an NGO if we laminated 50-odd A1 posters with his business...so we are still looking to see if we can find a cheaper place anywhere else to try and ensure that CCP are going to be budget for all the cool posters we want to make them!
Then cell as usual. Challenging, yet good fun! It felt like an entire week had passed already by that point! I was quite ready for another weekend! Alas, it was not the weekend and Wednesday rolled on in.....

Wednesday 21/05
Did an assembly with the entirety of GCS(Gateway Christian School) all 247 kids watching....featuring myself, Jenny, Izzy, Jonno and Phil (while Hannah and Abby went for their first combi driving experience - or should I say non-experience as Zamazulu(the school) cancelled the lesson and I don't think the combi has started since!)
The assembly was ALOT of fun (even though we all thought that it was pretty much going to be a shambles) we all had a letter of 'PEACE' on our fronts and I have never heard such a loud version of 'alleu, alleu, alleu, hallelujah' in my life - it was truly deafening!! and Hannah and Abby even got there in time to video the song!
The rest of the time was spent at CCP doing posters, sitting in HIV community support volunteers meetings and running to answer the phone(as everyone else went to continue the volunteers meetings at the school!)
Got feedback on the IT proposal I made for the school - and will definitely be there on Wednesday all day to start off things in that department - which makes me happy!!
Wednesday eve was brilliant - we had a girly night in with Kylie(from the school of fashion) - ate much, much, much choc fondue =D, watched a (rubbish) girly film(Her Best Move) and stayed up very late to let the boys in after their marathon footie watching sess (man u vs chelsea). Lets jst say Thursday morning = v.v.difficult to get up!!

Thursday 22/05
Abby and Hannah were both feeling pretty rough on Thursday so after sitting through some meetings Abby went to sleep off her cold. And while Hannah stayed around for a little while longer to help me with some more poster-age she left shortly before the weekly debrief(the first one we've actually been around to attend!) so it was just me - answering questions such as "what were the successes and challenges of your week?" - the answers to which were "laminating"(check out my exciting life!) and "getting used to working with Hannah and Abby"(perfectionists :-P)
don't remember much else about Thursday.....stuff happened?

Friday 23/05
Me&Hannah headed over to CCP(after the ever awesome time in chapel and having a quick chat with Becky) leaving Abby recovering frm her cold on her day “off” which I am assured was anything but – but at least she wasn’t running around CCP with us!. Friday may aswell be the weekend in SA! No-one really appears to be in work and if they are at work - they are not doing much work. So we did some work; bought some stationary and then tried to make more posters without the necessary card (there had been no card available at the shop we went to and we didn't have time to go to another shop (bearing in mind that CCP is currently operating on 1 car and many people need picking up from various schools and churches at varying times!).

Friday night we headed out for some much needed time away from prison walls and had dinner and watched a movie (what happens in Vegas….ignore the reviews its hilariously funny!) with tommo(absolute gangsta!) who goes to our cell group/NCF!

All great fun – except that was the last time I had my camera – and despite going back to the cinema twice and leaving my details with the security people – it is no-where to be seen :’( Cue much more money spending :S simply because it would be an absolute tragedy not to take any more of my own photos on this trip and secondly because I’d want a camera when I got back to England anywys – and chances are its cheaper out here.

Saturday 24/05
ABSEILING! Need I say more?

107m is a long way down – I was very nervous before I started (I was in the last pair of ppl to go – so waiting did get rather dull and irritating) but as soon as I started doing it I found that I was fine. Even the first look down (which everyone had documented as the worst part) was surprisingly OK – I just sort of thought ‘OK – that’s how far I have to go – lets give this a go’

How impressively hardcore of me!

Unfortunately there was more sitting in the harness than there was ‘walking’ backwards (there’s no weight going through your legs) as there was extremely little grip on the rock and with no weight through my feet it was exceptionally difficult to keep my legs at a parallel angle to my body! Some practice is needed if I ever intend to repeat an abseil experience (though something tells me that any experience after this will pale into insignificance!)

