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| Community volunteer Matilda teaching at Simunye Creche. |
As the cool weather began to roll over St
Lucia, South Africa, our projects flourished as new ventures began and
improvements were made to ongoing initiatives. A month full of enthusiastic
volunteers with limitless ideas made April a very exciting and productive
month.
Read on to hear about all the new and exciting happenings!
Crèche
/ Holiday Club
April
saw our community volunteers participating in a mixture of crèche and holiday
club, as the Easter holidays meant school took a two-week pause. The volunteers
had a great time organising interesting games for holiday club, like different
types of tag, face painting, sports, crafts and more. One particular hit was
creating a collage – an activity brought all the way from another project in
India by community volunteer Britt-Louise.
We
returned to crèche during the second week of the month, heading back to Simunye
and Khula Nomathiya, where the volunteers began to teach more about family,
methods of transport and water. Shwele has even been raving about what
excellent teachers our April volunteers have made. Community volunteers have
started bringing the CD player to the crèche too, and the kids are fond of
dancing after their lessons are finished.
Support
Group
This
month has been a very positive one for both of our support groups. In Khula,
the ladies continue to make over R700 throughout the course of the month, and
their numbers are beginning to grow. One very special Tuesday, a local man who
does business consulting visited the support group. Word was spread at the
clinic about our support group and the special speaker and we were welcomed by over 40 attendees!
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The Induna receiving a pedicure from
medical volunteer Miriam. |
The inspirational speech consisted of motivating people to
follow their dreams and trying to find the opportunities to start their own
businesses instead of waiting for employment. A great success! David is also
still making his regular visits to the support group, and over the course of
the month they have done home exercises, math lessons, learned about diabetes
and had lengthy discussions about their personal affairs. The ladies also
acquired a new stall at the side of the main road, which we will be
refurbishing for their use in the coming weeks.
At
Ezwenelisha Support Group the numbers continue to grow, with new attendees joining
every week. At the beginning of the month we had a very interesting discussion
about how to get more involved in the community once the Induna was inaugurated
on the 29th. Things like beginning to work in the crèches, doing
more HIV Education courses and events were brought up, and we are eager to
begin planning with Bheki, the new Induna, next month.
Funny enough, we had a
very close encounter with the future leader, as he stopped by our support group
when we were teaching foot health and giving our members pedicures. He promptly
plunged his feet in one of our buckets and allowed us to massage his feet along
with the rest of the members! The garden is also still going strong, with
carrots, spinach, onion and pumpkin growing at a steady pace.
Home
Based Care
This
month, the volunteers continued to use the helpful colour-coded system for our
patients that was developed by our February volunteers. Seeing “red” patients frequently
and “green” patients on occasion. This has made their weekly planning session
easy and productive, and has helped us keep track of our patients with ease.
As
far as our “red” patients go, it was a difficult month for some of them.
Veronic in particular is having plenty of trouble, and although we convinced
her mom to let her go to the hospital to have a growth looked at, the hospital
discharged her after giving her a blood transfusion – a very frustrating
situation for all involved. Penduile’s sister had to go to the clinic to be
checked for TB and although the wound on her neck was looking better at the
beginning of the month it is still very swollen. Gogo Breast Cancer’s state
remains the same and we continue to visit her grandson, Sipho. Bheki’s Karposi’s
Sarcoma is slowly getting worse but he remains in great spirits and continues
to attend support group each week.
The
volunteers this month also created a new sign-out sheet for our medical
supplies, which will help track our donations with ease so we can ensure we are
using all of our supplies to the fullest. Our relationship with the clinic also
continues to strengthen, as the volunteers have slowly begun doing more than
just blood pressures and weights, moving on to doing more statistics work at
the clinic and aiding the nurses with simple tasks in the consulting rooms. We
also continue to receive donations, such as paracetamol and bandages, for our
home based care patients from the clinic.
Afterschool
Club
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| Reading Club in the container. |
This
month, we continued to regularly attend both of our Afterschool Clubs in
Ezwenelisha and Khula. Ezwenelisha began to receive computer lessons from
medical volunteer Stefanie, who has proven herself to be a very dedicated
teacher. The kids are quickly learning under her lessons and she has been
teaching other volunteers to follow suit.
Although the time of our Afterschool
Club has been cut short, we have continued to play the same games and take time
to colour and dance with the learners before heading home a little earlier than
we’re used to. Typically the volunteers use this extra time to water our new
garden in Ezwenelisha.
In
Khula, the volunteers have been colouring and playing their usual favourite
games. Near the end of April, we began to open the container (now a library)
for the use of a few of the learners each week. We began with eight boys, who
went to the container with some of the volunteers to practice their reading. It
was a great success and we’re hoping to continue to bring a handful of kids
every week to the container to practice their reading as a kind of Reading Club.
HIV
Education
This month was a
great one for HIV education, beginning with our volunteers teaching many of the
Zulu dancers employed by Veyane, the local tourist cultural village run by
Khula’s Induna. We were happy to have more men in the classes, as we have
trouble recruiting men for the course.
We were also
able to begin teaching the employees and migrant workers at
one of the farms in Monzi, one of the surrounding communities that is home to thousands of hectares
of sugar cane fields. Thirty employees attended the course on the first day and
although many were too nervous to write the test, 15 passed with flying
colours. Being the largest class Shwele has ever taught, it also marked the
first time the volunteers used their new resources – things like flash cards
and small games – to make the class more of a workshop for the attendees. In
all, we taught 34 adults HIV education over the course of the month.
Extras
Plenty of new and exciting things happened
over the course of the month, including trips, small projects and improvements
to current initiatives.
The volunteers made our first official trip
to the Isiphaphalazi Butterfly House and its tea garden, located on the main
road in Khula Village. The project employs many local people, which makes us
supporting the venture very important to both the staff and volunteers. We had
a wonderful tour of the butterfly house followed by delicious tea and cakes.
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| Our logo on the alleyway in St Lucia. |
Volunteers also demonstrated their artistic
talents by painting our logo on the wall in St Lucia. They also made more
bookends for the container and painted beautiful designs on the Malibongwe bed.
As far as improvements to our current
projects go, the volunteers helped keep the chickens out of our AMREF garden by
putting up chicken wire along the edges of the garden. With any luck they won’t
get in any more! We have also continued to brick build at Inkanyezi, and spent
a few afternoons beginning to create a new sign for the creche’s entrance.
We were happy to be invited to the Induna’s inauguration on the 29th of April, and five volunteers, Sofie,
Alanna, Nokwethemba and Shwele headed to the Induna’s house for a lovely
ceremony filled with a speech from the king, singing, dancing and traditional
ceremonies. We’re glad the community was a part of choosing the new Induna, and
are eager to begin meeting with him as he has already shown such an interest in
African Impact. During the ceremony African Impact was mentioned numerous
times, both as donors in the community. Also, when Khula’s Induna was giving
advice to Bheki Nkosi he told him he must work closely with us to improve the
community.
To read about our 10 Families project, check out one of our latest blogs.
