Mpame Village Projects: Goodbye Mike

Mike has left Manzamnyama yesterday morning. Babalwa came to visit me in the afternoon and she looked really sad when she told me how she accompanied him to the taxi stop early that morning. It has been great having Mike here, he's just the kind of volunteer this project needs: open-hearted, happy, enthusiastic, full of ideas and willing to work. I have hardly seen him in these 4 weeks he spent here - we set him up to start building the Early Learning Centre, and he took up this task very seriously and there wasn't much more I needed to say. So he dug the foundations, he raised money to buy cement and other necessary materials, he paid some villagers to help out with different little tasks, he mixed cement and laid foundations, he spoke to Maxwell (who acts as a building overseer) to get advice, he thought about the future of the Early Learning Centre, he went to visit the Preschool in Bulungula to get some ideas about how it could be run and organized, and he drew plans and schedules. He rented the free hut from Babalwa and spent a lot of time with her family and the villagers, went to funerals and soccer games and iniciations ceremonies and a lot of other stuff, learnt how to prepare local drinks and foods, learnt to speak some Xhosa, and told lots and lots of stories to the children.

Thank you Mike, thank you for sharing your time and your sweat with us, it was a blast having you here, and we will definitely miss you.

Mike with a village boy

Now we wait for the big village meeting, that is supposed to happen on Monday (though you never really know, it could get postponed again). At that meeting, we will discuss the building plans for the Early Learning centre and the Lodge. We thought it's better to draw plans now and write down the names of the people who help out, just to give it all some more structure. We have also been thinking about reducing the committee, for 10 people is a bit too much and they're never all at the meetings anyway. So maybe we will split the committee up and divide them between the two construction sites, so that everybody feels like they are in charge of something, and therefore appear at the meetings. :-)

While Mike was busy with building the Early Learning Centre, I was mostly doing fencing, trying to save my baby tomato plants from the sneaky goats. First I built some kind of little Kraal just around the little bed where the tomatoes are, but last Monday I finally bought some pig wire, and now I can fence the whole area in properly. Though the goats still come through the bushes at the back side of the garden ... so I set out with the saw over my shoulder to go cut some branches that I can stuff in the holes in the sisal plant fence. Now my garden is pretty much secure and I can happily start planting again. The lodge also needs to be fenced in properly for the goats and sheep keep on munching away on everything there too, but I think I'll wait for Aidan to come back for that task - that's a bit of a bigger fence. Tony has told me anyway that I can't do fencing alone for it's a two man job, and I laughed and said, well it looks like it just became a one woman job now. There you go. :-)

new fence around my garden

Meanwhile, I also spent a lot of time at Bulls Inn (a Fisher and Holiday Lodge in Mpame) with Tony, helping to fix the landrover. That thing was completely rusted through and needed some welding. Now at least the chassis holds together again, but the starter motor still doesn't work, and we also need new break and clutch seals. We will tackle that next week ... so that hopefully the vehilce is ready when Aidan comes back. Aidan just left Cape Town, mission accomplished: he got his visa to come to Switzerland with me in November. Yaih! :-)