I had a little difficulty doing down in a straight line as I was sat a little off-centre in my harness (or at least it felt like it!) and so I kept swinging to the left into my partner’s rope which left me spending a lot of time trying to go in a straight line and keep my legs on the cliff – until I gave up trying to abseil properly and just sat back and enjoyed the view of an 107m waterfall crashing into the lake while lowering myself down – which was a whole lot easier! Getting into the boat at the bottom was surprisingly easy (even if there was some sogginess involved in the process!)

The climb back up to the top (which I had conveniently forgotten about in my eagerness to actually get down) was rather arduous. Beautiful scenery but more time was spent climbing over rocks and focusing on how not to trip over rather than admiring the view (we knew the rest of the group would be eager to get home by this point so did not linger to admire the scenery – not that I had a camera with me to document anyway!)

There is a slight black hole in my memory regarding Saturday night – I think we watched a DVD – not very sure though!

Sunday 25/05
Was going to go to PCF – but woke up still utterly shattered so decided to go back to sleep – weekends are the best!

Wandered around a little while after brekkie and then got invited out to lunch at the mall by Dean (cell group leader)

That was fun – and I had my first clamping experience – in that Dean got his car clamped while we were having lunch because we hadn’t been able to find anywhere to park so had found a nice square of pavement (which reminded me of the parking situation when working with the NHS…..) I was very glad that my first clamping experience was not mine own – and found it pretty funny until dean argued the charge – so it got doubled(!)

When we came back from lunch I had a splitting headache so went to sleep for approx 2hrs – which pretty much cleared it up – but I promised myself I would get more sleep!
Church on Sunday eve was pretty awsum and as usual I stayed up far later than I promised myself I would!

Monday 26/05
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on a Monday morning! Who? Me? Never!
But surprisingly enough Monday morning was enjoyable. Getting up wasn’t that difficult :O

Very intense devotional time at CCP followed by more stationary buying and epic poster making (in relation to the last days of the previous weeks in which we had not been able to make half as many as we had planned due to lack of supplies.) this new burst of productiveness made me feel a lot more motivated and useful than I have done in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here and serving and working. But this culture is soo different it was nice to be able to measure our work by our own, far more comfortable, standards! Not better standards (even though we might occasionally think so!) just different standards!

The rest of the week has much in store; GCS’s founders assembly tomorrow (no idea what that entails but we’re helping out with refreshments afterwards!), school’s IT room on Wednesday and nothing too hectic planned on Thursday as yet! Hopefully we’ll be passed to drive with CCP soon as this will expand our list of roles and responsibilities (even though they only have one car – we’ll be praying and hoping that we can still be of use and that they would be able to source another vehicle soon)

On Friday we’re going to renew our visas (which could take quite some time – we’ll have card games at the ready…) and then this weekend we will hopefully be going to the beach! In Durban! Though we have yet to fully organize that – so we shall see!

Peace out! xox

South Africa 10 - Life @ PG

So, now that we're working the week is simply flying past. The days are long - and as always I feel tired until about 2100 but then can keep going for absolutely hours at that point. The 0630 mornings are becoming a little harder everyday; but amazingly still a lot easier than getting up at that kind of time in England has ever been which is a definite positive!!

Here's a summary of my week and a bit! Sorry it's been so long - I just feel rather anti-social to sit down and type sometimes - so will definitely be trying to keep things shorter!

Monday 12/05
Went to CCP for the day with Hannah and Abby - staff meeting 0800-1100. They always start with worship and d/v (devotional) time - best thing ever! Then a lot of nitty gritty as they have recently begun procedings to break off from Project Gateway's umbrella as they are getting very big(there are other very complicated reasons for this move - but we are only just starting to brush the surface of what our role is in the organisation let alone in the bigger 'politics' of these things - so we're waiting and seeing. i don't think it affects us as volunteers - and that's the main thing at the moment!)

