This is going to be my last post in a while as we are
leaving Barberton this weekend. I have truly had the most amazing time with the
best volunteers anyone could wish for! I’m so sad to see them go and nervous
for the next five weeks where I am going to be traveling alone! We’ll see what
happens and hopefully I’ll be able to update the blog in November (providing
I’m still alive- just kidding nana).
So these past two weeks have been perhaps my favourite. Last
week we had sports day at Fairview school and it surprisingly ran relatively
smoothly. We work in two schools so we had to organise bringing them together
for the big event. We managed to ship eighty two learners off from Eckhiyeni
primary in the world’s oldest bus and arrived at Fairview just
gone eleven. There was going to be another eighty two learners competing from
Fairview as well, but naturally this meant that the principle had to suspend
the lessons for the other 952 learners. It was the only reasonable and logical action
to have a 1000 children running around the school high on sweets and ice
lollies.
All crammed in.
When we arrived with the eckhiyeni learners we treated to an elaborate
dance from the Fairview girls. Wearing knee high white boots and tiny blue
dresses at the age of ten meant it got slightly weird when they started to lick
their fingers and run them over their bodies, but the boys seemed to enjoy the
display. The dance went on for a good 25 minutes and it was starting to get a
bit repetitive until the principle decided to shove us into the spotlight. She
made us stand in the middle of the girls who were now lying in the floor
thrusting towards the sky to have our photo taken for the local newspaper. How
those images turned out I’d rather not know.
The day ran well and the highlight
was the football match. Whenever one of the teams scored a goal a screaming
encore of learners would run onto the pitch rugby tackling the goal scorer to
the ground. It was really sweet. Things did get chaotic though when Katie and
Lucy decided to award the winners from the orange and spoon race a sweet. What
can only be compared to the scene of muffasa’s death, the kids swarmed Lucy
and Katie and the mob was only contained when one of the teachers had to pick
up a stick to physically beat them away.
#Swag
Three legged cutes
Warming up
That weekend we went to Swaziland. It was arguably up there
with one of my best weekends of all time. We had agreed to be picked up at three
thirty so naturally we set off at six. A journey that should have taken two
hours ended up taking six. We made the most of a bad situation and took a few
beverages for the road. After being stuck at the border for two hours the
drinks got flowing and the seal got broken.
We were left with few options and the only place to pee was on the side
of the main road while the traffic was locked. With not even a bushy hedge for
modesty we were forced to pee on the electric fence surrounding the border as a
group. It was not one of my finest moments and the hooting only added to the humiliation.
Stuck and bored we decided to crank up the music and have a bogie on the side
of the road. It was all fun and games until the traffic decided to rapidly move
on. We all managed to clamber into the bus and it was only a couple of minutes
and a few selfies later we realised we were three men down. We’d covered quite
a few meters and started to scream for Lucy into the dark abyss. Things were
looking bleak. Louis surfaced first, however still refused to come into the
van as he wanted to ‘work on his cardio.’ We were getting scared for Lucy, the
slowest and weakest member of the group. However, just when the group were at
their lowest her fiery hair slowly emerged from the dark. A bit like Nelson Mandela’s long walk to
freedom we basked in the miracle of her return.
Trevor was the last of the group to return who had simply refused to
run.
Before the incident
Blissfully unaware of the missing party members
Louis emerging
Leaving Lucy and Trevor's survival to fate
Triumphant
Where do I even begin with Trevor? The poor sod had been drinking since
11am and when we finally arrived at the hostel at midnight he couldn’t even
remember his own name. In fact he couldn’t
even remember crossing the border and it took several attempts to convince him
that we were in fact in Swaziland. The man only got more outrageous when he
kicked a dog with the rationale that it was a ‘white mans breed’ and made up
some elaborate story about his imprisonment (which never happened). Lucy
managed to hurl the six foot giant to bed and we all got a few hours peace. We
enjoyed the rest of the evening eating the world’s best steak, however were
shocked to see Penny and Katie with their suitcases suited and booted at 3am
after they’d been asleep for several hours. As victims of crime we’ve been very
careful with where we place our stuff. So it was understandable they had the
shock of their lives when they awoke to a strange man lying in between their
bunk beds and hitting Penny. When they finally summoned up the courage to ask
the strange man what he was doing he simply fled from the scene of the crime.
