Day 17:
This morning I woke up early to upload 135 pictures on
facebook. You’re welcome everyone because
it took 2 hours and I wont be doing it again until I get home! J You can find the album on my page (annie
elble). I think I made it public but if you need to, you can friend me. The rest of the pictures wont be posted until
probably August 1st when we return from Zambia.
We headed back to GrowMore Wholesaler as Bheki mentioned
that if we added another 25kg bag of mealies to our already purchased food for
the kids, that then it would last the families until December when we
return. When we got to GrowMore with our
already full tiny Nissan Livina, we overestimated how much room we had in our
car. 10 25kg bags are HUGE and
heavy. We calculated that with the 5 of
us and the bags of beans, rice, mealies, cooking oil, sugar, etc that our
weight was a half ton! Our tiny Livina
was weighted down so much that even the tiniest bump in the road made us bottom
out. I had two 25kg bags of mealies on
my lap the whole drive to elangeni – it weighed about what I do! Additionally
the mealie bags are not entirely secure so I just want to apologize in advance
to Dollar Rental Car… they will have quite a mess on their hands but it was for
a good cause!
We went to the Primary school and fixed all of the
computers! All it needed was a simple tweak of the screen resolution and BINGO!
We have 7 working computers each with Open Office and 5 JumpStart educational
game systems! Oh my goodness, such a
relief. We taught a teacher how to use the
programs and he actually studied computer science in university so he already
knew it all. He said that he was
thrilled to get the computers because the school appointed him to be the
teacher in our lab. He is already
creating posters for the walls with pictures and words indicating the basics
(how to turn it on, what the desktop icons are for, etc). Super exciting!
Then we went to the secondary school and met with 4 of our
boys who’ve been too busy to meet with us prior to today (they’re on the dance
team and other evening obligations). It
was so nice to meet up! We had them fill
out a questionnaire with what they wanted to be when they grow up, what they
like to do for fun etc. Its so cute to
see them grow up and change their minds a million times (just like me!!). We told them we would be stopping by their
house later to drop off some food.
Delivering the food to our child-headed households was
strategic. We had to go to the
homesteads first that had the least amount of rocky dirt road leading
there. Our car was bottoming out
constantly. We took the food to all 10
families with Bheki’s guidance. Nate
asked whether the roads had names in the rural areas we were traveling, and
Bheki responded that they do not have names but people mention them based on
landmarks – like turn at the street where you see all of the trees (Um, there
are trees everywhere) or at the fork in the road turn on the street going up
(we’re on the side of a mountain, everywhere is up). Luckily he knew where everyone lived, so we
made it just fine. When we got to Lungelo’s
house, he lived up a dirt road that was too steep for the car. Bheki started yelling his name and I told
Nate that that is the Swazi doorbell.
Two minutes later Lungelo came running down the hill with a wheel
barrel. Perfect. Next we went to Siphesihle’s house. He did not come running and Bheki was
upset. In Bheki’s mind, everyone needs
to be like “New York” and hurry hurry everywhere. We found out Siphesihle wasn’t running to
fetch the food because his asthma has been acting up. Bheki told him that asthma is a demon and he
held his hand on Siphesihle’s forehead and prayed to Jesus that the demon would
leave so he could breathe again. He kept
yelling “Asthma GO AWAY, GO AWAY NOW” and the whole family was standing around
praying. If only it were that easy. I’d scream my brains out for AIDS to take a
hike…
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