We're Home!

Nicole and I arrived back safe in Seattle yesterday. Thank you so much for all of your prayers throughout this trip. God certainly blessed us!

Last Day

Today is our last full day in South Africa. It is crazy how fast 5 weeks has flown by! We celebrated our last day by teaching the first grade class - all by ourselves!!! Yikes! I love those kids to death, but I'm not sure how Leeanne does it every day. I'm tired! The kids behaved better than they have in the past, which was a blessing, and they worked very hard. God definitely answered our prayers and brought us through the day. All of the kids were still there at the end of the day, too :)

We have been saying good-bye to people throughout the week, but this was by far the day of good-byes. We had to say good-bye to most of the teachers and all of the kids that we have come to know and love over the past 5 weeks. Please pray for us as we begin our long journey home tomorrow. It will take us 36 hours from the time we leave Kokstad to the time we arrive in Seattle.

This is our crazy first grade class. Yes, they really are that dramatic ;)

We're Back! (in Kokstad, that is...)

We arrived back in Kokstad last night from our short vacation: the Midlands Meander. We drove for about 4 hours on Thursday, stopping at various shops along the way, before we arrived at our Bed and Breakfast. On Friday, we drove up into the mountains. We took the scenic route, which was beautiful, but very windy and bumpy. Nicole and I both got really car sick... We took a hike up through the mountains to some old rock art paintings. We were assured that this was an easy hike that would take us about 30 minutes. About an hour later, all 4 of us were pretty tired of climbing over rocks! I would really hate to see what a hard walk looks like to South Africans ;)

Yesterday, we drove to a nearby game reserve. We saw a lot of zebra, antelope and buck, one ostrich and two warthogs. No giraffe or rhino :( Oh well. We did have some heart-stopping moments with Allen's Toyota Yaris and one-way roads bordered by cliffs. Let's just say that most roads here are designed for vehicles with four-wheel drive and a high bottom clearance. We spent the rest of the day driving home, which took about 6 hours. Nicole and I barely ate anything yesterday we were so car sick. Thank the Lord we made it home and we are feeling better today!

This morning was our last Sunday here in South Africa! It seems so crazy that we have been here for 4 weeks already! Wow time flies. We enjoyed our last church service here, had tea with Nerina and her family and then went to lunch at the Pastor's home. It's funny how a day with no plans suddenly turns into a very busy day!

The four of us at Howick falls.

This was the little cottage we stayed in. The thatched roof was just beautiful (too bad Nicole was allergic to it...)!

Me and Nic on our hike.

Some of the rock art paintings we saw on our hike.

An ostrich we saw at the game reserve.

One of the shops we stopped at - a chocolate fondue shop!

Still-Had-to-Labor Day

I apologize for not updating the blog yesterday...Nicole and I had a packed day. I hope you all enjoyed your three day weekend, because we certainly did not get a day off :) In reality, yesterday was probably one of our busier days. We started the day off at school, moving from the first grade class to the 4th/5th/6th grade class and finally ending in the office. The older girls are trying to play catch up with their work before the term ends in three weeks, so they are continuously too busy to talk.

After school, we went to the orphanage to hang out with kids for a few hours. Nicole and I were shocked by what we found. No one said a word to us when we walked in - in fact, we had to search for someone to in charge. We could have easily picked up a kid and walked out the door, and no one would have been the wiser. Once we found and introduced ourselves to the supervisor on duty, she asked a little girl to take us to a housemother. All of the kids in the orphanage are split up into 4 houses, and each house has a "mother" who is in charge of the well-being of her 15 or so children. We introduced ourselves to the first housemother and told her we were there to help the kids with homework, play with the kids, take care of babies or whatever they needed. She told us that the kids didn't have homework because of the strike (most kids haven't been in school for weeks), and they were being entertained just fine by the TV. She told us to try another house. We went through all 4 houses that way, with each housemother telling us that she didn't need us.

When we walked into the last house, all of the kids were huddled around the TV like they had been in all of the other houses. We realized, however, that we had walked right into a sex scene, followed a few seconds later by a murder scene! Mind you, these are kids ranging from 2 months to 13 years old. We asked the housemother, who was busy enjoying the TV show, if she wanted us to take the kids outside in the beautiful sunshine to play on the orphanage's playground. She grumbled at us and told us that they were fine in front of the TV. Then she got up and left. A few minutes later, we heard a baby crying from the back room. Since the housemother wasn't there, and none of the kids seemed to care, we both went back to the baby's room. Sinalo, the baby girl, is 2 months old, one of twins who were born prematurely. The poor thing had an extremely wet diaper, and had so many clothes on that she was literally dripping sweat (it was about 80 degrees outside). It was obvious from the first few minutes that Sinalo lacks proper stimulation: she doesn't respond to light, touch, or sound, and she won't follow movement with her eyes. She had had a bloody nose who knows how long ago, and blood was caked around her nose and mouth. She had a really hard time breathing. We cleaned her nose up and changed her diaper (which was way too big - the back reached her shoulders). Then we decided to play with her. After about 30 minutes, she was reacting to sounds and the tickling of her feet. She had a hard time making eye contact still, but she would follow your finger if you moved it slowly in front of her eyes. It was obvious the poor thing was in desperate need of love and attention, and it just broke my heart that she wasn't getting it.

