Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.

I lied. THIS is my last post from Africa. I am at an internet cafe in Johannesburg. One short flight away from Komga and I already feel so far away. After lots of tearful goodbyes I am on my way. I sat next to a really drunk guy who was convinced that I am going to take him to America and that we are going to get married. Awk. Luckily the flight was only about an hour and a half long. Seriously. Sheesh. My flight to DC is about 19 hours long and I should get into Denver at about 10:30 am. Naturally I will be partying it up in celebration of Dan the Man's 21st birthday my first day home. Can't wait to see all of your lovely faces!

kb

Last one from South Africa...

My journal entry from September 1, written on the airplan from Washington, D.C. to Johannesburg, South Africa.

"In a lot of ways I don't expect to come home from Africa. Maybe that means that the old me will be cast off and only the new me will return. Maybe my heart will be captured, leaving me defenseless, without the ability to leave. Maybe it is a side effect of giving yourself wholly to something that truly only you and God can understand. I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

It's almost time and I'm almost ready

God always does this for me, I’m resisting this time more than most, but never the less, it’s happening just the same. I am almost ready to go. Not without heartbreak and tears and an incredible desire to stay, but still- ready to go. I knew he would do this, and I shouted at him about it a little bit. I’m not ready to be ready to go, I’m not ready to be ready to be home, and I’m not ready to be ready to go to Cairo. I don’t think God minds the shouting, if I’m going to be honest, at least I’m talking to Him. And of course, amidst the shouting, God is still God and slowly turning the pages for me toward the end of this chapter of my life. As I start to process leaving I pray that I never forget the faces, the names and the stories of the absolutely beautiful children who have left a mark on and changed my heart for forever. For now all I can do is cry about it and let God take care of everything else. It’s not easy feeling like you are doing to these children what every person in their short lives has ever done by leaving. It almost feels cruel that I came into their lives just long enough to love them, only to leave them just like everyone else has. I found here what I set out to find in the first place- something that makes my heart beat fast. Something that makes me feel like life has a purpose. I could live my whole life drying the tears and wiping the bums of amazing kids like the ones that have stolen my heart here and I absolutely mean that. I also found things I didn’t expect to find- like an intense struggle with God about kids suffering and all of the evil, pain and hideous things that are going on in the world. I learned a lot of real things about the way the world works and I want to spend the rest of my life living like I know those things are true.

If I’m going to see you sometime in the next month, know that I am excited about it and if I seem to not be, it’s just because seeing you means leaving here and while I am almost ready for that, I am not anywhere close to being excited about it.

kb

I am probably the best banana chocolate chip muffin maker in Komga

Probably. I just made some really really yummy ones with my fantastic helpers Asekhona and Sikelelwa. I told them that when I go back to America I am going to walk around shouting “Yebo!” just because no one will understand me (Yebo=Yes in Afrikaans). And they said I shouldn’t do that because then people will think I’m crazy and then when I tell people about Open Arms the people will think that they are crazy here. Speaking of words that I know that I will be sad to stop using when I go back to America, I thought I would share some with you. I’m sure they are all spelled wrong because they are just coming from my brain. I shouldn’t have told you that because there’s no way you would know any different.

Kassi’s Open Arms Dictionary
(all words Xhosa unless noted)

Chini- kind of like ‘sheesh’
Hayi- No
Salapanse- Sit down
Lala poopa- Kind of like sweet dreams
Lala conmande- Something else that is nice to say to people who are going to sleep, I use it. I don’t remember what it means.
Umpocokho- African Salad
Poofy- Poop (crude? Maybe, but I live with 30 kids)
Lala poofy- Poopy dreams. Yeah, I know. Remember…30 kids.
Hamba- Go
Puma- Also go, I think one of them is nicer, I’m not sure which.
Maculu- Grandma
Tomculu- Grandpa
Nappies- Diapers
Kusasa- Morning
Ebusuku- Evening
Neenee- Small, a little
Yebo- Yes (Afrikaans)
Ewe- Yes
Lalapanse- Lay down
Molo- Hello
Bum/Bums- Bottom/rear/butt
Wena- You
Apa- Here/there
Amasi- Sour Milk
Enkosi- Thank you
Unjani- How are you?
Hoho- Monster, snake, spider, really anything that scares you
Var- True (Afrikaans)
Onvar- False (Afrikaans)
Tulla- Be quiet
Damu- bottle

Ageko umfanana Yesu- There is no one greater than Jesus

Things that I say/hear everyday that I think are funny…and that I probably won’t get to say/hear when I leave…

Conversation between me and anyone not wearing nappies who is still peeing the bed at night after 6 pm…
“Auntie Kassi please the water”
“Are you weeing the bed?”
“No”
“Ok, then yes the water”

“Ooooh someone is so stinky. Who needs a nappy change?”
Usually accompanying this sentence is another one where I ask one of the boys to find out which baby stinks. I do not want to stick my face down there to smell those nasties but the boys do not mind.

“Nomava! He says! He wants to sleep in the toilet!” –Sikilelwa (Nomava is a girl)

“I was see a sea lion! I was see it!” –Zimkhita, referring to a little watering hole on our driveway, where apparently she spotted a sea lion.

The kids keep eating the raspberries before they turn red, Phelisa was the culprit yesterday…
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing”
“Are you picking those berries again?”
“Yes”
“Are you supposed to be picking those berries?”
“Yes”
“No, no you are not”
“OK”
“Please go play somewhere away from the berries.”
“I’m picking the berries!”
“Do you want a timeout?”
“No, I want the berries”

While playing Candy Land, Zimkhita became very angry at the licorice spots that make you lose your turn, she kept landing on them, and determined not to land on the next one, shouted,
“I’m skipping you, you stinky bums!”

“What are you DOING?!”- Khanyisa

“Father Christmas is coming TOMORROW!”- Khanyisa, everyday since the beginning of last month

“Auntie Kwassi!” – Asanda

“Ina finned” – Asekho said this to everyone all the time for an entire week, we still don’t know what it means in any language

“Haaaaayi!” – Sanda

And what makes my heart smile every single day, no matter how crazy the kids are being is the prayer that all of them, from Asekhona all the way down to Sive bow their heads and close their eyes and fold their hands to sing before every meal…
“Tank you Jeeeeesus, tank you Jeeeeesus
Fo ou-wa food, fo ou-wa food
Many, many blessin’s, many many blessin’s
Aaaaamen, aaaaamen”


kb

Finding Perspective

We have an Oscar Romero poster in the hall and I can't remember if I already posted these words, but I like them. My time here is coming to an end entirely too quickly and I'm not handling it well. Sometimes I need a little bit of perspective.

We plant seeds that one day will grow
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promises.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that
This enables us to do something and to do it very well
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

I know I'm failing at being a good blogger. Sorrrry.

kb

Really...

I should have written something, anything really, in the last 10 days while I was busy skipping around the country with my family members...but I didn't. Hopefully I will.

I should have written something about world AIDS day today...but I didn't. Hopefully I will

I am sad that my family is gone...but I am also happy to be back with my babies.

Happy Birthday to Sikho who is officially 2, but began his terrible 2's months ago. Good thing he is adorable.
AND Happy Birthday to Mickey Mouse who is 5 whole years old today and blew out his own birthday candle all by himself!

The faces that the babies made when I jumped into the playroom today after not seeing them for 8 days almost made my heart explode.

Hopefully I'll write more in the next few days, I'm just terrible at forcing myself to write.

love y'all
kb

Thursday Things

· I grated my finger. No really. With a cheese grater. It was obviously an accident and it just nicked me in a couple of spots, but luckily I recently received an AMAZING birthday box with Disney princess band-aids and hot wheels band-aids. I also gave each of the sickies/itchies one to make them feel better. Some of the kids put them on their foreheads.
· If you are ever going to be in Africa for 4 months, invest in an inflatable globe, it’s good for perspective
· I’m awesome at the ukulele. No really. Tally brought one with her and I finally learned how to play it yesterday. I can’t play any real songs but I’m awesome at that thing.
· Our original itchy kids are healed, but we have about 4 others with different rashes. One of them is scabies. Which is not good.
· My dad and brother are currently somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean and should be in the country at about 3 pm. Then I will get to see them at around 9 pm : )
· We had a ‘talk’ with the girls yesterday, complete with visual aids and M&Ms. It was great. I love them. Also I feel totally qualified to be a mother by now.
· I have been a baking CRAZY. I made tortillas over the weekend, followed by banana bread, then banana chocolate chip muffins and last but not least a very yummy rhubarb cobbler with fresh rhubarb from the garden. In Tally’s words, I “would be a good wife”. So. There.
· We (the volunteers and Rita) have spent the last two nights out on the town! Before you jump to any conclusions: The owners of two of the stores in town have totally adopted us and we love them. They are the ones who took us out to that game farm for my birthday, in case you didn’t make the connection. Anyway there is a…I don’t know what to call it…bar(?) or club maybe, called Thunderstruck really close to the end of our road and this family is buying it. I think that is true. Anyway we never knew about it and they told us and we went! It was fun. We were there ‘early’ so there were only…3ish other people there. We are never in town after dark, so it felt like an adventure. Then yesterday we were planning on going into town to get some supper (the kids were having some fish stuff that I generally do not appreciate or consume) and this same family laughed at us because we were going to their store to buy these little pie things that are kind of like potpies and instead they brought us Chinese food from East London! It was amazing. Also they are amazing.
· Tally is leaving early early tomorrow and Yui is leaving on Saturday. Sad : (
· Granny Pearl is our newest driver. She is hilarious. Also super intense. She decided that I needed to clean my room today and that she was going to help me. Wow. All I can say is that it is clean. And that it was an intense experience. Actual conversation from today: Tally: You made Granny Pearl clean your room?! Me: No, Granny Pearl made me let her clean my room. True. Story. (Also- Aunt MA- I am very sad to inform you that the picture of my room that I put up was from my first day here. My room was essentially a huge disaster up until about an hour ago. Thank you for loving me enough to compensate for my flaws. I love and miss you!)
· It is closer to Christmas and I am happy! My Dad is bringing my pink Santa hat and I am getting verrry excited.
· Things you can *hopefully* (cross your fingers) look forward to reading about in the coming monthish…me being in charge for like 10 days while Rita goes to Europe, taking the kids to some sort of theme park in East London (for FREE), cookie making, tree finding, stocking filling, a dairy farm visit, hopefully Robin Hood at a local theater, feeding lambs with bottles, baking, maybe some High School Musical 3 action, and the insanity that will come with having all 30 kids home everyday, all day for one month. Oh it’s going to be good.

