Advertisement
Published: August 22nd 2015
A nice leisurely start to the day, up for breakfast at 8.00 am then we got ready for a shopping spree in Marble Hall - an hour's drive - we were joined by Evelyn and Gugu (as she needed some new clothes and a suitcase for a forthcoming school trip). Some clothes were bought for the boarders, some more games (that can be shared) and a suitable lockable box so that the games can be stored for the boarders. Tim and Rob discovered a different hardware shop which was a great delight (just two weeks later than required). Then we stocked up with snacks for our journey to Kruger and a few supplies for the next few days (breakfast cereals etc.) Tim treated us all to an ice-cream (after all, we are on holiday) we were all feeling weary in the 29 degree C heat. And it was only midday!
We met up with Evelyn and Gugu in Wimpy, which was much nicer restaurant than any Wimpy I've visited in the UK. After two weeks in Siyabuswa, it seems strange to see other white faces, I guess that's why we get so many friendly waves when we drive around Siyabuswa,
everyone seems to know that we are visiting Grace School and Hope for Africa Mission. After lunch we drove back to Siyabuswa and sorted all the items ready to take across to the school. We had a small list of jobs to finish off at the school: one board to go up in the infants playground, some seeds to plant in the school garden, a seat to fit on the see-saw, a few posters to go up in the classrooms, a basketball hoop to fix to a wall for the boy boarders. Rob gave Frances a short course in plumbing, so she is now an expert in ball cock replacements.
The boarders all enjoyed seeing us again and playing with some of their new games and toys, the wind-up radios were a big hit - but not the easiest radios to tune, we found a channel broadcasting football commentary, but the music stations were much preferred. It was hard to say good bye to the boarders, we've enjoyed playing with them after school and getting to know them a bit better. We won't miss the exhausting heat or the fine, powdery dust that blows up from the playground &
the dirt roads and gets on your skin and in your hair! We will miss the fun and the friends we've made...
We brought a lot of extra suitcases in order to bring resources for the school - in fact we each brought an extra 23 kg of goodies - at least we don't have quite so many to pack before we set off on the next leg of our adventure. We have a 450km journey to Kruger National Park (which is one of the largest in the world and the same area as the country of Wales) which we hope will take less than our predictions of 8 hours - but realistically, with stops, we anticipate a long day of travel - fortunately we have four drivers so we can share the driving.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0407s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Richard Hudson
non-member comment
Congratulations and well done--you've achieved a tremendous amount at The Grace and it sounds like you have been a real blessing to the children. You deserve your holiday now--hope you have a safe journey to the Kruger. Be warned, if you are going the Loskp Dam-Middelburg way, that when we were there a few weeks ago they were blasting to widen the road, which meant they closed it for hours in the middle of the day. They may not be doing that on a Sunday but if they are, it's necessary to get there before 1100.