We also got our 'timetable' (i use this phrase very loosely!) for the week and i think (my memory is a little hazy at this point in time!!) that abby and hannah went to Georgetown Secondary while i was going to Nontiwele (no idea if that's the right spelling!) to teach the children about HIV/AIDS.
I jumped into the combi that was taking us and they drove off; and despite my polite musings that i was sure we had left someone behind (the guy who had told me which car to get into hadn't followed me) but they continued insistent that everything was fine(i mean i was a newbie after all!)

It then turned out that we were going to a church creche first and then onto the school so that was interesting as I saw a large, understaffed creche in a very small space for the first time (hence the falling in love with a month-old baby in the previous post) and as the meeting was conducted completely in Zulu and wasn't translated I have no idea what was going on! Whatever was being talked about was certainly sobering and challenging for the staff - and as this was my first day part of me thinks that it was easier for me to stay in a cloud of fuzzy misunderstanding!

From the creche we went onto the school. At the school the lessons are also done nearly solely in Zulu to make sure the learners(students) get the best understanding of what is being said - which is fine - tiring to stay alert-looking after a while tho!

Tuesday 13/05
I spent alot of time in the same school observing the facilitators from CCP interact with and teach the children. It is so tiring to be in that environment for essentially the whole day because I found I was continually checking my behaviour, how people were responding to me (and the others) being there, feeling slightly(!) out of place because of being white etc etc. Indeed, by the end of the day I found myself surprised when I occasionally looked at my hands and discovered that I wasn't black!!

Wednesday 14/05
I asked to spend the time back at Bethany House because I wanted to see what I could do practically to help rather than spend time being driven around and observing lessons which were beginning to make me feel rather useless (not that I told them that - I know it was very important for me to see and try and understand where the staff of Bethany House work for me to be of any use at all!)
I made a start on re-doing some of their informational posters about HIV/AIDS which they take into the schools with them - as they normally just write out info out on flipchart paper and take it with them.
Hannah, Abby and I have been working hard on that since then - and although most of my original plans were scrapped because Abby is an absolute and complete perfectionist(i know she won't mind me saying that coz that was the reason she used to change them all in the first place!) - the posters are really taking shape! And, although we seem to spend far more time on them then seems relevant (proportionally) we are hoping to be able to laminate them so they will last far longer and be far more useful to the staff in the long-term.

While I was doing that Hannah and Abby were having a more detailed tour of the community work of CCP - so that I sort of feel that I should've jumped on the combi that morning - but I found out more about the history of CCP in a meeting that Rob (one of the overall managers/facilitators whose house we looked after for the weekend a while back...) did - so I was gald that I was there for that.

Thursday 15/05
We spent the day at CCP doing posters; followed by a light lunch with the staff - which was a lot of fun and laughs! Then we had a 'debrief' session which was supposed to be serious but the 'stress-relieving' game we played at the beginning (Zip-Zap-Boing for those of you who are interested..) turned into a full on tournament which eventually turned into a dancing/singing session followed by an in-depth discussion about marriage/men/family (all the male members of staff had wandered off by that point..)
so we stayed chatting for awhile and then came back to Gateway - where we found Becky and the tourism dept in a flat-spin as they had had a last minute booking from 19 pastors to stay in cell accomadation that weekend. And also that the Jo'burg Oasis team were coming to stay for the weekend because of the escalating violence in the Jo'burg townships prohibited them from working in their usual projects.
Much fun was had looking for random keys in the large disorganised pile of keys in the office(which is our to-do list for sorting....)