LOVE!
kb

p.s. Shout love to a world so desperately in need of a whisper.
p.p.s. I am going to be trying to defeat East London with my Dad and brother tomorrow, so that should be interesting. Then we are heading back here and then leaving for Cape Town on Saturday : )

Why do all kids, everywhere, get up at 6 am on Saturdays?

And furthermore, why do they find it necessary to make sure that everyone else on the planet is also up at 6 am on Saturdays?
Things that make good days….
· Going to the clinic with a 5 month old baby the doctor was almost sure was HIV positive and getting the negative test back
· Taking 6 kids to the clinic for HIV tests last week and getting 6 negatives
· Getting an amazing package from my beautiful school friends!
· Going to a middle/high school youth group for kids in the area and having lots of fun, but realizing that I am very much not in high school anymore
· The fact that I learned how to make tortillas in Africa
· Making tortillas from scratch for 40 of my favorite people on the planet, even though it took 3 hours. (also if you eat a lot of tortillas and you buy them at the store, you shouldn’t. they are so easy to make and fun and full of love)
· Finally getting to watch Enchanted (LOVE!)
· Tally and I made these things called Russian Bars that were awesome and a recipe from our South African Oma, Rina, who we have tea with almost every week.
Things that make interesting days:
· Trying to figure out what locals think of foreigners coming into their country and taking care of their orphans
· Having all of the school kids sent home early because of some mysterious rash at school. Of course 8 of our 10 kids came home with it.
· The clinic is out of meds and calamine because of the outbreak. Luckily we kind of horde those things, so we have a stash.
· The 8 kids are quarantined because the only thing worse than 8 kids with a rash? 30 kids with a rash.
· I feel qualified to have children now, because I already feel like I have 30 of them
Sad things:
· All of the kids standing at the door of their quarantined house with their goofy looking, white, calamine covered bodies, asking if they could come out and if they were going to be able to watch a movie (for the record they are being fed and tended to, they are just not allowed to touch anyone who goes into their house and they are eating all of their meals there and they didn’t get to watch a movie but they did get to play outside while all of the little kids were napping)
· Siphamandla is being treated for TB (the not contagious kind) because the doctor is pretty sure he has it. This is not actually that sad of a thing because the meds will make him stronger and the TB has probably been stunting his growth, but I just remembered it right now when I was writing sad things.
· Realizing that the world doesn’t look much like a lot of people think it does and trying to figure out what to do about that.

The Barbees take on South Africa in T-minus 5 days : )

kb

This is going to make your brain explode

Real. Life. Actual. Pictures.
After over 2 months in Africa, I was finally able to load a decent amount of photos online! Be excited, be very excited.
Here are the links:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2184285&l=f4e95&id=5619188
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2180066&l=4e380&id=5619188

ENJOY : )

kb

lizards, toads, 21!

Wow! It has been a while, sorry to all 3 of you who faithfully read my blog : )
Things to mention from the last weeks:

There is a little guard thing at the bottom of my door to keep critters out because my door leads directly outside. Well, that thing is broken. I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but a toad crawled under my door one night a while ago and just last weekend a lizard came in. The lizard was fast and one of the drivers came in and destroyed my room trying to catch that thing. I was just standing at the door like the pansy girl that I am with some of the kids screaming every time it ran. I’ve started stuffing newspaper under my door every night.

The whole time I have been here I have been responsible for making turkeys. As a thank you to our donors we have been cutting out little turkeys made out of Asekhona’s hand. We finally reached our goal (580, I think). It only took 2 months and made me hate Thanksgiving for liiiife.

We have another volunteer! He is only here for 3 weeks and a friend of Rita’s, it’s fun having so many people here!

I tried driving in town the other day. It did not go well.

I am SO excited for Christmas!

Sive is WALKING! He is one month younger than Endi. The two of them are hilarious together.

Melissa sent me a little kid Cinderella costume for my birthday. She is the best!

I have been able to upload two whole pictures! Here are the links for them:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=36222786&l=2a859&id=5619188
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=36222786&l=2a859&id=5619188
I’m pretty sure the first one is a picture of Endi and the second one is a picture of me and Phelisa from a very long time ago (the time we went to the beach, like the end of September maybe?) We have literally tried every way we can think of to get pictures online and have had no success. We have another thing to try in the next couple of days, cross your fingers!

I am 21! I celebrated my birthday with the kids on Saturday (Asekhona made a killer cake). And then the church people sang to me at church and made me an amazing cake and made me go stand awkwardly in the front and talk. And then it’s hard to explain but basically the lady who owns the store where we buy milk came to visit last weekend with her two daughters (who are 20! Ah! People my age!) and we told them that my birthday was this weekend and they are just too nice. They took us (me, Rita, Tally, Yui) out to a hunting game farm and we had a South African BBQ, which is called something that I cannot remember at this BEAUTIFUL farm. They have 4 rhinos and two of them were up near the house the entire time we were there. They are really goofy looking animals, but it was awesome to see them so close. These people are obsessed with hunting and they have all of their trophies in two rooms and that creeped me out a little bit. Anyway lunch was fabulous and I only had a few sips of what I think was beer mixed with Sprite because 1. I am on a lot of medication and 2. I left to look at the rhinos and when I got back there was a fly drowning in my drink. After lunch the owner of the game farm took us for a drive and we saw ostriches and all kinds of buck and some impala and giraffes! We also looked for the zebras but we could not find them. Their property is HUGE and the animals that we saw were amazing. It was definitely not a shabby way to spend a birthday : )

THANK YOU times infinity for all of the cards, packages, e-mails and messages that helped make my birthday very special. Y’all are the best.
LOVE!
kb

The Adventures of Balloon Boy

Last night was actual scary. Let me lay it down for you. Last night after supper I was in the main house in what we call the playroom which is actually where the kids eat their meals and where we do some homework and after supper the mamas change shifts, so all of the kids stay in there until the second shift mamas arrive. They usually sing or play games but yesterday was just madness and everyone was running around and screaming and having a pretty good time. Then three kids start shouting “Look Auntie Kassi, look!” I turned around to find three kids pulling up little Ayabonga’s pant legs to reveal an infinite amount of bumps. I noticed that he also had them concentrated all around his mouth and that they seemed to be spreading to the rest of his little face. I took him into the kitchen and sat him on the counter and noticed that they were all over his stomach and his arms and his back. It looked like an allergic reaction to me and I started asking the moms if he had any allergies and no one knew. I took him to Rita who was working hard in the office and she said that it was probably an itchy rash and had one of the moms put calamine lotion on him and that was that. All of the kids went to their rooms and Tally and I were standing around waiting for round 2 of tutoring for the day and I was telling her that I was really worried about Ayabonga because the spots seemed to come on so fast. I am kind of the spot queen and I am usually the one who notices when the kids have weird rashes or spots and I had not noticed anything developing on Bonga at all. Anyway Tally offered to tutor the two boys that we usually work one-on-one (someone came for tea during homework time the other day and I offered to skip tea to do homework with the kids and I ended up handling homework time for 8 of the kids all by myself, so it was a trade). Anyway I was real tired and I knew that Rita wanted me to help her with some paperwork later so I went to my room to shower and just rest for a little bit. About an hour later Rita knocked on my door and said that we needed to have a meeting. She explained to Tally and I that Bonga’s whole face had started to swell (it was actually his whole body, but most obvious in his face) and that she had called for an ambulance because our drivers get off at 6 pm and Rita can’t drive because she has one arm and I can’t drive because I’ve only ever driven one time and that she was going to send one of the moms with him so one of us needed to sleep in one of the houses with the kids. I offered to sleep with the girls (the house with 9 absolutely insane little boys intimidates me, they pulled a sink off the wall once and sometimes they get into the toilet and throw the water on people) and took my blanket and flashlight and iPod and settled in with the girls. After I made sure the girls were ok (they were scared because they didn’t know what was going on, why the mama in their house was leaving, etc) I took a peek at Bonga and he looked terrible. His face was SO swollen I could barely recognize him. Luckily he wasn’t having any problems breathing yet but while he was mostly calm he was obviously scared. Long story short, several phone calls and about an hour later it was clear that the ambulance was not coming and Bonga was starting to breathe heavier. By this time I had already read Psalm 91 (which all the kids are learning) to the girls and prayed with them and they were all asleep so I snuck out to see what was going on. Rita decided that she would sit in the driver’s seat and shift and Tally would steer. I told her that I could probably do it, but the only vehicle we have on the property at night is the new truck, which I have never driven and I still have close to no shifting skills. She was actually able to drive mostly by herself and the two moms and I watched as they drove down the driveway until we couldn’t see them anymore. We then tried to call the ambulance to tell them not to come (I think that one of the moms actually wanted to chew them out) but they didn’t answer. Rita was almost positive that they would need to keep him overnight at the clinic (it’s the same free clinic where we take the kids and it is also kind of a hospital but doesn’t have a lot of services, a lot of times they just stabilize the people taken there so that they can get them to East London) or take him to East London. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping much so I went and made some tea and went to sit in the house with the sleeping girls. I spend most of my nights sitting in my room watching movies on my laptop, writing e-mails or reading a book and very rarely do I just take the time to sit. I took the opportunity while I was sitting in there listening to my iPod and drinking tea to pray for each of the beautiful children in the room individually. I prayed different things for all of them, but for each one I was sure to pray that God’s love would heal the wounds left by their past and that their futures would be driven by that same love. It was beautiful and a powerful experience and it also helped me take my mind off of worrying about Bonga. I’m not sure how much timed passed, but when I heard the truck driving back up the road I expected to see just Rita and Tally pulling back into the garage and instead saw an already less swollen Ayabonga! The nurse at the clinic gave him something, he immediately started unswelling and she sent him home with some medicine. He was already returning to his crazy, normal self and we all could not have been happier. It turns out that one handed Rita drove just fine and of course they passed 0 cars in Komga, South Africa at 10 pm. We still don’t know what he’s allergic to. We didn’t eat anything new yesterday, but he is known for sticking random crap in his mouth (and stealing food from smaller kids, think Maja’s birthday brownie…and eating food off the floor once it is all gone from his bowl) but hopefully that never happens again because balloon boy version of Bonga was scary and stressed everyone out.

