Wow, I can’t believe I’ve already been here a month, the time has flown by so fast! I’m already feeling at home here and I feel blessed that I get to experience life and the people of Africa. The work I’m doing teaching English and going in the communities is keeping me busy by the time Friday comes i’m exhausted, but in a good way.

At first when I went out into the townships I was afraid because I didn’t know the people. Now when I go into the townships I feel comfortable. Nobody bothers us because they know we are there to help, so they respect us and they enjoy it when we come. Lately I have been going out with Mama Julia to a township called Tavern Becky to help with HIV/AIDS patients.  Happy, on of the ladies we work with who has AIDS was about to die when Julia found her.  Julia gave her arv's and now she is so much healthier and stronger. Happy now helps Julia out in the communities and comes along to translate for us. She is such a great lady who is filled with so much joy and compassion for the people in her community. The stories of these people’s lives are so sad and filled with so much pain. Julia has seen people go into deep depression and alcoholism after discovering they have AIDS.  Since Julia has been going to Tavern Becky, many people have turned their lives to Christ, and this has given their life so much meaning. Instead of clinging to drinking and depression they decide to cling to Jesus. After making that commitment Julia has seen some of these people’s lives change for the better.  They stop drinking and they start wanting to help others. The focus is not longer on themselves and their illness but on other people, which helps with depression.  What I like about Refilwe is that we teach people how to thrive on their own. We don’t continually feed them or give them things because then they will learn to rely on us.  Instead we teach them how to make a garden so they can grow their own food and how to bead so they can sell their items.    If you give a man a fish he will be fed for the day, but the next day he will be hungry. If you teach a man to fish he will never go hungry and hopefully he will teach his brother to fish as well

Africa is filled with so many problems with no easy solutions.  One thing I have noticed is that drunk diving isn’t taken as seriously as in America. I have been here a month and have already come across a couple drunk drivers. The cops are so busy dealing with violence it seems that drunk driving isn’t noticed. One evening, I was sitting outside on my porch with a friend and I noticed a lady driving by on the lawn with her trunk open. She was driving slow but jerky. A few second later she crashed into my neighbors close line shattering her car window. She then backed up and ran into a tree, and then she kept going! Eventually she stopped the car. A few of us ran out there, and sure enough, she was drunk.  We didn’t let her drive, but nobody called the cops because apparently police officers don’t come out to Refilwe at night. It was interesting how she got in because at night our gates are locked and the security guard has to let us in. He let her in because she said she was here to see Jaco- her boyfriend. The directors name here at Refilwe is also Jaco. She was too drunk to notice that this wasn’t her boyfriends house. There are no houses around Refilwe so she must have been way lost and the place she happened to end up was at Refilwe’s gates, where she got let in because there is someone here with the same name as her boyfriend. By the way she was driving I can’t believe she even made it to Refilwe alive but it’s good she did because we didn’t let her drive anymore.  I don’t think her coming here was a coincidence at all.

Then, a few days later I came across another drunken lady that had been driving.  On Saturday I was walking to a swimming pool with a friend when we saw a lady stuck in a ditch on the side of the road. When we went to help her out I noticed she seemed frazzled and a little drunk. She also had bloody scratches on her body. Inside her car was open beer and a blood soaked napkin. I asked her if she was alright, and she told me she was running away from an abusive x-boyfriend- which explained all the blood. She didn’t need or want anything other than to get her car out of the ditch. A nearby worker was driving a fork lift, so he came and pulled her out of the ditch. The workers noticed she was drunk and they started to talk to her about it and she started crying, we knew she wasn’t going to be driving anytime soon with the workers there, so that’s when we hitched a ride with the forklift to the swimming pool. I never know what to expect next.

On a lighter note, I’ve been learning to speak a few Soto words. My goal is to try to be able to speak conversational Soto before I leave, but it’s very difficult and I don’t think I will meet that goal.  I can now say Hi, How are you, how was you’re day, I’m fine, No, Thank You, good night and you too.  There are 7 languages that are spoken here but many people can understand a little of each but i'm just picking one to learn.  My friends here have been teaching me how to speak it and I also have been picking up some words when I work in the tree nursery because some of the guys speak it. 

Here a couple pictures with 

Here is a picture at Refilwe with a few of the kids on site.