Friday 16/05
After a hectic four days we had another day 'off' from our respective projects and met up with the few members of staff for the fledgling projects onsite (Hands and Feet) who collect and distribute donations to other smaller community projects in need and run the hospital feeding schemes etc.
We went out to one of the creches in one of the nearest townships(Edendale). Unlike Thandi's creche which we visited with Di, Edith and Becky a couple of weeks ago this creche had not been done up and painted by previous teams. There were 20-30 odd children between 0-5years in one of two small rooms which this woman had on the side of her house. They had virtually no toys or stimulation and some of them were quite scared of the cuddlies and various other toys which we took with us. We also took some food and some blankets as its now getting 'cold' in the winter(i will never get to used to calling this weather winter!!)
It was fun to play with the children but it was incredibly difficult to begin to process the conditions in which were doing so. The room was small, dark and the smell took some adjusting to! The children seemed to be less apprehensive of us than the children at Thandi's creche which was the opposite of what I was expecting but lovely nonetheless.
We were there till lunchtime and we had lunch given us by the staff of H+F when we got back to PG - which was difficult to accept as they had spent most of the time telling us how their over-stretched staff situation was exacerbated greatly by a shortfall in funds at the moment.

Spent some time on the computer and then had a very long and rambly conversation with Kylie (working in the Gateway School of Fashion) which lasted literally several hours till the Jo'burg team arrived after being rescued by Hannah and Phil from driving into a township!
A huge amount of lasagna had been cooked so we mainly just ate and chatted for the rest of the evening - till the majority of the Jo'burg team headed to bed after a 7hr odd drive and we were in bed not too long after.

The weekend 17/05-18/05
The weekend was different to how I we had planned - but alot of fun. The Jo'burg team headed out to the beach very early on Sat. The Wildcat Girls followed into Durban (more specifically Gateway Shopping Centre) several hours later. With some brilliant driving under pressure from Abby!
I wrote about Gateway Shopping Centre in my church magazine when I was writing about my pending trip to SA a couple of months ago as a method of contrast to the type of work I would be doing and the environment I would be working. And boy, is Gateway Shopping Centre different.
Its absolutely HUGE. Hannah, Izzy and I spent basically the entire time on one floor! Didn't act do that much exploring of the centre which I now regret, but at the time I didn't think doing one floor could possibly take that long!
I didn't buy much but spent a lot time jst soaking everything in - can't say that it'll be one of the things I can say was the greatest use of my time out here - but it was alot of fun to spend time with the girls and to at least see the 'largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere' which I feel I would have 'missed out on' had I not gone - even if in reality that wasn't quite true!

Saturday evening we gave the boys a present and a card as a thank-you for letting us have the car to go to Durban and back(no, we didn't think it would make it either :-P good old cedric!)
and spent some time chilling out before a late bed for me - because I was 'too tired' to actually go and get into bed!!

Sunday morning we said goodbye to the Jo'burg team early – hoping and praying that they will stay safe despite escalating violence in the city - as we went to church with Edith and Irene (older members of the Project Gateway crew, surrogate grandmothers to everyone and anyone - including the Wildcats and general legends/local celebrities).
They took us to ECC (Eagle Christian Centre) which was an experience and a half! Exuberance isn’t quite the word! The worship was pretty awesome and the preacher was a bishop from Lesotho who loved to keep his congregation awake (the loudest sermon I think I’ve ever listened to!) and yes, everyone else on the team loved it when I jumped due to the noise level going from quiet to loud very quickly….you know what I’m like!!

We all shook a lot of hands and hugged a lot of hugs, everyone was so welcoming!! Although I feel I should be getting used to that by now!

We have in fact been invited to their outreach event in a couple of weeks time because they were so impressed with us(may I add that we did nothing other than what most normal Christians do when they visit a new church – which is generally sit there looking nervously excited and join in as best they can!)

After a three-odd hour service we headed home for a ‘make-your-own’ lunch and a few of the hardcore shoppers headed out to do yet more shopping while the rest of us took a bit of time for chilling out/general headspace. I sat in the sun and read =D. Sunday was the first day I truly missed home – because of one of the songs we sang!! And so that was unusually tough because I had gotten used to the idea that I really wasn’t going to miss home very much at all. It was all fine – just had to be conscious not to wallow and sit around thinking about home too much!

We then ran the childcare for a special service which was going on at PCF – some amazing things happened in that meeting – which we were unfortunately not able to be in – but we had a rather chaotic time keeping 20-odd kids of a rather large range occupied for the best part of three hours – was a little insane at times – but all good fun!

