Goodbye White Men

Holly had an administrative day so Brian went with me to project. Shirley and Mama Winnie were both away today so any communication was done was through Lulu using a lot of hand gestures. The language barrier between English and Xhosa was still too great.

The children got to have outdoor play time because the weather warmed up enough by 11:00am. I brought some sidewalk chalk with me this morning and some mini soccers balls. We put the chalk to good use when Brian and I each made a hopscotch for people to play on. No one at Masi had ever seen chalk before let alone knew what hopscotch was or how to play. I led the exercises and stretching in the middle of the yard and then we played some soccer and catch. We also played sharks (a game like tag) and then played a lot of Duck Duck Goose.

Since Shirley and Mama Winnie were both away I knew it was going to be difficult to do the lesson without our usual translators. When I asked Lulu after lunch if I could do the lesson then, Lulu and the other carers all agreed that they wanted to have their lunch first. Since it was a half day and the children weren't going to be taking their nap, one of the carers would have to supervise the children while I gave the lesson so we'd be down to two carers actually attending the lesson. Knowing that Shirley wasn't going to be at Masi today, I was planning a review for everyone but it ended up being more trouble than was maybe worth so we all decided together that we weren't going to do the review.

I made a Happy Mother's Day sign and brought it in to project to have the children hold up the sign to have their picture taken so I could send them home to my mom. Today was photo day so I was able to bring my camera and take pictures of what we've been doing at Masi for the past two weeks.

At the end of the day all the children were outside playing in the yard and all came running to the fence when it was time to leave for the last time. The children were speaking in Xhosa as they called to us when we were getting in the van. Remi was laughing at everyone and when we asked what they were saying he said they were calling to us saying, "bye white men".

After project we didn't have a meeting so I went with Jodie and Iris to the Internet cafe in Valyland. I went down to the post office as well to pick up stamps for the postcards I got at Boulder's Beach from our weekend trip in Cape Town.

At 7:00pm we all went over to Erica for the goodbye Braai in honour of Lindsey and I. Brian cooked the meat and Holly and Kim made a bunch of different types of salads. When dinner was finished, Lindsey and I went to Holly's room for our goodbye presentation. Hearing about how GVI felt thankful for our work was nice because I feel so blessed to have been able to do it. Having Holly deliver the presentation was especially genuine since we worked together on project nearly everyday. I didn't have a partner to work with on project like everyone else did at the sites in Westlake so Holly filled both roles of a coordinator and a partner to bounce ideas off of.

When our goodbye presentation was over all the volunteers and coordinators came in and we watched our goodbye slideshow. It was overwhelming to see evidence of how much we've actually accomplished in two short weeks.

After the braai and goodbye presentations we all went to Polana to celebrate our time together before Lindsey flies home tomorrow morning.