More Work at Kuyasa

The boys at Uva Mira

The girls at Uva Mira

"It's hot, it's hot, and it's going to get hotter! Why? Because there's a shark in the water!"

Rejoicing after the all-girls soccer game.

Hein, the leader of SCAS ministry with his son, Jayden

So this past week we worked at Kuyasa through Thursday. Monday through Wednesday we did kid’s games and soccer like I said in the last post. Wednesday afternoon we also repaired the roofs of a couple of houses in Kayamandi. Note that I use the word repair loosely. The walls and roofs of the houses are made of pieces of sheet metal, sometimes lots of little pieces just thrown together in patches, and the two houses we worked on had leaky roofs. So our repair jobs consisted of covering the roofs with tarps, stapling/duct taping the ends over the edges to the walls of the house, and then putting things on top of the tarps to hold them down. We proved that duct tape really does fix anything. The first house we did used big blocks of asbestos to hold the tarp down which made us all a little nervous, and the second one used blocks of cement. Two of the guys in the group, Clark and Ryan Blalock were the brave souls to get up on the roofs. The houses don’t have studs anywhere except for where the walls meet the roof, so the only places they could stand were on the very edge. There were a few times I thought they were going to fall through the roof. Then on Thursday we just went for a little while. There wasn’t a whole lot of work to do so we picked up some trash in the neighborhood and played with the kids for a little while.

The group from North Carolina left today, so we had Friday through Sunday off to do some touristy stuff. On Friday we went to Cape Town. Some of us went to Robben Island to tour the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 16 years. It was really interesting and really educational. Our tour guide was actually an ex-prisoner there. He was held there as a political prisoner charged with high treason, and he told us a bit about his story and crime. It’s interesting to me that apartheid happened during my lifetime and that racism still has a big affect on the people and cultures of this country, so it was cool to learn about the history of South Africa from someone who actually played a part in making it. As insensitive as this sounds, that won’t be possible in a few years. That night we climbed up to the summit of the Lion’s Head (a little mountain peak right on the beach in Cape Town) to watch the sunset over the ocean and then watch the full moon rise over the city. We then hiked down by moonlight. The sunsets over oceans and mountains (and sometimes both) and just the scenery in general never get old here. I would go so far to say that South Africa is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

Then on Saturday we went to the Cape of Good Hope where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. On the way we stopped and saw penguins (yes they are native here), and then we also saw baboons in the middle of the road at the cape. I can’t even describe how amazing all of these places are, and pictures definitely do not do them justice.

Today the North Carolina group left, much to everyone’s displeasure. They all wish they could stay longer, and so do we. We got a lot of work done and had a lot of fun while they were here. Our teams meshed better than anyone could have expected and they were a real blessing to have around and work with. Tomorrow we start our Level 1 sports leadership training. We will be doing the Level 1 training until Thursday, and then we immediately start the Level 2 training until next Thursday. It should be really good.

Once again, thanks for reading my blog and thanks for all of your prayers. I’ll post again soon.