LOVE!
kb

p.s. Family members- tonight is MEXICAN night at Open Arms : ) we are having tacos and rice and I think the moms are going to make me help especially because the mama who is cooking today LOVES to laugh at me in the kitchen. I will let you know how it goes…
p.p.s Ash bo Bash- I wrote that last blog on Monday and put it up on Wednesday. Also I like you. Let’s be best friends forever.
p.p.p.s. Hi Lauren! Comment on my blog! Do it! Now! Or in my next blog I am going to write out all of those rules I gave you for how to behave while I am gone : )
p.p.p.p.s. S. Furman are you still coming?! Both Rita and I have tried to e-mail you and seem to be having 0 amount of success.
p.p.p.p.p.s Is it weird that I used all of my P.S.’s as shout outs? Maybe. I’m ok with it.

OOKH!

(Written Monday, October 27)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAJA! Tom Maja is officially 2 whole years old. He likes to position himself belly down on the tire swing and stare at the ground while his body drags behind him and gets covered in dirt. He also enjoys shouting ‘look!’ which sounds like ‘OOKH!’ and then pointing at nothing over and over again. He also just learned the word yes. Maja likes to hug legs and he and I stood outside yesterday for at least 10 minutes looking at and listening to the thunder (I know that looking at thunder might not be possible, but we did it, just trust me). He just got some new shoes a couple of days ago and likes to stare at them and sometimes he wears a little sweatshirt and the hood has two little ears on it that stick up and make him even cuter, if such a thing is possible. I was once again in charge of cake duty and with the help of 4 of the kids actually accidentally made brownies instead of chocolate cake, but I didn’t hear any complaints. I have been trying for 3 days to teach Maja how to blow so that he could blow out his candles, but he froze under the pressure and couldn’t stop staring at the candles long enough for anyone to tell him to blow them out. Unfortunately about halfway through his birthday brownie little Ayabonga (who is chubby and a trouble maker) stole Maja’s brownie and ate it before anyone noticed. We finally noticed Maja’s defeated look and quiet tears and immediately know what happened so he got another one and all was right with the world again.

Other things to mention:
· I am the next Open Arms birthday! Two weeks from yesterday I will be 21! My 10 year old BFF Asekhona has promised to make me a cake, but I told her that I only like ice cream, so maybe she will just convince Rita to buy some ice cream. Also I think there will be a little bit of South African Beer drinking after the kids go to sleep. Ooo la la.
· We are dressing our littlest baby in doll clothes! That is not even a joke. She has been wearing clothes that belong to our other baby and they are just SO huge on her. The aunties (me, Tally, Rita) stole away to East London yesterday to go to a market and we saw some doll clothes and I joked that they would fit little Lindo, and then today we got a donation of baby doll clothes and they DO fit her and so she is wearing them.
· I had tonsillitis and was miserable all last week but finally got some good meds from the nurses at the clinic and am back to normal!
· I officially heard from the American University in Cairo a couple of days ago and am most probably officially going there next semester
· The pool is clean and almost full and ready for happy swimmers! I am so excited!
· The Flowers family wins the award for first birthday card to make me cry (Sahara Desert- I am SO excited about your concert and I wish I could be there and I miss you TONS!) Also my Uncle Bob will surely win the coolest uncle award for trying to get me The Office season 5 episodes!
· I finally got Nelson Mandela’s book and it is huge and I am super excited to read it.
· In a strange series of events the police brought some victims of domestic abuse here yesterday (who were not children- which does not make sense because we are a children’s home…) and just left them and while we were trying to get the police to come back the power went out because of a storm and the mamas had to finish making supper on top of a paraffin heater, which was comical and then the power finally came back on at 9 pm(ish) and the kids were all grouchy this morning and apparently the boys called one of the girls a cat and she was really offended and everyone was mad and crying. Thank you, Monday.

LOVE!
kb

p.s. I like hanging my clothes out on the line to dry. Dryers are overrated for sure.

Bloggy Time Out

You are in big trouble, mister.
I have decided that all of you, my readers need a good old-fashioned time out because you are being NAUGHTY.
I want to know who is reading my blog and I want to know it...right...now. And I am going to count to three and if you don't comment on my blog and say hello then you are going to be in even BIGGER trouble. And if you were an Open Arms kid then you would NOT get after dinner snack and then if you were even naughtier then you would have to miss Friday Night Movie. And trust me, neither of those things are fun for anyone.

The honest truth is that I just want you to say hi so that I can be happy that you are reading my blog, so just do it. Leave a little note, say something clever, maybe something funny or even leave an embarrassing story about me (like how you maybe gave me my first 'C' in school, ever). No really. All of you. Right now.

Time outs are generally very effective when you live with 30 kids, so I was hoping it would work here : )

Also. I love you all.

kb

p.s. I tried again to post pictures yesterday and it was just a big fat failure.
p.p.s If anyone could find out a way to record The Office Season 5 episodes that have come out in the last few weeks on a DVD and mail them to me, I would owe you a lot of things.
p.p.p.s I have started getting birthday mail and need to announce that my Aunt Gloria already officially gets the award for best birthday card ever. Not only do i absolutely love it, but so do the kids and the song was listened to at least 35 times today. The older ones are trying to learn the words. I am not making this stuff up. Thank you and I love you!

Sive and Lindokuhle

At 28 kids we thought we had reached capacity. We had one extra crib and decided that we could only take in one more little baby. We have had to turn away many little kids over the last few months because we just don’t have the resources or the room. Until today. Sive and Lindokuhle were brought by the police this afternoon because they didn’t know where else they could take them. Usually the social workers call or the people at the clinic ask us if we have room and if they can refer people to us and we explain that we are full, but expanding in the near future and if someone had called and asked if they could place Sive and Lindo here we probably would have said the same thing. It turns out that they fit in beautifully and round out our number to a comfortable 30. We did only have one extra crib…until yesterday when Mickey (4) was put in a big boy bed, conveniently leaving 2 free cribs : ) Sive is 15 months old and a boy and chubby and beautiful and Lindokuhle is just under 2 months old and a girl and makes Anesipho (who is just over 3 months old and was premature and is itty bitty) look like a freaking giant. It has been crazy since they arrived, moving around beds and picking out clothes for them and what not but they are both now fed and bathed and safe and happy and I am SO excited that they are here. Now we really are at capacity and happily so : )

kb

p.s. Tally (the new volunteer) is awesomer (yes it's a word) at taking pictures than I am and is going to try and upload some in East London tomorrow, so I will let you know if/when they are up and where you can find them! Otherwise I am going to try and upload some onto this blog tomorrow night. Big deal, big deal.

Endi Baby

This post is dedicated to Endinakho who took three whole steps all by herself today!
Endi squawks. That is the best word to use. When she is mad she squawks, which is really just an intense cry/scream. She is 1 and ½ and chubby and beautiful. She is very close to being able to walk, but prefers to just be held constantly. Waving is her new thing (she does the typical baby wave, meaning she just shakes her arm around and her hand flops back and forth) and she has started saying “Bye-bye”, which actually sounds like “da da”. If you call her name she says ‘hmm?’ and she is very attached to me and the mamas constantly tease me about it. Every time I walk into a room she turbo-crawls across the floor to me, pulls herself up by my pant legs or my knees depending on the situation and then stands with her hands straight up and her head back until I pick her up. She has huge cheeks and when she smiles her smile is so small because her mouth muscles cannot defeat her goofy cheeks. She is not old enough to sit at the little kid tables during meals, so she has her own highchair and if you don’t strap her in she will stand up and try to climb out. She cries when I put her down and when her food bowl is empty and I once caught her trying to steal food from some of the other kids. Some of her favorite activities include: walking around in one of those little baby walkers, sitting in the kitchen in her highchair while the mamas are cooking, drinking from her new sippy cup, watching people vacuum, crawling all the way across the courtyard to the preschool, dancing, watching flies crawl across the picnic table and then attacking them as they fly away, trying to eat grass, trying to eat bugs, trying to eat dirt, bothering the older kids when they are doing their homework, trying to eat their homework, trying to eat their pencils, trying to eat their crayons, following me around, sticking her fingers in her mouth, and trying to stick her fingers in my mouth. She is a very happy baby and always wants to be where the action is. Love Endinakho.

kb

p.s. sorry for still no pictures! we are going to East London and Tally is going to try and upload her pictures there (they are much better than mine) onto her travel blog and facebook, so hopefully you can see some soon!

