The Wandering Two: SNOW LIKE AMERIKA!

The Wandering Two has temporarily expanded into the Wandering Three. Telia is here and already we have had some crazy times! We went back to Victoria for a week to visit family and arrived back in South Africa on the same day as Telia. We all brought bags full of things for the centre, now that we know more what they need here. We brought back Halloween candy and clothes for the children (thank you family and friends for donating things!). Wednesday we handed out candy and divided the clothing up for the children who needed it most. The children sang and danced for Telia. That night, we had found a spider behind Telia’s suitcase, I tried to kill it (miserably according to the girls…) long story short the spider ran away and that was that…or was it…? Olivia and I were on our way outside to brush our teeth and I told Telia “HAHA I bet the spider’s in your suitcase!” While outside we suddenly heard Telia’s anxious screaming, “SPIDER IN MY BAG! SPIDER IN MY BAG!!” I ran back and there was the second largest spider I’ve ever seen in real life with my own eyes in the wild. This spider, as you can see below, was huge and furry and was very active and running around Telia’s bag. Honestly I was too scared to put my hand in that bag and procrastinated by documenting the giant spider via photo shoot while Telia checked her pants for the spider’s family as she had just put them on from the same bag. By that time, Olivia had come back to see us just standing there taking pictures of the spider and yelled at us for not killing it. I tried to kill the spider with the broom but the spider ran out of Telia’s suitcase and into Olivia’s backpack. I took the backpack outside and dumped the contents of the bag onto the ground. Throughout this whole process the three of us were screaming and yelling a lot as you can imagine, at no point did anyone come to see what was the matter except for Nomusa’s daughter who peeked her head out of the door, saw us yelling and jumping around a pile of things on the ground and immediately went back inside and closed the door. Anyways, we found and killed the spider. Adventure one with Telia complete.

Adventure two: global warming comes to Zonkizizwe. It’s been raining a lot more recently, since Telia has arrived…I don’t know…the rains have been biblical. You can see angry black clouds like a curtain of evil coming in the distance and suddenly the warm sun becomes the most insane downpour and half an hour later the sun is back and half an hour later the rain and clouds come again... This makes drying our laundry a challenge. It has been hanging in our room as a result of the rainstorms for the past two days and I’m pretty sure it’s as wet as it was when we first hung it. The most recent storm today consisted of about half an hour of steady hail the size of gumballs. We were watching from inside and the noise of the hail on the tin roof was deafening, so of course we decided to go outside and run around. Afterwards the centre yard was a river and most of the garden was underwater; the part that wasn’t looked like it was riddled with bullet holes. After the hail/rain stopped the kids ran outside yelling “SNOW LIKE AMERIKA!” and attempted to build a snowman out of pellets of hail. Let me remind you that it is apparently summer here now… Adventure two complete.

In between our adventures we have been here at the centre doing activities with the kids. Today was our first Culture Day and one of the staff had suggested we do it on Kenya, so we did. We had a map of the world and a few pictures of people, cities and landmarks in Kenya to show the children as well as some basic facts about the country. We also learned an important lesson about respecting other cultures and their differences. The kids enjoyed it a lot and suggested many other countries they would like to learn about on future Culture Days.

Our next adventure will be a safari in Kruger National Park followed by a few days in Durban on the beach; hopefully the hail doesn’t follow us there.

Love,

The Wandering Three