141011, Friday afternoon, no water again…!!!

 I’m sitting here with my greasy hair and I long for a shower.  It’s slightly on the cloudy side today and I’m not brave enough to face the seawater just yet.  I guess if by tomorrow there is still no water that will be enough motivation for me to go and dive into the sea…   My boys haven’t had water at their house for more than 6 days now…

I’m just reflecting on the kids at the Christian school where I teach.  Many of the kids seem to have a lot of issues and I’m finding it really hard to deal with it all.  This morning I had a serious session with them, reading from the Bible and praying and admonishing them to walk in the light.  It was probably the closest I’ve ever come to giving a preaching ceremony.  They all prayed fervently with me as well, so I really pray a difference will come in their lives…

Everyday there are fights among them because this one stole that one’s papers or pens or cell phone or whatever.  Yesterday someone stole my eraser from right under my nose.  All that was left was the little piece of cardboard that used to cover it.  They steal each other’s notes, doesn’t matter if that person wrote their name on it.  They’ll just scratch out the name so that it’s unrecognizable and replace it with their own name. 

Other than that, some of the boys are cutting themselves with blades and pouring ink into it, giving themselves home-made tattoos of prison groups and wearing studs in their ears and trying to get away with wearing as little as possible of their uniform, always armed with a dictionary of excuses.  It starts with the older boys of about 16 years and then the younger ones of maybe 13 years then imitate them.  Today we had a long meeting discussing how to deal with these problems. 

I think a lot of them also have learning disabilities or perhaps just no discipline at all to even try and study for their tests.  With the results that some of them do well, in the 70s and 80s, while others have an average of about 22. 

(A bit later now, evening 7:43, the water is back on thank YOU!)

I feel a little bit uncertain of how exactly to deal with these kids.  I feel like I need a place and time where I can see these kids individually and have sessions with them like a psychologist. 

Anyway, it’s weekend again in Coffee Bay and I wouldn’t mind a rainy weekend (there is some wild thun-----DER!!!! at the moment…..shoooo that one was dangerously close and scary…!), maybe then the hordes won’t pitch up for their weekly beach party. 

I walked on the beach earlier and there was a young Australian couple walking on the beach, warning me of the broken bottle glass that lies shattered on the beach.  I find that quite sad that DEAT (Department of environmental affairs) don’t seem to care about all the drinking that goes on at the beach or about all the illegal loads of sand that gets taken away here…  Come on guys!  Do something about it!

Ah rain sweet rain… 

121011, Wednesday,the joys of walking

Since there was no petrol from Friday until yesterday afternoon, I walked to school in the morning and have decided that I’ll be doing that every day now, it just means getting up 15 minutes earlier in the morning.  So now my alarm is set for 5:45am.  It also means that I’m ready to fall asleep even before 9 in the evening…  There are children in my classes who get up at 4:30 every morning and I’m sure some even earlier.  That’s a little bit too close to midnight for me…

I normally pass a lot of kids on their way to school.  There is this one particular bunch of kids who find it very amusing when I overtake them at a pace about 3 times faster than their own speed.

About half of them would try to keep up with me and walk really fast for a couple of meters behind me, swinging their arms wildly, before giving up with lots of laughter.  They find it most hilarious.  I’m hoping to inspire all of them to start walking faster in general.  Most people around here always walk super slow.  It might have something to do with the distance they have to walk every day… Haven’t figured it out yet.

I’m having terrible cravings for a braai tonight… 

101011, Monday admin…

Another previous favorite revisited

Spent the whole day doing computer admin, still trying to sort out insurance stuff amongst other things and thankful for some people who are so much more helpful than others…! 

(Thanks to Genevieve from Gallo Images and Portia and Natasha from Photographic Repairs - thanks for going out of your ways to assist a person far away who you've never even met!)

Also part of my admin is of course washing!  Got nice clean sheets again tonight…  Some day if I don’t live here anymore I think I’m actually going to miss these hand wash moments…  It’s really quite therapeutic splashing around in the soap suds under the morning sun… 

 The boys came around a little late and I just tried to get them to learn: “I wash my hands, you wash your hands” etc.  I’m a little bit shocked every time at how bad their reading skills really are…  Sometimes they can’t see the difference between he and she. 

