Well my computer charger has been broken and I have not been able to blog in quite some time. I am working on getting caught up but a lot has happened in the last month! So here it goes! Dan and I went to visit another volunteer in her village. She lives only about 20 minutes (walk) from the beach.
We were in heaven and we were the only ones there. We had some local boys walk us there and it was great to get to meet them as well. Dan and I ended up staying the night and tried to fetch a taxi the next day. We waited for an hour for a taxi and one never came. Kelley’s host uBaba (father) took us to the taxi rank and we were able to get back from there. I swear you can wait all day for a taxi and it is not like ours where you just pick up the phone and call one. Things to get use to!
I have been working on my community needs assessment and I wanted to do some community surveys. I had Julius pick some families for me to go out and survey.
I asked them questions about their community involvement, youth, nutrition/health, education, and recreation. I learned that there is an extremely high stigma about HIV/AIDS within their village and I hope to get some education out there. There is also not a clinic in their village so they have to travel rather far to get tested or treatment. Throughout this survey, I was able to meet some community members and get their personal interpretations about their community. I was really glad that I was able to go and I can’t wait to work with this village more often.
I was also asked to go and meet with the iNkosi again. I met this guy and had a pretty good conversation with him. I did my best to use my very broken isiZulu and he used his broken English, between that it seemed to work. I had Julius translate what Flat Mommy was and he thought it was hilarious!
So the PC will allow us bike allowance if they feel we need a bike. I did not originally apply for a bike, but my APCD told the PC that I should get one because I live so far from work. I finally decided to get one and Dan got one the same day. I am pretty sure we look awesome rockin the Huffy’s! We had quite the experience assembling them and would have returned them if it had not been for Grandmere and Grandpere. It shows that us Americans automatically assume that it was packaged wrong when really we just put the handlebars on backwards! Woops, after taking it back apart, it works like a champ!
Sugar cane here is a huge industry. Cane fields surround Empangeni and I have wanted to try to eat it. I asked for someone to bring me a piece to try and Mandla finally did. It is pretty much impossible to eat! He made it look so easy and I could not figure out how to do it. Here he peeled a giant piece and I have a sliver!
So you bite the side of it and pull with your teeth. This takes the hard side of it off. Underneath it is like fibrous plant like crap (hard to explain) but it is just saturated with sugar juice. You bite it and get all the juice out and then spit out the fibrous stuff. Very interesting, I thought it was just far too much work but I am glad I tried it.
Well here you have a few minor tidbits from May. I hope to get started on my Trip to Pretoria this last weekend! We will see how that goes. Sorry this format is so funky today! I miss and love you all!
Saturday the local Rotary and one of the banks planned a food collection for the welfare at one of the local shopping markets. We paired up with them and just asked people to help support the local families who are struggling during the winter. I was amazed by the amount of food that was donated! We were there from 7:30 to 3:30 and filled the back of two bakkies (trucks) with food. It is amazing to see a community pull together to help families in need. The Rotary and Nedbank also donated R15,000 to the welfare and they want us to use it to buy blankets and food. I don’t think we will need food anytime soon so we can help keep people warm with some blankets!
Today is Fathers day and it was a pretty good day. I would have loved to be at home with my Daddy though. Luckily he is enjoying the company of good friends and the sun in Lake Powell! I sure do miss him! Dan and I decided that we would make Grandpere and Grandmere breakfast for Fathers Day. So we made French toast and bacon. It turned out great and they seemed to like it. After breakfast we went to visit another family that Dan met at church. We had a big cooked lunch and enjoyed the lovely company. After that we came back to my place and had another home cooked meal that Grandpere cooked. It’s easy to see why I am packing on the pounds! All in all it turned out to be a great weekend!