From the witness description and the only piece of evidence which was a white iPhone
we managed to piece together that the strange man was in fact Louis who had drunkenly
passed out.
The next day we went to a traditional Swazi village. It was
really lovely to learn a little about their culture and we were even treated to
a forty five minute dancing and singing show. There was also a beautiful
waterfall we got to see! Louis and Trevor decided to embrace swazi culture by going to the mall and sleeping in the bus all day.
That evening we went back to the party hostel and had
another great night. Trevor got trevored again and voluntarily went for an
evening swim and told us the story of how he lost his virginity. A story which I
hope to one day forget. The lies were ample as he declared that he had named
his son AL Capone. We were also joined
by a crazy man called Vanity (who names a child vanity!?) who introduced a topic shift, a game changer when he told penny and Katie
that it was ‘better to buy a woman than rape a woman’. Louis was on top form, but couldn’t seem to
grasp the rules of never have I ever and just kept repeating ‘never have I ever
never ever never ever ever.’ Sizway our driver was having the weekend of his life, free food, free accommodation and getting paid to party. The guy was hiliar and we embraced him as one of our own. At some points we needed to lay down the law. For example, his frequent napping did disrupt some of our travel plans. But he was very accommodating and even offered Lucy a place to sleep and kept reminding her that 'it is very sad too sleep alone.'
Post Swim.
We decided it was time for bed at 6am and after
two hours sleep we made our way to the Reed festival. The king of Swaziland holds
a festival every year to pick a new wife (the man currently has 26). There are thousands of women who compete and they all have to hold reeds. The idea is that if you are not a virgin the reed will wither and you'll be caught out like the snake in the grass you are. It was
really interesting to see and I even got to buy a t-shirt with the king's face on. One
to add to my polygamist icons t-shirt collection.
The many women competing for the kings affection.
Ladding about.
The week has been really fun! We got to learn about a
popular swazi legend, the seven headed snake. The seven headed snake lives in
the rivers and when you look at it can kill you. It apparently draws the colour
out of you and turns you black. The snake naturally gets about my travelling in
the clouds and just flies down when it starts to rain hitting people along the
way.
At school we’ve been trying to get same data on the learners. For example,
we want to know the number of learners with a single parent. When we approached
the teachers about this they were willing to cooperate. One teacher actually
went into a class and told her learners to ‘put your hand up if you are an
orphan’. This obviously caused some confusion because of the language barrier
so she was quick to clarify ‘not one parent dead' she reprimanded 'two parents! dead!.... put your
hand up'. Last week I brought my laptop into school and ended up showing one child a clip from Aladdin this escalated quickly to 15 learners all clambering around my laptop screen.
Homestay life has been good, however I am now openly called fat every day. In fact today my neighbour and my house mother had a good two minute conversation where they just repeated ‘rea is so fat now’ ‘she is fat now’. A great boost to anyone’s self-esteem.
Last weekend we finally went to Kruger. I did enjoy Kruger,
but I am going to be outrageous and just say it. It was slightly boring at
times. We spent ten hours driving around in a hot truck! But we did get to see
some amazing animals rhino, leopard, elephants, zebras, giraffes, buffalo,
impala. It was incredible when we saw a wild dog! I didn’t get too many pictures
as my camera is shocking, but will pick some up to share at some point.
The highlight was probably our night out at Barberton’s only club. If you can call it that. We had a wail of a time. We got to essentially control the DJ booth and pick all the old classics, mr bombastic, girl by destinies child and milkshake by Kellis. However, the fun stopped when the DJ got a series of complaints about our outrageous music choices. After the club we made our way to the mountains and got to see the whole of town. It was an amazing view and I’m glad we went even after Bridie and I threw a fit at the idea and acted like spoilt teenagers the whole drive up. The evening got called to an abrupt halt when we realised we were one man down (again) and found penny passed out on a rock.
Lucy and her rock in the club. Unfortunately not the one Penny took a nap on.
It’s the last day tomorrow of project and I’m so sad to be
leaving Barberton. I’m hoping to come back again in October to see the fam! But
I’m going to miss my volunteers so much. They’ve been the most amazing people
to work with and I love them all like sisis. Last night we went out to
celebrate Katie's birthday and had a bit of a tearful goodbye to some of our friends. In fact I sobbed the whole way home to a very uncomfortable Louis.
That’s all from me thanks for tuning in!
Rea
