Four weeks teaching and playing with art with AIDS orphans outside of Jo’burg

This evening we had ten teens over for dinner. With the help of one of the marvelous housemothers, Mama Angie, we served a full South African dinner.

Robyn approached Mama Angie this week about cooking with some of the teens who wanted to learn. She was very enthusiastic, and so on Thursday morning we set out to buy food for a dinner party of ten. We bought enough stewing meat to feed a small army.

It was an absolute blast. The cooking class, dinner and post dinner clean up were accompanied by “The 50 best Motown Songs (as voted by South Africans)”. A collection of CDs that Robyn and I picked up yesterday while grocery shopping. It was money very well spent!

Most of the children said that they had never heard of Motown. And we said “WHAAAAT?!”.

But, have no fear, by the end of the night we had everyone dancing and singing along to “ABC” by the Jackson 5. One boy didn’t stop grooving all evening.

We set out to do this evening because we knew that a lot of teens wanted (and needed) to learn more about cooking. We also wanted a really informal setting to get to know some of them better. It was a very successful evening on the whole and we will definitely do it again.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve replaced some of the pictures in the blog banner with photos of Sparrow.
As we take more, we’ll change it up.

We’ve just finished baking and decorating two cakes for today’s set of birthdays. We’ve taken on the mission of a former volunteer, and are baking cakes for all the birthdays during the time we are here. So far we’ve delivered three. This afternoon we deliver two more, and in the next two weeks we have seven more birthdays.

The photo below is of the first cake we baked. It was Grace’s 16th Birthday so we baked her a chocolate cake. A group from the US had visited that day, and the girls in the cluster had been given matching Hannah Montana hot pink bathrobes.

” If you don’t be quiet and be nice to the teacha she isn’t going to take you to Canada” said the grade one teacher as she left the room. ” Yes, teacha” the fifty youngsters cried after her. I sat down at the teacher’s desk to look over some addition problems with a sweet, but very behind girl, while I tried to keep my eye on the 49 other students in the room. Within moments complete pandemonium had broken out and I was forced to stand up tall and yell at the top of my lungs “Sit down, do your work and BE QUIET.”

This became a loop, count to five on my hands to demonstrate to a child, get up and yell, count to six on my hands, get up and yell, comfort a crying child and discipline the person who hit, stole from or was rude to him or her, count to seven on my hands. It was definitely an interesting experience.

An hour and a half later, Robyn came running into the room with her own story to tell. ” Isn’t it break yet? I’ve been alone, with over fifty third graders, all of this time. And, they are a rowdy bunch.They were done their assignment after twenty minutes and my teacher never came back! I have no voice left from all of the yelling I had to do.”

We were exhausted.

NOTICE: Tongue in cheek.

It’s been a challenging adventure learning the many names of the children here at Sparrow. Some, are simple- such as, Annie, Wendy, Julia and Abigail- or so they look on paper. However, we’ve come to learn that many of the pronunciations are just not sounds we use in the English language. However, Robyn recently mixed up one of the girl’s here Busi, for Julia for about a week, before realizing she’d mixed up the pronunciations all over again and it was in fact Busi. Many of the pronunciations are just not sounds we use in the English language!

We have a boy here named ” Psycho-Fatso”, a very popular name it would seem. You can take a moment to digest that one. Correctly spelled it’s: Tshegofaso.
When we were walking into church with another boy on Sunday morning, we met a boy who introduced himself as “Booshee”. After a few tries to get what we thought was the correct pronunciation , he clarified saying, ” it’s like, B-U-H-L-E”. Robyn and I could only look at each other sympathetically while the rest of the kids burst into giggles.

We were provided with a “cluster-list”, which is a list of all the names of all the children, according to the cluster they live in ( cluster. n. a group of three or four igloo shaped buildings that are glued together with archways that serve as the houses for everyone.) This list especially comes in handy when trying to distinguish between “Thuli Big” and “Thuli Small”.

We really can’t complain though, as trying to memorize the myriad names of the beautiful children of Sparrow is a wonderful problem to have.

by Robyn

Last Wednesday afternoon Kaili unfortunately fell ill, but to no-parents-worry I became Nurse Robyn for a couple days and nursed her back to health by Friday. Fortunately by God’s grace and all that Vitamin C Imbi Kinnon thought to pack for us, I didn’t catch the bug myself.
We have no shame when it comes to the daily realities of this trip, so here’s a photo of Kaili in her sick bed last week:

5 hours in.

First stop: The Howitts

The many generous donations that covered the Howitt's dining room table

Some, packed into one of three suitcases crammed with art supplies.

We don't travel light (not when we are taking three suitcases of art supplies accross the world.)

Here's hoping our bags are resting safely in the belly of that plane.

Next stop: A friend’s living room in Johannesburg

After making it accross the world.

Next stop: SPARROW ART ROOM. After almost two weeks in transit.

Unpacking in a disorganized art room.

And, finally, an art room ready to be used.

Clean, though probably not for long.

It’s a beautiful, clear sunny Sunday afternoon here in Roodeport. We’re just back from church. We checked out the church that many of the teenagers go to on Sundays, Rhema Bible Church. We went to the adult service, while all the teens were at a smoke and light show teen service next door.
Ours packed out, in what I am guessing is a 1200 person auditorium, and our service was the second of four.

We’re both pretty exhausted after a week of running around, checking out different volunteer opportunities here. I got very sick mid-week and am finally eating normally again. Robyn and I are currently helping out in the nursery early in the morning, then teaching some reading at the neighborhood school, then heading over to the hospice for the afternoon to play with the sick kids and hang out with the adult patients, before running up to the homework room to tutor during the after school homework time. Robyn has really connected with the children in the hospice, taking them for afternoon walks, giving them drawing supplies and reading to them. I will get involved in her work with them now that I am better.

We finally finished re-organizing/unpacking the art room yesterday afternoon. It was a pretty epic job as we found ourselves with a room packed with a multitude of different things, many of them NOT relating to art in any way or fashion, such as: engine cleaner, tick cream for pets, among many other things. This afternoon I will join one of the adult residents here who is an artist in a group class.

The room has really come together. I’m working on posters for the walls relating to color theory, and the elements and principles of design. Now that the room is actually usable again we will start running evening and Saturday classes.

We made a trip yesterday to a PNA which is where we will be buying a lot of our art supplies. It was fascinating to see the pricing. Certain things that would be closer to $20 in Canada were around $10, and others, like newsprint, which is usually around $4 for a huge pad, was closer to $15.

We will post some pictures later today.