We've come a long long way together, through the hard times and the good.

14 Aug 2009 at 18:10

I have to celebrate you baby,
I have to praise you like I should.

My last blog over here! It's been a really hectic week, I've been sick with flu since Saturday and saw the doctor on Tuesday who scared the living daylights out of me by telling me I had all the symptoms of Swine Flu. She treated me for it but told me there was a possibility I might not be able to fly home, which was pretty shocking news. I am all better now and didn't have swine flu, but even if I had, it is just flu at the end of the day. They are extremely jumpy about it over here though, our project leader freaked out because his wife and two kids had flu.
In short, I missed most of this week with the kids and got the A-ok from the doctor this morning so was able to go to the project, and it was amazing. A mad day, but the end feeling was that everyone had gotten something positive out the experience. I can't stop myself smiling at the moment. After yesterdays horrible wind and rain, the sun was...

0 reactions | post reaction

If only I could meet the maker.

10 Aug 2009 at 19:25

Sorry I've not blogged in a little while, it has been hectic and working is exhausting, but that's not to say I don't love it.
What I am reminded of every day here is that nothing is as it seems. Here the children will wait on highways begging for money every time the traffic lights turn red, pleading for money for their sick little brother and then you will see their parents waiting for them a little way down the road collecting the money from them. The biggest smack in the face that I have experienced apart from the poverty is one about faith. I am not a believer in God, I am a humanitarian through and through. This is not to say I believe in nothing; I believe that the soul is like a battery, an energy, and it is science that tells us energy cannot be killed, just changed into something else. When we die, our energy gets recycled into the universe and it becomes part of the bigger picture. I believe that we choose whether we want to be good or bad people and if you are a good...

2 reactions | post reaction

There's no combination, no words I could put on the back of a postcard.

01 Aug 2009 at 18:28

Well, I'm sure people will be glad to know that this week has just gotten better and better. I've settled more into teaching and am enjoying it so much that maybe it's time for think about the future. I'm working predominantly with a group of 3 of the older kids, Rudi, Christelle and Christaline and they are wonderful. This week I taught them about the use of capital letters, plurals, punctuation marks and how HIV/AIDS can be spread. Sometimes they find it hard to grasp a certain concept and so we spent an hour on thursday finding descriptive words for each letter of our name. The same boy who asked me for money, Rudi is very smart and is very quick to understand things and started straight away, but the words he used to describe himself filled me with sadness; Rude, Unhappy, Dead and Ill. I had a little talk with him and asked him to look at it from another perspective and all the good things about himself. He had to think about it for a while but then he came up with Responsible,...

0 reactions | post reaction

Love is a verb, love is a doing word.

28 Jul 2009 at 17:25

There is so much so say, everyday brings so many new stories to tell, so I'm going to try and condense this into something short but sweet.
So Thursday we all went to a big Soccer game, the Orlando Pirates vs the Kaizer Chiefs. You could see and hear people walking to the game for at least a mile(or a km as they do things here) before we got to the game and when we did it was jam-packed. There was so much noise and so many people; the atmosphere was amazing. I've never been a fan of soccer because of the violence it seems to breed in England so I was a little wary, but any negative feelings were soon dispersed and I really got into it. It was in the New Nelson Mandela Stadium so I am now a part of history and that really is something. What was fantastic to see were the fans of both teams mixed everywhere, hugging and congratulating each other when the other team scored. At the end of the game when the Chiefs won (of course) there was no bad feeling from the other side....

2 reactions | post reaction

So I am here...

22 Jul 2009 at 19:48

And everything is pretty fantastic. There is so much to say about it all, but I don't quite have enough time!
The weather is wonderful, but today it was very windy and colder, it is of course their winter here, and the sun goes down very quickly making it suddenly cold at about 6.
There aren't many local small cafe's, they are all quite big and next to shopping centres, so I am hoping that we will soon have a Briarr(BBQ) and a local boy Moweto (I think that is the spelling) says he will cook for us traditional Xhosa food which would be lovely. In return I will cook an English roast and the Dutch volunteers are cooking Hutspot so it will be interesting for everyone to share their home food. I am very blessed with the other volunteers, they are very considerate and sweet and we are very much like-minded.
So many things are different from England, even in this incredible heat, all the men wear ski hats and jumpers. Everyone is so helpful, they always want to do things for you,...

Read more: So I am here...

0 reactions | post reaction

All messages

Name: Hannah Hayward
Age: 19

Volunteered at Ready 4 Life from 20 July 2009 to 15 August 2009.

Track my weblog

Latest messages

All messages

Be More

Would you like to know more about Be More, then check the website at www.be-more.org. You can find the latest news, more information about my project and you can become a donor!

No. of visitors: 4993

RSS Feed

We've come a long long way together, through the hard times and the good.

If only I could meet the maker.

There's no combination, no words I could put on the back of a postcard.

Love is a verb, love is a doing word.

So I am here...

Latest messages

Links

Be More