Monday 19/05
Spent most of today at CCP – another brilliant devotional this morn and then time spent simply making some more posters/typing up lesson plans for the staff. Then a meeting about our holiday and what we want out of it with Becky and some general chill-out time!

This week I think we get to start driving vehicles at CCP – which scares me somewhat – but just want to get it over and done with really!
Have also set aside some time to really spend some time in the school IT room – looking forward to getting my teeth into that!

We are also going abseiling this weekend down an 100 and something foot waterfall this weekend in a town about 30-60mins away which I am really looking forward to!

Hope alls well

Peace out x

South Africa 9 - Thief

Yesterday I went out to creche run by a church and sat in a meeting that was done entirely in Zulu - so I had no idea what was going on!
The highlight of the morning was holding a one month old baby from the creche. She was a tiny scrap of life; light, warm and cuddly with the most beautiful face! I wanted to sit there forever.

On the way to a school to do a HIV/AIDS lesson I couldn't stop thinking:
Are her parents still alive? And if so, how much longer might they be?
What will happen to her in the future?
Does she have a future?
Does HIV already limit how long she can live?

I wanted to run back and scoop her up and take her far away from the reality of a packed out creche with no where near enough workers/volunteers to look after the number of children there.
And yet I knew that I couldn't and that I never would.


Occasionally one of the workers swaps into English when they're teaching the children; at one point later on that day one of the workers said that HIV "steals, kills and destroys"

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:10

HIV is the thief.

South Africa 8 - a country of extremes

Tuesday 06/05
We headed out to "Thandi's" creche in Edendale with Becky, Di, Edith (head of the rural house industries - she has become the team's surrogate grandma - she's absolutely amazing - and is running by far the longest exsisting project at Gateway - as all the others have chopped and changed with times and funding!)
We were driving a car that still belongs to Gateway but which another staff member (Zephy) normally drives. At first it felt like luxury with something like power steering - but it soon transpired that the gears were very difficult and the bite point was very, very low - compared to our normal caar where the bite point is exceptionally high. So there was alot of stalling and non-smooth gear changing on my part. The immobilser also took awhile to get figured out so we remained very inconspicuous when our car alarm went off numerous time when we trying to start!
Anyway, the drive was OK - I had my first tries at driving off-road and up (and down) very steep mountain sides. Brilliant fun and rather stressful! Thirsty-making work, A-Mazing views.

We bought crayons and took them with us - we also had colouring-in pics. When we got there all the children were lined up and sang and danced for us. The boys headed out to the garden to help plant some plants. Us girls went to do some colouring with the children and then played with them. It was far too hot to be outside, but it was so much fun to play with the children - so small, cuddly, ticklish, fast runners and absolutely loved our cameras! I'll get round to putting these pics onto Facebook sometime soon!!
It was our first taste of what a community(township) looked like - and our first glimpse into the reality surrounding the poverty in SA. Surrounded by such amazing, panoramic mountain views with such low quality housing and roads. Heartbreaking.

When we left at around lunch time we were all hot and tired, but the guys were suffering alot because of working so hard in the heat so high up.
When we got back Jonno, Phil and I sat in a meeting for the donor marketing and public relations meeting (DMPR) and listened to lots more stuff regarding how the department works and what needs doing. Phil and Jonno have got very stuck into the admin work - I dread to think how long their to-do list has become in this week alone!
At the end of this meeting I headed down to the school to spend some time with the children in the after-care scheme - the other girls were down there - everyone was playing on the jungle gym (a wooden playground basically) - I stayed down there for about an hour and a half; everyone else drifted off during that time because they were feeling the heat and we were all tired.
When I finished at 4 - I was heading back up to the school and was met by the other girls who were making get-well cards for the boys who had crashed out. The girls headed out to the supermarket to get some medicine for Jonno who was burning up and had suspected flu. Phil was being stubborn and refusing to get into bed though he looked pretty rough.
By the time it came to organising getting to cell-group Jonno was in bed; not going anywhere anytime soon and Phil was wandering around admitting to "feeling worse". We had bought them medicine, soup bowls (our bowls are glorified plates), chocolate bars and despatched the get-well cards to them - signed by many, many ppl from around site!

