Sunday, February 24, 2013

240213, Beautiful Bulungula weekend

The Bulungula backpackers.  Consists of some traditional rondavels and safari tents.
Kieron and his freshly caught fish
 (Kieron has been my student for the past 3 weeks but looks like 
he'll be heading back to Cape Town again now...  It was fun Kieron!!)

One of the safari tents with sea views at Bulungula.  I was also blessed enough to stay in one of them for the weekend. It was awesome falling asleep with the ocean rumbling in your ears and opening your eyes in the morning, half asleep watching the sunrise through the branches...

The Bulungula backpackers is on a most awesome spot,
right next to and overlooking the river flowing into the sea...

The local kids are great.  They don't beg like in most other places in the Transkei.  
Here they are playing and building some 'houses'

The view across the river...  Wish I had a canoe.

Some houses close to the backpackers.



Cows grazing right by the Bulungula backpackers

Sunset over the backpackers

Thursday, February 21, 2013

220213, Mama Flo


This is mama Flo, or Florence.  She speaks pretty good English because of earlier years working in other towns and she's one of the Reading Hut's neighbors, a very special old lady.

  She lives almost right below the Reading Hut in a small room that she shares with several other people.  You can recognize her by her hunched back from far off walking up and down that steep hill several times a day.  

Sometimes, when the community tap is dry, I see her carrying two 5litre water bottles up there from the river. I see her standing still, bent over to rest, every few steps.  When I go to help her carry I ask her to hook her arm into mine so I can help but she refuses proudly.  She's quite a busy lady, at night she goes to the shebeen where she sells loose cigarettes.       

Thursday, February 14, 2013

140213, Reading Hut

The Reading Hut is keeping me pretty busy, even got the first 2 adult ladies that's been coming for English classes since Tuesday.  Their levels differ quite a bit, so I give them different things to do.  Normally they arrive first and after a while of being busy with them, I turn around and see a bunch of kids who came in quietly and are keeping themselves busy in the kid's 'corner'.

When the ladies are finished after 2 hours I can spend some time with the kids again.  I'm happy to say that Mhleli's coloring skills have improved drastically and he now uses multiple colors and have become quite creative!

Occasionally I like to read the kids some Xhosa stories and let them help me with the pronunciation.  That's some mouth gym!  I really need a Xhosa-English dictionary still to understand most of what I'm reading.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

100213, Happy place


It's been hot here.  Hot and humid. The sea has become my official happy place.  Every time I go there in the morning or evening, it just seems like a slice of heaven and I feel so blessed to be loved by the Creator.   Had such a nice swim this morning and Saturday morning during my walk, some dolphins surfed the waves just for me...

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

050213, Tuesday, Reading Hut sessions


Afekile

Yesterday morning I had to attend a community meeting in the rain and on my way back I went to the Reading Hut to organize some new books.  When I arrived there, Mhleli was standing outside in the rain.  Now Mhleli, about 7 years old is a boy who lives on the hill and one of the Reading Hut's most frequent visitors.  He is also the only one so far who has been giving me some problems.  He'd want to colour in but then really just waste the colouring books a bit, mechanically colouring the whole picture with only one colour, having no regard for the lines, not even looking where he’s colouring and then just work through the pages.  If I ask him to do something like put the books back neatly, he’ll just refuse and swear at the other children. 

So when he was standing there, skipping school because of the rain he says, I decided to let him in and spend some quality one-on-one time.  I gave him some lessons on trying to stay inside the lines and use different colours.  When he finished a picture I told him to write his name, which he didn’t really know how, so I had to write it for him to copy.  He then wanted me to write his surname as well.  When he was finished with that he started practising his name on the mini blackboard I painted on the wall and continued to write the numbers 1 – 10.  He had a lot of them the wrong way around but he kept on until the board was about full. 

