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