Friday

As we began to wake up this morning I was aware of a large number of people shouting in the road outside the compound – it didn't sound threatening or unrestful, but no-one knew what it was about.

This morning the Rewired team was working in Kiine School – the building team helped carry the equipment from the cottages where we are staying to the classroom prepared for the IT suite, and we were soon setting up the PCs.

It didn't take us long before we were installing software, and we completed in about an hour.

We had frequent visitors from children as they changed classes, and also from Cosmas. It was clear how excited they all are about this new facility and how important it will be for them. 

 Unfortunately the security wasn't quite good enough, so at the end of the day we made a return visit to dismantle the kit and bring it back. At least the software has been installed now and all we'll need to do is put the kit back together again, hopefully before we leave.

After lunch we drove over to Gripse which is a very poor area with high numbers of people with AIDS/HIV and who the Home Care project are supporting with visits (to make sure medication is being taken) and food, and anything else that they can identify will make life easier for them. They are supporting between 30 and 40 family units, most of whom are extended families with adults caring for nephews and nieces whose parents have now died.

With one carer and 3 others from this team we first visited Susannah who lives in a mud brick house about 3x3m, with a corrugated tin roof, with her 2 surviving children (a third died before he was a year old). Susannah is HIV positive and doing well on the medicine. She showed us photos of her family, and I gave her some post cards showing my part of England, as well as some Yorkshire snow. She is remarkably optimistic and hopes to be able to set up as a small trader once she gets enough money to fund her initial supplies.

Our second visit was to Martin who lives in a house not much larger than Susannah's. This belongs to his sister who he lives with, along with 8 others. It is hard to imagine where they all sleep, or how their meals get cooked. Again, he is HIV positive and doing well on the medicine. He sometimes gets work as a garden labourer, but this has dried up. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to come & collect food later in the afternoon because his bike is broken, so Pete had a look at the bike and identified the problem and how Martin could fix it without taking it to an expensive repair place.

While we waited for the others I watched life going on around us while Penny from the Mission Direct in-country team gave some more background. It is a desperately poor area, and many of these people go to bed hungry. Most of the adults are caring for the children of their own brothers and sisters now that they have died. Some of the women who are looking after us back at our base live in this community, and the income makes a huge difference to them, although at least one of them has sponsorship for a child to go to school, which indicates things aren't completely good for her. Most of the children go to either of the 2 local schools, including Kiine which is a lengthy walk away.

 

Later in the afternoon we shared in the distribution of food at the church to the people that Home Care is supporting. The biggest challenge I could see was getting the 25kg bags of mealy meal back home - one woman had a wheelbarrow, most carried it on their head, and some dragged it home. None of this is ideal for someone who is sick.

All of what I saw this afternoon was thought provoking – I think the main thought is the importance of education and the other benefits that the children get from their schools, and I feel privileged to be helping the schools provide this.

The day ended with a “pub quiz” using questions that Laurie had sent me – the winning team got prizes of a bar each of Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate.


Afterwards I had an attempt at photographing the moon - it's new, lying on its back and there was earthshine on it. I regretted not bringing my taller tripod, but I decided that this time the trip had a different emphasis.