Children's Home- Africa style

Alrighty. So. Updates. I feel like I’ve failed ya’ll. Haven’t blogged in forever.

Despite the name of this blog I’m going to start with tellin ya’ll bout Limakatso. Truly, this SHOULD be another blog entitled “EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER- African school version”

The week before last, we started reconstruction on a disabled children’s school called Limakatso. All was well until we started encountering problems (as is usually the case, yes) i.e. bad materials, bad tools aka, reconstruction in Africa. We did well though considering the circumstances; we redid some of the playground, tore down the ceiling inside the building, put up a new one, sanded nearly everything, painted, rebuilt desks, fixed random things, etc. Long story short though, we didn’t make it in the designated time slot. It’s the floor that truly did it. Apparently, when they tried to lay down the laminate flooring, at one point they had to move it again or something, and pick it up, and the concrete beneath it came up. Woops. So they had to remove and redo half the concrete in the room, and (TIA) apparently they put a layer of thin concrete on top of the foundation… I dunno. African construction can be funky.
So after last week’s disaster and the previous African delays in construction, we had to add a couple days of construction.
Luckily, I finally got to work outside (Thank God! I was so tired of crown molding. Thank your lucky stars if you don’t know what that is). So again, we redid the playground–but this time, since our whole group was there all day, instead of half of us for half a day, we redid the WHOLE playground.
“Playground” is truly an interesting word for it. When I first saw it, it didn’t really strike me as “playground,” more like “glorified dump.” There’s one set of free-standing monkey bars, and then about 40 tires semi-strategically buried in the ground to best be used as a “playground.” What’s more, everything was painted (10 years ago, when Amy, the founder of Thrive, and some others put them in) weird pinks and yellows and such. So Monday, it was our job to remove EVERY LAST TIRE from the ground, pile em up, then come up with a new game plan by way of where and how to re-bury the tires.
Strangely enough, working in the dirt and with those old tires renewed my spirit. I’d been SOOOO frustrated with construction inside that building that I didn’t want anything to do with it. So I put my hand to pick-axing the crap outa that hard ground. A few of us started with the hardest part: making a tire-tunnel out of the 2 largest tires, then 2 slightly smaller ones (one on either side), then two slightly smaller ones as the entrances. Despite my blisters and still sore hands, I LOVED it. I finally felt like I was doing something productive AND I got to take out my remaining frustrations on the hard ground. It rocked. Monday and Tuesday we successfully reburied/buried somethin' like 40-50 tires AND someone else painted bout 2/3 of them (which made our tunnel look like a giNORMOUS caterpillar: just added to the cool factor though)(I didn’t paint it though, I strategically avoided ALL painting at Limakatso).
On another note, yes, the rest of Limakatso is more-or-less done being reconstructed. There are only some quick things that need to be done to make sure it’s ready for the chilluns by next Monday. That’s what Sunday’s for. But all-in-all, working at Limakatso has been amazing, especially the time I spent wielding a pick-ax.

Back to the original topic for this soon-to-be long blog…

Today was our first day at the children’s home in Qwa Qwa. Unfortunately, we that have the smaller kids only have today and tomorrow to play with em, but oh well.
The kids here are amazing. A note: as a general rule, Africans are very “touchy.” They like to hold your hand or something of the like. So naturally, the children just want you to hold them or carry them or whatever else they request of you. I spent about a half hour straight today (sometimes literally) tossing around this cute little girl that’s somewhere around 7 years old. It was amazing. I just can’t get over how friendly people are here. Also, I got to kick around a soccer ball for a good long while as well. Soccer is ALWAYS welcome to me. Good thing I’m in Africa.

It’s slightly off topic but I love waving to people as we’re driving. People around here are SO friendly that EVERY time you wave to someone, they smile and wave back. I love being white in South Africa. Also, the kids do this thing where you both do a thumbs up and kinda… flick each other’s thumbs with your own and say “shop” which means something to the effect of “cool.” So also, when I wave, to be extra friendly, when they realize I’m not an Africaaner and they smile and wave back, I give them a thumbs-up to be extra friendly. The extra cool thing about it is that I’m not just being friendly, but I’m helping pull the threads of the social effects of Apartheid away. White and black South Africans don’t necessarily openly dislike each other, but they don’t exactly associate either. South Africa’s got some interesting civil rights movements going. The interesting part though, is that, it’s not necessarily black Africans not having their rights, but white. In some areas, there IS some tension, and it’s generally because some black South Africans are stealing from the whites or something of that sort. Suddenly the white people are being mistreated in many areas. So there are some interesting social barriers to get through here: both races of South Africans need to realize that the other isn’t so terrible. Both races have bad things happening to them because of it.

So concludes my series of random updates/thoughts.

Love from S. Africa!
-Ben