Most of the volunteers had piked out towards the end of the game, so it was just Jenny and me, and Martain and Ruut left. We went into a cocktail bar nearby, but then came back to Zach’s and waited to be picked up. We waited for about 45 minutes, then were finally picked up, and got back about 1am. I rang Robin because watching the soccer made me think about him even more, but I had to whisper so as not to wake up the other people in the house, and he couldn’t really hear me.

Now have a look at another awesome blog!

I’m very pleased to report that I received an email from David not 5 minutes ago. Here it is, verbatim. I’ll sleep a little easier tonight, knowing that my friends are OK.

Hi,
I am very sorry that i have not been in touch for along time.I have been away on holiday and could not get some internet access. I reported to school on saturday 9th. Iam doing fine and the whole of our family is good and doing very Ok.
There has been alot of wars in our country for the few weeks due to the just concluded elections in the goverment side rigged the polls.Alot of people have died and others displaced.We thank God that there were no much fighting in our District and so we were not displaced.
There is alot of economic difficulties in our country today.The post-elections violence has greatly affected most of the public and private sector.Fares and most of the common people`s commodities are extremely costly.This problem is bound to continue since the goverment which the public voted out due to corruption and tribalism,is the one still in power. It would have been better if the opposition party took over.
Recieve much greetings from Kantet and the rest of the family.Dad and mum say hi to you and they really congratulates you for having been able to finish your school and secure a job. Kantet is currently on his last year of the primary school and hoping to join high school coming next year. Kiko is at home having finished his high school and hoping to join the college.
Thank you And hoping to hear from you.
David

What is child sponsorship, how does it work, and what can you do with it? Fisrt of all, I have to admit that I’m a massive fan of child sponsorship. I currently have seven sponsored children of my own, in seven different countries. I started sponsoring when I was 16 and have been addicted ever since.

The basics - how does it work?
I can only speak for the situation here in Australia, but (as far as I know) it works in a similar fashion in other countries. I would be very interested to hear from sponsors in other countries with any similarities or differences! But basically you pay a set amount per month for each child. Here in Australia, the rate is currently $43 a month. Now the biggest myth going around is that the money goes to your sponsored child. It doesn’t. It goes to the community of the child. In any one community, there will be several children that are sponsored. The money collected from all of the sponsors is pooled together, and is used in ways to benefit the whole community. I have heard people concerned that one child will be rich and well fell because he or she is sponsored, while other neighbouring children will continue to be impoverished. But this is just not the way it works - and I’m glad for that. So the money goes towards the community’s health care systems, schools, water, and community facilities such as halls and churches.

So what does the child get?
Ah - this is the clinker right here. This is why I sponsor, right here. The sponsored child gets something so important, so valuable, that money can’t buy it. They get to know that there is someone, a stranger, in another country so far away that they can’t comprehend it, who cares about them. Someone who goes out of their way to help them. Can you imagine how important and valuable this would be to a child? I can’t, really, because I grew up with a loving, supportive family, always feeling safe and secure. But if you didn’t have that amount of security, and weren’t always sure where your next meal was coming from, or if you would be able to go to school tomorrow, and pretty much knew that there is no way you’ll ever go to college, imagine what it might mean to have someone in another country tell you that they care about you.

When I was 16 I started sponsored a little boy in Kenya. I sent my money each month (it was considerabnly less back then! Only $31 a month), and worried that I might be late with my payments. But when I got letters from my child (and boy, did I get a lot of letters!) he never mentioned the money, or what it was doing to help him, his family or the community. He would instead say things like ‘thankyou for your care’, ‘my family is happy with you’, ‘I welcome you into my family’ and ‘thankyou for the love that you give me’.

Years later, I spoke to a woman who had been overseas and had met with a group of African mothers, whose children had all been sponsored. When asked what was the best thing about having their children sponsored, they all answered that it was the letters that they received from the sponsors. They never mentioned the money, just the fact that they knew the sponsors cared for their child and the whole family.

Of course the monthly payments need to be made. There absolutely needs to be the monetary component, otherwise the program won’t work. But my point is that, to the children and their families, it’s the letters and personal contact that means the most.

Now that I have seven sponsored children, I often forget to write letters. The act of writing letters to my sponsored kids often looks like an assembly line - 7 letters, 7 envelopes, 7 packets of stickers, 7 little packets of pencils… It often feels like too much work. And the postage can be expensive. I often feel ashamed that I may not have written for several months, even though I’ve been keeping up my payments. But it’s not about that, and I often need to be reminded of this.

My New Years resolution for 2008 is to write lots of letters to my kids - so that they always know that someone cares for them.

That’s all from me for today

Comments and general ramblings are, as always, welcome!

Now lets check out another cool posting!

