Life of Late

Was going to post this last friday - unfortunately we had no internet since thursday so this is the first chance Ive had! The past few weeks have been lots of ups and downs I'm sad to say. I'll again pick up from where I left off but before I do I shall just warn you this is a very long post... yet again. You may want to grab a cuppa!

Wednesday 7th Mark and Chris had a new baby grandson born! I've seen pictures and he's a beautiful baby boy. That saturday morning Chris went and drove up to stay with them for a week and got to have a bit of a holiday!

It meant we were all quite busy with doing nights shift every evening, we did 2 nights each between Kirstin Amy and I. But that saturday Kirstin and I had the chance to go for a big braai down the road at Sean's farm. A couple of Kirstins friends were down from Jo'burg for a holiday so we all got together with people on the other farms.

It was great to have an afternoon off, we worked 6.30am til 12.30 in the morning with the children and then spent the rest of the day at the braai. We even got thrown in the pool, its madness because it was the first time they used the pool since winter and they thought the water was freezing! When I told them I am used to Bournemouth beach they understood why I stayed in there for a while, whilst all the other jumped out.

We then went on a game drive with about 7 of us. It was awesome we saw giraffe only meters away, and he even started walking around showing off to us. The sun was setting as we went to the lake nearby, where they have hippo's and even crocs. Sadly we didnt spot them but maybe one day! Then we spent the rest of the evening by a big bonfire, drinking and eating and having lots of laughs! My first big social evening in South Africa!

But now to tell you the bad news. We have had a lot of sickness the last few weeks, all but 1 of the children have suffered. Some had fever for some time then recovered, other having sickness and diahreaa. But when we have even our smallest babies (2-3 months) coming down with a fever it was getting quite worrying especially with Chris away.

The little girl we have here went down ill friday the 9th so Mark took her to the doctors on monday because we started to get worried. That evening I was on night shift again and the whole night I could just hear her wimpering and struggling to sleep. She was so floppy and would not respond to anything. Neither eating or barely drinking.

Then by the next day Mark decided we should get her checked out at the hospital, luckily I got to go with her. I cant share all the details about her individually but she is still in hosital to this day, and has been transported to a bigger hosiptal about 2 hours drive from here. She has had brain scans that the doctors said show some abnormality but they need to wait for an MRI. BUT the hospital is not a private hospital and the MRI machine is not working! Because she is not detoreorating they are not treating her as urgent - yet she is a very young girl that is still not responding to anything and is being fed by a drip!

Please pray for our dear little girl, wish I could share more information for you all but as you can imagine she is in a critical state and needs our prayers that the Lord will heal her. We are trying to seek some other help, we need to get her moved to a private hospital where you get proper treatment out here, yet the because of the cost it is not possible. So we may look at trying to fundraise some money for her, which I will update you all on asap.

Chris arrived home last thursday the 15th, and by friday we had a premature baby! He is unbelieveable, he is 5 weeks old and yet only 3.75 pounds. We don't know how premature he was when he was born but he is still very small. We were a bit worried to bring him home when we have so mch sickness going around, so please also pray for his health.

Last friday 16th me and Kirstin had the day off together which was nice and we got to go into Pretoria to the Kollonade shopping mall. We had a lovely steak and chips for lunch! The first restaurant in 2 months, and so cheap! It only cost £10 for a huge rump steak and coca cola!

I got to go to a lovely church last sunday with Mark, Chris and the 4 boys. It is a church plant from Constantia Park Baptist and was great. The service and worship was great and then afterwards you all sit and have a discussion on the sermon and our thoughts which I think you'll agree is such a great idea to hear peoples experiences and share. It is mostly white congregation. I feel very fortunate to have experience 4 different churches so far, 2 black South African and 2 mostly white congregation. But since Ive only been once to each its hard to say which I will go to again.

This past week has been great - on monday Chris was having a busy day going into Pretoria. So there was no-one to home-school Nhlanhla and when Chris asked which Auntie he wanted to teach him he asked for me! So that was nice, and I said to him if he works well then I will take him across the road to one of the lodges for pizza. And thats exactly what we did! It was great. Also meant I had quite a relaxing day (although he has health problems so can be quite difficult to control.)

