The run-up to Christmas in a Children's Home...

Hey family and friends, thank you for visiting my blog! Sending you all lots of love xxx

So, it's the first day of Advent but the Home is already well on the way to Christmas and celebrations are in full swing. Christmas is not really about presents here, it is all about family and happy homes. While everyone in England is out present shopping, here our careworkers and social workers are working their hardest 'foster family shopping'. You have to remember that it is summer here now and the school year runs from Jan - Dec. So the children are all sitting their final exams and have now finished for their long summer holiday. This is the culmination of the year and they have to review all the children's home situations and communicate with the field social workers to see if they are going to be returning to a family home for good or whether they are returning to St Anthony's in Jan.

It is also really important to us that none of the children have to spend the festive season still living in the Home but that they experience a family environment. So the social worker and 2 community workers have been working round the clock to make sure each child has a host family who will take them for the holidays. This takes a lot of work, having to make sure the family is suitable and the child is going to be safe and happy with them. We are responsible for that child and so we have to be accountable for whatever happens when they are out of the Home. Imagine having 89 of your own children each staying at a friend's house for a sleepover...we are trusting that parent with our own child, and we are still responsible for them and worrying about them every minute!

So, some of the festive activities we have already been enjoying here include the trip I had planned for last Saturday which was postponed until the weather improved on Friday. I have been in contact with the manager of a Game reserve in the local town and he is so eager to help St Anthony's out. I managed to arrange a completely FREE christmas outing for the teenage boys' cottage, we arrived at the park at 7am and had the chance to see their helicopter! They boys loved it, although they weren't allowed a go! They all got to sit in the driver's seat and asked lots of questions about it. The manager is called Tony Roberts, he is a white man who is actually of British origin and was born in Tanzania when it was still a British colony. He moved to SA when he was 12yrs and lived on a farm. This means he has an amazing number of languages! He can speak english, afrikaans, zulu and swahili! It was really great for the boys to be able to have a white man speak fluent zulu to them and he is so intelligent, teaching them a lot about the environment and the animals there. We walked around and got to see zebra, wilderbeast, impala and ostriches. It was so hot though! About 33oC and I was struggling to keep up on the 2km hike.

After the walk we went back to the swimming pool and the boys got changed and all jumped in. They were all fearless of the water...but some of them had a reason to fear it...only one of them could really swim properly! That was Pete, the boy I took shopping who lives up in a village in the mountains. Maybe he learnt in a river or lake or something. One of the smallest ones, Matt, said he could swim and jumped straight in to the deep end. Mlondi and I were standing on the edge and luckily he saw straight away Matt was in trouble. He had jumped in and just went straight under, he wasn't coming up! His arms were thrashing under the water and his eyes were bulging out of his head! The poor boy was so scared. Mlondi just threw his arms straight in and pulled him out on to the side. Luckily there was no lasting damage done and he just stayed in the shallow end for the rest of the time. I tried teaching them to swim from the edge but it was pretty difficult! They all just doggy paddled around and had no idea how to do the proper strokes. All my memories of primary school swimming lessons with Mrs Spooner came flooding back and I had great fun trying to coach them from the pool side. I am hoping I might be able to make an arrangement with Tony and see if we can use the pool on a regular basis for swimming lessons, maybe just with 12 children at a time, I would love it! And the kids really really would.

I got some amazing jumping photos of them all flinging themselves in the pool. For 3 hours they just ran and jumped in continuously! Then Tony made a braai and we all had sausages in buns, and juice and crisps - all donated by the manager of Standard Bank in the town, Tony had arranged getting the money. After eating the begged to go back in the pool again so they got another hour of swimming and borrowing my camera to take photos and videos. Some of the older boys are really inventive and funny - they made some comic sketches up and filmed them, they were really good! It was so nice to just see them being kids, doing what they felt like rather than following their routine of chores. With the timetable they have they get about 1hour of freetime a day! The rest of the time is packed with cleaning, washing, cooking and studying.

Then the next day, Saturday 28th, was Thanksgiving and they use that date to celebrate the end of the year at the Home. We had a tent put up on the field and there was a full schedule of entertainment planned by each of the Cottages - plus my choir was down to perform!! I was so nervous!! The kids are good singers when it comes to singing their own Zulu songs but the really struggle with singing english and I was worried they were not going to sound very good. My hand was proper shaking when I was trying to conduct! We sang 'eyes on the prize' and it actually sounded really good. I chose it because the words are absolutely perfect for them...
'Keep your eyes on the prize, don't be dismayed, don't be dismayed,
deep in your heart you must believe, everything is gonna be alright,
everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be alright some day'
When they get to the 'everything is gonna be alright' they sing it with so much passion, it seems like it really does uplift them. There is nothing nicer than the feeling I get when I can hear them singing that song as the clean the floors or do their laundry. When it's hot and the windows are open I can always hear snatches of songs I have taught them drifting on the air. It makes me feel so proud :)

Then they were all awarded certificates and a present for each cottage - my Mum and Dad bought two dvd players for the teenage cottages as their christmas donation to the Home. The kids were so happy with them! They have already watched about 4 of my dvds on it, in just 2 days!!

After the entertainment we had a sit down lunch in the dining room and I got to sit with Fr. Peter which was nice, to finally get to catch up with my long lost godfather! He is such a busy man he is hard to track down. We spoke about our trip to the safari park, just 2 weeks away now!

