Day 10 - Monday 23rd July 2018 - Share and Witz

Greetings from Wits University Field Centre, within Kruger National Park!

For the gentlemen the day began in chapel at 7.00 am with men’s prayers, whilst the rest of us enjoyed a more leisurely breakfast before the Hands Monday Meeting and Prayers for the whole community at 8.00 am. This meeting includes a celebration of birthdays, including Vicky’s upcoming 18th on 6 August! Although a little early, she enjoyed receiving multiple hugs, much clapping and a time of prayer - a special Hands tradition which is carried out with enthusiasm and gusto. We were encouraged to consider the reasons for ‘spiritual dryness’ amongst mission personal, and sang a number of hymns and prayed for the needs of the Hands family, the care points throughout 8 countries and our partner communities in the U.K., USA, Canada and Australia amongst others.

Eventually, soon after 9.30am, we set off for Share, a journey of more than 3 hours which included stops to buy vegetables for the communities we are visiting, and increasingly rugged dirt and sand tracks as we travelled further and further from the Hub. Our minibus was rather full, with our luggage for two nights away; and two Hands volunteers, Audrey and Gugu, accompanying us.

We arrived, with our vegetables, just in time to start preparing the cabbages for lunch, which comprised pap, a bean stew and a vegetable dish based on the cabbage. We were greeted over time by 13 care workers (the care point has 14 in total with more than 60 children registered), ably directed by Promotion their leader; we soon went indoors to share in hilarious introductions, which included forfeits if a tennis ball was dropped, much energetic singing and dancing, and finally a time for prayer.

The younger children soon arrived from school and we became engrossed in a number of games, including bubble blowing, rudimentary French cricket, and much sign language to aid communication. Some of the care workers joined us for the games which was pleasing and encouraging.

I was asked to take Gugu to a taxi point just off one of the main roads. 6 of the care workers joined me for the ride and as soon as they entered the mini bus they all started to sing and dance. They sang loud and with great enthusiasm, they where singing clapping stamping whistling and shouting. We had the windows down and their African rhythm was reverberating around the minibus and I wish I could of kept on driving as I didn’t want the amazing sounds and songs to stop. It was definitely one of my highlights whilst being in Africa. I would choose to drive with the ladies singing than the radio any day. After we had dropped Gugu off we made the return journey back to the care point, I purposely drove slowly to take the singing in as much as I could. On our return Rosemary could hear us long before she could see us, the van was visibly moving with the dancing that was going on.

When we got back the lunch was ready, Clarrie, Meg and Vicky served the lunch starting with the youngest children, who firmly refused the cabbage dish but fortunately Clarrie was able to start to dispense the huge bowl’s contents once the slightly older children got to the front of the queue! Whilst the children where getting their lunch I noticed one of the care workers was emptying the stone sink by using a plate to scoop the water out, she told me it was blocked. Once we got the water out I removed the waste pipe off the bottom to see if that was blocked which it wasn’t, she explained to me where the waste pipe went to which was about 25meters away in the vegetable patch. Me and Chris dug down to find the pipe. Once we found the pipe I found some old fence wire which I used as a improvised drain rod. I pushed the wire up about 2 meters which resulted in a awful goo and stench coming out the pipe followed by good flow of waste water. The care workers where very grateful, this left me thinking how long had it been blocked? A simple task made a difference. If I hadn’t seen her bailing the water out I would never of known, how long would they of struggled with this?

All too soon it was time to say our farewells to the Share community for the day as we needed to journey to the edge of Kruger Park for our accommodation. With the field Centre almost in sight, we spotted two elephants just inside the boundary fence; needless to say Chris completed a swift three-point turn in order that we could take some very close up photographs. Once at the Centre restaurant, as darkness descended well before 6.00 pm, Audrey began our day’s debrief before dinner was served - delicious salads, beetroot, samp and beef curry followed by hot chocolate pudding and custard. We continued our discussions after being extremely well fed; we were deeply moved by the stories of three people associated with the Share care point which prompted us to pray for the troubled individuals before seeking out our accommodation in complete darkness!

In the midst of Kruger we are now enjoying a few games of cards before reaching the 10.00pm curfew and our bunk beds!

DJ and Rosemary