Thursday and Friday night I was on night shift. Friday was very difficult, I stayed up late with the older boys playing cards and then watching Narnia but two of the babies were up most of the night and had to do 6 different feeds. So luckily I got a nice lie in this morning! I keep thinking how easy its going to be when Im a mum - only 1 or 2 children! Im getting used to looking after 6 toddlers and 5 babies!

We've also been trying to keep up to date with the World Cup Rugby! I am determined to buy an Original Springbok Jersey, although they are rather pricey! But everyone goes around wearing them - rugby is definately South Africa's sport! Sadly the channel we have only shows the SA matches so I havent got to see much of England playing so I am not ashamed to say I have been cheering on the Africans!

Our premature baby is still doing well and healthy and one of our other little boys who just turned age 2 is due to be going back to his family very soon. We dont know what happened to his father, but his mother is very young and the family could not help support her financially so he arrived here last year very sick and suffering from malnutrition. Fortunately he will be going home to his mum now, as the family have finally decided to help. We will miss him very dearly! He is beautiful.

Another exciting thing is the swimming pool! For the last weekend we have been empting the pool from the dirt its gathered over the winter. Kirstin and I started with 2 buckets and gradually all the older boys all came and helped and a couple other volunteers. We were there most of sundayafternoon, whilst I was on a 'break', and finished empting it! Now the cracks need filling and we need to scrub it clean but should be up by next week! Canny wait!

Oh almost forgot MORE exciting news. We now have lions on the reserve! 6 at the moment, 2 more are coming. They are in 2 prides. Elephants will also be following them. But yet its bitter sweet. In some ways - LIONS. I mean how awesome is that, we can actually hear them soon and they could walk past my cottage! Madness. But then its sad because we can no longer go for walks, not just in a selfish way (because as you have guessed I love going for walks on my break, in the bush, past the waterholes etc.) but we can no longer take the children for walks. Most days we like to go for a wak with the toddlers, and they love spotting the Kudo and Impala and Ostriches, and we saw a baby Giraffe with them by the dam the other morning! We can't even take them on our farm because the fence only goes around the houses and cottages. The lions are still being 'introduced' to the reserve so we have 31 days left before we have to stop leaving the gate. We also like to stroll across to neighbours farms, Joanne and Darren who live across the road love us bringing the children over, and Tamboti (the restaurant and lodge across the road) where I took Nhlanhla for pizza and us volunteers sometimes go for a drink.

But on tuesday we did get to go with Mark, Hans and Gerrie, Kirstin, Nhlanhla, Tom and the three toddlers to go see them! Because they are in an enclosure to start with which is at a local lodge all the local landowners get to go and visit them for free! The toddlers were petrified of the safari truck but once they were on they loved it! We saw 4 lions, 2 male and 2 female. They were beautiful and the thought that they are actual wild animals that have just been brought over from Botswana and will be released soon is crazy!

Today is my day off and me and the four older boys had a lovely treat today! School has broken up for 2 weeks, and Mark had promised the boys he would take them to Pretoria for a treat sometime, the boys asked me to come and so I managed to get today off. We went ice-skating at the shopping mall and then got burger and chips! It was so much fun, and I didnt fall over once, to the boys disappointment - they were looking forward to seeing Auntie Gemma fall flat on her bum. I also brought a lovely Springbok Jersey, woop-woop!

Anyway I have rambled on for more than half an hour, and this has probably taken an hour of time your time, so I shall stop talking now! (Oh sorry one more thing to say - I may be staying a few more months, its in discussion that I may stay a further 2-3 months!) Love to you all and hope everything is well back home.

I hope to update you all about our little precious baby girl very soon, lets pray its good news but if not, she is in the Lord's hands.

Mama Catherine's Visit

It was a few weeks ago I was telling you that I was going to visit another orphange run by Mama Catherine. And (as I say very often in these blogs) its was quite an experience, one I wont forget in a long time.

So I went on my day off with Joanne and Darren and their two children. They are a couple who stay across the road on Mark and Chris son's farm, they are an American couple who emigrated a couple months ago to start up a business. Yet when your working with 'South African time' you never know when anything will get done so they are still waiting for the plans to be set in place.

Joanne and Darren have known Mark and Chris for many years and have visited this area countless times and whilst they are waiting to get the business started they help out a lot at the orphanage.

