Graeme and Lavinia come to visit
Trip Start
Jan 13, 2003
1
16
32
Trip End
Sep 01, 2003
Benoni,
South Africa
Friday, February 7, 2003
That 3rd volunteer arrived on Wed afternoon, so there are 3 of us in our room again. Her name is Clementine, or Clem, and she is from France.
The highlight of Wednesday was getting mince in the soup for dinner. Sounds strange huh? The Village gets food sent from the Centre, where all the food is made at once. Once every week - I think - we get supplies such as loaves of bread for the kids school lunches, a tin of jam, some veggies (variable, since KH relies on donations, and the budget is spent on staples), a sack of mielie meal for making pap, a packet of pasta, a bag of salt and sugar, some washing up liquid, some bleach for the mop bucket, and some washing powder.
Every day each house puts their large cooking pot into the transport and when it returns in the afternoon, the pots are full of soup. If the pot isn't put into the transport, then that house gets no soup for dinner. Rainbow is the only house that this happens to, cos whoever is on rota sometimes forgets. The same rule applies to the washing-up liquid - if the bottle isn't put in the transport at the start of the week then you don't have any for the whole week. Obviously it has to be used sparingly or you run out before the end of the week.
Also, since the kids are more important than the occupants of Rainbow, we tend to get the worst portion when the supplies are split into five.
The soup is always the same though, a mush of various vegetables. Today there was mince in it, a rare treat. We only get meat at the weekend, usually once every week, sometimes once every two weeks. Needless to say you get bored of pap and soup. When we get fresh vegetables we have a little dollop each of that too, either beetroot or cabbage. Every house has a fridge, but the one in Rainbow is broken. So no perishables. As a volunteer, if you want something extra you can buy it at the supermarket, but you have to eat it straight away since there is nowhere cool to keep it. Also, I find all the vols just live like the rest of the Village, so don't make themselves better off. I have bought some powdered milk, which tastes quite good if mixed with a little sugar. That's my only real extra, and since I don't drink tea, I reckon it's ok. I also buy fruit, since we don't get enough veggies, and the soup is cooked so much that it can't have many nutrients left.
Oh there is one thing - Butterfields. It's a bakery around the corner from the Centre, and it does fantastic cinnamon buns.
Thursday was in the office. I sorted files, I answered the phone. Doing the filing is helping me learn the kids' names.
The highlight was during homework session, when Lindo said, "I must have some of my drink now, because I have no idea what to write." Bless him.
And today, Ann Botha (our rep) arrived with Graeme and Lavinia from Project Trust. They are on a grand tour of Southern Africa, visiting all the projects. Graeme is the PT desk officer for South Africa and other countries like Namibia and Botswana. Lavinia is the director of PT, usually she doesn't do the rounds but this time she is. She's rather proper, so we were dreading her arrival. Turns out she was pretty ok. Phew.
They came to the Centre and talked to us and Moira, the Kids Haven director. Then we showed them around. Ann returned with the car and took us to the village. On the way we stopped at the mini-market and Lavinia paid for the fruit we bought. We also got free lunch, which has to be a highlight.
