This is one of many amazing lunch spreads the "mammas" would make for us every day while we were working at Farview School. Brian Anderson would take them grocery shopping and they would pick out all of the food and then he would buy it, bring it back and they would cook for us every day. It was delicious! Always had bowls and bowls of rice...
Wally brought a laptop and cell phone which doubled as a modem and he was able to set up Skype so that our kids and the African kids were able to Skype the kids at Columbia Independent School. It was awesome!! They were able to see each other and communicate....techonology is miraculous!
Digging a ditch for the pipe for the toilets with a pick axe and shovel...
now that's the hard way to do it!
Pulling and his guys mixing concrete for the teachers' toilets. We will be constructing 16 total new toilets for the school. Eight for the teacher, which will be flush toilets, and eight for the kids. They desperately need them!
The kids from the high school on right with our Katy and Abbi. Phomotso is in the green shirt. He wants to be a Photo Journalist.
The high school kids took us to see their school. Almost looked like a jail with all of the barbed wire! There is quite a bit of crime in South Africa.
This was written on one of the doors at the high school...
Zukes (a shortened version of his African name, Zukisani) explained to us how there were 105 students in this class!!! WHAT??? The desks literally touched the chalk board at the front of the room, so if you wanted to write, you would have to stand on the desks to do it! The teacher actually had to stand in the doorway to teach because there was no room for her to stand at the front of the class!
The high school was definitely in much disrepair and needed so much work. When I asked how they could learn in this environment with so many kids in their class, Zukes said it is a very good education academically here and they want to learn very badly, so they try to ignore the rest.
We were not very happy to see how badly they treated their furniture and classrooms. Desks and chairs were written on and just tossed aside. Dominique was quite upset because this is her country and she's the one who chose to rebuild the school in this community. She told them how wrong it was to not take care of what was given to them. Hopefully, Farview kids will feel a sense of pride with how good their school looks now and choose to treat it with care. We can only hope...
Three of the high schoolers in front of the school plaque...
This is what we woke up to every day in front of the lodge...so beautiful....
The fog just hung over the river...
Two good buddies....
Amanda was such a great role model to the younger kids...they just adored her (and how could you not?)...
Once you start taking pictures...everyone wants to be in them!
Me with these darling kids...you can see the progress we've made on the school behind us!
Washing the walkway outside...at the last minute we decided to paint it and it made all the difference. Looked so good when we were finished...
Dominique getting the students to clean up the trash around the school. It was horrible! They just threw it on the ground without thinking about it! We did find that there were no trash cans to be seen. That is hopefully something that will change if the kids have more pride in their school...
These two adorable girls peeking out of the window of their classroom now that it is all painted and nice...
Goodman with Liz...
Progress on the building...looking good!
These two ladies wanted so badly for me to take their picture...
Then they spotted Seth and grabbed him!
Did you guys call each other again to discuss attire???
Two boys posing as they're picking up trash...
Another cute pic of these darling girls...
Me with this sweet 7th grader....
Starting to paint the walkway...
The finished product!
Some kids showed up in regular clothes today if they didn't have school...
More pals...
These girls took my glasses and one of our girls' bandana and each posed with them....
I think this is Amanda's hat!
They were having so much fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment