Tuesday 12th-Sunday 17th - Fruit trees and Goats

Tuesday ended on good note as we were invited to a lovely friend's house from HCC where we experienced a South African braai where we cooked a wurst sausage, basically a long coil of meaty sausage with a lot of smoke and fire but it tasted yummy. So we went home after a blissful shower and with full stomachs!
Wednesday morning we worked from home so armed with tea and coffee and a pen and paper we did some plans for the walls of the pre-school and spent the afternoon at the family centre with the children. We were then sent for from the care centre and when we arrived were told that we were helping move a donation of 180 fruit tees from a van into the front of the centre. When we finished it looked like a forest of greenary, lemon trees, mandarins, plums and nectarines. Our methodical process was momentarily paused when Nicola attempted to stop a goat from eating lemon tree leaves and proceeded to chase it around the building before finally out the gate!
Thursday home vists went really well. I was back with the lovely lady called Jan from HCC who I have been with every other week. Luckly for me, she can't speak Zulu so its all translated by a wonderful lady from Ethembeni. We visited the triplets who I have mensioned before and they have grown up so much just in the time that I have been here! I think they are getting used to me now which is so lovely. They run to the door when they hear the car and they blow lots of kisses at us when we leave. I can't believe that under two years ago they were so close to death and now they are three little buddles of joy (and trouble!) After getting back to the familly centre a lot later than most people and after my lunch of rice and some kind of vegatable stew (every lunch at the family centre tastes the same but changes between meat and veg), I met a group of students from America who are helping out with Ethembeni for the next three weeks.

On Friday before our youth work at HCC we had a meeting with Grant, the director of Ethembeni, where we were given a number of new projects that we are going to work on in the next two months. One of these is for the girls to organise Womens days for the girls and ladies in Mpophomeni so if anyone has any good ideas that we could do then please let me know! We are also starting to plan English lessons for the ladies at Ethembeni because although they speak a reasonable amount of English, they are all keen to improve their comunication and understanding.
I will try and keep you all updated on our projects and what we are getting up to. I hope you are all well,
Lots of love and blessings from S.A x

Tuesday 12th - An exciting new project and a little request...

It was good to get back to Ethembeni after over a week away from the family centre and the care centre because of Durban. On Tuesday we were given one of our main projects for the next two months (I can't believe that we have been here for four weeks already!) which is to paint and decorate a pre-school in Mpophomeni called Grace Chapel Educare Centre. There are 180 children between the ages of 1-6 in four classrooms with 5 teachers! The walls are concrete and bare with the schools colours on the walls, dark orange and brown. The girls visited the school on Tuesday morning and spent the afternoon making plans and setting up a 'Just Giving' page. Our main aim is the paint the hallway to make it more cheerful and to provide bag and coat hooks which will create more space which is desperately needed. We have money given to us from Ethembeni but we need more if we are going to achieve our aim of making it a safer and better learning environment and especially to get the coat hooks made. This a link to our page and it would be amazing if we can raise as much as possible! Any donations would be greatly appreciated and would make the world of difference, especially because the exchange rate from pounds to rand is so good. I will try and post some photos on here when I can,
http://www.justgiving.com/transformsouthafrica
Thank you!!