Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Mitch’s Blog

Today we’re back to school to work just like the week before. This week, however, we are working in Odendaalsrus, which is the next town to Welkom. Odendaals, which is a surname and Rus meaning Rust. Instead of the township of Thabong, we are now working in the township Kutloanong. Even so, Monday morning we were back into routine. The past week we were arriving in our contingent wear for each school. However some schools had their Scouts come and greet us, and one school even had the entire school together for an assembly for our arrival. We thought that if this should happen again, we should be at least in our proper uniform, so now we wear our uniform shirts with work shirts underneath, ready to work. Everyone woke early today, so we were ready and at the school by 9am. We had a quick breakfast of baked oatmeal made by Shannon and Thomas, and continued to the Impucuko School. We passed at least four mines on our 20 minute drive. It’s like Sudbury, but more with mines.

Our school today had to have some demolition, as we removed the old, rotten gutters so we could put up ours. The Scouts of the school sang and danced with those of us that had no work at the time making the day even more fun. All the construction went well until we found that our gutter had been put together backwards. Thankfully, Bruce was able to easily fix it and we finished all our work just before lunch. The school served lunch, and after that we left.

On the way back, we stopped at the cemetery. It was very large and only ten years old! We were told there are about 50 funerals every Saturday, mainly for those that died because of AIDS. Back at home, we did the normal stuff: showered, played soccer, mailed postcards, threw a rugby ball, etc. For Dinner, Bruce and Caroline made a delicious meal of shish kabobs.

The 17th was much the same, but today we went to Rearabatswe School. We took down the gutters and put up the new ones. At the end of the day, we went back home to the Scout Centre. A lady from a local magazine came to interview us, and we told her all about the project and other recreation things we have done, such as the night hike and gold mine. For dinner we all went out to Nando’s which served halal meat.

There are only two schools left, and it’s been a great experience.



By Mitchell

1 comment:

  1. Great work Mitch. We are very proud of you and all the group. We just got back from our canoe trip in Killarney and were quite excited to read about your work and experiences.

    Keep up the great work, Mom & Dad, Spencer and Kristen

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