Day 6:
Today was more hectic than I planned but it all worked out in
the end. We still had two more stoves
and three more sets of meals to deliver but had no idea where the homesteads
were located. We drove around to the
homes we knew in search of our remaining students’ phone numbers or directions
to their homes (I was hoping for the prior because directions usually amount to
“turn on the road by the school and then go up up up the mountain until you
reach a rock then follow it until you reach the largest tree and then keep
going up up!”)… No such luck for either.
Then, I called our village facilitator Bheki (aka the busiest man in the
universe who is always running!) and lo and behold, he was in eLangeni for a
meeting and would take us to the remaining homesteads. Crisis averted. Thanks Bheki!!
After our work was complete, we played mini-basketball at
the Msibi homestead and hide-and-seek at the Maziya homestead. Philo is my size
now, so I told her to walk me to the car where I stripped down my jeans, shoes,
and sweatshirt for her to have and wore my Swazi wrap home. We leave tomorrow for America and I don’t think
anyone is ready to go. But we hugged
goodbye until November and headed home. Driving away and seeing them and their
village in our rearview mirror is the hard part. I pray and pray that these kids will be fine
until we return in November – and I feel so blessed that I am able to do so. Missing them is like missing a piece of my
heart.
Thanks to our AMAZING group of volunteers! I cannot sing their praises enough – they were
loving and open toward the orphans, never complained about the failed meetings
or changes in schedules (typical here in SD), and were always eager to help in
any way possible. Without all of the
above we would not have been able to get everything done in our short
trip. Thanks to your generous donations
and their hard work we were able to:
1.
Deliver food to 18 child-headed homes facing
severe food scarcity
2.
Cooked and disseminated school lunch at eLangeni
Primary for 634 students.
3.
Deliver gel-burning stoves to 6 child-headed
families without electricity who previously had to cook outside over a fire.
4.
Purchased barbed wire for our 25 hectares of
land in Malindza that currently houses New Hope School and our vegetable garden
to feed the orphans.
5.
Deliver medical supplies to an under-resourced
rural clinic.
6.
Delivered food to 2 primary schools for school
lunch through November reaching 665 orphaned students.
7.
Deliver clothing, toys, games, and shoes to an
orphanage.
8.
Installed 5 laptops at our New Hope Primary
School for orphans in Malindza.
Until I return to Swaziland in
November, you won’t hear from anyone on this blog. Thanks for keeping up with the happenings at
Give Hope, Fight Poverty. We could not
do any of this without you!!
If you’d like to stay in touch, email annie to get on
our e-newsletter list: anniefightspoverty@gmail.com
or check out our website: www.ifightpoverty.org
You can mail tax-deductible checks to: 2436 N Alabama Street, Indianapolis
IN 46205 or donate online: www.ifightpoverty.org/donate.html
If you’d like to join us in Swaziland we can customize a
trip suitable for you and your friends/family’s schedules or you can just join
one of our previously scheduled trips: www.ifightpoverty.org/take-action
Siyabonga (thanks) from Swaziland…
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