Adrenalin is pumping!

After some relaxing and refuelling days at the beach last weekend, I was ready for another week at MOP. It definitely consumes energy to interact with the kids at the day-care, help with homework and communicate with the housemoms, so in my weekends I try to do as less as possible and reload the battery. But although I try hard to plan nothing, at the end my weekends are busy too: Indian banquets at the Indian Church (see picture 1), beach visits, writing letters with the kids, cleaning my house and updating my weblog.

Last week was an interesting week with adrenaline pumping through my body:
First of all the teacher of the day-care was sick for 2 days so I was in charge! Fortunately a chair dance and a puppet show kept the kids pretty quiet. I even came around making motherdaypresents for all the housemoms (see picture 2). A bit to late, but better late then never, right?

The housework room is up and running and had a successful first week (see pictures below)! Kids came, sat down and made their homework and left happily telling others about this ‘magic room’ (you go in with a blank paper and come out with your homework done!). In the beginning mainly the younger kids came to work on relatively easy projects, but as time went by I found myself trying to solve mathematical equations like: (x?+3x) -2(x?+3x)? - 8 = 0 Without any books for support (they leave them at school) I wish my dad could fly over to help me on this one... It’s a relief to know I will have the books quickly, since I am sure after a bit of reading it will all come back to me...

Apparently 2 drop-in hours a day are not enough to help everybody with their homework, since I had a housemom on my doorstep on Wednesday morning at 06.00 o’clock! They stand up at 0.400 o’clock everyday, so for them 6 am is decent timing… For me it’s not! Although still partly in my REM sleep, I decided to help solve a biology problem about Ph values. But I did made clear that this was a one time favour.

On Wednesday evening all the volunteers were invited to join a policeman to see ‘Durban-by-night’. In other words: drive incognito (no we are not tourists or the police) through rough areas and see the stuff you are not supposed to see and go into areas you should NEVER go into by yourself. We drove past the Nigerian mob, the pick-up places for loverboys, the hookers (some were pregnant and still working), the drug dealing places and got an explanation about this site of South-Africa. It was scary, really impressive and I was happy to arrive save and sound back at MOP. As you might realise no pictures were taken, so you just have to go there yourself…or not.
 
Thursday was another school day for me. I joined the kids up to Inkwali primary school for a sports day! This time I was armed with my bag of hockey sticks! In the middle of the school buildings there is a little field surrounded by higher pavement, ideal to play hockey on. After explaining one rule (no high sticks) I let 18 kids play a match, boys against girls. Although I expected an unstructured crowd running after a ball, I just wanted to let them get excited about the sport. And it went great! Some of them had never seen a hockey stick in their lives before, but immediately knew how to use it and handled it great! See the pictures for an impression of innebandy the South-African way (including a game of hockey here at MOP with the younger kids).

The rest of the sports day consisted of a match of netball for the girls and soccer for the boys against another primary school. Because they assumed (wrongly) that I have a lot of netball experience I was named assistant coach. I learned here that it is better to go with the flow than to argue, so decided to go along with it. After a last tactical training and team picture (see below) we went on our way to the other school. Transport in SA is slightly different from that in Europe and also slightly less save…It is mostly a question of how to fit 20 kids into a minibus suited for 10 kids (see picture)! Since I am coach (and teacher and white) I could sit relatively comfortable in the front. The trip was great, driving along the sugarcane fields, very loud music, kids singing and collecting dust on arms, legs and hair along the way. We arrived save and sound at Singele primary school were a crowd of kids was welcoming us. I am sure some of them had never seen a white person before as they were all staring at me. This might also had to do with the fact that I came out of the bus dancing to the beats of ‘Jazzmans’ rhythms!

After a welcome ceremony with lots of singing again (it’s great), we went of to the sport fields. My debute as a coach was unfortunately not a big success since we lost… but the atmosphere was super! Next time we will be back with hockey!
The drive back in the minibus was as exciting as the way towards the school and again I was an oddity (white people normally NEVER take minibuses, since minibuses are not considered save modes of transport) and stared at by everybody we passed. Then again having a white person in your minibus gave the ‘Jazzman’ loads of status, so he needed to make sure everybody we passed got to see me (i.e. honking all the time, loud music and shouting)!

Last Friday I had another housemother meeting (see picture) and the input of the moms is increasing. Via this way I would like to thank Linda, the previous MOP volunteer, for making the room for the meetings. I heard you did a lot of effort to clean and decorate it and I just want to let you know it is used a lot now and it suits the housemom meeting very well: Thanks!

Friday was also the last working day for 4 Bobbi Bear volunteers, so we had a little goodbye ceremony. It made me realize that time flies here and that there will also be a day where I have to say goodbye to all the kids. That made me really said, because I feel I already made a bond with so many of them. So after 2 months I expect it to be really hard to go. But for now I will have to focus on the time I am here, the time I can help them! So I give them as much attention as possible. The little ones started calling me Aunty MJ, which is a cute way of saying a name.

A new boy (around 18 months) arrived not long ago and he even calls me mama… it makes my day when he starts smiling every time he sees me (see picture). He knows how to smile but he doesn’t know which sound to make with it. If I tickle him his whole face lights up but the sound he makes resembles that of a snake’s SSSSSS. I think he never had people around him before that laughed, so he just doesn’t know how it sounds.

Below I also put a picture of an example of a ‘house’. As you can see it consists of 2 housemothers and about 6 children (and sometimes an own child of one of the moms). It is often a combination of ages, ranging from 2 till 16. By the way, the 3 little ones sitting on the chairs are really sweet and with the girl in the middle I have a special connection. It is hard to explain, but there are always children that just mean a little bit more to you. It is not only me, every volunteer will have 2 or 3 kids they connect with a bit extra.

That’s it for this week, ciao for now,
MJ

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