11/03/12 Sunday…Andrew…Last Day of Work:

It was Sunday, our last day of work, and the last time we had to wake up at 6:00am. It was so tricky for us to wake up, probably because we knew that it was another (long) church service, so I dragged myself downstairs to a very quick breakfast without my Dad (since he had left at 5:30am to go an hour and a ½ north west to a place called Lichtenburg) we had to go ½ an hour to a church called St Monica in a community called Kanana, near Orkney (not in Scotland!) with the Bishop of Matlosane who we were staying with. It was very long, I didn’t understand much and the way every thing worked was different.

            We came back and ate a huge watermelon the size of a microwave and it lasted for days. We then had time to chill; we played some ball games such as ‘Piggy in the Middle’; we also played in the garden. After an hour or so, we went out for a meal with the family we were staying with to a restaurant called the ‘The Ocean Basket’. It was lovely

            It was late when we arrived back, so we went straight to bed and were out like a light. It was a good last day of work, and I’m sure I will remember it.  

Life in South Africa……28.02.12 ………. Sam

         These are some of the things I have found

 Out about South Africa so far…

History

·       For a long time people here had to live separately to others until the 1990’s when Nelson Mandela was elected president and he changed everything so that people could live together, this was called apartheid.

Houses

A house in a township

·       Most people still seem to live in separate groups. Some houses are too small and look like shacks.

·       Most toilets near small houses don’t have running water and some toilets they would call long drop toilets because there are no sewage pipes. (You get the picture?)

Currency

·       The currency of South Africa is called Rand and there are 12 Rand to the pound.

·       The notes have all the big five on them (Lion, Rhino, Leopard, Buffalo and Elephant and the big seven (extra two) are Cheetah and Giraffe plus we’ve seen all of them in one day last year!)  there’s a new note coming out with a picture of Nelson Mandela on it.

Population

·       Approximately 55 million people live in South Africa which is less than in Britain because there are 60 million there.

Roads

·       There don’t seem to be as many roads as back in England but there are quite a few more fast straight roads.

·       The roads are measured in kilometres instead of miles.

·       You can drive at 120 kph on the fastest roads. This is about 75mph.

·       The roads can go through mountains or past farms.

·       Lots of roads don’t have tar on them which makes them very bumpy.

Farming

Dirk  digs up some potatoes with Andrew and Sam

·       On one farm where we stayed in the North West Province the farmer grew maize and potatoes. He had just planted some pecan nut trees to sell abroad. We saw sunflowers too.

·       In White River the farmers plant maize, bananas and avocados. We have also seen other fruit being grown such as oranges, lemons and mangoes.

·       You can’t grow bananas in North West Province because the winters are too cold.

Shopping

A roadside stall

·       There are big shops in towns but people also put up stalls to make money for their family. We have seen brushes made out of twigs, macademia nuts, birds carved out of wood and drinks made out of marula fruit.

Schools

·       School starts early at about 7.30 and finishes around 2pm. Lunch is at about 11am.

·       The school year starts in January and ends in December.

Dimakatso and Betty

·       Children are taught in English, Africaans, sitswana, siSwati, Tsonga, Zulu, Xhosa or any other of the 11 or 12 official languages.

·       It can be a long way to school. Dimakatso is 6 and he walks 12km to school every day.

·       You only move from one grade to the next if you pass the test at the end of the year. So you could be years older than some of the other children in your class.

Nature

·       The weather, animals, birds, insects and trees are different but I might do that another day because I am tired.

Bye for now,

Sam

Discovering Matlosane………19.02.2012 Sam.

The North West Province of South Africa;
In fact we had only moved from
Nelspruit in Mpumalanga (on the right)
to Kleksdorp in the North West (in yello)

          Sorry for the delay of my blogging, here is me writing about the last few days……………hopefully you all know the we are discovering a new part of South Africa called Matlosane, and it was a six hour journey to get here however the traffic was horrendous! So then we were stuck on the motorway,

For an extra two hours, in the end I was sat in the car with my mum, my dad and Andrew for EIGHT HOURS! But we did stop for a quick lunch at spur; (a bit like KFC) it was delicious!

          After we had had lunch, we got on to the N12 motorway towards

Jo’burg and then after about twenty minutes people in there cars found out on the radio that a lorry a crashed up ahead, so they got fed up and decided to get off the motorway by using a track on the grass to get to the roundabout to get off the motorway. After five minutes people started to reverse up the hard shoulder and even some people did u-turns as well! It was chaos!