Garbage is the Enemy!

First of all I am moderately proud of the fact that there are people all over the world who talk like me. The more I get to know the older kids the more they start to sound like me and I feel pretty good about that.

The last few days have been super. Lately I am spending much less time being sad about not being at school and much more time loving living here. I still have my moments, don’t get me wrong (and some of you are killing me with how little you are keeping me updated on your lives) but it has been an outright goal for me to not miss all of the awesome, amazing, super exciting things that are going on all around me because my heart is stuck on the other side of the planet. I am happy to announce that after 6ish weeks, I am fairly certain that my heart made the journey with me and will most likely stay here long after I leave.

On Sunday we were supposed to have no electricity all day because they were doing maintenance, but it turns out that the whole town and the whole township lost power but we didn’t : ) Anyway we had a picnic on our porch and invited the pastor from our church and his wife to lunch. It was interesting talking to them. I’m pretty sure we have some theological differences and lots of other differences too, but they are great and it was nice to be able to sit down and talk to them for a little bit. After they left Tally and Rita and I went for a little hike around the back of our property and that was a lot of fun. We did a little bit of exploring and then sat down with an absolutely gorgeous view and had a little chat. I have not spent a lot of time in places where there is no sign of human life for as far as meets the eye and where the nights are so silent that you can hear the leaves of the trees moving in the wind and the creepy bugs doing all of their creepy bug things. It is creepy, but beautiful. After that we went and got the four oldest boys for a ‘secret mission’ we took them to the front yard and walked around the front of our property picking up garbage. We were pretending to be soldiers on an actual secret mission and we were marching and they wanted me to make up a cadence so I did and it was awesome. I don’t remember all of it but I made it up on the spot and the last line was “Garbage is the enemy” and the boys were cracking up and had a lot of fun seeking and destroying the enemy along the road. Apparently one of their teachers was picking up some trash outside of school yesterday and they made a comment about defeating the enemy. I love them.

We are almost out of water. Again. The city is out of water or the pump is broken (we have heard both excuses) so that sucks. Also a truck came to deliver water today and the driver was super mean and made our driver/gardener/maintenance guys super mad. Apparently he knew that he shouldn’t take his truck over our cattle bridge and he did it anyway and he destroyed a bunch of our plants and flowers and put the water in the wrong tank and wouldn’t listen to our guys and was super mean. They came and got me after he left and I have never seen them that angry. So anyway we have water now but might run out again soon.

Rita went to East London today to run errands/go to the doctor (she is healing nicely) so I was in charge of homework/tutoring time and the kids were home from school a couple of hours early because there is no water (the kids actual words: “The pooping in the toilet is stinky so they sent us home because there is no water”) the school never tells us when they are letting the kids out early and that is annoying but luckily our driver spotted some kids ‘downtown’ and figured they were out early so that was good. I am proud to say that we were able to work with everyone today at least a little bit. It is still a struggle to work with 10 kids even with Tally here, but we are trying to get a routine going and it seems to be working out. I also made banana bread with Asekhona and Siyathemba today. The kids love making banana bread and we accidentally got way too many bananas once so we have a stash of rotten, frozen bananas to use up. We served it for snack tonight and it was a great success.

Sorry I haven’t been able to post pictures! I tried posting one the other day because I started writing posts each dedicated to just one of the kids here but it tried uploading for 20 minutes and then failed. And then I tried it again and it did the same thing. Maybe I will be able to post the pictures on the office computer (which is officially fixed! Hurray!) soon and then everyone can be happy and see some of the faces that have touched my heart and surely left a mark on it for good.

LOVE!
Kb

p.s. I am going into the clinic with little Anesipho (the baby baby) tomorrow for the results of her HIV test/maybe a shot?/typical baby doctor visit. She is BEAUTIFUL and starting to smile and figure out her mouth muscles. Love her.
p.p.s I just found a bug on my bed for the first time a minute ago and I am HATE that bug.

Happy Birthday Siphamandla!

Posting two days in a row? What? Who are you? I know, I know. If you haven't read yesterday's post, do it. Then read this one...

He is 4 whole years old! Siphamandla is almost a professional singer and brilliant and adorable. In preschool we have him with the 5 year olds because he is very smart (only a little behind in his coordination and motor skills). He likes to repeat everything you say and he is tiny but likes to pick fights. And he really does sing loud and proud. If you hear a voice over all the others it is his and if someone keeps going when everyone else stops it is usually him. Happy Birthday Siphamandla!

In other news…today:
The little baby monster threw up on Asekhona. She was holding the baby up in front of her so some of it got in her mouth and all over her face and shirt. Luckily it was mostly water, but still disgusting and absolutely hilarious.
The baby then threw up all over my arm a little less disgusting, just as hilarious. Especially because both times Anesipho (the little 3 month old) had no reaction.
All of the little boys got their hair cut so they are all bald and look like little old men and are absolutely adorable. Siyathemba (who is one of the older boys) learned how to cut hair and that was awesome
The weather was absolutely beautiful all day
I learned how to drive! Our driver who taught me was scared of me when we first started so he drove me out to a field across the road where there was a little road and a bunch of cows. I was so good at driving. I only stalled once and that is because I accidently put it in first instead of third because I could not find third. It was fun and I ended up driving us home on the actual road and I didn’t hit any cows.
I, along with 7 of the kids successfully made 2 birthday cakes and 2 things of homemade frosting (that I thought was disgusting and just tasted like butter, but the kids loved it so I just went with it). Ballerrrr. The first cake was almost a disaster and came out of the pan in about 7 pieces when we flipped it over. The icing was brown and the cake was bumpy so we lovingly named the first one after the road to our farm. The mamas were laughing at me in the kitchen all day long. They laughed at my efforts and my results, but admitted that it all ended up tasting very good and even asked for seconds. They are great.
I accidentally stepped on a worm in my room and it was squishy and gross
I walked all the way across the courtyard with Endinakho only holding onto my pant leg! She is SO close to walking!
I wore a white shirt that ended up with purple spots from the stuff that we put on the kids when they have rashes/sores and brown homemade frosting and spit up and stains from happy after dinner hands and grass and more purple stuff all over it.
I decided that I would rather have a dirty shirt than a clean one any day.

love love
kb

ps. please keep sending me happy e-mails and comments (and snail mail, if that's your thing) because I am still ELATED by them and love remembering that I have a life and some love on the other side of the planet.

The day I almost got kidnapped and almost got the truck stollen. I love Africa

This is going to be excessive and long, but I feel as though I must accurately attempt to recount the last few days of my life for you.

The week started off normal enough. The kids were back to school and we finally got Municipal water. Praise God for that (no really, we went to sleep one night and they said that there was water in town but that one of the main pumps was broken and that our line had a leak in it and they had no clue when we could get water and then we prayed hard and woke up to the tank almost full of clear, clean water running in from town). The power still shuts off but usually only at night and we just have to go out to the box in the morning and flip the switch back. The phone is working again, plus our fax and our office phone magically started working when the phone line was fixed. The office computer is now broken, but other than that everything is back to normal…sort of…

