Friday 25/07
Chapel was brilliant. A very mixed bag indeed. The certificates were given out to those members of staff who have become certified tour guides/first aiders in order to show tourists round Gateway site as the Gateway Tourism Initiative increases in momentum.We got read the tour guides code of conduct (fun!)Rob invited everyone to the party that CCP are having next Thursday to celebrate moving and shared a little about his own personal side of leaving the umbrella of Gateway - which he and Debs have been working in for five years in different roles and thinking/praying about for seven years. It was very moving and I think most of those gathered were crying/hastily blinking by the time he finished.
After chapel it was more moving of boxes&other miscellaneous objects (oh the joys!). It was very much down to the three Oasis volunteers to complete the task of emptying the cabin outside CCP which is being dismantled and reassembled on the new site. It was arduous work once again but we kept up an impressive pace (we unloaded one load off the bakkie in 5mins flat!).
After lunch we went back to the old poster making and were very nearly locked in an alarmed Bethany House for the weekend!
In the evening Phil and I went to NCF Youth - it was packed! The husband of the lady who spoke at Ladies Night did the sermon (they're on a visit from Australia) - he was full of beans - he had soo much energy!
We stayed pretty late chatting to many people - both of us beginning to realise that NCF has begun to feel like it holds security and friends for us! Of course we always felt welcomed by the awesomely friendly people there. But its taken quite some time for it to feel like we know people to initiate conversation with...
Saturday 26/07
This was the schools 'Family Fun Day'.
Jenny and Izzy had been working towards organising a musical/dance extravaganza with all of the school children - a performance from each grade (school year).....which is no easy feat when you're working on Africa-time, teaching in a language which is not their mother tongue and have not had that much notice on the whole malarky.
But they pulled it off and it went down an absolute storm!!
I was only involved in a bit of the cutting out stars and organising props/stage set etc - and was only able to watch about 15mins of the show (an hour and a half long in full!) due to helping out on the cake stall(which was pretty hectic/tempting stuff!) with Naomi.
But the parents went mad for it and I have heard nothing but absolutely glowing praise about it since.....according to the school we've set a precedent for future Oasis Teams (eek....sorry guys :-P)
After an exhausting day of being up and around at 0730 on a Saturday(!), moving things, selling cakes, painting faces (I was quite impressed by how they turned out considering my lack of painting skills and my fear of how badly things went last time I painted a child's face.....)
, grooving randomly, chatting, baking in the sun etc etc we were all absolutely knackered so...what did we do?
Headed out to a restaurant called 'The Butchery' with Naomi, Ru, the N.I. team, Mama Dora(resident cleaner, zulu teacher and all round legend!), Becky(teams co-ordinator and a lady called Wendy who used to work/mostly volunteer at PG!
I went out with my face painted like a tiger (not a lion for anyone who's inclined to fall into that fatal pothole of error...) because it was far more interesting than applying normal(boring!) make-up and was amazed that I got taken seriously by my friends/waitrons(thanks Fred..) well, indeed, by anyone! But they managed it somehow! I think I may have been disowned by Jenny and Abby in the process though!
Jules (from the NI team) made her way through 1kg of steak and a litre of beer(don't worry she's not under Oasis rules...) which cost much less than a 10GBP.....i'm going to miss the cost of eating out in SA!
It was a lot of fun! We all went home and crashed!
Sunday 27/07
We slept in (surprise, surprise!)
Had a some nice chats with Abs, Hannah and Phil.
Izzy and Jenny hid themselves in the teams room and threw themselves over what they were doing/made us stand and face the wall whenever we went in!
Later on, when we had got to the botanical gardens, all was revealed as we were given a star each with a thankyou message and a yummy chocolately goodie that they had made for us - it was niiice - we also had lunch at the gardens - which is always yummy!
We made our way back to Gateway and then headed on out to NCF in the evening.
A classic Sunday at Gateway I believe!
