Today was a great day. Rachel and I spent the day with the children at K2, a preschool for orphaned children. We ate some pape (boiled corn meal) with a soup like dip for it. The children were beautiful. It was hard to imagine none of them had parents. I sat in class with Cindi and got number of hours with her and her kids (4th picture). I got to hear her story along with some of the kid’s stories. Cindi is my age, 23, and has been teaching in the school for the last 4 years. She has a boy who is 3 years old and her mother passed away five years ago. It was really great being able to watch her with the children.

You also begin to see the potential in children after seeing these kids, all 1-5 years old and mature as anything. They listen when told what to do. The play when told to play. They be quiet when told to listen. They are all independent beyond anything also. They clean their plates, wash their hands, go to the washroom always by themselves. It was amazing watching barely two year olds moving their own chairs around and preparing their own places to eat.

The afternoon was spent on the same base when all the high school students came into get extra help on their homework. This program is called Forward education and it is where they are preparing a few of the students who show good leadership skills for possibly going to college. Hands at Work spends a lot of time and energy into a small number of students hoping that they will rise up and start pouring back into the Masoyi community. They are doing a great job with it.

One of the boys that I worked with in the morning and his younger sister (first two pictures) have to walk 5 km by themselves every morning to come to the school. They had social workers going to their aunt’s house to talk to her about moving closer so that the kids didn’t have to walk so far. I gave Martin my camera for an hour or so and taught him how to use it. He loved it. The forth picture is his. It fascinates me that these children have no parents, have to walk 5km to school, and yet still find joy in the same things that we do, being with people and being loved and accepted.

I finally got to upload some pictures, I’ll repost them at full sizes all together when I get back, I can’t upload large files from here.

We are finally here. While its 10am in Sarnia, its 4pm here and we are all exhausted. Charity and Shane lost their main big piece of luggage and found out that it is all the way in Detroit. It never ever made it at all along the way. We’re going to try to get it shipped here, but its not looking good for that. It was four flights in total, and three of them were booked separately. So we were surprised our luggage made it all the way here. We then rented a car and followed Jayme into where we will be staying.

We spent the day in London, England yesterday with Charity and Shane’e friend Ahmed. He took us around and out for Lebanese food, and we watched the Canadian tennis team beat the British team on a big screen at Trafalgar square. Then we caught our connecting flight yesterday night to make it here for this morning.

We are staying at a place called the ACTS clinic near Masoyi. It is one of the best hospitals/programs in all of South Africa for AIDS victims. There are dorm room types spots here so we have moved all of our stuff in here and are getting settled, we are probably going to spend the next bunch of hours just recuperating from our 7 or so hours of lost sleep and the long flights with obnoxious people (one guy got arrested on our flight this morning when we landed.) The Hands at Work office is right across the street. We are heading out for our first visits in the morning with the Home Based Care teams.

But we are here, safe and sound, Jayme has brought us around to a bit of the places we will need to know and has helped us get settled in. Driving on the other side of the road is an interesting adventure, especially because I don’t know how many times I have grabbed the window crank to shift gears. Joe would be happy to know we rented a Volkswagen Polo. So far things have been great . People are very receptive and have been awesome to get to know; especially the people in the place that we are staying, different people who have given up years of their lives to be here and work with AIDS victims.

So far we haven’t had to do much adjusting. Our rooms come complete with showers and beds and toilets for all those that said I would be having rough bowel movements. So far so good.

Well, we have started our trip. Rachel and I are sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for Charity and Shane to arrive (which we gave them 40% chance of making it on time). It wasn’t without our mishaps and problems getting here. The long wait on the Bluewater Bridge, the traffic jam in Port Huron and then navigating around it using Ron’s Blackberry (I’ll pay you for the data usage when we get home). But we arrived at our terminal as soon as the last people were boarding. Props to Northwest for getting our luggage here also.

We’ll be heading off to London, England in about an hour where we will be meeting up with Charity’s friend Ahmed, and then we will be heading from there to Johannesburg. We arrive in Nelspruit, South Africa 10:30 Tuesday morning.

I’ll be trying to post as much as possible and whenever I can get internet access and be posting as many pictures as possible also. Thank-you again to everyone for all your support, we would be on this trip without you.