Hello my dear,

we girls went to Durban and participated in the color run.

It was so much fun to run five kilometers while you were thrown with color.

Just look at the picutes :)

Love from South Africa Fredo

A little Christmas...

Time runs by soo fast, we have Saturday already. Not too much time till we go on our big trip J did I tell you about it? I and four other volis are going to Capetown J Afterwards we are planning to drive along the coast until we are back home. We are supper excited about this trip: D

But for now I am going to write about my last week and this weekend in Greytown.

This week so Children start to leave to their families because in the beginning of December the big Christmas vocations start here. Since all the exams in the schools are written, the kids don’t have to go to school anymore (isn’t that weird?), so some of them go back home even before the vocations actually start. So we don’t have a study time anymore because there is no homework anymore (if there ever had been haha ). So I have time to play with the kids in my house. 

I taught them some gymnastics had we had so much fun together.

Also Anele, my big little girl from NB left on Friday. I guess because of this she acted so weird this week. Most mornings she did not want to go to Kammaland and did run back home, which is a difficult situation for me because I have to bring her to school, even though she does not want to go! That is a bugging job, believe me!

Well it was hard to say goodbye to her yesterday after lunch. She will be gone for almost two month and I am sure that she will behave really differently when she comes back! But her smile while she kept telling me she is going home was a nice thing to see.

My week kept on being bad because on Monday evening I did cut myself really bad while cooking, but my other girls helped me with the blood as fast as they could. I am sure I am going to have a hub from that :$

On Wednesday Pieter offered Leonie and me as equation for our effort with the Certificates to go along to a meeting in another Children’s Home called Koningsdale. The road to go there is really beautiful. We drove along the President’s house and through a forest called Nkandla Forest. Here you can see how beautiful it is there:)

 

We even saw a wild horse…

Konigsdale was quite different than our Kinderhuis. It has 89 children there, even from the age 0. We played with the smaller ones for a long time. They also have sheep and horses there. We had an African lunch and made our 2 ½ hour way back home.

 

Leonie and I were actually really excited about Friday because from noon there will be just the two of us because the others will leave for Durban and the Drakensbergs.

Our hall time was great fun. We danced, played and shoot photos with the kiddies.

Afterwards we cleaned the kitchen and talked a lot about our plans for the weekend. We decided to go to the computer room to research a little bit more about our trip to Capetown. Suddenly the electricity decided to turn off for an hour and we were sitting in the dark. We planned to borrow a movie at LH and eat noodles at midnight while watching “Despicable Me2” (this was a great decision :D). We slept in Toevlug and had a great night. 

Today we will go with two of the Toddlers to the Supermarket where they can spent their pocket money. Afterwards we will bake some Christmas cookies because most of the time in December we will be gone. I can’t wait, we will have great fun I am sure :)

But baking cookies without electizity is really difficult but we had great fun!!

 Lots of Love
Fredo

Christmas Party :) Santa is coming...

Hello again,

So now in this post I am going to tell you about my last week.

During the week didn’t actually happen that much. We were busy caring for the children, finishing the certification stuff and practicing the Christmas Play. Charlotte, Hannah, Leonie and I had the idea to play the Christmas story with some of the Children on our Christmas Party here. So it was a difficult job to find some children, who wanted to act and are able to speak fluent English.

We practiced really hard with the kids, so they knew their texts by heart.

So I go on now haha. On Friday we had to decorate the Casa Nova, the hall where the meal would be served. It had been not a good mood, because this time actually had been our off time. Plus the woman who organized all the stuff had not been there, so we just started to decorate. Finally, we were almost finished by this time; she showed up and didn’t like anything. So we had to do it all over again. The Christmas tree should been decorated by us, all the volunteers. Since we wanted to show some German tradition we decorated just in red and gold and not a holy lot. Her comment: “This is the ugliest and most disgusting tree I have ever seen. It looks like it had never seen any water. “ Besides the tree was a plastic one, this comment was really disrespectful and our mood went further down. 

The casa nova decorated

Oh well on Saturday morning we had to get up early to decorate the tables, which looked nice because Maria organized everything. Afterward we got dressed and went to the Church with our acting kids to get them dressed.

In Church the Choir of the older boys and girls sang, we heard may thanks from different people, had our play (which went really really good!) and almost all kids got certificates plus the schools and geements (communities) and also we, the volunteers got some.

Afterwards we went back to the Kinderhuis, where some of the smaller boys showed Zulu dance.   

In the Casa Nova we were supposed to have a great lunch, which turned out to be meat, half of a Hot Dog bread and a soon full of potato salad. Not a lunch we thought it would be.

Shortly after the lunch Santa Claus came on a big truck. Well actually seven Santas came, one for each house.

All the kids followed the truck, even climbed on it, and got their presents. The smaller ones got stuff like dollies, kitchen stuff, skateboards and the older ones money or gift cards.

 

We had to serve the donators of each house coffee and cake in the house. It was a strange feeling because those people behaved (well that is my opinion) as if they were something better. In the beginning they didn’t even say hello and then suddenly they told me what a good work I do and that it must be so difficult. Oh well, at least I got some cake and also a little present from the church here.

