Delicious South African Braised Meatballs

A perk of volunteering on the St Lucia South Africa projects is the scrumptious food we come home to cooked by Nonhlanhla and Mumsy, after a busy day in the communities.

South African braised meatballs is a very popular comfort food. Have a look at this easy recipe that gets results every time! Just make sure you get all the ingredients together before you get started - as there are quite a few spices involved...

Ingredients (serves 4-6):

500g minced beef
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup soft breadcrumbs
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp ground paprika
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
1tsp salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Method:

1.      Combine all ingredients together and mix well.

2.      Form the meatballs by rolling portions into balls and pressing down slightly to flatten them.

3.      Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan and brown the meatballs on both sides.

4.      Reduce heat and cook until the meat is no longer pink.

5.      Serve on top of creamy garlic mashed potatoes.

DELICIOUS! Happy eating readers!

A helping hand

At times it's hard to find tangible before-and-after examples of our volunteers making a difference to one individual - but here's a great story that became a highlight for last month's volunteers.

When a small girl showed up at our African Impact orphan afterschool club in Khula village with a badly infected burn on her wrist, volunteers and staff rallied together to provide her with the care she needed.

When the girl arrived at Khula Afterschool Club displaying an open wound caused by a burn that was so bad she couldn't bend her hand, the volunteers sprung to action and approached medical coordinator Nokwethemba about what could be done.

The following day, Nokwethemba and our medical volunteer team investigated the girl's name and family and got permission to take her out of school and bring her to the clinic.

Over the course of a few weeks, the girl's burn went from infected to healed thanks to our volunteer's involvement in her treatment and care. The girl was later spotted by our volunteers at afterschool club once more, and was happily able to participate in all of the games being played.

Two of our former volunteers said that the healing of the girl's burn was the highlight of their stay. Seeing such a drastic improvement in a child's health and experiencing how our projects on the ground work together to help the community and even individual's turned out to be a highlight worthy of more than one mention.

From the field: January Update II

Medical volunteer Karlijn making patient
notes in our home based care folder.

My name is Karlijn and I have been happily working as a volunteer on the medical programme in St. Lucia for almost 4 weeks now. Two of the projects I participate in are Home Based Care (HBC) and 10 Families, let me tell you something more about these projects.

HBC is one of the projects we do during the morning time. Each week we spend one morning on HBC in Khula and one in Ezwenelisha. 

Together with my fellow medical volunteer Kristina and local African Impact coordinator Nokwethemba, we drive through the communities to visit the patients. We’ve got a file full of patients and at the beginning of each week we make a plan of who we are going to visit, usually around 4 patients a morning.

The health status of our patients is very diverse; some are seriously ill and badly need help, others have been very sick but fortunately have recovered and just need a check-up every once in a while. 

A morning on HBC can be really varied: we redress a wound now and then, clean a patient, or do exercises with them. Some patients just badly need company, someone they can pour out their heart to and share their problems with. It is also important to encourage patients to go to the clinic or even the hospital. Some patients postpone this far too long with all its consequences, because they do not want to go there or do not have the means. So, in this case, we often take patients to the clinic.

What I like most about HBC is that we have achieved results although we have only been here for four weeks yet. I also like the variation in the activities and the patients. We’ve got very young patients, but we also have very old Gogos (old lady/grandmother), who were born around the first earthquake (we have no idea when that was, but they certainly look old).

Malwande attending creche with our volunteers.

Our youngest patient is “The little girl” (we’ve got a nickname for every patient), a three-year-old girl who can’t walk nor talk. Her name is Malwande, and when we met her she didn’t go to the crèche, just sat down all day. No one seemed to do exercises with her to learn these things, so there was no development in her situation. When we visit her, we try to walk with her and play games. We also brought some toys the last time (donations!) to trigger her to start moving more. 

Most importantly, we convinced her grandmother that she should take her to the crèche, which she finally did! Now the little girl really enjoys it, she plays with other children and even started to crawl, which she did not do before! It may be a small step, but it makes us really happy to see that she finally has fun and is learning new things.

The 10 Families Programme is one of the things we do in the afternoon: again, one afternoon in Khula and one in Ezwenelisha. In each community we have 5 families on the programme. 10 families is essentially a nutritional programme. We bring Epap, a nutritional supplement, for the family member(s) who is/are on the programme. 

Karlijn and fellow medical volunteer Kristina taking the
weights of some of our patients on 10 Families.

The people on this programme are underweight and unable to reach a healthy body weight themselves. The reason for this can be disease, but we also have families with lots of children, which they are unable to feed properly. 

When we visit them we talk about how they’re doing and we take their weight and measure the biceps circumference to see whether the Epap has any effect. Some are really profiting from the Epap and have reached a healthy weight because of it. In contrast to HBC, we see the same persons/ families every week, which means we as volunteers get to know them and we can see their progress. It makes me feel really involved.

I am not a doctor or a nurse or anything like that. I do have a little bit of theoretical knowledge because I did a bachelor in Biomedical Sciences, but that’s it. If you do have a medical background, it certainly is helpful, but it is not necessary at all. 

When you’ve got common sense, interest and enthusiasm, you can make a difference here. 

In my experience people are glad and grateful to see you, especially if you greet them in Zulu! House visits can be happy or they can be heavy, but they are always interesting and informative. 

I still have four more weeks here and I am looking forward to it!

Monthly update: January I

Volunteers and kids playing at Khula Nomathiya Creche. 

The first month of 2013 got off to a flying start, as we welcomed six volunteers to begin our projects on January 13^th. Pairs from America, Sweden and the Netherlands and ranging in age from 18 to 56 made this one of our most diverse groups, and we’re so proud of their commitment and work ethic – what a great team they made!

