As I am writing this, I am listening to the rain pour down
on our tin roof and although I am thankful for the rain to water our children’s
vegetable gardens, I am hopeful that the rain does not wash out the road to our
school as we have computers, medical supplies, food, and books to deliver
tomorrow morning.
But you’re wondering about today…so let me start from the
beginning. We started our day by
traveling to eLangeni Primary School to help cook our FOODOM food donation and
serve the mostly orphaned children.
Only, when we arrived, we found the cook is very ill today and called in
too late for the head teacher to find a replacement, so there will be no
lunch. No lunch. No food for the 634 children who likely haven’t
eaten since school lunch on Friday. It
broke my heart…
Then we trekked across the road to the PreSchool where Nelly
was teaching about letters today. The
children do not have access to paper and writing utensils, so we practiced
forming our letters out of sugar beans on the cement floor. Many of our 55 preschoolers graduated at the
end of 2014 and went on to primary school so we have 30 remaining – and a lot
of them are new faces! It was so fun
getting to know the new children and seeing the returning ones. A few of the old faithfuls were there
including Sphiwe up to his usual shenanigans of doing cartwheels and wanting to
show you how he can do a summersault…900 times.
And you can’t forget Princess - who is simply cuter than ever. She is my husband’s favorite child due to her
complete inability to do anything physical.
Games are simply not Princess’s strength. Today she was challenged to a foot race and I
am thrilled to report that she ran in the correct direction… although she undoubtedly
lost the race.
We then hired a local electrician to cut off the American
plugs on our donated laptops and connect Swazi plugs to enable them to be used
without adapters. These will complete
our computer lab in eLangeni community! We
picked up and sterilized used hotel soaps from the Royal Swazi Spa as part of
our Sanitation Across Swaziland program. Our program cleans and redistributes used
hotel soaps to children in rural villages to prevent the spread of infectious
disease and ultimately reduce (or hopefully eliminate!) preventable child
mortality. Then we purchased the entire
stock of anti-fungal cream, deworming pills, and Panadol (Tylenol) from the
local pharmacy in anticipation of our free clinic day on Thursday.
We delivered food to our child-headed homes (Thanks
Mitali/FOODOM) and then met up with Njabuliso at his university – VOCTIM college
– to deliver his food. He is renting an
apartment near school. In his 7 foot by
7 foot space he has a twin bed, a collapsible camping chair, and a small
table. He was so proud to show us this
space as he worked at the George Hotel restaurant for 6 months prior to college
to save money for room & board so that we could focus on paying only his
tuition. We found out that he earned the
highest marks of his class in his first semester examinations. His teacher is already talking about sending
him to Durban to apprentice in some major South African automotive shops (he
studies automotive engineering). I was
bursting with pride for this hardworking boy!
Tomorrow is another long day – Malindza Village/New Hope
School day. For those of you who have
been with me here, you know what that means!
I am going to try to upload this blog even though the internet is shoddy
during thunder storms. If you are
reading this, I was of course successful and I am now likely to be sleeping
soundly to the rain and pitter patter of lizard feet scurrying on our tin roof.
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