After a fair amount of discussion Abby kindly volunteered to look after the boys and make Phil go to bed soon and us girls headed out with Dean to cell group. Dean was amazed to hear the lengths we'd gone to to look after the guys and veto-ed from being ïll"by being informed that we had no sympathy for man flu!!
Cell group was good - the prayer and worship sess was amazing - all us girls were sure the guys weren't gonna be sick for much longer! There were less ppl there than last week - was alot of fun, good chats were had and some very yummy food was eaten!
When we got back Phil had wisely gone to bed and Abby had been an Ab-star and cleaned the kitchen until it sparkled!

Wedsnesday 07/05
Despite our best efforts to keep both boys resting in bed Phil was up fairly early and Jonno followed a little while after. Jonno, Phil and I spent the day in a fundraising training session run by Di. Abby and Hannah went over to Bethany House and went on a schools visit in the afternoon and Izzy and Jenny spent the day in the school. Jonno had several naps during the day which was cool but Phil seemed to be almost over it! :D
After the fundraising session I spent a couple of hours sorting out the photo discs which I've taken on as part of the work which needs doing in admin. It's repetitive work - but nice to do in the afternoon as it doesn't require too much brain power!
Then in the evening we headed out to Becky's house to watch a film called 'Faith Like Potatoes' amazing stuff (i'm in the process of reading the book which preceded the film)
Check out this review(although don't read all of it unless you want to know the whole story):
http://www.joymag.co.za/mag/3-2006/3-2006-angus.php
and Angus's website:
http://www.shalomtrust.co.za/
In the first week we here Angus Buchnan (author of the book) held an annual conference on his farm called Mighty Men - 60,000 people attended. Insane!

Jonno was alot better in the evening and it was a while before we were back at the prison due to the amount of chatting, table football and pool being played!

Thursday 08/05
I spent the day in CCP with Hannah and Abby - we spent the morning in a training session on giving lessons to high school(secondary school) students about sex. Much hilarity was had, and we all learnt something, which we were not really expecting!
Then in the afternoon we headed out to two schools (Abby and Hannah at one and I at the other - of course we were all with a team of staff from CCP).
Again we were out in the communties; however the school I was headed out to had cancelled all the afternoon lessons for Sports Day which they hadn't told us about (apparently the schools regularly chop and change the timetables without informing CCP so this is a frustratingly common occurence for the staff)
Because I didn't get to go to the school in Imbali I went out with Rob(overall manager of CCP - whose house we lived in a couple of weeks ago) to Georgetown High School where Abby and Hannah had been for the afternoon. I sat in a meeting with the principal about continuing the teaching with the children and making the school a centre for VCT counselling (compulsory counselling before having an HIV test) and HIV tests.
The school buildings and resources made Gateway Christian School look like Buckingham Palace - and I am forever re-evaluating the way I look at things.

Finished work at 3 because there was a staff only meeting so came back to PG and sorted some more CD's and spoke to Mrs Bennett in the school about the two afternoons a week when I will come in and start looking at the IT room and teaching some of the children how to play some board games.
Went to a prayer meet at NCF at 6 with Jonno, Phil, Hannah and Izzy while Jenny and Abby wanted to stay here and chillout.
Came back and had dinner and then watched Cars on DVD -- although only Phil and I "watched"it to the end as everyone else drifted off to bed - i say "watched" because I think we were both more sleeping through it than watching it!