The orphange itself is different to Tshepo Ya Bana in many ways and sadly not in a good way. They are in much more of a poverty state and have around 60 children. They range from ages as young as 1 years to early 20's. Im not sure on the exact amount of children there at this moment in time.

But so we arrived around midday and took some balloons with us to blow up as I was told the children absolute love balloons! They all speak Africanse so I couldnt speak with any of the younger children but the older girls I could talk to. They learn English from an early age at school, so it was great to be able to talk to some of the older girls.

Most of them were absolutely enthralled when I told them I was from England and just kept stroking my hair and complimenting me, which was so crazy. But it was nice to try and talk to them about life at the orphanage, most of them dont have much aims in life because they are into their late teens and still at this orphanage yet finished schooling.

But we sang some songs: Beyonce and Rihanna etc. and they adored it.

The younger children loved me even more as soon as I took the balloons out of my bag, sadly I only had about 20 balloons so some were left quite unsatisfied. But some of the children had such a sadness in their eyes, three inparticular did not let go of me. They were just holding onto my clothes or wrapping their arm around my legs and wanting me to pick them up constantly. Crying out for love.

You see, the orphanage works from local support from churches and contacts and largely runs on donations. They have lots of Mamas working there, I saw around 20 older African women there yet they are not paid. It is in such a poverty area that the people come and work to get a meal and food daily. So these workers actually do not care for these children in any way, practically or emotionally. Me and Joanne had just arrived as visitors but we were the only ones playing with the children, interacting with them, helping feed them. We were just in complete shock that these women are here to help in order to recieve food in return, yet they were sat drinking tea the whole duration of our visit.

That is one of the main issues that is happening at Mama Catherines.

So after playing with the children and the older girls for an hour or two, it was now lunchtime for everyone. Yet as soon as we started to grab some tables and chairs all the older children disappeared and it was just the children ages 8 or younger left. So we had around 20/30 young children with no supervision trying to feed themselves. It was horrific.

There was no cups for water and no bowl to wash their hands in. So firs and formost me and Joanne got a big bucket for them to wash their hands before they sat up. Then we noticed thta there were around 4 or 5 children just able to wak (so no older than 14 months) sat trying to feed themselves. All the children eat with their fingers as that is typical African, yet these young children had absolutely no Mamas helping them or showing them what to do so we grabbed them and started to help feed them.

After most of them had finished we suddenly noticed that there was one of the 1 year olds drinking the dirty water from the bucket we put out to wash their hands. Immediately we pulled him away and then noticed that none of these children had been given cups and there was no water or taps in sight.

So Joanne grabbed a cup for this little boy and a bucket of 'clean' water. Before I knew it they were running up to me drinking 3 or 4 cups each, having to take it in turns because we could not find any more cups. Children as young as one years of age drank 4 large cup fulls of water in one go.

How long had they been without water? We had no idea when they were last given the chance to drink.

The main problem we noticed when we were there was that these poor children do have lots of things... bed, blankets, plenty of donated clothes, food on their plates and taps for water. Yet they have no actual care. The older children disappear and dont help the younger children, and the Mamas and Papas who are there to work sit down on chairs and talk.

It was a very eye-opening situation as you can imagine and I cant write all the things I experienced there but this was the main thing I wanted you all to hear about my first visit to Mama Catherines.

Joanne came yesterday to Tshepo Ya Bana and I spoke with her briefly and she said that Pete (Mama Catherines side-kick if you will) has asked after me saying when can I come again. Its clear they need all the help they can get for these poor children sakes. And even last week there was news to say one fo the 7 year old boys had died. Mark and Chris attended the funeral, all anyone knows is that the boy began with a fever and by a couple hours he was gone.

If you are a believer please pray for this orphanage. Pray for Mama Catherine. Pray for these children. And pray that I may get another opportunity to visit and help in any way possible.

(Hope this hasn't been too much of an essay to read!)

Week 8

Hey all,

Week Eight has begun and it seems like yesterday I was checking into arrivals nervous about being stopped and told I couldn't enter the country or something crazy!

So to pick up from where I left off, last saturday was a pretty full on day and in the evening me and Kirstin were going to go back to the cottage, have a drink and chill to a nice movie. Well our plans were changed when we had supper and put the toddlers to bed, then all of a sudden we had a power cut! So we thought, 'Oh well, we're all in for an early night!' Since its quite a regular thing we had lots of candles lit which was fun and then all of a sudden Mark gets another phone call from Derek to say he's doing another night game drive! And we were welcome to join! An offer, again, that we couldnt refuse.

