So there's a little of the background information for ya.
Our day started with working with the younger kids. As many people probably know, babies weird me out so I went with the kids who were 4-6 years old. Tracey and I took them outside and played various games for a few hours and then did some puzzles and what not at the end. The kids were ADORABLE. It was quite sad though because you could definitely tell the difference between the kids whos mothers were heavy drinkers and which that weren't
These 2 boys were the same age, but the boy in the yellow was literally half the size as the other boy.
We took a class picture and off we went to get some lunch at the main house and figure out what our task was for the afternoon. Annie told us that we would be doing actual farm work for the afternoon on the climate change path? (whatever that meant) We found out that the farm was actually an olive farm where they produced their own olive oil and was sold in the grocery stores around South Africa. So before we started our farm work this women Ingred (she ran the highschool kids program) showed us around the olive groves and led us to where we would be doing our work.
Here's some pics of the olive groves themselves.
Our job for the afternoon was to weed this field that they were going to use to plant... something? Who knows. So anyways they literally just put us out into the field and were like here are 2 rakes and the rest you pull up with your hands. Now, this was no normal weeding. This field had been grown over for a VERY long time and there were literal plants with deep roots that needed to be pulled up. Not to mention that there were huge aloe plants everywhere. After about 2 and a half hours of weeding my hands were basically raw and I physically could not straighten them. We decided it was time for a break. Every one was in some serious physical pain and we couldn't imagine if that was really someones job they did everyday. I could never imagine something like that. There were workers that were working in the area next to us and they kept asking us what we were doing and then laughing.. um? Okay. Rude. We were like slaves. When we went back to see what time we were doing the weeding until they guy was gone and so was everyone else that was working on the path. Once again... um? We called up Annie and asked her what we should do, and all she said was when we were done we could head up to the building where we would be eating dinner and working with the high school kids. We decided that we were done and went up right after we got off the phone will her. Whoops haha.
They had made a fire and it was getting pretty cold so we sat around the fire for a while waiting for the kids to get there. Once they started to arrive they made us come inside and dance with them. Let's take note of the fact that I cannot dance to save my life. Literally ZERO rhythm. I tried to explain this to the girls that were trying to teach us their African dances but they didn't understand the severity of my lack of rhythm. It also didn't help that the Africans all can DANCE, like really really dance. I feel like they are born with a natural rhythm or something. I was jealous and still currently am. Once Ingred showed up we got into a circle and sang for a while, dancing and circling around. Kind weird but whatever, they kids liked it. After we were done with that, we had planned an activity with the kids to get them to work together, and once they were done to present their answers to everyone. We did the activity where, im sure everyone has done this at some point in their life. But where you are given a list of people and things and it goes like "you are stuck on a deserted island and you can only take 5 out of the 10 people and 5 out of the 10 items on the list". One then proceeds to figure out why you would bring the people you said and why you chose to bring the things you did. The kids explanations were hilarious and the exercise went really well. It was so hard to imagine these kids at home being abused by their parents and being exposed to all the horrible things that exist in their village. They seemed so normal and happy! It was so sad, but thank god for this program because these kids were actually making something of themselves. All of them were saying how they wanted to go to college and get out of their towns and what not. They were awesome. I wish we had known about the project earlier in the semester so we could have gone more than once. We ate a traditional African dinner with the kids to end the night and all of a sudden it was 9pm and it was time to go. It was sad to think that we would never see the kids again, and there was no way we could keep in contact with them. :( I just hope that they actually follow through with what they said they were going to do with their lives and that they do not get sucked into the on going cycle of alcoholism.
Here are the kids that Tracey and I worked with in the morning
These are the highschool kids
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