Friday 09/05
Went to chapel on Friday morning and then discovered our car (the one we were using as a temporary replacement) wouldn't start. The start motor was turning over(making a very unusual noise) but the engine wasn't starting. Much activity commenced. Jumping leads were used and we got the white car started from the green car's(our normal car) battery. However there is no reason why the battery should have been flat coz we didn't leave the lights on overy night and the battery is only four months old! When the white car did start it wasn't running very well so the tyres were pumped up on the green car(which was the problem making the car unsafe) and we used that one instead (so nice to drive with gears that I can find without too much hassle again!)
We spent the majority of the day at a feeding scheme run by Life Ambundant Ministries in Edendale. We spent the first hour or so chopping and peeling onions, carrots and potatoes which we had bought and taken with us. Because there were eight of us; Pretty (the team's assistant) was with us as she can speak Zulu, we finished preparing the vegetables pretty quickly and essentially sat around for approx 3hours (apart from the odd stirring job) until all the people came to collect food.
There weren't as many people there as we thought there would be - and they appeared in dribs and drabs - and hearing some of their background stories made for some serious reflection time later on....
I helped to serve out the pap(made out of mealie - and well, not much else - has the texture of playdough and doesn't taste of much). It was BOILING hot - and I made good use of my families seemingly genetic trend of burning themselves and had a very painful thumb by the end of the session.
Had my thumb in cold water for about half an hour when we got back - and it now doesn't hurt at all - but the time I was very worried!
We spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from the heat and sun and I spent yet more time sorting CD's! We went down to the youth group at PCF and there was another DVD session about relationships and sex (me, abby and hannah are going to have heard an awful lot on this subject by the time we are back in England!!) We unfortunately missed the beginning worship sess as they started early (unheard of here I tell you!) and I was pretty gutted about that!
After that we all headed out for a meal as we'd prepared enough food that day!
Brilliant fun was had - I managed to jump and laugh hysterically alot!
Then we headed back with very full stomachs and hit the sack. hard!!

Saturday 10/05
Lie-in! YAY! well. if 0915 counts in your book. it would never normally count in mine, but I was so refreshed to have almost three hrs extra sleep!
Rather disjointed morning - until we finally made the decision to go shopping. I wasn't going to go until everyone else decided that they would and i decided I'd rather not stay here by myself so I went and brought a bigger bag to carry my stuff around in and some very cool PJ's. Was very, very busy at the mall and rather tiring and stressful to be around. And while some of the team were in their element. Several of us were bored easily! So after food and delibaration I drove some of us back and then Jonno headed out to pick up the more hardcore shoppers who weren't quite ready to leave when we were!
So, it is Saturday evening and I am not too sure what we are doing this evening, we need to plan out all the exciting activities we are going to do in our remaining 14 weekends(?!) and start thinking about the things we want to book for our two week holiday! fun times!
We've also managed to not track down the person who is currently in posession of the laundry room key so we're in a slightly interesting position clothing and underwear wise but hopefully that will resolve itself soon!

I'm still trying to get my head around being able to drive 10-minutes in one direction and ending up at the gate of an exceptionally large house with a pool, tennis courts and fully equipped rooms and then driving for another ten minutes and ending up in front of a shack with a tin roof which is lucky if it is supplied with electricity or running water. Obviously that is a slight exaggeration as it often takes more than ten minutes to reach the more remote areas...but the principle still applies.
I find it hard to deal with - as are other people on the team - but then that's one of the challenges of coming here from a very priveledged background and all of the Oasis teams will be dealing with it in one form or another.
One of those things I was hoping I'd prepared for, but in reality you can never truly prepare for things like that!

Can't wait for Monday morning(!) when I go to the weekly briefing at CCP and find out what I might be up to this next week!
Also looking forward to my church services 2moro!
(Did I mention I could quite happily stay here for a lot longer than is currently planned :-P)

Peace out x

South Africa 7 - the working week begins(almost!)

Saturday 03/05
You know about the day, the evening was alot of fun - we went to the cinema for a late night showing - which was very fun - a very large quantity of cake was consumed beforehand! *


*Starbucks may not have made it to SA yet (praise the Lord!) but Mugg&Bean should definitely break into the UK market - their cakes are insanely good - and HUGE as well - I might stick a photo on sometime - but then you would all realise what a fattie I'm being at the moment - so maybe i won't!!*


Sunday 04/05
I went to PCF (the church onsite) in the morning - brilliant times - so chilled out and a completely different experience to NCF - far more multi-cultural which is brilliant!