Oh we also had some laughs with some Afrikaans words that they wanted to know and tried to pronounce!  The funniest was ‘vuurhoutjies’, (matches – for those of you who don’t know Afrikaans)

Yesterday I made them snackwiches, their first ever!  And they were quite impressed.  It was a bit like vegetarian jaffles, except I added a great luxury –cheese, as well.  I made it from my samp and bean/lentils soup that really has now turned into a stew and bread that was going a bit stale.  (I discovered that I’ve been buying half-loaves for R4.50 from the local shop, where a full loaf costs only R6 at Ngcwanguba, although not so fresh and of course too far to go to everyday…)  But yes, I must say I also rather enjoyed it. 

And I love those boys more everyday, especially when they do things like wash their own dishes or clean up after themselves without me even asking.  Or wash my car for mahala (free).  And occasionally they’ll bring me a sweet or a packet of chips or something.  One day Buyana had one of those little chocolate éclair sweets and he bit it through in three pieces to share with Aphiwe and me. 

I wish I had money to buy them new school shoes and some new clothes.  The soles of their shoes are so worn trhough, they’re practically walking barefoot.  And I wish Yum Yum peanut butter would sponsor us like a ton of crunchy peanut butter and jam and make bread available at a cheaper price in this area.  There should be cheaper prices and not so much cheaper quality of goods for poor people!!! 

Here nobody drinks Fanta, -Twizza does the job, nobody eats Nik Naks, it’s Sick Snax or something or other with a fake name. 

Psalm 37:11 “But the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace”

And 37:16  “A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked” 

081011, summer Saturday

Another pic from the past... 

What a truly blessed day today was.  Went for a walk in the morning and came back to have breakfast and play a little bit of djembe drum…  I was almost on my way to the other side when Sarah, Sezah and Michael called me from the fence.  They all came for a little visit and we sat outside the tent with Sezah splashing around in my black washing tub, her own personal little swimmingpool.  Had a lovely time…!  When they left I played a bit more of djembe, I’m working on a certain rhythm that I want to get right. 

Then Buyana and Aphiwe came by and we set off for the beach with the djembe, 2 pairs of pois and a tennis ball and one beach bat (the other bat didn’t survive the last session…)

As we neared the beach our little party grew with another couple of random kids who followed and wanted to join in the fun.  Amazingly everyone had something to do and we all had a great time.  The boys were playing cricket with the beach bat and I was thinking that it would be great if we had an actual cricket bat…!

It wasn’t long before some boarders from the Christian school came by, they were also having a beach day.  And pretty soon, Snooks, Layla and Jesse also pitched up with Liza.  They made a nice little shelter with some towels and branches, very inventive Snooks! 

I was super stoked because I had 3 groups of my children all in close vicinity of each other on the beach and we could all hang out together and share the few ‘toys’ that we took.  It was almost a case of 5 fishes and a couple of loaves of bread as everyone had something to play with.  I guess they were all doing a good job at sharing. 

I was amazed at the one boy with hearing problems and what a natural rhythm he had on the djembe!

Mydog was resting on the sand mostly, I think yesterday’s walk put him in pain again…  Sorry Mydog!

Tonight I’m making soup again, adding some broccoli for variety.  It also includes more samp these days and beans that I bought from the ladies couple of weeks ago.  It’s also sometimes turning into more of a stew than a soup.  Good stuff! 

I’m not going anywhere this evening, got no petrol in my car and the petrol pump in Coffee Bay has been dry since yesterday, so hopefully on Monday we can get mobile once more!  The campsite seems very peaceful tonight, even on the outside I don’t hear any taxi parties going on at the moment – can only be a good sign.  (Most weekends you’ll find groups of people having a party outside the campsite, on the way to the beach.  It normally gets quite rowdy as a lot of drinking goes on there, but I wonder if the police has decided to step in this weekend?  Hope so.

Oke, the soup is looking good and I’m getting hungry now…! 

