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.