So we went with Kirstin, Tom and Hans and Gerrie (one of the older boys and the other volunteers). It was great saw lots, I cant remember all the names but some of which are zebra, wildabeast, porcupines and others.

Sunday was also great because I got the chance to go to church again. We have a guy here called Dennis who has been coming consistantly since Tshepo Ya Bana started and he's here for 3 weeks and goes to a church called Tempa Community Baptist Church. So I took the opportunity to visit another 'real' South African church and experience a township church. It was great, the people were so welcoming and friendly and I had such a conviction that these are my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. The music was incredibly loud, yet in such a small and crumbling building. The worship was mixed languages and also the preaching. You often find the people out here will mix English with their own language so it was quite difficult to follow the sermon.

That afternoon was straight back to the children and a busy day. Monday Amy arrived back from Cape Town. Her boyfriend Sam had been visting her here and then they went to spend a week in Cape Town sightseeing and visiting. Sadly when she came home on monday she was very 'lovesick' as we said! She spend Tuesday in bed and even Wednesday was in and out of her room, so we were short staffed last week because poor Kirstin also had an operation to have her wisdom teeth removed. The operation, thankfully, went very well and although she was in a lot of pain for most of last week she is now back on her feet and off the painkillers.

So as you can imagine last week was quite intense with the children, some times the children know that you are stressed or tired and will play up to that (as children often do!) but every day they make me smile. Koki, Tshepo Didi and Oarabille kept making me smile when they would persistantly come and give me kiss, although when Tshpang gave me a kiss it was rather sloppy one on the lips! But nonetheless they are all so full of love!

Today we even started to potty train Tshsepo David. He is the oldest child we have and yet looks a lot younger (I think I mentioned his situation in a previous blog, was malnurished for the first year of his life and is HIV posititive.) so he is quite far behind where a normal child would expect to be. But we are about to try and potty train him and today was the second day and juts before nap time I thought I would give it a quick go to see if he could sit for a while. And lo and behold it suddenly runs to me screaming (I thought he's got stung by something or seen a snake....) but turns out he's been to the toilet! So that was great, although Im sure we will have lots of accidents to come - as many mums will relate to!!!

On friday our new volunteer Magdalina arrived! She is 19 years old and from Germany. She will be stayiong for 6 months also, and leaves in March. Its great to have another pair of hands, especially as Kirstin will be leaving for Belgium this month to be an au pair. She is a lovely girl, and her English is pretty good, although I do have to share my room again which I was not looking forward to as much Im not going to lie!! She is busy learning the children names and settling in but Im sure will be a great help here!

She had a few days off to just settle in and is now on shift duty so we are all helping her to 'learn the ropes' around here! I took her for a walk on the farm too to show her our plot and we also saw some animals which was nice for her. Its crazy to think 8 weeks ago I was in her shoes!!

Yesterday I didnt go to church but was nice because we got the afternoon off from 1.30 til 4.30pm. So me Kirstin, Dennis and Magdalina went down to Sean's cottage just down the road. They are the ones with the quad bikes!! They were having a big braai with friends and family we went for an hour or two and chatted... and of course go on the quad bikes! I decided I did not want to be ridden so drove it myself! It was awesome, driving on the quad bikes in the bush in the glorious 30 degree sunshine!

For the last week or so we have had temperates in the late 20's early 30's and been eating our supper outside, although it is still very brisk in the evenings so we wrap the toddlers up in their coats and blankets!

Its nice now to think there will be me Amy and Maggie here now till next year and also Gerrie. So it means now we will have a nice lot of hands to help out and the children don't have people coming and going, atleast till early next year. Tsepho David still picks up a barbie doll we have here and calls it Auntie Melissa who was here for 2 months not long before I came. Its sad to think the affect some of the volunteers have on them, and then they disappear again. Ive been praying lately about whether to extend my stay just for a couple months or so, please pray for direction. I would love to visit Cape Town so am also about to start thinking about how I can do that.

I hope to speak to you all again shortly and if you have Facebook I will be trying to upload a few more pictures for you to all see.

Blessings and love xx