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