I’m sure you’ll all agree with me if I say that the current situation in Kenya is pretty troubling. Several countries, including the UK and Australia, have issued severe travel warnings, strongly discouraging any non-essential travel to Kenya, in particular to the most troubled areas of Mombasa and Nairobi.

It was only 18 months ago that I travelled to Kenya, and this brings me back to the night before I flew out. I decided to visit the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs website, and found that there were similar travel warnings in place. In particular, the Department warned against visiting any sites of national or military significance. I decided not to mention this to my family, because not only was I getting ready to fly to Kenya, the hotel I was staying in was in the heart of Nairobi, right near the major military monuments.

Any sort of major conflict, anywhere, is obviously troubling. But the current strife in Kenya just seems that little bit worse. For starters, we’re talking ethnic cleansing here. Basically it’s one political party trying to wipe out the entire tribe of his opponent. Secondly, Kenya just seemed to me to be a country slowly pulling itself out of it’s past troubles. When I visited, I was so impressed with the amount of anti-corruption advertising around, just everywhere. It was on the radio, television, and on massive billboards. The idea was that Kenya would not tolerate corruption, especially in the political arena, and that any suspected corruption must be reported and would be immediately investigated.

It just seemed to me that Kenya was rising above the troubles still facing large parts of Africa. What a shame this has had to happen now.

A friend of mine in Kenya (the brother of my sponsored child, with whom I exchange emails while he’s at university) foreshadowed this drama. He recently said that his country was experiencing a lot of turmoil because of the upcoming election.

I hope they’re all ok.

Your comments are, as always, welcome.

Let’s (sort of) stay on topic and find out some more about the environment. ‘Til next time…

We came back to the house after that, and the Dutch boy Martain, who has been here for four weeks already, said he needed to speak to us at 5pm. So I went outside and rang Mum, and she told me about various hotels that I can stay at in Durban if I decide to take that option for my second weekend here. I’d like to go on the camping trip with the girls but if there’s any chance its not going to happen then I’ll organize my own. There is some appeal for me to stay in Durban by myself for that time, I’m not sure why, but I’m not going to make my mind up just yet. I came inside and read and chatted with some people until 5pm, when we all met up with Martain. He spoke to us about the Tree Clinic, and Project Bobbi Bear, and his thoughts on why we aren’t able to visit the project any longer. We all had a communal whinge about Tracey and the whole organization. It is true that the whole thing is very disorganized, and its so frustrating that so far we still haven’t really done anything. Its all right for the people who are here for four weeks or longer, but for Jenny and me its harder because we’ve only got two weeks, minus weekends, minus Wednesdays and minus the first two days.

Onwards, upwards, to the next blog on the blogroll - San Diego, CA

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?

After that was sorted I felt a lot better, then went into the kitchen. Becky (one of the British girls) and Iris and I decided to make dinner together, which basically ended up with Becky doing everything and Iris and I asking every now and then if there was something we can do to help. We had jacket potatoes with tuna, lettuce and tomato. It was actually really nice, even though it’s a combination I haven’t had before. After tea I asked Becky if there were any spare beds inside the house, or even in the room she was in. She took me upstairs and it turned out there was a spare bed in the room she shared with Iris and Amy (the British girl with the boyfriend, Martin). So I moved my stuff into their room, which is great for about a million reasons. First of all its with people that I like, its with people that speak English, its inside the house rather than in the rooms outside, and its near a bathroom with a shower, unlike my old room which only had a bath. Oh and I actually get a proper bed rather than the top part of a bunk. And it just seems clearer, newer and nicer. And I took a blanket from my old room so I’ll be a bit warmer too. That’s pretty much everything up until now. We’re all pretty tired here so will probably go to bed soon. Everyone’s just writing in their diaries at the moment.

Now check out another cool blog: Seattle, WA

We took all of our stuff and gathered in the entrance, where we were given a glass of juice and then shown to our rooms. I was first, and the only one from the group to be put in Room 1. Its got two rooms with two bunks in each, so I put my stuff on one of the lower bunks then had a look around. The bathroom is pretty basic, and has only a bath and no shower. Soon another bus load of people arrived, and I had two roommates move in – Fleur and Kayleigh. They are both from Amsterdam and speak in what I assume to be Dutch. They can speak English but choose not to. The had come with a whole group of people, and wanted another of their friends to move in, so we did that, then they decided to move into the second of the two rooms, so we all moved our stuff in and I got stuck with a top bunk. I suppose I don’t mind but I’ve only ever slept in a bottom bunk before. The girls seem nice when they speak in English, which is only when they need to tell me something – the rest of the time I can’t understand anything they’re saying. Of the groups that I came from the airport with, most speak in German, so again I was out of the conversation. Its really strange – I just assumed that people would be speaking English or Afrikaans here. A lot of people in South Africa speak in Afrikaans, but all of the signs and notices in airports, shops, streets etc are all in English. So its really strange and hard to be living with a bunch of Europeans who wont speak English.