We are staying with the Diseko Family

          We eventually arrived as it was getting dark, and we were staying with a family with three children, the children’s names are Leruo, Gnata and Letlotlo. Their dad is the bishop of Matlosane. The school that they go to starts at 7.30 and they leave their house at 7.00 but they do finish at 2.00.     I‘m glad we don’t go to school that early! I’ll tell you some more soon by for now…………………Sam

09/02/12…Another day at Mercy Air… Andrew…

Hi guys, you may or may not know what Mercy Air is, so Mercy Air is a small place where there is a kind of small airport and also where all the pilots live. So let’s find out what I did today; it was a hot night the last night so I didn’t get much sleep and consequently I woke up late. We had late breakfast and then we had a walk around the site. Afterwards we went shopping to the mall (when I came out a shop crouched up in a corner was a man with a bullet-proof vest on with a grenade launcher in his hands. We tried not to just stand there with our mouths open.

          We then had lunch and all that malarkey until night when we saw thunder and lightning round about 4 miles away, we waited there looking at the site. It wasn’t ordinary lightning either; it was crackling down with speed. As we were walking away, we spotted flashing lights in the grass, they were either fireflies or glow-worms but we were drawn away by the lights; as I am writing this thunder is bellowing down at us with super heavy rain and blinding lightning. Hope we can sleep tonight with this racket!

          Andrew, signing out.

P.S After I wrote this we went outside onto the veranda to watch this surprising scene. The storm passed close to us and we heard the thunder crackling down. It was stunning. We also had a short power cut !   

A typical day at Mercy Air……09.02.12………

We began the day by having breakfast, and then we took our malaria tablets, and thought about what to do before we took some photos of Mercy Air (this is where we are staying and where they keep the planes, pilots and families). We did in the end decide to get in the pool and when we did, it was surprisingly warmer than last time we got in. After we had finished in the pool we walked around the gardens and the plane hangers to take some photos. We were one hour taking photos of the gardens, the plants and trees are REALLY different to home and sometimes we forget how big they are here! Plus we were surrounded by insects and monkeys, and there was a strange bright green insect that was just like a praying mantis. (Creepy crawly).Also we tried to get pictures of monkeys but they were too fast. Then we had lunch, and had a quiet day at Mercy Air.

……………………….Sam

07-02- 2012…A day of botany & zoology… Andrew

Today was the eleventh day in South Africa and a day of rest! We went to a place called the ‘Botanical Garden’ (it is a place where there are thousands of species of plants, (literally thousands) and scenic views of water falls and rivers).The day started of quite cool, well cool in our terms, we took a thin jumper there. It round about 25’c so back home it would be called roasting, but to make it feel slightly cooler there was a cold wind and in the night it rained relatively heavy so it was humid.

         We left at about 11 O’clock because Sam and Mom wanted to go so I had to go with them. Once we arrived, we found the sun was now blazing at around 30 – 40 degrees c and we hadn’t bought any sun cream with us, so we had to do without it for the time. It turned out to be quite interesting in the end. At the beginning I spotted a multicoloured insect which the park said had only been in the park for the last three months., We spotted some strange plants like a Fig tree where the fruits grow on the bark and trunk, and because we came in their summer everything was lush and green, there had also been a flood lately so the waterfalls were thunderous and powerful. Because we were hot me and my brother went over onto the grass and waited… and then we were soaked with water from the huge sprinklers. We came back dry though because the heat had dried our soggy cloths.

         We had our tea and then watched a film and Sam played with the Lego before I slumped into bed as tired as a sloth.   

Thurs2 Feb 2012 - Our visit to Bush Buck Ridge…Andrew:

          Last night was awful; I couldn’t get to sleep,

·        Because I was as sweaty as a pig;

·        Because I was being circled by a mozzie;

·        Because a group of teenagers were having a party.

So in the morning I was as tired as a sloth and got out of bed just before 9:00am, (I thought that last night was a dream, but it  actually true that I nearly set fire to a pillow, but  was even because my mom broke the ladder the other night.) I went to the dining hall once I was dressed and had my breakfast; afterwards Sam was amazed that I could swallow my malaria tablets whole without water.

        Then once we had had our malaria tablets, we had to leave Bush Buck Ridge and go back to ‘Hands at Work’ so we loaded the car up and headed back to ‘Hands’ on the 2 hour drive. Once we got there and unloaded our vehicle and went to a place called Twins (fast food place) it was so refreshing having something so greasy, it was a little bit of home. We went back to ‘Hands’ because we were going to have tea with some friends. After, we came back blogged, worked, Skyped, did our journal and slept.

      Signing out, Andrew.  

Sam- A Journey to Wits... 30 Jan 2012

My apologies for not getting to you lately,

Although we had a nice time yesterday, because we had a day

At hands at work while we were waiting for a kind man called Simon,

who will take us to Bush Buck Ridge where we will be staying in Wits,

which is pronounced vitz. We were waiting for him because he was in a training meeting, so that left us with a quiet day at hands at work.