071011, Friday, Happy 1st birthday Capri-Sezah!!!

 Finished early with teaching at the holiday camp, all in all a good experience this week!  Came back and decided to do a little bit of washing since it was a beautiful sunny day and there was water.  Two things that are not always present, around here, so you’ve got to kind of take advantage of it when it is.  Glad that I did that, because right now, 8pm, there is no water again and who knows how long it’s going to last.  Well, it is the first time this week that the water’s cut off, so can’t complain too much.  I’m thankful for my 5L bottle reserves, so I could get clean again.

While I was doing the washing, I just thought of Buyana and all the other kids around here.  Pretty much all the kids also have to do their own washing.  By hand.  And very often, like last week when we didn’t have water for almost 3 days, they still didn’t have water for about another 2 days…  Yet, you don’t really hear them complain. It’s just a part of life.

Today was the sweetest girl, little Sezah / Capri’s first birthday and I arrived at the party just as it was ending.  But all my beloved children were still there and I had a warm welcome and lots of hugs from Snooks, Josh, Asefika and of course plenty cuddles from birthday baby Sezah herself.  One of those days that I wished I had my camera there, just to capture those happy little faces and make sure I’ve got all the images to last me a lifetime of joyful memories.  I guess this one I’ll just have to carry in my heart.

This week has really been full of these kinds of moments.  Small moments that make me feel like heaven must be really close by.  I made Sarah a slideshow of pics that I’ve taken since I came here, mostly pics of Sezah, sharing the love with all her friends, and we watched it when the party was over.  Sarah loved it of course and furthermore it was totally priceless seeing all the kids freak out about it.  Snooks and Asefika and even Josh and Jesse totally loved it.  I think for Snooks it was like seeing a movie with herself in it, she was quite out of her skin.  And I was the contented observer filled with enough love to last me another month.  Only Layla was a bit upset that there weren’t enough pics of her in it.  I hope I get the opportunity to make it up to her in time for her next birthday…

Mydog, Buyana and Aphiwe joined me on the walk to the other side.  We all had walking sticks today, well except for Mydog of course.  We carry the sticks for a number of reasons, firstly just because it’s fun walking with a stick.  I myself have always rather enjoyed a bit of stick twirling along the way.  Aphiwe has gotten a rather long stick, which he uses to practice a form of pole-jumping as we walk.  Not to mention that it’s handy purely for just being a walking stick.  Then of course protection from whatever one may need protection from.  Aphiwe has gotten me quite aware of the fact that there are plenty of snakes around in these parts as summer draws near…  Everywhere we go people seem to be interested in our sticks and why we carry them, hence the thorough dissemination of reasons why we do. 

I must say I really enjoy the two brothers and appreciate that they choose to tag along wherever I go most of the time.  They are also continuously growing fonder of Mydog and I often see them sharing parts of their food with him.  It’s always a joy when our little party sets off on a mission somewhere.  

061011, Thursday, end of 'holiday' week

Another previous pic that I like...

Glad the week is almost over!  It's been a good week with Axium at the holiday camp.  I've got all the lower level kids together in one class now and it seems to be going much better than the mixed level classes I've had before...  Great!  Now I'm really looking forward to having a free weekend, yay!

051011, Wednesday

I don't really know where the time is going these days.  Had such a fun time on the beach this afternoon.  When I got home from teaching at Kwaaimans, Buyana and his 2 brothers pitched up and was in more of a playing mood than a learning English one.  So was I.  So we took Mydog to the beach and played some bats and balls and other beach running-around activities.

Back at the caravan, I cut up my broken umbrella's material and Buyana and Aphiwe made some balls from plastic from which they made their own pois!  

Oh, this is just one of the previously taken pictures which I rather like and since I have nothing new to show, I thought it won't hurt putting it there again.

I don't know why, but lately, perhaps because of the rain and wind we've been having, the clouds have been even more beautiful than usual.  And the sky is this perfect tone of blue that just compliments the contrasted clouds so brilliantly. It's hard to tell if it's just my imagination about that, but I think I would really appreciate having a camera again.