Dear Blog Friends 2

Our first day we were bright eyed and bushy tailed ready and waiting for Kandice (one of the grade 1 teachers) to pick us up. Something you will also notice if you ever come to South Africa is that EVERYONE has a crack in their windscreen.No matter who they are and what they do they have a crack, even our host Sue has a huge crack in the glass. Back to the original point. We drove to school, situated around 15 minutes away from the flat just off from a busy main road. Currently there is a large mall being built just down the road from the school which will be opened whilst we are still here so it will be very interesting to see the changes.

Anyway school is like nothing you have seen and yet it is exactly what you would expect. It is situated in its own grounds made up of multiple buildings all dotted round. They are built as a donut with either a play area or garden grounds in the middle. The first day of school never changes though for pupils and also for staff, always planning for the next holiday, wondering how long till you can just go home and the nervous jitters in your stomach as you enter a classroom filled with people you don't know.

I have 22 children in my class which is grade 00 so they are all around 4 and 5 years old. The teacher is Mrs. A van S with the helper Am. (Am left on Friday 3rd) this is the start of work and to be honest I was bored. Yup I know the problem was that whenever I got the chance to do anything Amelia would instantly do it and almost brush me to the side, I felt like the biggest waste of space in the history of the world.

The day plodded on and before I knew it I was at aftercare. Aftercare is the kids club which the children can go to if their parents can't pick them up at 1 when pre prep and junior prep school finishes. There are around 80 kids that we have to entertain and register. They love to play games and I swear if when I get home I have to play duck, duck, goose, for more than an hour like I do here I will cry. The kids are wonderful and they come and hug you constantly so when you are having a down moment you just have to go to aftercare and you realize how much these kids love having you there.

On the Wednesday I was minding my own business looking after the kids during snack time always interesting as the comparing of who has the and a huge group of English looking and sounding people walked up to the fence where I was and asked "Are you with Project Trust?" I obviously replied yes and it turns out they were a group of past volunteers who were over visiting all of their projects they had already been to Mozambique and Swaziland and were making their way up to Botswana whilst stopping in Plk to visit some projects there.

Thursday came and went with tears for no reason and strange home sickness and then on the Friday I still couldn't stop just everything was getting to me yet, me being stubborn me was determined to go for the first month without contacting home. No news is good news right?

So we got home on the Friday afternoon after a very mad day due to it being none uniform day so the teachers dressed as pupils whilst the kids went in their own clothes which cracked them up no end. We began to potter around the flat just tidying up and sorting a few things out when before we knew it all the old volunteers arrived on our door step and just announced we are taking you all out!

So we soon got ready and went out to our local club Cheeky monkeys. After the initial problem of getting in as we didn't have I.D on us we talked our way in. We could have been anywhere in the world, it was like walking into a club at home, other than the fact cocktails are ridiculously cheap. But we didn't care we just wanted to have a good time. As I looked around I began to realize there are hardly any black people in here. Turns out that this was (off the record) an Afrikaans club and as you looked harder people were not dancing as we would in a club they were doing traditional Afrikaans dancing which is like the fastest version of line dancing mixed with jiving in the world. People were being swung round at a speed that was not healthy after seeing the amount of alcohol being consumed at the bar. We danced together as a group doing a little foot dance that the past vols taught us and soon enough we got dancing with the few black women in the club and began having a laugh as they taught us how to dance properly. It was then that one of the members of staff got our attention and said " you don't dance with black people, it's not cool to dance with the black people." I couldn't actually believe my ears, somebody, a member of staff for that matter had the nerve to say that to a customer about another paying customer. I have seen a number of things whilst being hear now but that was one of the most disgusting things I have heard. We carried on as we were and began to be taught how to dance Afrikaans style and one of the guys that was teaching us said "This is my South Africa, they can go and get there own."

When we were in Johannesburg we were warned about the wild north and how it is full of cowboys and I was sure everyone was just exaggerating but it is times like this that I think they are true.