When Simon was ready to go, we set off to Wits and it was a long two hour journey! When we got to Wits we were very tired but we came to the wrong place, and as well as that, we drove through a very bumpy road and we didn’t know whether this was the right place, because it was a first time to come here, and then we realised it was he wrong place, so we had to go back

Up the bumpy road to a different place, but it is a good thing that we found out where we are staying. By the time we had settled in, it was bed time, and pitch black too. We were a little nervous at first, and even more when we saw a rat in the kitchen! We got ready for bed and watched a film on dad’s laptop

to calm us down. See you soon.

Sunday 29 Jan: Andrew…Second whole day in S.A:

Sorry again that I didn’t get to you yesterday, we were very busy; anyway we got up in a very grumpy mood, we went to bed the other night at 11 O’clock(but you lot we are still 2 hours ahead of you lot( I bet you were all still awake) It would be 9 O’clock in England). We were due to go to Touzhill Church at 8:30am and we woke up at 8:00am, so we got changed very quickly and then stepped outside to find it was raining, it was the kind of rain which is very light but gets you very wet.

     We had to take our Malaria tablets after breakfast; my Mom and Dad had one (but were equivalent to two smaller ones); my brother had two small tablets and I had three small ones .Me and my Mom and Dad’s tablets went down ok even though they were hard to swallow.  After this we went to church and were met by loud but peaceful music. 

      After Church we had a big argument about whether a tree was a lemon tree, or an avocado tree, we never finished this argument but it will end my way of course .Then we went over to our friend’s house for Sunday lunch it was delish. After lunch me and Sam played football then we decided to do some playing in a canoe in the swimming pool, so we did I went second but when it was my go Sam jumped on the back and fell flat into the freezing cold water FULLY CLOTHED and got soaked I did get in eventually though. Once we had a nice warm shower we went outside to play Crouquet, I won. Now we looked forward to eating home made waffles and also homemade maple syrup! It was lovely. After this we came back to sleep and do our journal.

   That’s all; see you in 5 hours or so. Andrew.

Day 3 Hands at work

Today we woke up very early, because we needed to go to church, also we were very tired of a late night.we went in to have breakfast, but we then realized that we had to take Malaria tablets, THEY WERE HORRIBLE!  Next we got ready to go to church, the church was called Touzhill Church and it was just an old warehouse! Later on in the day we went to Paul and Cathy's House in White River, and we began to think about going in the canoe and we did after a while, but I tried to jump in the canoe but Andrew was already in it and he paddled away, so I ended up jumping into the FREEZING cold pool! so I got very wet. Then, because I was wet, I went to go and have a shower.After that me, my dad Paul And Andrew, went to go and play croquet..........In the rain! then we sat down inside had some home made waffles , then went back to our room in Hands at work. Bye for now... Sam

First whole day in africa

We woke up surounded by the noise of insects buzzing around us while we were in bed, and when we got up to have breakfast in the main room however, when we went to wash up our breakfast bowls there stood a Stick insect the size of a glasses case! {We will send you a picture when we can} after that we went into the kitchen  and we met  a man called Sibusise, and he was from Swaziland, his mom and dad had to pay for him to go to school. He was amazed that in England we could just pull over to the side of the road to pick an apple off a tree. Also he was amazed that in England you didn't have to pay to get medical help and that you could just call 999 to get medical service. He eats meat only about once a week and we often have it most days. He has got 3 brothers and 4 sisters!read on tomorrow

      sam westwood

Day 2- Andrew -Saturday 28th January

Sorry we couldn't reach you guys for the last 3 days; we were at the airport and flying.The last three days has been hectic traviling for 34 hours!(day and a half).We were tired when we arrived at 'Hands @ Work', all we could think of was food and sleep, which was suprising for me because I'm always the last awake in our household. 
       It was nice to find myself under one sheet because once I was dressed I went outside to find I couldn't see until my eyes suddenly caught out a spectacular veiw of a mountain called Leggotte( you may of heard of this from last years blog) , I couldn't admire this for long because the air was scorching so I rushed back in ;changed into shorts and T-shirt ;no socks even no shoes or sandles!I tried to aviod the heat as I hurried across the stone path towards the dining hall but the stones were sizzling hot.After breakfast we had an explore around the village and heard some awful noises...BUGS!...It sent a shiver down my spine. Then we did some school work(even though it was a saturday)and did drawing.
  We met a man staying near to us, named Sibusise and went to the local shopping mall called 'Riverside Mall',we also had tea with him we got to know him very well and are very good friends.We then  played some games and had a little read and also did our blog but a frog had found a way inside. We then turned the lights of and went to sleep.Thats today ,see you tomorrow.