Day 8 Tuesday 31^st July  

By Jack

Hi everyone – up early again at 8.00am for breakfast of corn flakes and sugar (lots of it) because you need the energy for all our activities. We went off to visit the infant school to play games with the small children, I had previously been giving piggy backs but today I was too tired so I played catch instead – they still seemed very happy and loved all our games. Then we walked back to the Alathea Bible College which is our base. It is also our sleeping area and some of the hardcore boys (including me) are on lilos instead of real beds.

At lunchtime I finally had my strawberry jam sandwich, we’ve been waiting for a while for strawberry jam and when we found it in the supermarket it came in a tin! (Shocking). Food has been okay most of the time but I am beginning to miss chips and bacon… Rob says that we might be able to get chips when we get to Kruger Park next week.

After lunch we had a briefing (we have lots of briefings, some would say too many)… Toby and I led today’s briefing so it was the quickest one ever!!! The briefing was to prepare for the Olympic Themed After School Club – nobody seems that bothered about the Olympics here in South Africa, not sure why…  At the After School Club we had to do a bit of shouting as we had 130 children along, which means that we have at least 13 people in each group. Each day we start with some warm up exercises to classic workout music like Lady Gaga, followed by some drama to introduce the theme which today was mountain biking which linked to the Transfiguration of Jesus (Mark 9). Today, in the group challenge game, Rob was spared from the custard pie (shaving foam on a paper plate) in the face which went to Alistair – but he still got a hair makeover with yellow silly string. We had a high-speed debrief afterwards while we sat in the sun on the veranda… the temperature today started a bit cooler than other days but still got to about 27 degrees C.

We had a huge dinner this evening with plenty of carbohydrates – we had rice, pap (made from maize flour) and sweet potato curry – all of which I had to eat with my fingers in the traditional African manner. Our luxury dessert was hot custard and tinned fruit plus a muffin (my chocolate one tasted Christmassy). We closed the evening with worship led by Laura and we thought about all the special people we have met here in Siyabuswa – there have been so many, both young and old.

See you all later! Special hello to everyone in France – hope you are having a good time!

Jack.