Today I walked up there again, and the only person who came for about an hour before anyone else, was Afekile, a 9 year old girl in grade 2 who lives just below the Reading Hut. She was one of the kids who since the beginning, I knew the Reading Hut could have a potentially great impact on, because her 2 older brothers Buyana and Aphiwe used to come and visit me all the time at my tent and their English improved quite a bit, while Afekile always had to stay at home.  Now she comes to visit the Reading Hut every chance she gets because it's so close to her home.  She really doesn’t speak much English at all, only knows some basic nouns and not much else. God was super kind to bless us today with some very valuable time together.

Spending one-on-one time with these kids really helps to see exactly what their levels are and what great needs they have.  Afekile kind of knows the alphabet verbally and knows most of the letters, but still there are many she doesn’t know at all.  I think today was the first time someone showed her that W and X are in fact two different letters.  The 2 together must have sounded to her like ‘double-ex’  and she thought that was the name for W, whereas she didn’t have a clue about what the X was.  LMNO and some other letters, totally confused her as well.

Very thankfully I received an alphabet puzzle-set today, (thanks Joy!!) with the letter and a picture next to it. This was a great help to use with Afekile and I think she now knows a whole lot more about the alphabet. 

Of course I realized then that she actually couldn’t read at all, which previously I had assumed that she could at least read basic words.  First I showed her exactly which books she should look at (There are some graded Xhosa books from 1 – 4, Thanks Oxford publishers!!!) and that they differ in difficulty.  (I also wanted her to see that there are different numbers, so in future she would aid me in keeping them a bit organized, because kids just come, grab a bunch of books and shove them in anywhere else.  

I then  went back to even more basic books, there are a few very basic Xhosa alphabet books teaching colours, numbers, alphabet etc.  So we looked at the colour book and I showed her basically how to read a word by breaking the word into parts.  I think there is more we could do in this line, with more pictures and labelling familiar objects.  Anyway, I could see that Afekile was able to learn and that her lack of knowledge only stemmed from not being taught properly. 

A little later some older girls arrived.  Some of them could actually read a bit of English and they hung around till I closed the place at 5:30.  I was also impressed that somehow things were running even more like a real library, people putting books back neatly where they found them and speaking in low voices.  When the little kids are there I constantly have to remind them to whisper cause the get quite loud.  It looks like I can teach a few individuals the basic etiquette and when other kids come they tend to spread the way of doing things.  Everything is actually going much better than I anticipated and I feel God’s blessing on this whole project!  Thank You Father!  May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven!      

Sunday, February 3, 2013

030213, Sunday, visiting the other side of the hill













This morning I really felt like going for a walk to take some photo prints to a group of people on the other side of the hill.  I set out but didn't get far.  It was way too hot and the sun was scorching my back.  When I got back to the caravan I had a missed call from Noen saying they are waiting for me to come and help wrap Valentines gifts, so I went there till about 5.  

When I got home again, it started drizzling a bit and then stopped.  I took my chance, picked up my camera and headed up the hill.  I was distracted very soon by someone who lives on the way.  A Xhosa girl that used to work in the house I lived when I first arrived in Coffee Bay.  Anyway, I had to take some pictures.  As I walked on, kids started following me wanting their pictures taken and took me to their home to photograph the rest of the family.  I was more than happy to oblige.  Right now I am very thankful to God who blessed me with this gift of an afternoon and these photographs that I can keep to remind me of His goodness.  Hallelujah!  Without Him it would not be possible...  

Thank You Lord for Your grace and mercy to all of us undeserving people.  
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" Romans 3:23-24

030213, Reading Hut, Mr Brown can do it...



Got some more books for the Reading Hut thank you!!  It's pretty full already and hard to keep tidy.  The kids think they are helping me by 'reorganizing' the books all the time but they're actually just creating chaos!  All good fun.  (They are crazy about coloring in... and have all become fans of "Dr Suess: Mr Brown can do it how about you?" even though many of them don't even understand English yet...)