Visit to a South African School

Today has been so amazing, we all drove to the local school which was about half hour drive away. We took some food with us from the reserve to give to them, it was basically the same as what we have been having for dinner each night. On the drive there we saw some giraffe up close, warthogs, zebra, eland and blesbok - 2 other types of antelope. I managed to get a pretty decent picture of the giraffe as well considering we were moving, and the gravel road was really bumpy. As we approached the school, we drove through the local village and I have to say it made realisation set in a bit when you realise that their homes have just sort of been built with odd bits of material that they can find, and you see people having to walk just to get water; it makes you feel really grateful for what you have.

When we pulled up to the school the children were so excited to see us, they came running out of their classrooms and waved like crazy! They varied in age; I would say probably ranging from about 5 to early teens. We started off by dishing-up the food for them; you could tell how grateful they all were. Whilst they were lining up to receive the food and we were lining up to take it in turns giving them the food, the kids just wanted to play with us. They loved doing hand clapping games such as 'double, double, this, that', 'rock, paper, scissors' as well as just high-fiving or fist pumping you. To be quite truthful, I could not stop smiling and my cheeks actually hurt by the time they all got their food; it was such an experience to visit these children and be welcomed into their school.

After every child and teacher had been served the food, all the volunteers went outside, and we were just swamped by the children. Each child came up and basically just hugged and picked one of us. The girl that came up to me was around 6 and called Iliza (not entirely sure if that is how it was spelt) she was so friendly; she straight away took me over to the tyre swing and asked me to push her, although her English was not very good, she knew the words that she wanted such as swing, push, music, games, and shoulders. You may be wondering why she said shoulders but basically all the kids loved to be put on our shoulders and have races; this should have been a struggle but all the kids were so scarily light that it was easy even with my bad back. Eventually though, the older kids thought it would be good to show us some of the traditional songs which was quite fascinating, I did get a video but due to child protection laws I am not allowed to post it on social media although I can always show you when I see you if you are interested. Afterwards the children wanted to play with our phones after they saw us using them to film and with the teacher's permission, they were allowed so Iliza took loads of selfies of us before looking through my music and dancing. It was such an endearing and eye-opening experience, honestly; I cannot really do it justice. When it was time to go, they did not want to say goodbye, or let us go although after some time Iliza did release me and give me a hug goodbye.

They all looked so upset as we left.

Once we got back, we had lunch; I was absolutely starving as was everyone else, we had certainly worked up an appetite. Today's lunch was mac 'n' cheese with some salad, it was absolutely divine! I ate till I was ready to burst.

After lunch it was time to get back to work, although this afternoon's session was not very difficult. We all got in the safari truck and taken into the game reserve as we would have to be doing a game count today. Today we would be counting impalas' which are a type of antelope, they are light brown in colour and have a black stripe down their back. Only the male impala's have antlers, so this is the way to tell whether they are male or female. We were out for around 90 minutes and counted 267 impala's although this is an estimate as a) we cannot cover all 6000 hectares of the reserve and b) they move and hide behind bushes so we cannot guarantee we have not double counted or not counted some at all; apparently this is done around once a week per species in the reserve, so they do end up with an average. We also managed to see elephants, mongoose, zebra, springbok, blesbok, wildebeest and waterbuck whilst out so that was pretty amazing.

We finished work around 4.30 today so it gave us a bit of free time so me and Charlotte decided to take a trip over to the petting farm on the reserve. Whilst there we saw geese, goslings, ponies, rabbits, a parrot, loads of different birds and marmosets; the parrot kept following us around it's cage and even said hello to us which was pretty cool.

Spending time at the farm saw us through till dinner time which was a South African style BBQ! It was delicious, there were 2 different types of meat, one was definitely beef whilst the other looked a bit like crab although don't hold me to that. There was also some mash and salad to go with it, the mash was so creamy and then the best part was we got dessert! It was chocolate cake with ice-cream, and it was just so nice, all light and fluffy! I could easily have gone back up for seconds but knowing what we are like, they dished the dessert up for us and it was only one per person.

I think it is going to be an early night for me today though as considering I only have 1 week left at the reserve, tomorrow morning they want me to meet them at 5am for a dawn game reserve drive along with the people who are leaving this weekend. I am going to disappear now as I need to pack before I go to sleep as we are going to go to Plettenburg Bay for the weekend so that should be awesome as we are doing a few activities there as well.