Every little bit counts.

Hello Everyone!

In my short time here at Nkosi's Haven I have had the opportunity to witness first hand the amazing work that this organization does and the tirelessness of its staff and volunteers. Nkosi's Haven was inspired by a little boy who changed a lot of people's lives and their lives. Nkosi Johnson worked throughout his short life of 12 years to educate people about AIDS and those living with it. You can read more about Nkosi here. June 1st, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of Nkosi's death and to honour his legacy we have embarked on a fund-raising campaign. I would now like to take the opportunity to speak from personal experience about the need here and tell you some ways your donation would be spent.

The current and most urgent need for Nkosi's Haven is heaters. It may seem crazy to Canadians that winter in South Africa is cold, but it really is! The past two days I've spent all day wearing a coat and my fingers are freezing as I type. The cottages are not insulated and so children are currently sleepy with hot water bottles, which don't hold much heat.

Another important need currently is funds to fix the transport. Since I arrived a month ago both the large vans to drive the kids to and from school, therapy off-site and to take them on day trips have been broken. This has made it very challenging day to day and we are currently relying on the kindness of friends of Nkosi's Haven.

While these are short term needs there are many long term ones including the development of the farm that Nkosi's Haven has recently purchased to produce food and revenue for all our sites, expand our recently started jewellery project that allows the mothers to earn their own income and maintaining the current level of care at all our sites.

I can personally see that the money that Nkosi's Haven has is being well spent but the number of people living with AIDS and in need of care greatly surpasses our current capacity. I know that most of those reading this blog are students and don't have much to give but every little bit counts and as Nkosi himself said "Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are."

You can donate here online!

Thank you for taking the time to read this and anything you can give is really, truly appreciated.

Normal programming will resume next post.

Lack of electricity.

I think that one common perception of Africa is that the electricity can be rather unreliable. My experience of this thus far has been two very local power outages. And when I say local I mean local. Saturday night and last night the power went out in 5 cottages, including the one I am staying in, in Nkosi's Haven village. Luckily the kitchen still has power and we still have water so it hasn't been much more than a minor inconvenience. Apparently its a result of all the kids taking a bath at the same time and the water tanks - geezers they call them, I don't know why - overloading the wiring. I find it ironic and amusing that the only power outages I have experienced thus far have been so localized. As far as I know I can look forward to another evening in the dark. I miss my electric blanket.

A Few Highlights

Hello Again.

Today I had a day off because it is South Africa's municipal elections so it is a national holiday. Since I obviously can't vote it was just a Wednesday with no work for me. Naturally I took a nap and now I'm not very sleepy so I am going to post a few more pictures of a few of my highlights so far...

These first 3 pictures are from the past Saturday, May 14th. Nkosi's Haven enjoyed a fun day that was put on by a local group of families and friends that like to organize fun days for homes and orphanages. After being somewhat annoyed that there was about 100 kids yelling outside my window at 8am on Saturday morning, I joined the fun. The kids had a great time and it was nice to see them enjoying the day. There was a bouncy castle, an elephant ride (like those ones you'd see in the mall, not a live elephant), hula hoops and then there was a visit from the Johannesburg Zoo with a cockroach, bunny, lizard and a snake much to the terror of many of the 2-4 year-olds. I ended up with four kids crowded into my lap all screaming from fear and excitement as other kids touched the animals.

Later on Saturday I set off with another volunteer, Silke, to visit another friend she has staying with a host family in a township, Daveyton. I could write a book on the whole experience but for now I will leave you with the part where I tried eating worms. As most of you know I have been vegetarian for about 6 years but I decided that while I am in South Africa I am not going to limit me from trying new things. Technically these are caterpillars but they are called mopane worms. Eating bugs has a big EW factor in North America but really it wasn't much different from any other food. Almost a bit anti-climatic actually. I excepted a big explosion of green guts or some sort of weird burst of flavour but they tasted .. a fishy and chewy. Not bad really.

I get many visitors in my office, usually kids, but also peacocks. There are an unknown number of peacocks living at Nkosi's Haven and they are very nosy creatures. I happened to have my camera on this day so I snapped a picture. I won't let them come in the door, I'm worried they'd act Canada geese and peck me or something.

I'm going to try to keep updating, so far I am enjoying blogging, it gives me a good opportunity to reflect on and try to explain my experiences. Byeeeee!!

A Day in my Life.

Sanibonani (Good Day) Everyone! I hope that whatever corner of the world you're in you're doing well.

I thought that for this entry I would give you a basic idea of what I spendmost of my days doing (so far). After two weeks of working I have settled into a basic routine but everyday is different.

I wake up around 7am and get ready for the meeting that all the volunteers and mothers have each day at 7:45am. These meetings are run by a staff member. From what I gather these meetings are a fairly recent addition to the routine here at Nkosi's Haven and they allow everyone to have an opportunity to raise concerns or make announcements. This is important in a place like Nkosi's Haven because word of mouth is how almost all announcements seem to be made.

After the meeting I go back to cottage I live in and have breakfast. Breakfast is served in the kitchen everyday at 6:30am but I have no intention of getting up at that time for maize porridge or bread. (This is what I've heard is served for breakfast I've only eaten it once, my first day because I arrived at 7am.) This is the cottage I live in.