After 30 minutes or so, she started getting really fussy, and she was sucking on anything she could get her hands on. The schedule in her room said that she was supposed to be fed every 2 hours, so it was pretty obvious that she was hungry. We brought her out to the house mom and asked if she needed to be fed, but the housemother said no. Apparently she had been fed several hours earlier, and the housemother didn't want to overfeed her for fear she would spit it all up. They are not open to any advice or criticism, but it seemed pretty obvious to us that you can't just not feed an underdeveloped baby because they have acid reflux! We highly doubt they burp her, either, because they give the babies a bottle in their crib propped up by a blanket and then let them go to sleep. The housemom then grabbed Sinalo from us, shook her a few times (without holding her head), and sat back down in front of the TV. Needless to say, we were furious.

Our plan is to continue to spend time at the orphanage for the remainder of our time here. Please pray for us and for the kids at the orphanage. It is a truly heart-wrenching experience, but these kids desperately need love.

Nicole helping Gugu (1st grader) with her vocab

Me helping Audrey (1st grader) with reading

This is Sinalo. She is 2 months old, but she is so small.

Oink, Moo and a Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

Nicole and I started off our day by baking homemade cinammon rolls. The recipe is one that has been passed down through Nicole's family, and we both enjoy it. Usually we let my parents' bread machine make the dough for us, but today we were on our own! We had to make the bread dough, knead it, let it rise, cover it in butter, cinammon and sugar, roll it, slice it, and then coat it with the topping. What hard work! Allen, Gloria and Nerina told us that they were very good, and I don't think they would lie to us...

We spent the rest of the day doing laundry, cleaning out our flat, getting our toilet fixed (it used to run constantly), reading and napping. After dinner, the four of us decided to play a game. Nicole and I brought Snorta with us for Allen and Gloria, so we gave it a go. For those of you who haven't played, it's a blast! I'll give you a hint: you make animal noises. We just could not stop laughing! All in all, we had a fun day :)

Hard at work making cinammon rolls.

The finished product (minus a few taste tests, of course)

Showing off our Snorta animals.

The 1st Grade I Never Knew

Nicole and I gave our testimonies to the senior class today. I'm not sure if it made any impact (well, I know for a fact they enjoyed the hour they didn't have to work), but God knows! They did have a lot of questions, especially about dating. Oh, teenage girls.

We spent the rest of the morning helping out in the 1st grade classroom. I was assigned to one little girl, Audrey, who really struggles with reading. Nicole floated around the room helping the other kids with their questions and their reading material. For those of you who don't know, I only went to first grade for about a month before I moved to second grade (and I have no memory of what I did experience). So it was interesting to see what I missed out on!

We would have talked to the senior girls this afternoon, but they were all way behind on their studies. So, instead, we helped out in the office for the last part of the day.

The silly 1st grade girls.

Nicole read the kids a story once they finished their work.

I think we forgot to tell you that we tried a new and exciting food the other day...ostrich! Neither of us liked it much...

Hospice

Nicole and I had an eye-opening experience today. We met up with Kokstad's branch of Hospice, which gave us a township tour. We spent the day in Kokstad's poverty-stricken neighborhoods - "the locations" as the government calls them. The government provides housing for the people in these neighborhoods (see the picture below). Hospice brings medical treatment to the sick people living in these neighborhoods.

1 in 3 people in South Africa has HIV or AIDS. The majority of the people we saw today had HIV or AIDS (including the children). Because of their compromised immune systems, these people tend to get sick very easily. TB is a huge problem here, especially considering the small houses they share. Once one family member contracts TB, the rest of the family is likely to develop TB. Those with TB receive daily injections of medicine. Hospice also makes sure that patients on ARVs (for HIV/AIDS) have been taking their medicine twice a day, every day. If they miss even one dose, the virus is likely to grow stronger within their system.

We saw several examples of the good that Hospice is doing in the community. Several people that we ran into, who are fine now, would have been dead a few months ago if not for Hospice's medical treatment. It was very heart-wrenching to see the devastation caused by AIDS, though. So many children have been orphaned by this disease, left to be cared for by grandparents or aunts. It was even harder to see children with HIV or AIDS. It's so hard to look at them and know that they will never lead a normal life: they will always be smaller than other children and underdeveloped, and they won't live nearly as long. It's so easy to feel completely helpless - after all, there is nothing that you can do to cure them of AIDS. But so many of them have smiles on their faces and joy in their hearts. I think they understand better than any of us that this world is not our home.

The two ladies in the back are Hospice caregivers. They live in these neighborhoods, and their job is to figure out who is sick so that the nurses can come and give them treatment. The little girl in this picture was abandoned by her mother. She almost died when she was a little girl, but Hospice brought her to the hospital and nursed her back to health. She is 3 years old now and is living with her grandparents.

This is a school for children with disabilities. The schools in South Africa don't have special education like they do in America, so the woman on the left decided to use her home to educate these kids.

The woman in this picture is the Hospice nurse that showed us around.

Each of these little shacks is a home built by the government. The shacks are literally no bigger than my living room back home, but they house anywhere from a single couple to a dozen family members. Most have electricity, but they do not have running water or indoor plumbing.