Today we just have to ‘relax and meet the other volunteers’, but we’ve been here for a couple of hours and its only just after 1pm. I have no idea what to do with the rest of today but I know it will be spent in silence, unless I can pick up a couple of extra languages really really quickly. Tomorrow we have orientation in the morning and then we’re going to visit the projects, so that will be good. Apparently on Wednesday we’re going to a talk about AIDS, and then we can start visiting the projects on Thursday. I hope that’s not all we’re doing on Wednesday otherwise I wont know what to do with myself. Also I’m not sure what happens on weekends, as I don’t think we visit the projects then.

Now it’s onwards and upwards to Sacramento, CA.

I was woken up at 5am by my wakeup call, and my breakfast came soon after. It was enormous! It only cost around $AU13, but there was a huge bowl of muesli and dried bananas, more than I could get through, another huge bowl of fruit yoghurt, four pieces of toast, various jams, freshly squeezed orange juice, and a pot of coffee. It was so good, and I was wishing I could have brought the rest of it with me! I had a shower and got ready to go, then packed up the rest of my stuff and was downstairs just after 6am. The shuttle bus took me back to the airport, by myself this time. I had a few attempts at checking in before I finally found the right terminal. My luggage was weighed and I was directed to another counter to pay for the extra 7kg. I was really relieved because it seemed it would go smoothly. The extra weight cost R160, which is just over $30! I couldn’t believe it. I checked my suitcase in and had about half an hour to look around the shops before boarding. I was wishing I was hungry because there were some great places to eat, even a sushi bar. I bought two elephant key rings. I found the check in place and went through the metal detector, then found the gate and waited there until it was time to board.

Lets continue our travel journey, and head to Phoenix, AZ.

Its great knowing that after I went through the gate I had surprises for Mum & Dad and for Robin, and that it was for each to tell the other about it. I think Robin will really like the photo in the box that Dad took at the Greyhounds. Also I really hope that the 21 packages for 21 days will help him for the next three weeks – I thought it was an awesome idea and it was great fun getting it all ready. Its funny that thing where when you do something nice for someone you automatically feel good about them, even if they have no idea what’s going on. It was great thinking about what to get for the 21 days and which things to put on which days. We’ve had the best last week together – it started on that Thursday when I went to Robin’s after dancing to watch the soccer. On Friday morning I drove home and picked up Mum, and we did the World Vision raffle all day. I was so tired because I’d only had about 2 hours sleep, but it was a great day anyway. Robin came over in the evening and we all had fish and chips together and watched Fast Forward. In the morning Robin and I went to the World Vision raffle, but thanks for Dorothy and Lola we only ended up staying for 45 minutes, as opposed to the 8 hours that Mum had to do! We came back home and got some stuff ready to be packed, then went to the forum and to the Dome for lunch, then came home and slept for the whole afternoon. Robin left on Sunday morning, then we met up again in the evening for the comedy festival. It was excellent, so funny and we had a great night. On Monday I came up to play in the indoor beach volleyball team. I was so nervous, but it went really well and I was just relieved not to have made an idiot of myself! Slept in on Tuesday, then went straight to dancing then home. On Wednesday I came up and we picked up Mark and went to Carnegies in the city. It was the first time we’ve been to a club together, and it was awesome. Then we went to the casino but couldn’t get in, but I couldn’t have cared less. He could take me to the middle of the desert and I know we’d still have a great time as long as we’re together (yeah I know, cheese cheese…). I left on Thursday, had my optometrist appointment then my ballet exam, then came home straight after and had Chinese with Mum & Dad after they finished the shopping. Then Friday was the Greyhounds, Saturday packing, and then today. Its just been so good, which of course makes it even harder for me to leave him for three weeks, but also so good knowing what I have to come home to.

This plane isn’t even nearly full, and I’m on the aisle in the middle row, with a woman on the other aisle. So there are two spare seats between us, which gives me room to move. My neighbour on the window side looks just like Farmer Hogget. I had a nice little vodka just after we took off, which helped quite a bit! My flight leaves tomorrow at 8am, so I’m not sure if I’ll get to have breakfast at the hotel before I leave. Probably not, and it’s a real pity because it’s a smorgasbord and it could be the last good food I get until I get to Kenya! Oh and the one male flight attendant is gay (surprise surprise) and just walked past me with his hand on his stomach, mouth wide open, making a noise like a seagull. Not that that has anything to do with anything…

I’ve been on holiday to South Africa and Kenya - why not go on holiday to Oklahoma City, OK?