On Tuesday night there was a huge storm that knocked out the power in town, which means our water was not running, but everything was going to be fine once the power was back on, so crisis averted. Rita and I left Wednesday morning to pick up our new volunteer from the airport. We left early so that we could do all of our once a week East London errands and of course we went to the gas station in town and they were out of gas. Of course. Anyway not a big deal, we just stopped at the first one on the road to East London. Our first stop in the city was the Beacon Bay Shopping Center. We were running a little bit behind so we split up some of the stuff to divide and conquer the work load. Rita headed to one side of the center to slip into the bank and I headed to the Vodashop (think phones/other assorted technology) to try and get more information about the wireless thing that we are using. As I walked across the big parking lot I was thinking about how I should have worn tennis shoes because my flip flops were a little bit slippery in the rain. I carefully walked into the store and luckily ran into just the right guy (he is the only one I have ever talked to on this planet who knows anything about this wireless business) he explained absolutely everything to me and it turns out that it is much easier to use than we all thought, so yay for that! As I was sitting in there talking to him I heard someone call my name from behind over and over again. I turned around to find a short, strong looking man dressed all in black ( I was sure that something had happened at the bank and that for some reason they were taking Rita to prison- I know that that is not a logical thing for me to be thinking, but I was caught off guard) who told me that my friend Rita had slipped on the tile on the other side of the center and she may have broken her wrist. I feel like people always think they break something when they fall and that is what I was thinking walking across the parking lot with black shirt man. Also right when we got to where she was I slipped (luckily didn’t fall) on the exact same wet tile Rita fell on. It turns out that her wrist was legit going in three different ways, actually broken broken. She was sitting on the ground still and there were a few people there asking if we needed help, etc. The ambulance was called and a bunch of super nice people came up from the stores telling us to let them know if we needed anything. Rita was super calm about everything and said she needed to make some calls (we had a conversation where she was like ‘I don’t even know who to call’ and I was like ‘Father Barnes’ because he is the only Open Arms contact I have ever met in East London and she was like ‘uhhh I think I should call our doctor friend in Komga’ and I was like ‘oooh yeah, a doctor’. Essentially she is more level-headed than me in any situation ever.) so she figured out from our doctor friend what hospital she should be taken to and what doctor she should ask for. Eventually one of the managers and one of the security guards from the shopping center came over to us and asked us a bunch of questions. All of a sudden the security guard was being BFF with us and offered to help me finish running errands and to pick up Tally (the new volunteer) from the airport and drive us home and we didn’t really have any options seeing as how I still cannot drive standard oh and also because I don’t know where the airport is. We decided we would take advantage of that offer. The ambulance came (also this is probably inappropriate but one of the paramedics was young and good looking, I rarely see young males so I was ok with that. Also he might not have been that good looking, it’s just so rare that I see anyone close to my age that he seemed so at the time) and I thought they would go straight to the hospital. So security guard man decided that we should go make sure that our vehicle (the new truck) was safe and we did that after about 10 minutes of me trying to figure out which one it was. He insisted that he drive the truck to the airport because his car was too small so I agreed. Then he said he needed to go take care of some things in the office and I decided I would try and run the rest of our errands. That lasted about five seconds because I could not for the life of me remember what else we needed to get. I ended up going into a Pick n Pay (grocery store) and walking around. That is when I realized that this guy could totally kidnap me and steal the truck. Being in a foreign country and letting some dude drive the car that I am responsible for to take me to the airport to pick up some girl and then drive me back is just not something I usually do. Anyway he seemed legit and had a card and the people from the stores seemed to know him. I was processing all of this while walking around the store and I decided that everyone just needed some chocolate. The ambulance was still there when I got outside so I went over and asked young, (probably not very) attractive boy to put some chocolate in Rita’s purse just as a thing to make her happy. It turns out that security guard man was legit and actually a moderately cool guy. I spent an awkwardly large amount of time with him driving around East London and then waiting at the airport for Tally. He bought me lunch there (which is when I realized that the shopping center was probably doing all of this so that we wouldn’t sue them) and we had some good conversations about politics and America and South Africa and history and the future and he was a security guard in Iraq for some engineers so we talked about the mess in the Middle East and it ended up being a fairly enjoyable time. We picked up Tally and essentially I greeted her by saying “Oh hi! I’m Kassi, the other volunteer, Rita fell and broke her wrist and she is in the hospital so we have some stuff to figure out. Also we had no water or power this morning. Welcome to South Africa, here is a sign we made for you, let’s go to the hospital now, how were all of your flights? Oh also this guy is driving us around. I don’t know his name. Let’s go!” No really that’s pretty close to exactly what I said. We went to the hospital to discover that Rita had been sitting there for 2 hours. No x-rays, no doctors, just sitting. She ended up having x-rays done and they needed to transfer her so she could have surgery at a different hospital. Security guard man offered to drive Tally and I back to Komga. Rita and I had an intense session in which she ran me through all of the details of how I needed to be her for the night/morning until she came back. Luckily I have been here long enough that I pretty much know how everything runs. Security guard man took me to the store to buy bread, another store to order fruits/vegetables and then home. He told me that when he talked to Rita she said it would be best if he took the truck back with him to East London so that he could bring her back in the morning. That was false information. I meant to call Rita right when I got home to confirm that that is what she said but things were so crazy with the kids meeting Tally and unloading stuff from the truck that by the time I remembered it he was gone. We have like 15 different security locks on that truck and I was sure that I had just given it to that man. When I talked to Rita later that night we were sure that he had stolen it. It turns out he really was legit and just really insisted on taking her home. He parked the truck at his house and didn’t drive it around until it was time to bring Rita back. Thank the Lord that that guy was legit. So Wednesday night/Thursday I had to play Rita and it was exciting and I kicked this places butt. The meat man came on Wednesday night and I paid him and put all of the meat away. I also set out all the diapers and toilet paper for the kids and set out snack and got Tally settled in. On Thursday our little HIV + boy had to go into the clinic to have blood taken and I took him in and I knew who to talk to and where to go and I even found a little sore on his finger too and got cream for it (yes, I also kicked the clinic’s butt). Then we went and picked up the fruit and veg order and I even remembered that we needed to pick up hot dogs for dinner. I also bought all of the hot dog buns in Komga, South Africa. No really. I got one and a half packages from Flambys (gas station) and four packages from Staright (little Komga grocery store) and we had enough for everyone for the first time since I’ve been here : ) I also picked up a belt and a new backpack for a couple of the boys (it would be safe to say that, yes, I also kicked Komga’s butt). I really had everything under control and if I’m going to be perfectly honest I was pretty proud of myself. Rita was back in the late afternoon. She ended up needing surgery and is in a cast, but still more level-headed than me and mostly back in the swing of things. She needs more help now (it was her right wrist and she’s right-handed) and I appreciate the extra responsibility. Also I haven’t gotten to know Tally too much yet but she seems pretty great.

So there you go. Everyone is home and safe and happy now with electricity (most of the time) and a working phone and running water and a new friend (security guard man) in East London. Also we just watched the new Charlotte’s Web tonight with the kids and that movie is cute and hilarious and great and you should see it even if you are old or hate talking pigs.

Oh! Also I love Africa and I am loving God and loving living
Kb

p.s. I am having my first driving lesson in the KIA (which the older kids have lovingly dubbed the old man with the walking stick- the back window got shattered the other day, but that is a whole other story) tomorrow, plus it is Siphamandla’s birthday and he is turning 4 and I am in charge of cake making and I love Saturday morning errands running with the four oldest kids.
p.p.s. Fun factoid- I have been spending a substantial amount of my free time sitting with my laptop listening to and writing out High School Musical lyrics for the older kids. I anticipate we will be able to do an entire performance of the movie within the next month : )

The Long Version

(written on October 1)

The kids have been home all week and I have survived almost three whole days of it! Gold star for me. Honestly, it has been tons of fun. The preschool is still running so all of the kids go in (including the older ones) in the morning and sing songs and stay for the bible story and prayer, then they are handed over to me. Sheesh. It has been a challenge tutoring 10 kids of varying grades and ability levels. At the same time. By myself. A couple of our first graders cannot recognize numbers beyond 5, so that has been my main focus. They can only handle about one new number a day. I cannot do anything with them in the same room as the other first graders because they will tell them the answers, and I cannot leave the two alone to work with the others because they will cause problems wherever they are (think fire extinguisher going off in the van). I usually end up sending all of the older kids to read and the rest of the first graders to do a worksheet somewhere (which I know they all copy the answers off of one of the girls). When I’m done with the two crazies I try to read or go over other math stuff with the rest of the first graders but they are hard to handle as a group and it is hard to fight with the babies crawling around the house, the mamas cooking and cleaning and the rest of the craziness in the house for their attention. We are making progress, and we will get there. It will be so amazing to have more volunteers here because the kids all really have specific areas they need help in, and need individual attention. Speaking of more volunteers something happened with the new volunteers passport (something=she does not have it). I’m not quite sure what is up, but she was supposed to be here tomorrow and will now not be here for another 5 days. It’s good that she will still be able to make it, but sad because tomorrow was going to be a fun day. Since the kids are home from school we were going to take a couple of them into East London with us to pick her up, go out to lunch and then Rita was going to have to drop us off at the shore so she could go to a court hearing for some old case related to the home. My life here is never boring or predictable, but it can get a little monotonous, and trust me those things can all exist together. Anyway I was super excited for tomorrow. Rita will probably still have to go into East London tomorrow, but I will most likely not go with her.
Sometimes life can get a little bit lonely here, even though I am constantly surrounded by no less than 30 people and way too much love, everyone I talk to does not speak English or is 2 years old. I haven’t really been homesick at all, the only thing I really miss is having normal/brilliant/hilarious conversations with lovely people who generally understand what I am trying to say the first time around. Also I got to talk to some of my LOVELY friends on Sunday(ish) and it was great and I love y’all.
On a similar note, some of the younger kids still do not understand that I do not know Xhosa. There are a few who come up to me and say such passionate things in a language I do not understand. You can tell that they really want me to understand what they are saying, and cannot comprehend that I might not have a clue. One of them is a little boy named Lisa. He is a manly man and loves to kick and hit and run and jump and mostly hates school. His favorite color is probably pink, because that is the crayon he always chooses, and he sings gospel songs in Xhosa and repeats the line ‘we are going to heaven’ over and over again. That was a tangent, but he is beautiful and constantly tries to say things to me that I do not understand.
And lastly…everything is broken here. No really. We did not have power/water for at least 24 hours. I was talking to Rita when she was trying to get everything fixed and she said ‘It’s always something’ to which I responded ‘…or…everything’. We have been trying to get municipal water for about…a year? And they finally have the pumps all fixed up and everything working. We were super excited and when we started to run the pumps we got…no…water. Because, naturally, the city had run out of water and failed to inform us of this before we drained our reservoir to bring in the municipal water. Naturally. So the pumps were working so hard that they tripped the power and brought us no water all at the same time. Disaster. Anyway the city brought in a truck of water to us yesterday. We might have to start doing things like flushing the toilets once a day and washing dishes twice a day and other such conservation efforts. Oh and once the power came back on the phone lines went out and then Rita’s cell ran out of minutes. Also we found out that someone had shimmied up one of the telephone poles, cut the line and pulled some wires out. Most likely to sell the copper. Naturally. Always something…or everything.

Kb

p.s. Happy birthday Furman, Sarah and Furman, Liz. I was hoping I could at least send you Happy Birthday e-mails, but even the wireless internet has been out the last few days.
p.p.s. I’m going to try and get into some sort of routine where I put up like three posts once a week or one post three times a week. I haven’t decided. Big decisions, big decisions. Also I think I might start writing whole blogs about just one child, because that sounds fun and they are GREAT.

The Short Version

I have written a few blogs about this week on my laptop already and will hopefully be able to post them once the wireless internet is working again. For now, here's the short version.