Monday 28/07 - Wednesday 30/07
So, I'll admit it, these three days have blurred somewhat significantly in my mind - and because I've left it so long to blog unfortunately there does not appear to be anyone to help me out with remembering this blip...
Essentially, we spent three doors of lifting and carrying and sorting at CCP - which generally resulted in plenty of fatigue.
One event which sticks out in my mind is when we (Hannah, Abby and I) attempted and were forced to stop to sort a room out at the bottom of the garden in Loop Street which had been ransacked a few months ago and had had a lot of things tossed into it when Beatrice and Benson rushed to move out in a week. Unfortunately we were not in a position to clear out personal belongings - and so, after about half a day of hard graft, we were asked to try and fit everything that we'd thrown outside (in an attempt to be able to at last clamber around inside) back inside. I believe this event could be epitomised as frustrating!
On Monday the team went to the mall and had Nandos and watched the latest Batman - which I enjoyed about three minutes of in all.
At times it felt like I was watching one of my own nightmares back! (you know the ones where you can't see any hope or light at the end of the tunnel).....However I did have a great amount of admiration for Ledger's performance of the joker -as he portrayed the more disturbing sides of his character amazingly powerfully - it was difficult to watch in places though - as we know now that having to get so into character probably ultimately contributed to his premature death
earlier on this year.
So yes, on Tuesday eve it was cell as usual - always a fun time!
On Wednesday we met up with Debs to discuss how things were going on the whole making-posters front.....because of the move things had been delayed somewhat - but it was good to summarise and make sure we knew where we were at!
Thursday 31/07Thursday was a nice but sad day. It was the last day of CCP running from Bethany House.
We had a slightly longer devotional time than we had on the other days where we had a day of moving ahead of us. We said sad farewells to Sarah (who worked on alot of the admin which ensued from the school assessment days) she has previously worked in high places in Kenya and was moving to new pastures working/studying at the university in PMB.
Unfortunately Hannah, Abby and I had been slightly out of the loop with this news so had no idea that she was leaving - so that was tough to find out.
Ru, Hannah, Abby and I did not set out to be lazy that day - but it happened anyway! There were alot of support workers busily working around BH - so much so that we struggled to find jobs to do. So we did the sensible thing and sat in the sun chatting for a couple of hours!
This was brilliant fun - especially when Hannah tried to help Pastor Richard only to be told
"No, no - you sit down again - you girls have been working too hard - when my daughter grows up I never want her to be enslaved the way you girls are!"
I have to say that that cast a whole new light on the word volunteer :-P
The time came around when it was time for the family and friends of CCP from PG and beyond to join together for a time of praise, speeches and biriani (Indian rice and meat dish which we've had a lot of while being here!)
It was alot of fun with Rob&Debs kids running around and providing us with plenty of entertainment - we went to Loop Street and back again (I never quite made it there as one of the kids lost his 'flops'!)
Again, I don't recall what we did that evening - I'm sure it was fun!
Friday 1/08Chapel was good, it was Ru and Naomi's final week in chapel so they got plenty of well-deserved praise and encouragement - also made our farewells in a couple of weeks time seem alot more real :S
There was a classic quote from Mthoko(site manager and all round legend)
'I was thinking in my head'
which just made me giggle - so thought I'd share - even if it was a bit of a 'had-to-be-there' moment!
The rest of the day passed in a blur of shifting things around in Loop Street and taking group photos of the CCP family.
The short-term August Oasis guys; Jo, Emma and Adam (with Flo coming separately to Gateway - but is on that team aswell) arrived from Durban and we said 'Hi' and 'Sawubona' and all those other things when you meet jetlagged Brits who are trying to get their heads around Zulu culture!
In the evening we had Naomi and Ru over for a meal - and they stayed in the cells overnight...leaving plenty of time for take-out pizza, sardines (a more complicated/glorified version of hide-and-seek) outside in the dark, banter, an encouragement session and plenty of D&M's (deep and meaningful conversations) until the early hours of the morning - so that was cool!
