Promotion to official party planner

Even though I still can’t really believe it, it’s almost Easter time, the weather is slowly changing to autumn and school holidays are beginning. For Stella, Louisa, Magnus and me that means that it’s time to travel again. Tomorrow we are starting to escape the momentarily rainy Joburg weather making our way to the north – but first some words to my work of the last days.

In the mornings Stella and me are still doing our normal work for Cotlands which means for the moment a lot of office work: no matter if it’s data capturing for incoming donations or sorting files we are slowly but surely becoming experts! But this week we also had some more interesting work to do. Cotlands is just launching a new “donate your birthday” campaign and we could help to set up a small advertising event. The campaign allows people in an easy online way on the Cotlands homepage to give their birthday over to the good cause and instead of birthday wishes they ask their friends for a certain donation for Cotlands. That’s why the theme for our advertising event was a children’s birthday party. We could help buying all the decoration, decorate the room with all the Cotlands-orange stuff and in the end we could take place in the “children’s party”. Invited were some press people, South African celebrities that are supporting Cotlands, some donors and staff members of course. “Donate your birthday” is going online on first of April, so hopefully it’s going to be a success!

But now to our travel plans… After already having seen many nice places in South Africa we are going to leave the country for the first time of our stay and go a little bit farer to the north to Botswana and Namibia. There are many stops on our schedule like the Okavango Delta, the Makgadikgadi  Pans, the Namib Desert, the Skeleton Coast and maybe one of the highlights: A short trip to the Victoria Falls at the boarders of Zimbabwe and Zambia. We are leaving tomorrow morning at six in the morning and come back in three weeks’ time. I hope that I will be able to upload some pictures in the meantime otherwise I will report back with a detailed travel review at the end of April!

Finally new work!

After many worries about our work we finally found something to do! In the mornings we still go on working at Cotlands and the amount of work is still changeful but in the afternoons we are working for St Mary’s now.  St Mary’s is a children’s home near Cotlands that gives home to 60 children aged between seven and 21. Some of them are orphans, some were abused or neglected and some have been infected or affected by HIV. They live in six different cottages together with a house mother. In their cottages they have their bedrooms - single rooms for the oldest kids and 2-, 3- and 4-bed rooms for the others - a cosy living area, a dining area and a kitchen. The hole premises is quite big and they also have a lot of space to play outside.

Since last week we are going to St Mary’s every day at two o’clock. The children are going to many different schools so their homecoming times are also differing. When we’re arriving only some children are already back home. We look after them while they are eating their lunch and wait until the others gradually arrive. When everyone finished eating it’s time for homework at half past three. Stella and me both have our own cottage where we always help with the homework. In my cottage the children are aged between seven and sixteen and they are all very cute and nice. Somewhere between half past four and five when everyone finished the homework it’s time to go home for us. When there is some spare time in between lunch and homework there are many things to do with the children as St Mary’s has a very nice premises with a small soccer field, a basketball area and a little pool.

So far we really enjoyed our work in the children’s home because the children as well as all of the housemothers were very nice and welcoming. Furthermore after working with babies for half a year it is also very nice to work with some older children again because there is so much more that you can do with them. So far they were especially interested in German music so that we always had to bring our cell phones for playing Cro or Helene Fischer for them – only the best of course! They also tried to learn some German so that they are now always seeing us off with a cheerful “Tschüs”.

I’m really happy to finally have some satisfying work again and I already fond of all of the children!

Already halftime: AFS Midstay Camp

After more than five months here in South Africa it’s already halftime of my stay, so last week it was time for our Midstay Camp which is one of our seven preparing and postprocessing camps. Before we have already had two preparing camps of five days in Germany and our two-day On-arrival Camp here in Johannesburg and we are still going to have an End-of-stay Camp and two postprocessing camps back in Germany.

Our Midstay Camp was basically about sharing our previous experiences, thoughts and feelings with the other German volunteers of our group and trying to find solutions for possible problems. At first we all had to present our projects to the others which was very interesting because even though we approximately knew what everyone else is doing it was quite nice to get some more details and personal opinions about the work. After that we talked a lot about our expectations that we had in the beginning - if they were met or if there are new expectations for the rest of the stay – about changes that we underwent, problems and challenges that we were confronted with and everything else that was on our minds. Even though some discussions could get a little bit exhausting all in all our camp was quite relaxed especially because of the nice location. The 15 volunteers of us, two AFS South Africa volunteers and one employee all met at a backpacker in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal, an eastern province of South Africa. The backpacker was very nice and big with a pool, Jacuzzi, sauna and good food and above all beautifully situated in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the mountains which was a nice relief to the hectic and noisy life in Johannesburg. On one of our five days we also had the chance to take place in a tour. Some of us went to Lesotho, which was only an hours drive away and some went hiking in the mountains – I chose the hiking tour and it was really great.

All in all it was a very nice week. I enjoyed to see everyone again after almost half a year and to compare all of our very different experiences. Unfortunately my project problem still isn’t solved and it looks like I can’t do anything else than to wait and see. Our babies are all gone by now so we are desperately looking for work most of the time. So far we found something to do for most of our working time – even though it sometimes was tidying up the cupboards of our co-workers which is not the most interesting or challenging job – and hope that there will be more for the next weeks.