1. The other volunteer is not here yet, for some reason she didn't have her passport, hopefully she will be here Monday.
2. We have no water. We ran out of water on Monday, had some on Wednesday and ran out again. We have a couple of containers that we are able to use, but no running water anywhere. It is a VERY complicated issue that involves things being stollen/people not telling us the city was out of water/ordering things from the USA/a hole somewhere in our line/trucks not bringing us water.
3. The power trips every. night. It generally comes back on with the flip of a switch, but scares me everytime it happens. Plus the heaters go out and it is still cold. Rough.
4. Someone cut the phone line on our driveway to steal the copper out of the wires so we haven't had phone/internet since Sunday.
5. Welcome to South Africa.

That's all for tonight.
love love
kb

The wheels on the bus go LOUND and LOUND…

At least according to Bukho they do, he refuses to accept my interpretation of ‘round and round’. Wednesday was a holiday here (Heritage Day, I think it was) so the kids were off of school. Rita and I decided to take the 14 oldest kids to the Sea, which is only about 45 minutes from here. We sang lots of songs on the way there and just had fun hanging out with the kids. It is way too cold to do anything but play on the beach/sand dunes and look for shells along the shore, so that is what we did. Besides some kids throwing sand in the eyes of other kids, we didn’t have any major problems…until we were about to leave. One of the boys got in trouble and when Rita went to talk to/discipline him he decided to run. He didn’t go too far, but one of the younger kids followed him and they both got in pretty big trouble. Then one of the younger kids decided to pick up trash from the ground and stick it in his mouth, when I asked him to put it back on the ground he decided to lick it. We have a sand thrower, a runner, a follower and a trash licker who will not be going back to the beach with us. On the way home I had a few kids sleeping on me and I eventually shut my eyes for about 5 minutes. I was awakened by a fire extinguisher going off in the van. I would like to say this surprises me, but living with 28 kids in South Africa for a month has already taught me to constantly expect the unexpected. One of the kids was touching it earlier in the drive, so we think it was probably him (we couldn’t get an honest answer out of anyone) we wiped off the nasty stuff the best we could and continued home. We made it home for lunch and then took the 10 kids who were behaving to Iona (the preschool teacher)’s farm! They have lots of lambs right now and the kids got to hold them and feed them, or just talk to/shout at them if they were too afraid to get too close. They also have tons of chickens and they let the kids go around and collect any eggs they found. While they were busy looking for eggs, Iona showed me an empty cage, where apparently a chicken used to sleep with its head out of the cage. The night before a Wildcat got in and bit its head off. She also told me lots of stories about people stealing chickens and other wildlife that has snuck in. I loved visiting their farm! Everything about it was interesting and the kids loved being so close to the animals (and talking to them, my favorite part) and getting out of the house for the day. Always an adventure.

On a side note one of the little girls who is around 4 and named Asanda picked up the phrase ‘oh my goodness’ from me (also it sounds more like ‘oh my gooness’ when she says it). In the little baby room in the house their light goes out if someone turns on the hall light and it happened when I was in there and I said ‘Oh my goodness’. Now she says it every time the light goes out and most times when I walk into the room. The other day one of the mamas asked her if she knows what ‘goodness’ means, to which she responded ‘Oh my goodness’

Love!
kb

ps. two posts! big day. I think it makes sense to post them two at a time so I use less internet time, or some sort of similar logic...

7 Months? Harsh. Also Fake Boyfriends...

First of all I need everyone to know that I defeated a bug yesterday that was basically a worm with wings. It makes a terrible buzzing sound and I thought I had already killed it, but apparently it crawled out from under the shoe that I thought defeated it and was buzzing around again at about midnight. I threw my shoe on it and then pressed down on my shoe a few times and did not muster up the courage to look at it and verify its death until this morning. It is still on the floor, dead, under my shoe because that thing is nasty and I do not want to do anything that resembles picking it up off the floor.
Sicky sicky sick- I was feeling tons better this week until the last couple of days when the throat/cough started coming back (hopefully just as a result of the nasty weather we have been having) and my eye decided to swell up yesterday (because why not?) it was still swollen this morning so one of our driver/gardener/maintenance people drove me to the clinic. The nurse says it’s not pink eye or anything contagious, which is so good because I did not want to give it to the kids or spend another week stuck in my room, gave me some ointment and sent me on my way. On the drive back up to the house the driver was asking me about America-how much things cost, cars, politics, sports, etc. then he started asking about my life back home, particularly if I have a boyfriend, etc. I decided that for all practical purposes I need to have an imaginary boyfriend, at least when talking to men in foreign countries. If nothing else, my summer job with foreign students taught me that the answer to the questions ‘do you have a boyfriend?/do you miss your boyfriend?’ should always be yes, so I have a fake boyfriend.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but we have been having some issues with our water. Apparently the guys have been putting in way to many chemicals (they are supposed to put them in once a week and have been putting them in every day, or something like that) so our water has waaay too many chemicals and is kind of gummy or sticky. That being said, my hair looks dirtier and feels way gross after I attempt to wash it in the shower. Rita went into East London and was able to treat herself to a visit to the salon yesterday and It took them 4 washes to get her hair back to normal and the guy who did her hair said that it looked like she hadn’t washed her hair for 7 months. 7 MONTHS! Needless to say I am not washing my hair in the shower anymore. I’ve boiled some water and put it in a big bottle and will probably try and wash my hair with it tomorrow, God only knows how long it will take for my hair to return to something that resembles normal. Luckily, the kids think it is still beautiful, maybe even more beautiful, when it is disgusting.
I finished ‘Through Painted Deserts’ by Donald Miller last night and it is amazing. Seriously read his books. He has a big brain.

Things are still going great and I am still loving life here. The kids will be home all of next week (they are between terms) and we have a new volunteer coming on Thursday! All I know is that she is a girl and that she is from the US and somewhere close to my age. I am SO excited for her to come. Rita is SO busy, so I spend most of my free time and meal times alone, which is good but also starting to drive me crazy. She is an answered prayer on many levels, so yay for her coming!

Love love
kb

Hard Things, Happy Things

Hard things…
Today I went with Rita to take in one of our little HIV + kids to the clinic. She is beautiful and happy and sometimes calls me Auntie Kwassi which makes me smile A LOT. They had to take some blood to run some tests and I went in the room with her. She did fine when the nurses were looking for veins on her arms but not as well when they made her lay down so they could look for veins on her neck. She started crying and big tears rolled all the way to the floor. It only got worse from there. It was close to impossible to stand there listening to her scream as the nurses held her down and took blood from her neck. The honest truth is that I could not even look and had to cry about it a little bit. There’s just such a huge difference between the cry that comes after a fall or a stolen toy and the cry that comes with true pain and fear. She got some Jellybeans for being such a good girl and all was right with the world soon after but even though she gave me some of her Jellybeans part of my heart is still broken about it a little bit. There are so many times when I notice something or think of something from my childhood and can’t help but think in my head “Every child should get/be able to ______” The blank is usually filled with things like ‘have one adult holding hands on each side and get to fly on the count of three’ or ‘be taught to ride a bike’ or simple things that you could do with one or two kids that you just can’t do with 28. Today I decided that every child deserves to be cried over when they have to have blood taken out of their neck and I was incredibly thankful for Open Arms. I will only be here for 4 months but I can rest assured knowing that there will always be someone here loving on, caring for and crying over these beautiful kids. I have always had a spark in me about it, but I feel a little bit more confident that I will not be able to spend the rest of my life doing typical life things. Something about children crying alone, taking care of other children, living with and dying from untreated treatable diseases, never feeling safe, never being safe, never knowing what it is to just be a kid, seeing and experiencing unspeakable things is wrong. There is something wrong with the way things are. I just don’t understand how I could go back to the day before I realized that and live my life as if I never had. Rita and I often joke that life here is like life on another planet. The truth is that it isn’t another planet, but it’s easier to think that than it is to think that all of these things are happening in our world. All over the world there are children looking for food in trash cans. Food. And I’m sure some of them will die because they can’t find any. It’s just not ok. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and closing your eyes doesn’t make it go away. On OUR planet there are babies, teenagers, adults, grandparents, PEOPLE dying from things that should not be killing them, things that do not kill other people in other parts of OUR planet. It just isn’t ok.
Happy things…
I got to spend lots of time with Anesipho today. She is 3 months old and about the size of a 3 week old and also ADORABLE. All she does is eat and sleep and cry and poop and I’m ok with that. She is going in for immunizations tomorrow and I will not be attending that event. Oh and I lied! She does something else and that thing is swinging her head around a ton because she is becoming less of a blob child and starting to hold her head up! Exciting.
Also African Salad is not salad, do not let anyone fool you about that ever. I don’t even know how to explain it…think really dry mashed potatoes with absolutely sour, sour milk poured on top. And don’t listen to Sarah if she tries to tell you that it is ok with regular milk and extra salt, it just isn’t. They call the sour milk stuff Maas, which to me sounded like moss, which sounded like something green and salad like. The food is good, I just cannot handle African Salad night.
I hope things are BEAUTIFUL in your life. Also it makes me happy when you send me e-mails and comments and messages because it reminds me that I have a life and loves on the other side of the world.

KB

p.s. I think I might be closer to Antarctica than I am to America, so that is strange.
p.p.s It was raining all weekend so we did typical rainy day things like make banana bread and watch movies and take naps. Also I was SO sick, especially with the bad weather, I was mostly the SICKEST. Trust me. I am feeling soooo much better.
p.p.p.s I was going to try and upload pictures but too many things have occurred in the time it took for me to write this that I cannot do it this time (one of them is that I had to catch some flying bugs in a bottle. It started out innocently. I had every intention of releasing them outside. Then I learned that there was still juice in there and that it killed them. I don’t know if you heard, but Africa has turned me into a bug killing machine. I’m a pretty big deal.) Sorry!
p.p.p.p.s My Dad figured out how to comment on my blogs! yay Dad!

