The final stretch

It’s my last week! I can’t believe it’s gone by so quickly! But it started off great. Two of the volunteers went west along the Garden Route this weekend so myself and the other volunteer stayed with a local family who house volunteers regularly. They are just the most welcoming, open, friendly people I have ever met. Their door is open to everyone and there is always family calling in to say hi. And we ate great food...can’t beat home cooking! It was wonderful to just relax, read a book and chat. And everyone was interested in Irish history, especially the whole Catholic/Protestant thing, seems everyone sees some similarities between our history and their own. So we stayed Sunday night as well since the other volunteers weren’t back til Monday evening. Yesterday  then the Ithemba volunteer joined us for the day to experience another project and it suited perfectly as we were two short. And can I just say how proud I am of the work that’s been  done! We now have the walls painted and decorated with two soccer goals, soccer balls, rugby balls, a springbok and grass. It looks amazing. And a carpenter came to put up pigeon holes and cupboards in the little boys room as well as adding more storage in the big boys room. He did all the work for free, we just had to pay for the materials. So he also offered to fix the pinboards to the walls. So now there is a board at the head of each bed with their name on it so they can decorate it with pictures and drawings and make it a little bit their own space. And they love it. They were so proud of all the improvements that later in the evening when the two absent volunteers returned they couldn’t wait to show them everything. So you can all give yourselves a pat on the back because all the work done was made possible by your donations. All that’s left now is to assemble the clothes rails and hang the shoe bags which we will do today. I’m so happy to have finished everything we set out to achieve. There is always the small fear that we could run out of time and leave things undone. And with the project finishing next month there would be little chance of our loose ends getting tied up. But we did it! And today we are bringing two of the ladies who look after the house to the shop so they can buy the things they need like new kitchen utensils and a new ironing board. We told them they have 500R so take what you want...they were ecstatic. So right now they are off doing their shopping , looking forward to seeing what they come back with! After all our hard work decorating yesterday, we helped out with homework after lunch. One of the older boys has taken it upon himself to help a group of the younger ones with homework. He writes out sums for them and then corrects them and helps them get the right answer. It’s so great to see, and he really seems to enjoy it too. He laughed when I suggested he could be a teacher but he really ahs that skill for expressing things in a simple and understandable way. Or at least with the kids he does...later he tried to teach me checkers and that was a different thing altogether haha! I didn’t do too badly but I did sometimes get the impression that I was only hearing the rules as I went along which left me at a slight disadvantage! Needless to say I lost, but not embarrassingly so. So maybe today I will try again, after all practice makes perfect!It doesn’t seem real that we have only three days left but I think I prefer that. I will just enjoy my last week here and come the weekend I can deal with my feelings on leaving. And with that in mind I’m off to learn to dance from one of the boys who’s home from school today!Bye for now!Zoexxx

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