CatchUp Continued!

Wednesday

GAPA TRIP! The team needed to be ready for 8:30 in the morning so we could start preparing the resources for morning activities, make 120 odd packed lunches complete with sandwich, yoghurt, fruit and juice. It was quiet a task! But we did it in record time, and I even found some face paints so that we could decorate ourselves, the kids and grannies in their national colours.*

*A quick note about that last remark - to try to organise and control 120 kids we separated them into 10 teams. Which were named after 10 countries so that the kids could bond with their team and leaders more. It worked so well! I was in team ZIMBABWE! So we created our own chant which we repeated throughout the day, we even had shouting matches with chants from other teams!

The beautiful thing about this trip was also the fact that all volunteers and staff member were working in the same site together. Including administrative staff, Shecky and Jane the catering staff and even the Tears (animal care centre) volunteers - who argued about joining in because they prefer dogs over humans; and certainly puppies over children! But we were all in the same boat and had an amazing time in the glorious sunshine. The designated photographer Lyda managed to snap some photos where we all (at least) looked like we were enjoying ourselves - even the Tears volunteers.

After singing and playing though out the morning in the park at Seapoint - looking right over the sea - we sat down for lunch. It was so funny, the grannies kept on trying to charm themselves into getting more food! Then when everyone was finished and there was seconds, the children didn't get a look in.

The end of lunch signalled the start of the afternoon activities, in other words, the Bud Tour! Everyone was incredibly excited to be given the chance to ride the tourist bus, it's something they would never normally have access to. We managed to fit everyone on 3 open top buses, all sitting down with their eye-spy tick sheet and headphones plugged into the audio tour guide.. And off we went!

Everyone was intently listening to the audio tour guide - my grannie Thandi even wrote a full A4 side of notes! They loved it, and as I pointed out famous monuments the tour guide was explaining they kept shouting 'Teacher! Teacher!' And pointing to the eye-spy challenge - eager to find them all! This wasn't just a pretty rode trip in an open top bus, it was an educational experience for the youngsters and grannies and us too! Everyone learnt something new about Cape Town that day. For half the volunteers it was that the sunshine here can burn you badly if you're not careful!

Thursday

Back to Fiks in the morning and GAPA in the afternoon. The kids were very surprised when I arrived on that day, as the day before I had gone to the local hairdressers for a haircut. The story behind this is that we arrived home from project around 5pm, so we immediately headed out to find a barber shop (me and Matt - another volunteer who also needed a haircut) but all the up market barber shops were closed! So Matt tells me "I know one more barber shop but it is the most African" I nodded in agreement and we headed there. 

Fortunately it was still open, and we had to climb a shoddy staircase to the 2nd floor of a small building. It was a room that was meant to be one shop floor - but they had added an extra one for the men's section. So we sat down and began to tell them the styles we wanted. Originally I just wanted short back and sides with a little bit of length taken off the top with scissors. But they had no scissors! All the serve only require shaven heads of various lengths! So I asked them for the longest length possible with a razor, which was 5. And it was a little shorter than I expected let's say..! But for R50 it was fine, and it was a cultural experience too!

At GAPA there was a change of plan, the grannies had sat a meeting with investors in the morning and they were also tired from their excursions form the day before, so no kids came at all! Instead we had a lovely meeting with them during which they expressed their gratitude for the trip. Explaining that even themselves, who have lived in Cape Town all their life, learnt so much that day and saw sights that they never would have experienced otherwise. One grannie said that when she worked in the city, she often saw that red bus drive past full of tourists. And she thought to herself, one day, maybe one day she would sit up there and witness the beauty of Cape Town like this for herself. And we fulfilled that dream for her.

After we had closed the meeting with my leaving speech and kind goodbyes, we busied ourselves by doing some gardening in the vegetables patches the grannies tend to, so that they can home grow some veg for the children. It was really enjoyable just chatting and working with everyone to Thulanis music, plus Sandiso taught me a thing or two about different plants.

When we returned home it was the usual duties of observations and preparations but instead of just dinner, we had a special guest - Sarah who came with free pudding and a sales pitch about various tour opportunities. But more importantly the food! She gave use Malva pudding (rich syrup laden cake with saffa) , Koeksisters (sugary doughnut twist) and milk tart which is like a creamy custard tart. All of them were gorgeous, especially with a cool glass of Rooibos ice tea.