Springtime

Last week I completed my first full rotation of work at Mitchell House, ending up back in Mainstream with the Grade 00s. For some reason I always find working in the Mainstream school much more tiring than working in the Enrichment Centre, which is strange because the children in the Enrichment Centre require a lot more one-to-one attention. But one thing I’ve noticed about being in charge of the Grade 00s is how many arguments you have to solve… Every five minutes a child comes up to you and complains that “someone called me a chicken” or “she called me cute”. The latter complaint is a common one with Lechlabile, the smallest boy in the class, who I frequently catch checking out his arm “muscle” in the classroom mirror. By the end of a week working in Mainstream, plus the extra four hours at Aftercare, you really appreciate the weekends!

During my time off last Sunday I decided to do some sketching. I’ve brought so many lovely sketch books with me and I have to try and fill them by the time I leave. So I walked over to the Enrichment Centre garden in the afternoon, settled myself into one of the blue hammocks, and tried to sketch a nearby tree. The gardens at the Enrichment Centre are so beautiful and I’m worried that my pictures don’t do them justice. It’s now springtime so everything is starting to bloom and smell amazing, much stronger than any of the flowers back home. My theory is that because the landscape is so barren, the flower’s scent is much more powerful in order to attract the occasional passing insect… As well as the flowers, the birds here are also amazing – their colours are like nothing you could ever see in the UK. Yesterday when I was walking back to the hostel, I saw a bird about the same size as a sparrow but its chest was a stunning red. The contrast between its brown back and bright red breast made it look like someone had painted on the red colour (it was that bright). Some mornings we’ve also seen some Ibis – a biggish bird with the defining feature of a long, thin, curved beak – traditionally linked to Egypt and the Egyptian God with the head of an Ibis. I think Egyptian Ibis are black and white and are referred to as the Royal Ibis, probably because of its connection with the God. 

Along with the changing vegetation and wildlife, the weather is also becoming much more tropical. At 1am on Wednesday morning we experienced our first proper South African storm. You can tell it was a big one because usually at one o’clock in the morning we’d be asleep but because of the noise we all woke up. The thunder during a South African storm makes any storm in the UK seem like nothing – the hostel walls were actually shaking because of the noise. The hostel was only completed in February so the shaking wasn’t due to any infrastructural problems…

In other news we have finally booked our Christmas travel and now that everything is finalised, I'm so excited to get underway. Yesterday we booked a 14 day Bazbus ticket that allows you to travel down the eastern coast of South Africa, getting on and off wherever and whenever you please. We've decided to spend a few nights in Durban, then travel onwards to Coffee Bay, Port Elizabeth, Plettenburg Bay, Mossel Bay and finally arrive in Cape Town on Christmas Eve. We've discovered an elephant sanctuary in Port Elizabeth that - for £8 - offers an hour to ride the elephants and then a further 45 minutes to feed and wash them. For our stay in Cape Town we've booked a tour of Robben Island, a day of shark cage diving and a vineyard tour. I also want to go and watch a rugby match at the stadium and climb Table Mountain and Lion's Head... so there will be plenty to do! Surfing is obviously also on the list, but because we're travelling down the coast I assume there will be many opportunities to try out the South African waves.