Then its time for me to “commute” to "work". Here is the hill I walk up to get to work

Once I arrive at "work" - about 3-4 minutes later - I start working on whatever tasks I have for that day. This always involves several trips “downstairs” (the bottom of the hill) for discussions with the founder of the organization, and my boss, Gail. As everyone is always saying, walking up and down the hill will make me “fit”. This is my office.

So far I have written a donation proposal, taken over running Nkosi's Haven's Facebook page, created a media list and am currently planning a memorial event for the 10th anniversary of the death of Nkosi Johnson, the boy who inspired the creation of Nkosi's Haven. Shameless plug: If you have Facebook, you can “like” our Facebook page by using the box to the left.

I work until about 1pm when lunch is served. Lunch varies from day to day but its generally a variation of sandwiches, fries, sausage, hot dog, potatoes, salad (rarely with dressing) or bread. So far lunch has not been my favourite meal of most days.

After lunch I go back to work until about 4pm or 5pm it varies from day to day. Since my office is in the therapy building of the village I usually get a few visits from kids who are coming for therapy, tutoring or Afrikaans lessons.

After I finish work I pack up my things and commute back down the hill. Then I usually spend an hour or so hanging out with the kids while we wait for dinner.

Dinner starts at 5pm with the children being served first. Then everyone else is free to come and serve themselves. I usually eat dinner in the cottage with the other volunteers. After dinner we usually hang around and talk or sometimes I read. Another volunteer and I are also trying to learn a bit of Zulu (the most common African language spoken at Nkosi’s Haven) so some nights we read aloud from the instruction books we bought.

I don’t quite know why but something about this place makes you tired very early. It gets dark at 6pm and everyone heads to their cottages around 7pm and seem to be in bed shortly after. So around 9:30/10pm I turn on my electric blanket and go to bed. For some reason the majority of houses in South Africa don’t have any insulation and we don’t really have an effective heating system either so its quite cold at night ... more on that later. I think that ‘quirks’ will make for an interesting future blog entry.

Leave comments!! More pictures to come...

First Few Days...

Hello Everyone!

I have made it to South Africa safe and sound after about 30 hours of travelling and not much sleeping. I had no real problems travelling, just a lot of sitting and waiting, and more sitting and more waiting.

I arrived on April 30th and got to Nkosi’s Haven at about 7am so I’ve been here for almost three days now. Since it’s been such a short time that everything is new and exciting but I’m going to try and give the highlights. As well, I don’t start work tomorrow (Tuesday) since today was a public holiday (Labour Day or Worker’s Day).

I think one of my favourite things so far is the kids, there are kids running around almost all the time and they are always happy to see you and give you a hug or a wave. There are I think about 100 kids ranging from infants to teens, 30 mothers/caregivers, and 4 volunteers living in Nkosi’s Haven currently (don’t quote me on the numbers) so someone is almost always around. There also several staff members that live off-site. Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming to me so far.

Yesterday I ventured to the mall with one of the other volunteers (who has been here for around a month) to buy some groceries and a cellphone. However, I couldn’t buy a cellphone because I needed ID and I hadn’t brought any. Walking around here on the roads is interesting, first of all because the cars drive on the left so it can be hard to remember which way to look, there is a lack of cross walks and drivers (or pedestrians) don’t necessarily pay attention to the rules of the road. Regardless, we got to the mall and back and only almost got hit once.

Today I went back to the mall with another volunteer who also needed a cell phone since his had broke. This time I did manage to get one but only after a lot of hassle. Cellphone stores in South Africa seem to require ID and proof of residency in the country to register a SIM card. This time we were armed with passports for ID but we were not aware of the proof of residency requirement.

After trying several stores with no luck, one clerk mentioned that we just needed a letter stating where we lived, at which point it was suggested that if we just went to the internet cafe and typed one ourselves that could be fine. At this point I remembered I had a letter with the address of Nkosi’s Haven in my email account in case I needed it for immigration.

After printing this letter we went to the store sure we had all we needed this time. Then the clerk was unable to make her computer accept my Canadian address and phone number or the South African address or phone number I gave. Many, many errors and retrys later we gave up and were discussing what else we could do when the lady who had been helping us said she would register the SIM card under her name and address for me!!! Shortly after we were on our way with a phone, which by the way cost me about $10. (The cheapest model but still, we are getting ripped off in Canada). I was so surprised and pleased that she offered to do that for me, thinking that would not happen in Canada, I will definitely be looking for a way to pay it forward.

After finally getting a phone (and several hours later than expected) we headed back by mini bus taxi. This was a small adventure all on its own. Joburg is lacking in a functional public transit system, taxis are relatively expensive and if you don’t want to walk, there is the mini bus taxi. I’ll try to post a picture later but they are basically 10-12 seat vans (though much skinnier than a van that would fit that many people in Canada) and at the mall they all sit in a huge part of the parking lot. To find out which one to take you go and ask one of the “managers” - guys standing in a bunch that know what’s going on - which one to take. Then once you get in the mini bus you pay the driver the fare which seems to be arbitrary and somewhat based on how far you are going.

The whole system is very ad hoc but I think the most amusing part is that the person who sits up beside the driver is supposed to figure out how many people are in the taxi and take the correct amount of fares based on that. Of course, we ended up in the front but we insisted that we did not want to make change so I just took the fares and handed them to the driver and he made change and then I handed back the change. Luckily we weren’t going far and I didn’t have this job for too long.

That’s been the main highlights so far, I hope you enjoy reading my blog and please feel free to comment, I’d love to get feedback!! Pictures to come!