So, here we are in South Africa. It’s our third day here. We’re staying at a community facility called “Refilwe”, which means “hope” in one of their 11 national languages…not sure which one! Yesterday they put us to work, first sorting through a storage room to salvage anything we might want to use for the kids camp coming up. Then we set to work cleaning the two houses where we stay. I have to say that I was impressed with everyone here. We really pitched in and the place looks amazing!
I personally decided that the bathroom was my Everest, and set out to try and conquer it! After it was all said and done, the showers, toilets and sinks were shining (well, that’s a bit much…but they were cleaner at least!) and the floor had been mopped three times! Here’s a tip…paint thinner is not eye-friendly! At one point we were on our hands and knees scrubbing the tiles with paint thinner to get the spots off. In the end, we accomplished what we set out to do and have an awesome place to stay for the next week and a half!
Today was our first day of training for the kids camp we will be running here for the next week. We start on Monday, and right now we have no idea how many kids to expect. They say anywhere from 50 to 350. We’re ready! They split us up into two groups: the recreation people and the small group leaders. I went back and forth as to what to do, but in the end I decided to help run the rec side of things. There are ten of us who will be responsible for running games out in the field everyday for about 4 or 5 hours. We did a trial run today, and I haven’t had that much fun in awhile! We attracted a group of kids and decided to let them be the guinea pigs for our recreation experiment. They loved the games! It’s definitely going to be a really fun and intensely active next week and a half!
We will be going to two more locations in the next three weeks to run the same camp, so we will all have a chance to try different things. I would love to lead a small group as well, and there’s always need for people to watch the babies…so I’m there! Don’t worry, I’ll be posting some fun pictures of the kids soon!