Sicky sicky sick sick

I am...drum roll please...SICK. So, that's typical. It started as some little throat issue in Cape Town and has escalated to full blown nasty. I probably have a double ear infection (which is also fairly typical for me, welcome to my world) plus all of the nasty throat/eye/nose stuff that is still going on. Luckily the nurse came today to check on the kids and gave me some meds so hopefully I will be a little less miserable very soon. That would be nice. I have spent about 95% of the last 2 days in my room watching The Office on my computer and only the other 5% with the kids which makes me feel mostly useless and sad, but I want to get better and I also don't want to get them sick.

In other news....
I got MAIL today! So that's exciting. It appears as though anything sent priority takes about 2 weeks to get here, but the cost and the time are nothing compared to how ELATED getting mail makes me : ) Oh also I've gotten a letter from my dad, a package from my aunt and something amazing from lauren. So if you sent something and you are not one of those people, then I have not gotten anything from you, just thought I would clarify so that if you have sent something you're not all like 'yay, she got it' when I actually didn't. ok moving on...

I tried the internet card on my laptop this week. It worked but dries up suuuper fast. I did, however, get to talk to some of my super sweet friends which was mostly awesome. I am still trying to figure out if the wireless is worth it/what I can do on there and not on the office computer.

More interestingly...
We started tutoring this week with the older kids (I can't remember if I've already mentioned that) but it is going super well. Yesterday they didn't have any so we drew pictures of and wrote about our adventures in Cape Town, which was awesome. We might try and drive out to the ocean tomorrow with some of the older kids, but it was freezing cold today so cross your fingers for no more sickness and good weather! I also really need to clean out my room and do laundry this weekend (also typical).

And before I forget! My aunt is a freaking genius and I meant to mention this much earlier but forgot. Bob (the founder of Open Arms) has a blog that he kept while he did his walk across South Africa to raise money for the home. There are lots of pictures on there from his walk which ended with our trip to Cape Town and tons and tons of pictures of the kids. He is home now and the walk is over, so I'm not sure he will continue it, but there's lots to catch up on there if you are interested. http://alongwalkforchildren.typepad.com/ There's the link. He's written tons of great stuff, plus it will give some of you who are still not sure why I'm in Africa something to work with.

LOVE!
kb

Hi Beebee!

The honest truth is that I missed the babies while we were gone. I spend every morning with them in the preschool and I usually go sit with the itty bitty ones at night after dinner. I was able to learn about some of their stories/lives before they came to Open Arms and some of the things just absolutely broke my heart. They were so excited when everyone got back and I was elated to see them and hold them and squish their little cheeks again! They are used to me and sometimes flock to me or follow me around and cry when I have to leave the room or put them down but the one thing that just cracks me up is that every time I see them or walk into the room I always say ‘hi baby!’ which actually sounds like ‘hi beebee!’ and when we got back from the trip a couple of them ran up to me saying ‘hi beebee hi beebee hi beebee’ just over and over again with their little hands stretched out for hugs and pick-ups and it basically just made my heart explode. I absolutely love getting to know each one of the kids. It starts with their names and identifying them obviously but I love that now after the trip and the two weeks I have spent here I have inside jokes with a lot of the older ones, I know how to make most of them laugh and I am getting to know their personalities, strengths and weaknesses and desires and stories and I feel like I still have so much to learn about them. I love being around these kids. There are even times when I am in my room at night or in the morning and just can’t wait to see their little faces again! The crying never annoys me and the little laughs from across the courtyard or across the house make me smile real big. I love that my biggest problem today was getting too many kisses from Bukho (no really, he loves to kiss me and will sometimes latch onto me with his arms strangling my neck and his faced just absolutely smashing my cheek) and I love knowing that tomorrow I get to get up and sing songs with them and dance and run and play and laugh and dry tears and wipe noses and make faces and just live life with these amazing kids.
I know that God lives here. I see him in the smiles of children who were abandoned, children who have witnessed unspeakable acts, endured things before they could even talk that no human being should ever have to endure, children betrayed by family members and caregivers. I see him in the tears that are wiped away that are shed for much more than the little trip or the stolen crayon. The more I pray for the Lord to break my heart for the things that break His, I find my heart being broken for these children. I wish that all of you could know all of their names and their faces and the joy of just being around them.

Love from me and the beebees
kb

Cape Town is for Lovers

That might be false. But it is for us! I made an executive decision while we were driving around there that if I ever went home and then needed a new life I would move to Cape Town. That is a for serious thing. I would love to comment on everything and tell you all about the absolutely comical things that constantly happen in my life on the other side of the world, but I have so much to tell you! So I am going to try and focus on all of the events of our adventures in Cape Town.

Wednesday!
We loaded up the bus! It was a legit bus with a drive and everything. We had to shuttle people/stuff into town and it took a little longer than we thought it would. The driveway is LONG and takes like 15/20 minutes to get up or down (that might be false-I don’t wear a watch or have a cell phone so I never know what time it is unless I am in my room and my talking alarm clock announces the time) and it is like 4-wheeling and if you are in the KIA dirt comes up through the floor. Always an adventure. We took 18 of the kids which worked out to about one adult per child (actually I think we had more adults then children) so there were two kids and two adults in each room. Almost everyone on the trip had never stayed in a hotel, so that was a really cool thing for them. Rita (the director) and I shared a room with Asekona and Sikelelwa (two of the older girls) so it was just like a slumber party every night! We spent the night in a place called Wilderness just exploring the hotel and being goofy. Also after the girls went to bed Rita and I made like….60 ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch the next day. I enjoyed that time because we just spent it chatting about the kids/life here/life in general.

Thursday!
We got up early in the morning and walked along the beach for a little while. At one point I wrote ‘The Beach’ in the sand and took pictures and about five minutes later I walked a little further and saw multiple attempts at the words ‘the beach’ written in the sand by the kids. That almost made my heart explode. How adorable are they? Then we finished up the drive to Cape Town! One of the things that kept cracking me up is that a few of the older boys (mostly Luthando and Kanysa) kept asking if we could go to Cape Town now. The jury is still out on whether or not they know that Cape Town is a city and that we were there. Luthando was my bus buddy for the first half of the trip and Ayabonga (the older one) was my buddy for the rest! Love them. We went straight to Table Mountain (it’s a mountain…that looks like a table…also sometimes there is a cloud on top of it that looks like a tablecloth) and took the cable car up. The view was AMAZING and I had to carry little Thandazwa the whole time. Most of the kids are weary of change and strange experiences and she handles it by being terrified of not being held. The secret part of it is that I was glad I got to focus on her and not how freaking tall/steep our ride up/down was.

Friday!
Penguins! We went to a penguin colony. Yes. There are penguins just living along the beach in South Africa. It’s ok to think that is amazing because I do. The absolute coolest part of Friday was seeing whales so close to the shore! I have never seen a whale in the actual ocean and I saw about 6 of them on Friday. I think I was even more excited than the kids. After the penguins we headed to Cape Point. I fell asleep on the bus and when I woke up I noticed that not everyone was getting off the bus and I had no idea why so I got off, assuming that they were all just being slow pokes. The honest truth is that there is supposed to be a train that goes up there, but that it was broken and everyone knew that except for me, so I blindly followed the group up this big mountain/hill with a lighthouse at the top not knowing that there were any other options. I have no idea how long it took us to get up there but it was BEAUTIFUL. I have never watched waves crash against the shore from above and that has got to be one of my new favorite things. Also at the top of that thing a lot of random people took pictures of/gave candy to our kids and I’m not sure how I feel about all of that (which is why I haven’t written about the ‘stares’ yet). We then headed to this amazing Botanical Garden. Everyone was exhausted (especially the kids without their usual routines and naps and bedtimes) but I got a chance to explore on my own a little bit and it was so great there and to get a little breather from the 24/7 adventure with the kids.

Saturday!
Saturday was the official end of Bob’s walk across South Africa to raise money for Open Arms! We started the morning off at the Aquarium which was great and then took a ferry out to Robben Island, which is where the maximum security prison that Nelson Mandela was kept in for about..16ish years is located. We had a bus tour of the island and then a walking tour of the prison. All of the tour guides who take you through the prison were once held there as political prisoners themselves, so that is kind of intense. Outside of Mandela’s cell we had a little official end of the walk/commemoration ceremony. Everyone laid a rose in front of the cell and we all sang Amazing Grace (which the kids have been practicing for weeeeks) and said a prayer and Asekona read a passage from Matthew (which she has also been practicing for weeks) and she was awesome. The ceremony was meaningful and moving and just great. Also we almost missed the ferry on the way there and on the way back, but that’s just how we roll (how else can you roll with 18 kids in tow?) I saw TONS of sailboats out on the ocean and it made me happy! But also made me want to sail A LOT. Maybe we can get out on the water when my dad and brother come…Rita and I also made 80 sandwiches after the girls went to sleep… oh and there was some famous South African soap opera star staying at our hotel and people kept taking pictures of him. Rita and I kept telling the hotel staff that we are a pretty big deal in the US, but we like to keep in on the DL in South Africa. Funny funny.

