Since the actual building of the school started in November, we have received weekly updates on the status of the project, including pictures. (If you're interested, I'll try to post a link to the pictures thus far). The first update and pictures had me ready to hop the next flight-it made it all real. Today another reality was brought home in the latest update that arrived this morning. A number of the students in the high school have been helping with the building of the new structure (multipurpose, more another time). Initially they helped before and after school, but now that it is summer vacation a core group of about 20 have been helping every day. One of the volunteers organized an outing to reward the boys-they were taken to a store and given money to buy new shoes. Many of these boys had never "shopped" for anything before and the process of choosing and trying on shoes had to be explained. Some had money left after buying shoes and were able to buy shirts or in some cases small gifts for their mothers. (yay, boys! ;)) Mind you-each had been given 300 Rand-approximately $30.
But the real kicker for me was the comment that one of the boys was given money to buy shoes for another boy who had gone home to Maseru at New Year's since he was getting too weak to work, having lost weight due to "the bad flu"...AIDS. I am aware that he is likely not the only student in this situation. Reading the statistics about the country is not the same as this... One of the volunteers is a nurse and gave us a presentation about health, in it she recommended reading the book "28 Stories of AIDS in Africa". I highly recommend it for anyone who would like to have a more detailed picture of the situation there.
So I'm off on Tuesday for the marathon flights (10 hrs x 2). In the meantime, I'm hoping to wrap up all those little details that need doing when you're leaving the country for three+ weeks...
No comments:
Post a Comment