Global Poverty Monitor

Yesterday was a pretty busy day, which was nice after a whole lot of doing nothing the day before! Becky set her alarm for 7:30am but I was awake at 7am, so I went to the bathroom and got dressed before the others were up. I still had to wait for the bathroom though because we are sharing it with at least one other room. But its worth it to have a bathroom with a shower! When I came back the others got ready and then we went down for breakfast. The kitchen was packed with people making breakfast and packing lunches. I had a bowl of muesli which was ok, and packed a jam sandwich and an apple for lunch. I went back upstairs and got my bag ready for the day, then waited for Tracey to come for orientation. When Tracey came, she handed out handbooks to everyone, and went through the rules and other bits and pieces. We were also told about an option to work with Habitats for Humanity all of next week, and also about some tours that can be arranged for us on weekends.

We split into two groups and boarded the vans to go and visit the projects. The first was the Nb… one, which is a preschool for kids aged about 4 and 5. Walking in there was the closest so far that I’ve been to feeling like I did in Mozambique. We stayed for a few minutes and took photos of the kids and some helped handing out bowls of what looked like porridge for their meal. I just stayed in the background because the kids were a bit overwhelmed and I didn’t want to compete with everyone else. Then we went back on the vans and stopped at Hillcrest to do some quick shopping and have a look around. Was I surprised to see an actual shopping centre! South Africa is nothing like Mozambique at all. This shopping centre was huge, bigger, nicer and cleaner than say Centro Halls Head. Iris said it was bigger than any shopping centre in Holland. There was a huge clothing store, a shoe store, a Kodak place, and an enormous supermarket. I think everyone would be shocked if they compared that to Maputo markets, let alone anything in Tete. In the supermarket I bought two big bottles of water, two packets of muesli bars and some powdered skim milk. We got back onto the vans then and went to the next project. This was a house with one mother and about 11 children. It’s a new project that Lean on Me have just started working with. Apparently these children have gradually come to live with the woman as their parents have died from HIV/AIDS. I think that would be a project I would be interested in getting involved with, because its only new and there is a lot that can be done. Also because there are only a few kids it would be easier to build up a rapport with them. After that we went to the little village with the baby home. The village is organized into little homes so that the kids like in a family-like environment. The baby home was actually really nice, with lots of great toys, a nice cot for each baby, carpet on the floor, painted walls, a nice kitchen and a woman cooking great-smelling food. You can tell that this project has been a favourite with volunteers in the past because it looked really nice. I decided then not to use Sally’s or Sheena’s donations towards the baby home, because there were other projects that needed the help more.

After that it was on to the dream center. I had pictured that it would be like Chitima Health Center. But I was once again surprised with what I saw when we drove up to a fully-blown hospital.

Until the next post is released, why not check out the latest at the Mesa, AZ blog?