Stellenbosch - rain and more rain

Alright folks, due to lack of internet availability, I've been falling behind in my updates! So sorry. I don't know how consistent they'll be this week, Josh and I found an internet cafe today but I don't know if we'll have time later on. Anyway, here's a quick recap of the past couple days.

Monday:
We boarded into the bus and our driver, Desmond, took us into a township about 40 minutes outside of Cape Town. I have no idea how to spell it, but it's pronounced Kye-leetch-ah. The township holds about a million people, mainly in shacks of corrugated tin and cardboard, plastic, wood, whatever is available. We drove to a children's home to drop off some clothing and toys that we had brought, take a tour, and play with the kids a bit. There's about 140 kids there, ranging from infancy to 19. Many of them are orphans, but some of them are simply abandoned by their parents 0r neglected, so they stay at the home until their parents file a missing person's report, a social worker checks out the situation at home, and then the children are sent back.

When we arrived, there were kiddos running everywhere. The most adorable black children in tattered/mix and match clothing, dirt on their faces, running up to us with their hands outstretched asking to be held. One little girl of about 5 came up to me and wouldn't speak, but she took my hand and showed me around. We spoke to some of the older children, young teenagers, who showed us their beds (which, as we saw and according to the American v0lunteer who showed us around, they always keep made and neat) and told us that they enjoy living at the home. There aren't very many workers there, but they seem to really love the children and care about their futures - all of the kids are required to attend school.

Anyway, in one of the rooms all the babies were taking naps (which the children interupted as soon as they brought us in). There was about 10 children, those old enough to stand, stood in their cribs, peaking their heads over the side and holding out their arms to be picked up. The youngest baby was found abandoned on Mama Rosy's (the owner) doorstep as a newborn, eyes barely opened. There was another beautiful infant girl who was fussing, I went over to see her and gave her my finger to hold. All she wanted was human contact.

Josh won the prize for the most popular. He brought a box of latex gloves and a marker and was inflating them like balloons and drawing faces on them, so the thumb looked like a nose and the other fingers like hair. The kids went wild.

I think one of the greatest tragedies of apartheid is the devastating affect it has had on families. We see and hear story after story of families torn apart because of where they are forced to live (if in a township, many parents commute to work in the cities), the poverty that results, the unemployment, the violence.

Tuesday -
Tuesday we went to Parliament, had a really boring tourguide, and then went and had a fabulous lunch in an outdoor market. Da (my grandpa), you would've LOVED it! Papa Segall ordered us Samosas, potato curry filled pastries, to eat while we waited for our lunch and then we walked to the train station where we all tried some meat pies, and then we followed him back to the market where we ate our lunch of some potato stew wrapped in a tortilla/crepe like pastry. Delicious. I like the way Papa will travels!

Then, since we had a paper due the next morning, and since we hadn't finished reading the book we were to write it on, a handful of us went to an internet cafe and worked and then were up nearly the whole night in the hostel working. The 30 Irish students sharing the hostel with us thought it awfully amusing that we were working so hard during our summer holiday.

Wednesday -
Yesterday, I turned in my paper, and we all packed up and piled on to a bus to make our way to Stellenbosch. Here, we're staying at the University of Stellenbosch, an old Afrikaner (or maybe it was Dutch..) University in the dorms with the Irish students as well as other college age people from Cape Town and various other cities. We're participating in a week long Habitat for Humanity international event. We're divided into 8 teams of about 10 people each, and assigned a home owner or home owner family from the township Mfulani where we work from 8-4;30 each day this week building their homes. It's really quite fun because there's challenges between the teams (we had an Amazing Race like challenge last night. My team won 1st and the prize of an hour and a half more sleep on whatever day we choose! YEAH!), and activities in the evenings. It's awesome as well to get to talk to the kids from Ireland and CapeTown. While mixing cement and moving cinderblocks (all the homes are cinderblock, they found it funny when i tried to explain our wood and dry wall method) I learned that Stuart does not pronounce his name "stoo-ert" but a very quick "styu-irt," which I am still trying to master. I think I say it just fine and that they simply enjoy telling me I'm wrong. I also learned that the South African phrase "just now" means "in about 30ish minutes, maybe an hour" and that "now now" means "i'll think about it in ten minutes." I'm also in awe of the extent of the influence of facebook. It's wonderfully convenient, for whenever anyone would take a photo, whether from Ireland or Cape Town, they woudl promise to post it on facebook so we could share. How cool is it that we will all be able to stay in touch! And when making small talk, the weather is no longer the only subject we all have in common.

Oh
and the food! We took a break around 11 for tea and fat cakes (I don't have a clue how to spell their Afrikaans name). All of us Americans are in agreement that a fat cake is the most delicous thing we've stumbled upon thus far. It's bread that's been fried, sort of like a donut without icing. And you put jam or sugar on it.

There were a few adorable children who peeked there heads out of the shacks around our building site. I think we're going to bring some toys tomorrow so that we can entertain our curious neighbors, and at the end of the week there's traditionally a soccer game between the habitat builders and the children of the township. My brother Christian would be in his element!

We ended the day around 2 because it was raining too much for the cement to set. There was absolutely no complaining from us. The weather here is pretty nasty, cold and wet, more like Seattle winters than Tennessee summers. The Irish kids claim it's warm though, apparently this is similar to their summer weather.

We need to head back to the dorm for dinnner and activities, I'll try to update again sometime this week!

love and miss you all!