It's supposed to be summer...

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We've been in South Africa for nearly two months now and it has started raining! So we thought that we would use the time that we would normally be sunbathing to come to the IT rooms and catch up on emails and facebook.

We arrived on the 17th August and were collected from the airport by Mpho, a guy who works in the office here and is rather dodgy. He had ripped off the other volunteers by offering to drive them to Nelspruit then charging them about 4 times the cost of taking a taxi! He has also tried to get us to change 20 pound notes into rand for him, despite the fact that they were ones that have been replaced years ago by the new notes.

We live in a little house of our own, good news since the dorms are absolutely awful - they look like juvenile detention centres. School starts at 7.30am, and we teach 5 or 6 lessons a day each. We teach both the primary school kids and the high school. The primary school is crazy - each classroom is about 55 kids crammed into a tiny room so trying to get them to do anything is difficult. The senior school is a bit better, especially in the geography lessons that I take, since they choose to do these so the classes are generally smaller.

The geography teacher is a total nightmare. Between me and one of the Aussie volunteers, Jess, we take ALL of the classes so she just swans around doing nothing all day, occassionally not even bothering to come in at all. Other than her laziness she is actually nice enough, though she has come out with some cracking lines. On one of the first days of teaching she asked me to come to the back of the room so that she could point out which girl was pregnant. Another day she asked Jess if she would like to borrow her used nasal spray. She has now taken to asking us for money, which she would pay back, because she hasn't been paid by the Department of Education this month. On another occasion she wiped her nose with her hand, meaning that she smelt her new perfume. She then thrust her hand forward asking me to smell it!

We have taken a few trips at weekends - one to Pretoria, where we met a guy from Cambridge, small world - and one to Pietersburg for Jess' birthday. We take minibus taxis around the place as they are the cheapest way to travel. They are also the dodgiest way to travel. On our first ride the driver stopped to let people out, then got out of the taxi to bolt closed the door which wouldn't close properly. Unfortunately he hadn't put on the handbrake so the van started rolling backwards down a hill. He ran round the taxi and shouted at someone in the front to put on the brake. They did, but so quickly that the taxi slammed into the driver knocking him to the ground and nearly under the taxi. All good fun though.

We went to Mozambique over the holiday which was amazing. It is a very different place to South Africa - lots of wide tree lined avenues with communist and colonial era buildings everywhere. The border crossing was interesting, on the way there the coach left without some of our group because they decided we were waiting too long for our visas (I tried my hand at bribery but was flat out refused). On the way back Gem was feeling really ill and nearly passed out in one of the offices. Other than that it was a great trip with lots of seafood for very little money.

It was a bit of a shame to have to come back to school and start teaching again, and it has made us want to get off to Malaysia all the more. It has also started raining a lot which is really annoying! Since we can't leave the school campus alone (because the town is very poor and all black we would stick out a mile and get mugged) we don't have much to do other than watch television and drink. Apparently one of the volunteers from the last intake was a total alcoholic and I can see why. That said it has been a good experience for getting away from everything - just sitting in a classroom late at night chatting about nothing and ending up in stitches has been great fun, as has teaching and getting to know the kids.

Anyway, will post more soon, as the internet connection here seems to be a bit more reliable now. Hope everyone is well.

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Comments

[anonymous]

glad you finally got a blog!! great to have your news xxxx