How to spend Week 1 of Global Challenge.
I have been struggling to think what to write for this first blog. So much has happened - how can I succinctly portray what has kept us occupied over the past week? I guess I will start by picking out some of the highlights, and see how it goes from there...
Our first full day in Jeffreys Bay was spent doing the first of our challenges - a full day of of running around on a crazy team vs team "treasure hunt" that had us walking, running and hitching our way around Jeffreys and the surrounding towns. A few of the highlights? Eating 20 Steers ice-creams, finding a can of coke buried on the beach, washing the cars of 10 strangers, finding and modelling themed outfits in the shopping mall, riding the supertube continuously for an hour (I managed 21 slides and a lost earring) spending time at an old age home (where I managed to find an English speaking old lady to chat to - YAY!!), icing a cake and then taking it to a local town to find a stranger who's birthday we could celebrate with them ... and taking a stack of photos in random locations we had to find around the town.
Our first taste of manual labour was cleaning Ithemba Primary school in a local township. The school has in the region of 700 pupils attending each day - but only from 8am to 10am. Their education is limited to only 2 hours per day due to the poor facilities at the school and the fact that there are no working toilets. The toilets have been long since blocked up and desperate kids had resorted to defecating on the toilet floors, and even the passages between the classrooms.
Our first day at the school was spent unblocking the toilets. Armed with rubber gloves, members of our team were literally elbow deep in the toilet pots, pulling out handfuls of old excrement. Others set to work picking up the layers and layers of rubbish that had been dumped in the grounds. It was a case of picking up a shin-deep pile of papers, cans, bottles, etc etc etc only to find another layer that had already been caked into the ground.
Day two was spent with half the group sanding the walls of the classrooms (which we will be painting this week) while the others worked with a local plumber who had volunteered to get the toilets working again.
The motivation that kept us all working through the piles of excrement, rubbish, dirt and dust? Our work will give dignity back to hundreds of kids who currently learn in broken down classrooms and face the humiliation of going to the toilet in the passage outside their classrooms when they are desperate. Today was their first day back at school - for a full day, not just the meagre 2 hours they have been limited to until now.
We spent the last 2 days hearing each other's stories - the testimonies of people's lives and both the hardships and the miracles they have seen. I am so amazed by the passion and strength of character of people that will be my family this year. What an honour to spend this year learning and growing with them.
After only a week we have moved campsites from the caravan park to a site with rooms and dorm beds. ...and just as I was getting used to sleeping on the ground.
One week down, a million more memories to go!