Sunday!
The best part of Sunday was that as we were about to board the bus (at 5 am) I ran into one of the kitchen staff guys at the hotel where we stayed for 3 nights who was super nice and asked if I wanted coffee to go. The truth is that I wanted hot chocolate and I was able to get some for Rita too! It’s the little things, it’s the little things. The bus ride was manageable. We drove straight back (which took 13 hours) and I can sum up those glorious hours by saying that I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns which is a great, great book and we watched Stuart Little for the 7thish time as we were arriving back in Komga. Then of course I was riding around with Rita back and forth between Open Arms, the Location and Komga to drop off mamas, etc and we ran over some barbed wire in the big fat Quantum. Luckily the garage in town was still opened and they pulled it out and told us that it did not go all the way through, which was obviously very good news. Life here is just so comical. If you are just coming back from a 13 hour trip and you are sick and exhausted and slaphappy and you have to make tons of trips up and down a big, bumpy driveway before you can even go to the bathroom, you should just expect that you will catch some barbed wire with your tire when there are no men around and it is dark and you are in South Africa.

Random things you might like to know: my room smells a lot less like a sewer. Murray who does all of the maintenance shtuff put some sort of stink chimney (sorry I only know the technical name for it…) up behind my room and it seems to be working. Also I have not received any mail yet, so at this point we know that priority mail takes at least 2 weeks…I am sick but fine. Some sort of little bug is going around with a sore throat and cough…the internet card is almost a happenin thing. Rita and I are going to be sharing the one that we have and from what I can tell it is slow and expensive and we will just have to see about that…

And that is everything! At least for now….I commend you if you read this whole thing. You should leave a comment so I know you read it and then I can see your comment and be all like ‘wow, cool, he/she is awesome. I love him/her’

You are BEAUTIFUL and I love and miss you very much!
KB

Give the people what they want...

This is going to be short. Packing for 18ish kids to go on a trip for 5 days is proving to be a challenge. I stole away for a little while because I am exhausted. I have been with the kids all day and it is late for me (8:51 pm. i know, right?) and I am getting grouchy. We are leaving for Cape Town super early tomorrow morning and we still need to finish packing the kids, make sandwiches and I need to pack for myself (think typical family vacation on CRACK). We will drive for 6ish hours tomorrow, spend the night somewhere and finish up the drive on Thursday. To Cape Town we are taking a big bus with a drive and everything and we are taking most of the Mamas and leaving the babies. I am excited! More tired, but I'm sure I'll get there.

My Dad requested some follow up details on the Zoo trip (he actually used the phrase 'the people want to know' I don't know who 'the people' are, but I will give them what they want...). The zoo was typical for a small city in South Africa. It was small, but happy and about matched the attention span of our kids. We were only there for about 2 hours and we saw monkeys, lions, birds, snakes, otters, giraffes, more monkeys, ducks aand...that about covers it. Also we get around in our trusty little kia (pictured) and the quantum so we are pretty legit. They are basically just big vans. I have yet to drive one. Maybe eventually. Also: There is currently a sewage problem somewhere near my room...so my room smells like a sewer, but what can you do? You can't smell it after you've been in there about 10 minutes anyway...Also my dad bought me some ridiculous alarm clock that announces the time every hour and does nothing at the time when the alarm is supposed to go off, so I'm going to try and do something about that eventually...

I need to go help get ready for the trip! Also I am tired and I didn't proof read or edit this and I just refuse to, so please refrain from judging me.

LOVE

kb

Amile

Church, zoo, airport and PIZZA. Big day. All morning I kept asking the kids if they were excited for the zoo and they just kept telling me they were going to eat pizza! We took all of the kids but 4 so getting anywhere with that many is an adventure, but they all made it there and back with only minor injuries (mostly from eachother) and lots of smiles. One thing that I hadn't thought about until we went out was the stares that we get whenever we go somewhere. I think I will just write a whole post on that sometime.

Anyway, the thing today that made the whole trip worth it: Amile's laugh. His laugh sounds a lot like his cry, so it is hard to tell if he is elated or terrified whithout seeing his face. He is a pretty simple guy who seems to still be trying to figure out how he feels about everything and the most random things make him laugh. We were waiting outside for everyone to get out of the bathroom so that we could come home after a loooong day at the zoo and I just kept attacking his stomach and making crazy noises and he was cracking up. So great. I can't give you a good description of his laugh, and if I could put a recording of it here, I would, just know that it is amazing. Also, that is him in that picture, in case you don't have good skills.

Today was long and I am tired. I also decided to wait until after Cape Town before I get an internet card (so at least another weekish, probably more) but look! Two posts in a row!

Love love

KB

Pancakes in Komga

Yesterday was great. We had trillions of things to buy (have you ever tried feeding/entertaining 28 crazy kids all day every day?) so we hopped along from store to store as I tried to take in East London. South Africa is an interesting place, as far as I have figured it out the white people have money and servants and the black people don't have money and are servants. Obviously that's an intense generalization, but there are a lot of remnants of apartheid looming around. As Bob puts it, "things are getting better, but the white people had a 100 year head start. " We met up with a local priest for lunch (at a great restaurant where I could see the OCEAN!) who taught me all about ostriches and how small their brains are and how they have human hands tucked under their wings and how they will rip you down the middle if they are going to kill you and how to not let them kill you. No really. He also made Rita and I have something that is basically a milkshake with alcohol in it. The drinking age here is 18, so turning 21 will be anti-climatic for me. We got home in time for playing in the yard before dinner. Last night was Friday Night Movie Night and the kids did not like Happy Feet very much. They were engaged for about the first 10 minutes, got lost somewhere in the middle and appreciated the ending when we finished it up today. It is long and the plot is driven verbally, not enough action or singing and too many penguins : ) They just asked me if I have Narnia, so if someone wants to get them that and send it here with my dad…just kidding…but seriously. Today Rita and I tried, TRIED to make pancakes, we had moderate success. The kids liked them because they were doused in syrup anyway. I don’t think they’ve ever had pancakes before. After that we were off to the Komga Public Library with some of the older kids and Bob gave me the grand tour of Komga and the Location after that. During playtime outside today the things to do were climb me like I am a tree and make my hair beautiful. It is beautiful to say the least. Also a little slimy, but loved.

Everyday at the end of the day I make a point of picking one thing from the day that made the entire trip worth it to remind myself why I am here and focus on the good things when the kids are acting a little bit less good. So far it is difficult each day for me to narrow it down to one. Yesterday it was Kwakhanya proudly showing off some deflated ball (which is good because no one will try and take it from him), we kicked it, threw it and eventually he wore it as a hat. That almost made my heart explode. And today it was Thandazwa (who is itty bitty little and the one in the light blue in the picture that I stole from Sarah's Facebook) sucking the jam off of her toast. Direct quote from Bob ‘there are many ways to eat toast, Thandazwa has chosen the suction method’. The toast is about the size of her little face and she was not licking it off, she had it suctioned, parallel to her face and she was sucking it off. She (and basically all of the kids) ended up with maple syrup and jam all over her hands and face (…and feet and arms and legs and clothes and hair…)
Also the sunrises here are absolutely amazing. I mean seriously. My favorite part is hearing all of the birds and cows and creepy other creatures making more and more noise as the sun gets closer and closer to coming up. The view from Open Arms is absolutely amazing.
Sorry these blogs are rambley. I basically sit down and write whenever I am free and the computer is not in use and don’t have a lot of time to collect my thoughts. Please keep sending me e-mails and comments and other happy things. Oh! And let me know if you want the address to send me snail mail because it will take like a month but also make me very happy. I still don’t have internet on my laptop, but maybe eventually and then I can write stellar posts and put pictures up and check my e-mail more. Maybe, maybe not.
I’m going to take a nap. The days are longer when the kids are home all day. Church and zoo tomorrow!
Love yall
KB

Stinky Girl

I am here! and safe and happy and still exhausted and a little bit confused. Rita and Bob picked me up from the airport late last night. Everything after that is mostly a blur as we drove through the dark, I settled into my room and obviously slept very well, as it was the first time I was able to lay horizontal in around 35 hours. My flights were fine. I sat next to a missionary from Nimibia on the long flight named Charlie and we were basically bff. I should write a whole post on him sometime. I also made a South African friend in the Airport who wanted to watch the office on my laptop with me. Today I got up (ps. it is freaking freezing cold at night and that is the truth), got breakfast and met the loves of my life. I have only been here for one full day and already know that it will be the worst thing ever to have to leave these beautiful faces in 4 months. I helped in the preschool! also ps. they got a new teacher! She has only been here a week and I finding it difficult to manage the class (there are two four year olds and then lots of little ones), but is doing great things, so I am excited to be working with her. After lunch I needed a nap, because I'm a pansy girl and when I woke up the older kids were home. They are hilarious and one of them (I don't know his name yet, names are hard, I officially know 4 of them) keeps coming up to me and telling me I'm a stinky girl (which may or may not be true- I haven't been able to shower yet because the water/electricity in my room were not working this morning and it was waaaaay too cold for that silliness last night) to which I respond "I'm a clean girl, you are a stinky boy" and then trick him by telling him to look at the airplane in the sky when there isn't one, and running away. Needless to say, I am fitting in well. They sometimes call me Auntie Sarah, but there are not many other human beings I would rather be confused with. The older kids told me to go get her and make her come here. They love and miss you for sure Sarah! My life here will not resemble life I have ever lived anywhere else, and for that I am thankful. The internet on here really is painfully slow, so until I get an internet card for my laptop (maybe tomorrow? cross your fingers) I might not be updating too often. I am headed into East London for most of the day tomorrow with Rita and Bob to hopefully pick up a few things. Also I need you to know that as I am typing this the girls are BELTING out Amazing Grace from their room, which we are going to sing at Nelson Madela's grave (or at least that's what Bob told me). They make me smile. I have tons more to say but it is starting to get cold and I need to go shower and drink tea and read and sleep before tomorrow's adventures.
Love love
KB