07 August 2009 – Friday

Rain in the morning which meant we were not going to the game park as planned. It seems that every time we plan to go away for a day the rain starts. So instead of enjoying a day off, we enjoyed a morning off and then headed out to Esikhawini to give the Zone leaders some money and other things that they needed for their Cosi Bay visit.

 

When I get out my camera, the kid comes out in all the elders. They want to be in the picture and they want to have fun. 5 minutes later they can be bearing a wonderful testimony or talking about the joy of finding a new family to teach.

When we got there, elder Mokopotsa was busy fixing their bikes. I kidded him that he should start a bike repair service up on the corner where there is an auto repair service that operates on a large grassy area. This would keep the overhead down to almost nothing. Two of the great sisters of the branch were there working on their gardens. We love sister Mathe and sister Khumalo – they are great examples to the young women of the branch.

We then headed out to Port Durnford to visit gogo Nzama and see how she is. When we got there we found that she had gone to the doctor’s to see if she could get some relief. This of course meant more of their meager funds had to go for transportation and doctor’s fees. With little if any cash reserve they will have a hard time with bills and food this coming month. After visiting with Thandi Nzama for a short time, we dropped off the chicken soup Mary had made and headed back to our boarding.

 

On our way home we passed the Malondo home and saw that they were laying the blocks for the new round house they are building. We stopped to see how it was done and found Siya and Landani had stayed home from school to help. It seems that those two like to find reasons not to go to school. I suggest to them that this is a bad idea and that their main home to breaking the circle of poverty they are in is for them to get a good education. About 100 yards away from where they are building this house, the neighbors are building a square one using traditional wattle, stone and mud. Except for the tin roof that will go on, there is no material costs at all.

 

We decided today was the day we would check out that sea of mud we did not go through a few days ago. To get there we had to go through some smaller muddy areas. The idea is to get up some speed and hope you make it to the other side without getting stuck. Since there were a good set of tracks from prior vehicles we felt fairly safe in giving it a try and we made it through two of them without any problems. But when we got to the big one we took one look and said ‘no way.’ So we just took pictures and splashed back to the main road. Of course the car was pretty well covered with mud, but I needed to get it washed anyway.

On our way home to our boarding, we stopped at the mall and bought most of the food we will need for feeding the missionaries on Sunday. I am rather glad we do not feed them every week because that could become expensive.

When we got home we unloaded the car and pretty much called it a day.

Some random pictures: Mary really dislikes moths and this one was about 6 or 7 inches across. She did not care if it was beautiful she just wanted it gone. I love to take pictures of children. No matter where they are, how humble the surroundings, they are almost always clean, dressed in clean clothes and obviously loved by their parents or grandparents. The last picture was taken by sister Mickelsen of a loaded cane truck. I have been trying to capture a good photo of one of these for a couple of weeks but without success. Her picture is perfect. Thanks Sister Mickelsen!