Sawubona, Unjani? (Hello, how are you?)
Hope you are all keeping well! The remainder of my week was
pretty much the same apart from my weekend which I will tell you about now.
However before I do, I will explain briefly what my routine is during the week as
that is what a lot of people have been asking me recently:
- I get myself up, showered and ready for morning prayer which is at 8 am.
- Then I work in the office until 1:00 pm at which point I have lunch either with my colleague Thabile or in my house.
- At 2:30pm I go and see the toddlers in their cottage. They are aged between 0 and 6 years old. I play with them until 4:00/4:30 which is when they have their bath.
- At that point I go and join the older girls (aged 14 – 19) who are normally having their study time. A lot of the work they have to do is in English so they appreciate some help. The good thing is most of them are in the same class (here they call it grade) at school which means once one girl has been explained how to do something, she can teach the others (or the others copy her, which is what happens most of the time!).
- Once they have finished their work, they take their bath and have free time until dinner is ready which is normally between 6:30 pm and 7 pm. Each day one girl is responsible for preparing breakfast and dinner (at lunch they eat the food that has been prepared by the two dinner ladies in the main kitchen). This is one of the ways in which Saint Anthony’s teach the children life skills.
- After dinner they again get to do what they like work (which normally involved singing and dancing) if they have done their until bed time which is at 8:30 pm. That is when I leave and head back to my own little house.
- In the evenings I normally watch TV, work on my blog and have something to eat if I haven’t had dinner with the girls. That pretty much how my week goes however my last two weekends have been very different because there has always been some form of event. Therefore as of yet, I have no idea what a normally weekend at Saint Anthony’s looks like.
So moving onto this weekend...
Saturday 14th
September – Wedding!
So I was told on the night before about the wedding of Sis
Mabu’s (staff member) brother which was taking place at the church right next
to Saint Anthony’s at 9 am. So that morning I had a little lie in (until 8 am!)
and made sure I was ready for 9 am just in case we actually attended the
wedding. It was a good job that it did because it turned out that the whole of
Saint Anthony’s was in fact invited.
In terms of the ceremony, I didn't notice much of a
difference apart from the organ being replaced by two massive speakers and a
DJ! So instead of the bride walking into the church to the normal “Here comes
the bride” tune, she walked in on Boys II Men! However I am not sure if this is
what happens for all South African weddings...
Another difference I noticed was that the father doesn't hand his
daughter to her future husband until after the homily. This means during the
whole first half of the mass, the daughter sits with her father in one row
whilst the groom sits with his best man and groomsmen and the bridesmaids sit
together again on another row. The rest of the ceremony was a normal mass with
the signing of the papers after the final blessing. After this the newlyweds
left the church to some loud South African music played by the DJ followed by the
bridesmaids and groomsmen who danced their way out. The kids loved the music
and were all dancing around, even the toddlers! Again I am unsure if this was a
typical South African wedding but this is what I was part of on Saturday.
After this, the older children were invited to attend the
reception and they said I should come too. Normally there are two receptions.
The first one takes place at the bride’s house on the day of the wedding and
then the second one happens at the groom’s house the following day, which is
when the gifts are exchanged. However the bride’s home, I was told, is too far
away therefore they combined the party and were doing everything on the day of
the wedding at the groom’s home. Although I wasn’t too keen on the idea at
first, the girls reassured me that there were going to be some of the members
of staff there as well as all of the Zanzibar boys. Therefore I agreed to go
however the staff had already left in the car which meant myself and three of
the girls had to walk. This was the first time I walked through the township of
Blaauwbosch and it was nice to actually see a bit of the area in which I was
living. Here are a few pictures:
As you can see the area is very poor but they all have brick
houses. This is not the case if you drive just 5 mins in the direction of
Newcastle where a lot of the houses are still made of scrap metal, bits of
material and large stones, which are there to keep the roof in place... So it
only takes us 5 minutes to walk to where the reception was taking place and as
I expected most people were staring as it is very unusual to see someone white
in the middle of a township. However I had most of the Masakhane girls round me
so I felt safe, but this meant people were too frightened to come and talk to
me (this is what one of the men said to me when I arrived). This is something I
am finding hard to do here, how do you stay safe but still open enough so that
people are not scared to come and talk to you...? It is a balance which is hard
to find but I am sure it is something I will get the knack of over the next few
months.
To my surprise, the reception wasn’t very lively and slow
starting. We didn’t see the bride or groom and the music only arrived an hour
later (but the loud music I was hearing at 12:30 am that night showed me things
definitely livened up!). We only stayed a couple of hours and then headed back
to Saint Anthony’s.
Sunday 15th
September – 5:30 am start!
The title above is not a typo; I indeed had to get up on a
Sunday morning at 5:30 am! That day we headed to the Maria Ratschitz Mission
for mass as it has now been 50 years that people have been going on a
pilgrimage to this place. We drove most of the way however we did the last 2
miles by foot whilst praying the Rosary as a group. The children did ever so
well and managed to walk the whole way despite the hot sun, the dust from the
cars driving past and the early start! We were all very very dusty but glad to arrive,
that’s for sure!
We went to the chapel and prayed at the tomb of Bishop
Michael Pascal (founder of Saint Anthony’s Home). After getting out sugar
levels back up with some muffins and juice, we attended mass along with between
1 000 and 2 000 other people! Here are a few pictures:
Luckily enough we picked a spot in the shade and the strong
wind meant we were kept nice a cool for the whole duration of the mass, which
was approx. 4 hours. By the time we arrived back at Saint Anthony’s, it was 5
pm! It had been a very long day so I headed straight to bed (I was fast asleep
by 9 pm!)
As you can see I have only been in South Africa two weeks
today and I have already experienced and seen so so much. I feel extremely
lucky and blessed to have been able to be part of each event as most of these
only happen only once every few years. To me personally, the things are I am
seeing and experiencing proves to me that this is the right place for me right
now. For the next 8 months, here is where I am meant to be...
Until next time!
Isabel x
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