Catch Up!!

Alright, here's my catch up of the last few weeks. The day after coming back from Lesotho, we went zip lining through the jungle! We were pretty sore from the horse back riding the day before, but it was bearable and so worth it! It was a really fun experience for a quick day trip!

The first weekend in March, we went on a field trip of historic battlefields for our History of SA class. There was going to be a lot of driving so they rented a luxury bus for our drive. This was a great idea because we were all so much more comfortable then we would have been, so that was so nice for us to have! The best way to describe the weekend was that it was.....interesting. We stopped at about four different battlefields on our tour in a matter of two days. We had a tour guide, Tony, that traveled with us and told us everything there was to know about each battlefield. Tony is 75 years old and comes from a military background. He did not have tolerance for pretty much anything that went on. He would get upset anytime someone even so much as yawned! On the other hand, he was such a fountain of knowledge! I couldn't believe all the details he knew about each battlefield we visited! There was so much information to take in in a short period of time, so that's what made the weekend kind of a lot. On Friday night, we reserved an entire hotel called the Royal Inn! The Inn was a quaint little place and has been around for about one hundred years. It was really nice to get off campus for a little while. The food was so delicious; they fed us until we were about to pop!! After dinner, we sat around and talked with Reg, our school president and Life and Teachings of Jesus professor. He invited us to ask him any kind of questions we wanted. For most of the night we ended up asking questions about the biblical matters and SA. Reg is filled with so much wisdom! We all throughouly enjoyed asking him questions and having this discussion with him and want to do it again sometime soon. Lauren and I stayed with our neighbors, Sarah and Melissa, in a room. We had a great time! We stayed up late talking about all sorts of things and all slept on the same bed! haha Definitely a girls night, but we loved it!

So maybe I should quickly explain how classes work here. When we first arrived I was taking four classes at one time: Intro to Zulu, Life and Teachings of Jesus, Human Growth and Development, and Intercultural Communication. We do not receive any credits for the Intro to Zulu class, but it is beneficial because most of the people we come in contact with in our service sites speak Zulu so we need to know the basics of their language. I am now finished with Human Growth and Development, Life and Teachings of Jesus, and Intro to Zulu. Intercultural Communication is still going and will be over in about three weeks. We also started Community Engagement last week and will be finished with it in about three weeks as well. This class goes along with our service sites and we are learning skills we can use to help work alongside the community in this course. We are taking a break from our History of SA class and will start up again when we get to Cape Town and will last for two weeks there and then will be officially done! :)

So last Thursday, we started our service sites! I am Ethembeni with six other students, including Eli, and will be there for the next three weeks. Ethembeni means "places of hope" and is found in the Township of Mpophomeni. Mpophomeni has a population of about 43,000 people where 80% of the people are unemployed and one third of the people are infected with HIV. We will be specifically working at the Family Center. On Thursday, when we got there, we met Clair. She has visited twice for volunteer work and has just moved here from England for three years in order to work at Ethembeni. She handles organizing all the of volunteers that help out at Ethembeni. After meeting Clair, we went into the playroom to play with the 12 toddlers that are cared for throughout the day while the older kids are at school. They were so excited to see new faces and start playing with us! One of the little girls, Akhona, is three but looks like she is about one year old due to malnutrition. Because of this, she still crawls and is unable to walk. I played with her on the slide over and over again and she loved it! I also let one of the girls play with my hair for a while. She loved it and so did I! haha I love when people play with my hair and she loved braiding it and doing other things. Of course it was in a big not when she was done, but it was ok because we both were happy! haha There is also a little boy who is new to the family center. He arrived two weeks ago and cries every single day. We still don't know why he cries, and will try to find out as soon as we can. His older brother is also at the family center and is there to comfort him. In fact, the caregivers often use him to make his brother stop crying. After we played with the kids for a while, we sat down with Clair, Grant (who is in charge of the staff), and Nambo (who is the main caregiver) to talk about the expectations we have of each other. We told them that we are here to do whatever they need us to do, but they also gave us a lot of freedom in taking charge of many tasks and activities with the children. So we have a lot of planning to do! Some ideas we came up with was painting a mural of the world and maybe another mural in their main room, helping in the garden, and organizing their facilities better. One part of working at Ethembeni is that we are paired up with one of the social workers here. I am paired up with Phindile, the care giver/social worker of the 12 toddlers. Basically I am at her disposal in whatever way she would like to use me and also I am going to go with her as she visits the children's homes. I don't know how often we will be able to go, but I know we will get a few opportunities. The language barrier was a little difficult, but it was ok. Obviously our communication will not be perfect, but it can be frustrating in the moment. Talking to the older kids is easier and we are hoping we can learn some of the younger kid's stories from the older children.
We were so excited to go back on Friday! And the kids were excited too! When we walked into the play room, they all got up and ran to us! We were under the impression that we were going to be go visit the community for a few hours in the morning, but it ended up not working out. We were all bummed but they said that we could go on Wednesday instead and we will also be visiting some patients on Thursday. So while we did not get to go out into the community, it gave us an opportunity to start cleaning out and organizing their office, their play therapy room, and a closet used by a local church. The play therapy room functions as another closet because they have not developed it fully into what they hoped it would be because all their clutter keeps getting thrown in there. Our team cleaned out and organized the play therapy room and the church closet. They will be even more improved later in June because another group has planned to come and they have more resources than we do to fix their problem of lack of storage space. The office, play therapy room, and the closet look so much better now! It was a nice simple task that we could accomplish for them, and gave them one less thing to think about. So while we were cleaning out the office, Kailey was cleaning off a shelf and found some transparencies of the world! We were so excited because this would make the mural we wanted to do so much easier! We then thought that all we need now is an overhead projector. We tried to think of who we could ask someone to maybe help us get one, but then decided to get back to work and think about it later. After we got over our excitement, and went back to work, Alex was clearing out stuff and stumbled upon a box. She looked at the box and just started saying "No way!! No way!!" because it said overhead projector on the box! I riped open the box and inside found a brand new overhead projector!! We were all filled with shock and amazement!! Another thing we accomplished was that we wanted to give the staff pictures of all the children to put in their files because not all of the social workers know all the kids. All the kids are known by one or more of the social workers, but they would like to be able to know all the children by name. Cynthia took every child's picture that was there and will print them out over the weekend to be added to their file later. We were also hoping to decorate another wall in the main room with their pictures because they love to look at pictures of themselves! I am absolutely in love with Ethembeni and am very interested to see what God has in store for the next three weeks!