Week 2 – School Holidays, Patsy and Netball

Apologies once again for the lack of blogging that has occurred. I fully intend to rectify this situation by giving you a brief overview of what has happened over the last few weeks, so I will hopefully be up to date!

My second week here was school holidays again, so the centre was quite manic for the entire week. We did lots of fun activities, there was lots of singing and dancing, we made play dough & lemonade & I had my hair braided to make me a real Zulu! It was an incredibly cold and miserable week. I think there were fewer kids than normal because some of them just stayed in bed as it was the only way to stay warm. The Family Centre tends to be quite cold regardless of the temperature outside, which is a nice escape from the summer sun. But, you can imagine that if kids have had to walk a long way to get there, in the rain, to sit in a cold room, they’re probably better off staying in bed. The major discovery of the week was that Patsy, my car, hates English-esque weather even more than me! Basically, I think she broke down nearly every day that week, which can be a bit scary given that when I leave work, it’s going dark and I wasn’t particularly familiar with the roads either. Luckily, each time she broke down, I was giving some guys lifts home, so they had to push :D The first time she broke down, I was giving Zwe a lift to netball training & she just stopped on the main road in Mpophomeni. It took us nearly 2 hours to get her going, during which time the police came to move us on, fortunately Zwe was there to explain that we would quite happily move along if we could! I was quite happy as were opposite the soccer fields so I watched training for a while until she started up again. By the time we got to the gym, the rest of the team had been and gone & she broke down in the car park again. Grant came to rescue us but it took him an hour to find the right gym, I’m not sure how many he’d visited by the time he found us!
It’s interesting how the Zulu people respond to the cold, I think they certainly feel it more than we do back home, you can tell they’re probably wearing all the clothes they own! I was also surprised to see a campfire at the bus stop too, which is a regular occurrence every cold day, with a crowd of people huddled around it.
It was a busy weekend, on the Friday night, I went to the cinema with Linda the social worker. I was stunned when the ticket lady only charged us R40 for 2 tickets, that’s less than £2 each! Those of you who know me well will be expecting me to be at the cinema every night! I stayed over at Linda’s and we made delicious pizzas for tea, using up the contents of her fridge! I drove back to Howick through the worst fog I have ever seen. You literally couldn’t see the car in front, then all of a sudden, it stopped and it was a beautiful day! I looked in my rearview mirror & it was just like a huge wall, on the one side was all white and the other had a lovely clear blue sky and the birds were singing etc, it was stunning! I went to watch the netball all weekend, which was good, I’ve missed watching sports in the UK, so I really enjoyed that, despite being the only white person there! Lots of the people were staring at me, not really in an intimidating way, just in a curious way I think. I got stopped at one point as I was walking in the stands and a girl looked at me then said something to Zwe. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, so I asked and he said she told him I was beautiful. I just stood there quite shocked that she had stopped me to say this, then Zwe told me to say ngiyabonga (thank you). On Sunday too, a girl passed a message on all the way from one end of the stand to the other, where I was sitting, to say I was beautiful. It’s interesting to see elements of apartheid that still remain today. I was the only white person there, because netball is a sport played mostly in the townships, and only black people live in the townships. I don’t think those girls would have made such an effort to say they thought I was beautiful if my skin was a different colour. It’s so sad to think that black people were so oppressed a few years ago that now even they believe they are worthless and inferior to the whites.
Church was amazing, it was Africa Day, so a huge celebration of what it means to be African, or an honourary African! There was a lot of singing and dancing and being joyful! I am always in awe of how much these people sing and dance, even mundane tasks like putting out chairs etc are worked into a dance! Also, Grace, the Pastor’s daughter (who also sings & plays piano, like Jude!) gave me a CD they recorded at the beginning of the year, which is brilliant! It is intended to be a resource for churches who are starting to get Zulu people coming along to their services. So the songs are all in Zulu, but very easy, which means I can now speak much more Zulu than before! A major thing happened during the service. A women stood up to say she was HIV+. This might not seem like a big deal, particularly considering the huge proportion of people who are HIV+, but it is never spoken about, not even in families really, especially not in a public place like church. It is simply unheard of for someone to share their status like this. I knew that from July, and so for me to hear this woman sharing like that reduced me to tears. To think that barriers are breaking down, if people would talk about this, if it could become less shameful, then perhaps progress can be made so much quicker! She really was extremely brave, some churches reject people when they find out they are HIV+, I’m lucky to be in a church that welcomes everyone and encourages people to be open so that they can be helped where they need to be helped. More on that later.

Over n out

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Part of trip: South Africa Sep to Dec 09

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