280611, Tuesday, A good day for washing. Beautiful sunshine and no wind.

Moses and Lukholo outside their house
The bright room inside Moses and Lukholo's house
The tap closest to the boys' house.  It sometimes goes dry for about 2 weeks at a time...
In Ninti's room

After the washing, Moses and Lukholo came to fetch me and took me to see their house in the hills.  (My students whose parents died  some years ago and they are basically fending for themselves)  We drove in my car and I’m guessing that walking would take an hour to an hour 1/2 one-way.  In the mornings they walk to school and in the afternoon they walk to town and later back home again.  That’s a lot of walking.  For me that would surely be way too much.  And I’m the kind of person who enjoys walking.

They have  beautiful surroundings where they live, quite remote with the blue ocean behind distant hills.  Ninti stays in a separate building a little walk from the other guys.  He shares this building with a girl who lives on the other side of a half built mud wall.  Not extremely private.  The only furniture he has is a bed and a broken plastic chair.  There is no kitchen or bathroom in this picture.  He has a little paraffin lamp.  When these guys want to cook any sort of food it would happen outside over a fire in the only pot they own.

The younger guys stay together in another building consisting of 2 rooms.  Only in the first room, which has the entrance, is anything visible.  A bed, an old chest, a little wooden ‘bankie’.   

 In the other room it is impossible to see your hand in front of your eyes, even in broad daylight.  There is a double bed and I asked Moses if he isn’t scared that there may be a snake and he wouldn’t even see it.  He says that once he heard a noise under a bed and when he shone a torch under the bed, it was indeed a snake that had just caught a mouse…

Sometimes when I’m alone in my caravan I wonder if I’m just crazy or am I even really supposed to be here and why.  When I went with these guys today, it feels like maybe that’s why, if only to be a witness to their lives and the hardships they endure.  When I see their living conditions, I really feel like I want to do something about it, although I’m not sure how.  It’s not like I’m loaded with money.  But I think of those American programs where they do those house make-overs and I try to imagine what they could do for these guys.  I wish I could build them just a little house with windows that let some light in and a little kitchen and a little bathroom and clean linen and a comfortable chair to sit in and read a bit. 

Milli will be on her way here by bus tomorrow!