Then we went out with Dean to the big mall near us for lunch @ Spur - my first steak for a long time :D
Then our almost-weekly food shop (we go shopping fairly regularly for all those little things that always get forgotten!) with Hannah, Jenny and Izzy while the other three came back to Gateway - as Jonno hasn't been feeling too well (I've managed to pass my cold to Izzy and Jonno it would seem :S)


We were back just in time (after a slight detour onto the highway....my mistake!!) for Jonno, Izzy and I to go to NCF for the evening service - was brilliant - felt more and more like we have actually found friends there :D

Monday 05/05
Well; we thought we were going to be starting our projects this morning - but that hasn't quite happened(!) things seem more concrete in my mind - but that's just becuase we're talking more about time-scales now - and are sort of starting to get things done!
I will be spending the majority of my time in the community care projects - as well as helping with admin (on the IT/computer side of things) and hopefully abit with the kids from the school aswell as hopefully getting their computer room closer to being usable (i didn't think i'd been doing that at first - but its been suggested to me several times - so I'm going to give it a go and see how far I get!)

Jenny, Hannah and Izzy are working to produce some movable display boards with the info about Gateway and the projects which is currently on the seminar room walls. So they're busily researching and budgeting that!
Unfortunately Jonno is not feeling so good - i think it might be something like the flu - but he's very good at not moaning so I'm not too sure!
The car has gone to the mechanics as there are some things that need fixing - so is strange to not have a car.
Abby went driving for the first time(as she's been pretty nervous about the whole thing) this morning -she went out with Hannah who is very good at navigating us round P.M.B - I'm not so great at that atm - mainly coz it takes me quite a while to get a journey embedded in my memory - we're all getting there tho.

From all reports Abby did very well - and will be volunteering alongside myself and Hannah at Bethany House - which we're all very excited about :D

Heading out to a creche 2moro - and then off to a fundraising course as part of our intro to admin (its mainly Jonno, Phil and myself who are looking to be involved in the admin in some aspect or another!)
All very exciting!!
Peace out x

South Africa 6 - good, relaxing, frustrating times!

So, we didn't exactly get to Howick on Thursday as it rained in Howick - so there wasn't exactly much point in having a picnic. So essentially we didn't do much.
Nothing much on Friday either - although we have been out a couple of times on shopping trips and one unorganised late night cinema trip!

That's been fun in the sense that we're not really under pressure to do anything. No one has been onsite at all really, most people are on holiday and making the most of it! It's also been incredibly frustrating as these last two days have felt like an incredibly long time! We're all looking forward muchly to Monday - with some apprehension - but we have all got some kind of vague idea where we will try to head out to on Monday morning - so hopefully all should go smoothly!

On Tuesday we are going out to one of the creches in the townships and on Friday we're going out to help out with a feeding scheme at a community centre - which will take up most of the day. So while this week isn't going to be a full week of work in our projects its still going to be pretty hardcore!
I think now thursday and friday are over its alot easier to look ahead to next week and really enjoy the weekend.

This morning (saturday 3/5) the guys cooked pancakes for us girls :D even though we ended up having long lie-ins because of our cinema visit last night! It was so nice! They were so great about it and even spent some time encouraging us girls - such gentleman - when they want to be!
joking :P
We also had a really great devotional time together as a team which was challenging but ended on a really upbeat note and has made me feel reallly positive about the week ahead.
I think that its starting to hit home for a couple of people that we're not here for a holiday but here to work.
For me, that hasn't hit yet, I'm not entirely sure that it needs to (we shall see)
it's been interesting!

we've also decided what to eat and what to do 2nite - which is unexpectedly organised of us - considering our pattern over the last few days!

So this week is looked forward to and hoped for.
Let's hope things run smoothly!!

Peace out x