Orange trees!

Yes, the time has come. In one week the new volunteers will arrive and we are all looking forward for it. The people at the different places are all very excited, on the Farm, in Dimbaza and me in Somerset.
Otherwise the dayly life in my project is as usual. The children in the morning, the adults in the evening.
So I would like to write some more about the people I met in the past weeks.
Probably the most interesting one is Maria, a very old Lady with her origin in Austria. After World War II she and her husband (who met in Serbia, rebuilding the roads) went to Brasil where they stayed for about 25 years before they moved to South Africa where she lives now for 42 years. I dont know how to say, but it became hard for me to speak german again. So our conversations are mixed between german and english. She speaks so many languages, its impressive; but no french. The french guys are still the bad guys and she never wants to learn that language. Also, she doesnt speaks about the war. The memories are too bad she says. But there are so many other topics to talk about. When she speaks about her life in Sao Paulo and compares there the living with different skin colours to the life here in South Africa, it makes me curious about more in the world. Of course, her objectives are some decades ago, but I still like our conversations. She has so much to talk about, as she loves the purity of Canada and tells me about her wishes to travel, but she thinks she is too old now. Before she moved to Somerset East, she stayed in Vanderbijlpark, close to Johannesburg, where her husband worked in a steel manufactury. Then they moved with their children down here and bought a orange tree farm. So she showed me the many orange trees behind the house, where i just picked myself a orange off the tree. Delicious! I always wanted to do that! :)
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Somerset Update

Things in Somerset are going well the past days. It is very cold at night and the wind is blowing. But, when the wind does not blow in spring, there will be a bad harvest its said, so it is rather good.
Not good is, that the waste men (Dt. Müllabfuhr) are on strike. They want an income raise of 18%. To underline their protest, they distributed the rubbish all over in the main street.

It was a mess and I was very angry about driving on the smashed glass on the street. The white people who are living in this area were very angry too and told me this is not the picture of their South Africa. It was an experience for me how the mostly black people did not care about the dirt all over. Even the township looked better these days. And especially when the wind came you can imagine how everything looked like.
Then my day is always quite packed. In the morning I have got the students of my school and it took me a while to understand the South African timetable. There are seven days on the timetable. Every day has got seven periods. So when I received it, the school started on day 3, but noone told me that. Every period was a surprise :)
Also, the times of the periods are different. Depending how long assembly in the morning takes, or how long it takes until every student has his meal after the 5th period. Lessons are shorter sometimes. The program ringing the bell is called Melekaja, the secretary, who presses the button for the bell. Once he forgot to press the button, so there was a very long period.

Then, around 2 o'clock I have a break, where I defragment the computers in the office, or things like that. The Afternoon class starts at 4 oclock, but half the class is already coming at 3.30 to just use the computer, and i let them. I am happy when I have motivated students and I of course support them. They really want to learn. A new experience.
Then I have also a very small student who is coming to class every day too. For me it was no problem and the other students also accepted him to be with us. His mother is a very good student and everytime she comes to the front to show the others something on the projector, the little boy is handed around among the other students. Its a very nice atmosphere.

We are now so far that everyone can start up his computer, log in; create, move, delete, recover folders; change the desktop; knows the windows file system and so on... Furthermore we did a little practical excurs to how a computer works and what are its components on the hardware side. So to be able to solve small problems in the future, everyone unplugged all cables of his computer, clapped his hands (so they had to put the cables down), turned around three times and then finally plugged everything in and started up. It had to work and it made alot of fun.
I really see a development in the students. At the beginning everyone was very shy towards each other and now we make jokes together, laugh and if someone is lost at some point everyone just helps each other. Its very nice.
The lessons officially ends at 5.30, but it never does. The students are so eager about typing wikipedia articles that we never finish before six o'clock.
Then I return home to Leoni and we have dinner together. She shows me some songs on the piano and we have very nice conversations about my experiences and she supports me with everything. I just mentioned that I would like to have some tea in school. So the next day she gave me a cattle, cup, tea, spoon, sugar... Just great! I discovered now a new hobby: Tea tasting :)
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Back to Somerset East

The days in Joubertina are over. I am back in my school in Somerset now.
I had a great time in Joubertina. A great family and great students.
On Thursday we had a nice graduation which I enjoyed alot.
Now, back in Somerset, I started a new evening course with only a few students so far.
In the morning, I teach children from the school and got my own individual timetable. I have got a lot of free periods within, but there is always enough work to do by fixing computers in my lab, or from the secretary.
It is nice being back at my host Leonie, even though, it is very cold in Somerset. Yesterday the top of the mountain was covered with a thin layer of snow. Climate change??
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