In the afternoon I played with the kids, but it was so hot again! For about the 4th day in the row it was over 30oC and I had to go have a cold shower, its the only way to wake myself up again! In the evening we had a braai and a party for the kids, it was soooooo much fun! Unlike an english school disco where all the kids stand at the edge of the dancefloor too afraid to dance, these kids just went CRAZY! we couldn't even get them to sit down to eat their dinner, they were too interested in having dance-offs. It is amazing how talented they are at dancing, it just comes natuarlly to them! I swear this is true, I actually saw the 10month old baby dancing! I'm not joking, he was clapping his hands and bobbing his head in perfect time to the music - crazy!! At one point one of the older boys made me get up and dance. Before when we had parties with the staff I had refused but I'm not afraid infront of the kids, I don't feel like they judge me at all. I always say...give me 70 kids to teach rather than just 3 adults any day. I am much more nervous with adults, but right at home with the kids. I think this must mean I am immature...o well! Hope I stay that way! I never want to be serious. But it was still embarassing getting up and dancing Zulu style! I don't think I did too badly though and I actually enjoyed myself, I will have to be brave more often. It is just that I hate to be bad at something, if I am bad I would rather not try than attempt and fail. I really must work on that bad habit! Practice practice practice!

The next day it was one of the boy's brother's confirmations in Ladysmith, a town about 2 hours away. This boy was also in the Home for many years but as he is over 18yr now he is at college studying to be an electrician and staying with a foster mother. His name is Xolani and I remember him well from last year when I taught him at St Lewis. He is such a sweet and polite boy, so is his brother - the one I mentioned last time who wants to be a paramedic. They are such lovely boys, their father is dead and their mother is an alcoholic who lives in a one room hut. They have been in the Home over 7 years now, and will never be going back to their mother's. The lady who fosters them is really lovely and has a lot of love to give them, but not much money to support them.

We took the bus and 35 boys to go and visit them! It was such a nice surprise for him, we hadn't told them we were going as it was pretty last minute. In a typically african fashion we arrived at 9.30am...the service started at 8am and was over when we arrived! So we collected Colin and followed the Bishop to the next confirmation which was 5min away, in the very same township - it just shows you how many catholics there are here! But we were late for that one too so we had to sit outside the church in a baking hot concrete yard, think it was over 35oC in that spot - I thought I would faint. The service was over 2 hours long by which point we were all feeling sick and tired, literally! But yet again I experienced the unbelievable love and kindness that the Zulu people have for each other. They heard we were a group from a Children's Home so the ladies from the committee went and brought food and juice for the boys and then invited the adults in to have lunch with the Bishop! I actually got to sit next to him and had a really nice chat, he is a very intelligent man and it was such a nice surprise. I had heard a lot about Graham Rose but had never met him before, I felt very proud to sit there and talk to him. He said that he has a nun who is a friend of his from Bristol who works in Cape Town in a centre for AIDS babies, and that if I ever want to get away I should let him know and he will organise a trip down for me! Sounds amazing, I will definitely be taking him up on that offer!

After lunch we all piled back on the bus and drove to Colin's foster house in the township. We had bought 3 cakes and 6 bottles of fizzy drink for him so that we could celebrate with a little party, it was so nice. The township he lives in has no tarmac roads, like all of the townships I've been to, and so we bumped along in our 20year old bus. We pulled up outside their house, a one storey house with a corrugated iron roof and 2 windows - both smashed and their holes covered up with plastic bags. I wasn't shocked at the house because I had seen from photos of visits to the children's homes that that is how they lived. But despite the grim sound of it, the garden was really nicely kept with a mown lawn and flower beds, and inside the house they had nice furniture and a tv. It is strange the differences between the structure of a house which is so basic and then the fact that they have nice possessions inside...and they don't even have a real toilet. I noticed the steel shack at the back of the house so was polite enough not to ask to use the 'bathroom'...luckily I managed to hold it all day - pretty miraculous for me!!

When it came to leaving Colin asked me about the Shakespeare sonnet I had taught him last year and if I could please send him a copy of it with an explanation in easy english so he can understand it. It was so nice to hear he remembered and was still interested in reading literature, he is such a toughtful boy, really intent on learning and improving his education. I have made him a copy and have sent it with a careworker who is visiting Ladysmith tomorrow so hopefully he will deliver it safely to him. I am hoping that when we go to the safari place near Ladysmith we will be able to make a detour to visit Colin and Gerry who will be there for the holidays. We could take them a food parcel of some essential supplies as I know they don't have enough money to really buy suffcient food for that number of people. And as it's christmas I want them to have some nice things to eat too! It will be really fun to show mum and dad the real African side of SA, not just the tourism side which is not a true reflection of how I have been living and the people I am living with.

Okay, that is just about everything I have to update you guys on! I am working hard this week on completing some applications for funding from 3 different trust funds, I want to get them off by Friday so have a lot of boring paperwork to occupy me...but then I can always take a break and go and find some kids to play with. Yesterday I had amazing fun learning to shoot a home-made catapult with some of the boys - I was pretty bad but it was a lot of fun. Then we watched a DVD at their cottage and I ended up leaving at 11pm! You can tell it is winding down now that they are watching dvds instead of doing study, just one more week and they will be off for the summer holidays, and just 9 days until I am off for my holiday with mum and dad!

Much love to you all, happy 1st day of Advent, oh and did you know it is World AIDS day today?? If you want to do something, send some money for St Anthony's reach for a star christmas present project and help make a chlid's christmas one to celebrate :)

love Becky xxxxxxxx