The Wait Is Over

I sincerely apologize to those loyal people following my pathetic excuse for a blog. I realize that it has been sometime since I have last given an update. So without further ado, here is a very, lengthy, South Africa update. Over the past few weeks Marshall and I have been kept busy. We have interviewed several children, parents, and grandparents from SAME’s support homes with the intent of using whatever footage we can for a visual project that shall be elaborated upon at a later date. Marshall and I have also built a kitchen for three separate homes. Two of the kitchens were constructed for residents in Sigagule village and one in Keyalani. The kitchens, for those of you unfamiliar with what SAME does, consists of four poles acting as the corners and support for the corrugated sheet metal that acts as a roof. There are also four, two by fours cut to three meter lengths that act as support beams for the roofing and the entire structure. So far that is all that is there for these kitchens, we shall be adding walls to block the wind and other natural elements at a later date. Marshall and I have also been helping Shirley-Anne with updating the current database on all of the homes that are aided by SAME. We have constructed two water filters and the only thing left to do with them is find them a nice home. Today, we ended up planting in the gardens with all of our home based carers and home based workers, along with mothers and grandmothers from the homes we support. The gardens are a way for those that do not have enough land of their own to grow food can grow inside of our gardens and the agreement is that as long as they work and take care of the piece of land than SAME shall provide whatever is necessary to keep the garden flourishing. But despite all of the work that Marshall and I, along with all of the home based carers and home based workers and Shirley Anne, do we still find time during our weekends to have fun. Marshall and I have recently been to Nelspruit for the day, braaied with some South Africans on occasion, started to work out more, been to the Blyde River Canyon, and this weekend we shall be spending time camping in the Kruger National Park among all of the awesome wildlife. The weather here has become cooler, due to the winter season setting within the Limpopo Province. It has rained on and off for the past two weeks and fans are becoming unnecessary and long shirts and pants comfortable on certain days. I apologize once again to all of you loyal followers. I must say that it is difficult to update every day due to my limited access to the internet, but I have no excuse for why I have not written as of late. As for the continual promise of photographs, I am sorry that I have not uploaded any photographs still. My time here has felt pretty surreal and quite an experience so far. Marshall and I both have roughly around three weeks left here and I shall try to update more consistently in my last, couple of weeks here in South Africa. Thanks for reading.