My house

The house was decorated by me and the children

Dumsile with her present

At all I must say it didn’t feel like Christmas and all the work was way to intensive for not even half a day, but the children were all so happy about their presents and the tons of sweets they got and this was defiantly the most beautiful thing to see this day, the brighten eyes and big smiles J

Today we all make a chilly Sunday.

Have a nice Sunday everybody

Love from Greytown, where it is raining again

Fredo

Jonny Clagg concert

Hello my dear follower,

I am sorry before I will write about this weekend and the Christmas Party we had yesterday, I will first tell you about my last Sunday.

On this day we all went to Durban. Maria, Hannah, Leonie and I drove with Trevor, the guy who took us to the Hot Springs weeks ago. He also took three friends along. We drove towards the Botanical Garden in Durban because there would take a concert place.

Since we did not know what to expect, we just had some ice tea and toast to bring along. But it didn’t matter at all because it was a nice picnic atmosphere in the Garden, Trevor even took along some camping chairs. There were also some commercial tents, where we were able to get some coups of soup, even to bring home.

Leonie and I at this tree

So we were excited about the concert. The choir, called Ladysmith, performed a mix of Zulu music and dance, they also wore some Zulu dresses, and yes it was only guys.

Since this kind of music was not my favorite one, Leonie and I decided to walk through the Park, which was a little difficult because the area around the stage was locked. But we had fun seeing trees which roots grew from the ground until the top of the tree and some other trees threw strange wooden things apart.

The second act, Jonny Clagg, was really good. This guy is a white guy who sings Zulu music and was even in the Charts in Europe. Maybe one of you knows him

He played for over an hour and we danced along. It was really fun!

After the concert we decided to go drink a cocktail. We didn’t know what to except but it was wonderful! The Moyo is a bar at the beach over the water of Durban. Since it was dark we got to see Durban’s skyline at night. I really like the City.

We came back home really late for a Sunday and wanted to eat plus I had to finish the cake for Nesi’s Birthday. I was glad when I was in my but also I thought it was probably my favorite week here in Africa so far. I love Durban an d can’t wait to go there for a weekend with Leonie.

So this was my last Sunday…

I hope you can see by the pictures how happy I had been :)

Love you

Fredo

Hi everybody,

another week just passed by and I have quite a lot to tell.

On Monday we had to say goodbye to Michaela because she was leaving to another project in Jeffery’s Bay. We had some cake in the meeting and afterwards she was leaving. I hope you will have a good time J But it also means that I am the only volunteer in Nuwe Begin.



On Tuesday all the volunteers and some children went to the hospital of Greytown to sing songs there, remembering the National Children’s Day on the past week. We studied two English songs with the kids, but they also started to sing Zulu songs and that was an awesome feeling :)

On Thursday was the “Prize Giving and Closing Concert” of the Indlovana High school, which is located right next to the Children’s Home. We could see the girls wearing really short traditional Zulu skirts and tops while the danced Zulu.

 

 It was weird to see them almost naked in school, but I guess it is the tradition here. There were a lot of guest speakers, even the Police, but sadly we could not understand what they were saying because it was Zulu.

We also could see the boys doing traditional dancing. They wore fur and it smelled as it was properly fur. They were not only dancing, but also singing and playing traditional drums. It was such an experience to get to see this.

After this ceremony we were invited to have lunch at the Hall. We were traded like special guests and the only white people there. For lunch we had different kinds of Salads, the traditional meal rice with meat and terrible sweet juice. Or dessert it was ice cream with fruits and pudding and again a really sweet cake. Leonie and I sat on a table with three guys, two teachers from the school and one father, whose son got honored for his academic effort.

It was a strange situation because one of the first questions was:” will you be my bride?” After negate Leonie had to dish up for everybody. And once again we were asked:” Can I at least marry one of you?”

Gladly the conversation turned into a different way and we got taught some Zulu. We got to know that the one guy’s name would mean “Thanks Sheep” in English. We really tried to not laugh.

Even it was a strange situation it was memorable.

In my study time this day I got to learn some more Zulu and also Zulu songs. It was probably my favorite study time so far ;)



On Friday Pieter had a meeting in Durban and offered Hannah, Leonie and me to come along. Since the weather was supposed to be good this day we decided not to come along to the Kinderhuis there. Instead we asked his to drive us to the beach. This was defiantly a decision we would not regret.

The moment we got to see Durban for the first time, I instantly liked the city, the soccer Stadium, which was built for the Fifa world Cup in 2010, looked awesome. The next time I will be in Durban I have to go there. But this day we only had about three hours so we walked along the beach and on the Pier, which was an awesome felling. I really miss the ocean a lot! Afterwards we decided to walk along the road, where people tried to sell traditional stuff like bracelets or figures made out of wood. I will buy me one of them for sure :)

Later on we ate delicious ice cream and Hannah and I went into the water. It was cold and there were so high waves, but I loved it a lot!!

It was so strange because people kept looking at you and we even were asked if someone could take a picture of us.

On Saturday we made some decoration for the Christmas party next week.

love from South Africa