Read on to hear about the start of what looks like a great year to come…

Crèche

Khula Nomathiya Crèche welcomed us with open arms this January, as we attended their first day of school on the 16^th. Since then, our volunteers have been implementing a structure that began last year, whereby the learners are split into smaller groups for lessons and activities. This has worked very well over the past three weeks and despite some hiccups mainly surrounding our volunteer’s lack of proficiency in Zulu (although some of them are getting quite good), the structure is an overwhelming success.

We have also begun holding two planning sessions per week, attended by two volunteers while the rest participate on projects in the communities. This allows the volunteers to create more in-depth plans and prepare more resources for each day.

Volunteers started by teaching basic lessons to the learners, aged 5 and under, which included colours, numbers, shapes and lessons about the self. On one particular afternoon, Swedish volunteer Marie came up with a wonderful plan to finger paint, which was a big hit with the kids. 

We continue to visit Inkanyezi Crèche every Friday afternoon, and Mama Gumede and her children became a quick favourite of our January volunteers.

Afterschool Club

Our afterschool clubs are going well, and our January group spent a total of 65 hours in both Khula and Ezwenelisha. They played games, coloured, participated in sports and much more.

The kids at Ezwenelisha Afterschool Club in particular loved playing “Musical Chairs” and thanks to the generous donation of some iPods and speakers, we’ve been able to really take advantage of the kid’s dancing skills.

One of the advantages of being at our afterschool clubs each week is how close the volunteers get to interact with the kids on a regular basis. This came in handy when volunteers noticed a severe burn on one of the girls at Khula Afterschool Club earlier in the month. After discussing the matter with African Impact staff, the girl was taken to the clinic and by the end of the month her burn had almost completely healed. One volunteer even said it was the highlight of her stay that the girl got the treatment she needed.

Our first day at the AMREF garden - look at all those weeds!

Gardens

Checking out the gardens upon our return from the holidays is always a daunting task, but the volunteers met the challenge head-on and cleared our main AMREF garden in two afternoons and began cultivating Mama Gumede’s garden at Inkanyezi Crèche. Our goal is that by the end of March all of our gardens will be in full swing with seedlings ready to grow over the cooler period of the year.

Support Groups

Our Khula and Ezwenelisha Support Groups gathered once again this January and spent an entire morning catching up and listening to stories from each other’s holidays. A busy time for all, there was much to be said within both groups. In later weeks, the groups discussed the importance of gardening for physical, emotional and mental health.

The groups were also treated to a morning out at the Crocodile Centre in St Lucia, where they learned about the reptiles as well as about snakes and snake bites. They finished the very successful morning with a trip to the beach and a quick lunch on the sand dunes.

Our Mother’s Support Group was also graced by the presence of the volunteers for the first time! Lucky for us, volunteer Kristina used to be a midwife back home in Sweden, and we spent an entire afternoon with the group asking questions for her to answer. Great discussions were had about contraception, birthing and complications during pregnancy and delivery. 

Check back for a second installment of our January update. 

THAF Update: January

Volunteer Marie delivering donations to Malibongwe
Creche on one of our first days on project.

We are back in full swing here in St. Lucia and 2013 has got off to a great start! The Happy Africa Foundation began its year with delivering donations to all of the eight crèches that we work with, these donations included, balls, pens, paper, toys and a new bike for each crèche. 

It was a lovely way to start the year and was a good opportunity for the first volunteers of 2013 to see everywhere that we work throughout the year. We have also donated clothes and a towel to each of our regular home based care patients as well as a large clothing donation for the Dube family who are part of our 10 Families Programme.

Fundraising continues in St. Lucia with our monthly Quiz Night, and the one held in January saw R1663 made and eight teams attend with all the proceeds going to the Inkanyezi Crèche Development Programme.This is the biggest success yet but we hope to achieve even greater in the months to come. 

The “Buy A Brick” scheme is taking off very well with the total amount raised so far being R5911. This is a great start to the campaign but we would love more people to be involved. If you would like to be part of “Buy A Brick” then please email stlucia@happyafricafoundation.org for more information. 

A new volunteer house meant a new THAF wall!

Last year we started a fun THAF activity by having volunteers write letters about their time as volunteers. This January, the first batch of “Letters to Yourself” have started to arrive in the home countries of past volunteers. We have had some great feedback on the letters, saying that it is a lovely way to remind them of their time in St. Lucia and refresh the memories they made.

There are a lot of exciting events and opportunities in the works for coming months and we hope that volunteers, both old and new, will be involved in helping us raise more funds for our four focal projects. 

Staff profile: Monique

Monique as a volunteer on our Garbage Pick-Up Project.

When Monique Ledger volunteered for the first time in St Lucia, she stayed only three weeks in August of 2012, but dove right into the experience.

“I went hard, I was so tired and satisfied at the end of every day and loved it,” Monique says of her time on the Orphan Day Care and HIV Education project.

This January, Monique has returned to St Lucia as our Volunteer Coordinator. From Port Campbell, Australia, she is also studying to receive a master’s degree in International and Community Development.

Using her experience as a former volunteer, Monique says she’s looking forward to empowering first-time volunteers to overcome their initial fears.

“I can fully understand how volunteers would be feeling going out on projects for the first time,” explains Monique, who admits to being intimidated at first but following another volunteer’s lead during her first few days as a volunteer.

Monique is excited to take the lead and help volunteers have the time of their lives, and says a great bonus of being Volunteer Coordinator is meeting the array of people from all walks of life that come to volunteer on St Lucia’s three projects.

“I’m excited to meet people from everywhere who are going to come in and love everything,” says Monique, “To listen to their stories and at the end of the day hear how they enjoyed it, too.”