The next day the past vols picked us up and we went to visit Selena's project. We drove around 30 minutes outside of Plk to what felt like no mans land. The roads quickly became dirt tracks and houses soon turned into shacks. We drove up the track till we reached a gated area. We had arrived at Polokwane deaf blind school. Getting out and looking around it looked as any normal school would do on a Saturday. Deserted and abandoned yet as we walked further into the complex the buildings began to have broken windows, bars and soon enough faces appeared at the windows their fingers holding on to the broken glass. It looked like living in hell. Soon enough more and more people came outside ages ranging from 11 to around 30 men and women sat doing nothing, women having their hair braided even if they couldn't see for themselves what they looked like presentation in SA is very important. Selena slipped right back into her role and started signing and talking to all her past pupils I turned round and looked more at my surrounding and then for the first time in my life I saw an albino black man. Not just one but a group of them all walking towards us their fair skin burnt and blistered with afro hair that looked as if it had been bleached, noses the traditional shape you expect, the twang of South African in their voice and the biggest grins plastered across their faces as they came up, hugged us and shook hands with each of us in true SA style. They just turned to us asking for photographs on their mobile phones, still getting used to people living in shacks and walking round with blackberries in their hands.

We spent the afternoon being shown around and looking at where the guys live. You walked in and it was like a block of flats but the glass was all over the floor with goat poo all over the floor. On the bottom floor was the kitchen and some of the bathrooms, a few of the bedrooms were down there as well but were all locked to stop the deaf kids from wrecking the rooms even thought it was obvious they had been including some pretty pornographic pictures on the ceilings. The next floor up was the common rooms which consisted of a few broken tables and chairs. A very old crackling TV on full blast so the deaf kids could nearly hear it with once again a large amount of pornography drawn on the walls. On the higher floors were the guys' rooms which were tiny and padlocked to the extreme to stop the other students from stealing from them. Selena was saying that to stop the students from stealing her things she had to sleep with her bed pressed against the door.

Walking round was one of the most humbling experiences, the way that us just being there made them so happy as it was a new and fresh face. We then went to the local shop and sat outside in the baking hot sun watching a man shaving a dead sheep's head which they apparently make a very nice stew out of the brains with, he was explaining all about how to put the whole head in the pot and then boil it till the brains go the right consistency and that we should come to his house to try it some time.We then had a small encounter with the local drunk who proposed to every girl there claiming that his current wife was currently living in England as she had ran away and that he needed a good wife even though he has no money. All I shall say is that the past vol guys all of a sudden had multiple wives.

We then drove and picked up Hannah's (past vol) friend Khutjo who currently lives with distant relatives and works at one of the museums in Plk. We drove to Plk world cup stadium and with a bit of a fib the 16 of us got the stadium to ourselves. Let's just say we only had one child with us who was definitely not an orphan. Something that you must learn when in SA is if you hang around somewhere for long enough and speak to the right people you can get in most places. Then we headed for Savannah our very local shopping mall with the only cinema in the whole of the Limpopo region for a bit of food and to meet Selena's host Thabo.

We then went back to the flat with sad goodbyes but relief in knowing you don't have to be cooped up in our little flat with the inspiration of the past volunteers giving us confidence in knowing that you can go and get in a combi which are these mini buses that drive round beeping their horns and you basically call them down and get in next to a stranger say where you are roughly going and they drive until you say stop, so always make sure you get on the right one. We went to bed with the aim to catch our first combi in the morning which we did even though if you tell members of staff at school you got a combi they literally ask "how are you not dead?"

Meeting with the ex vols it gave me so much hope that life long friends are made heck Hannah and Tristan have even been dating for 4 years now and yet they still have something about them all that makes you realize why PT chooses where you go. What was also amazing was that even on your return to your project people remember you meaning you do truly make a difference to someone's life.

And with that I send my love and the promise to update a lot sooner as this has been sat waiting to be posted for weeks I just keep adding little bits, not like I've not written enough :P

Miss you

God Bless

Happy Travels

and

Love Always to all

Lucy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx