It was great over the past 2 weeks to visit the schools we are working with again, to give receipts for the school fees paid for the 2nd term and to catch up on their situations, plans and how we can get involved. We always receive such a warm welcome at all the schools and we spent some time chatting over projects that we may be able to assist them with.
St Charles Primary School had repaired part of the classroom roof which had blown off last time we visited and have nearly finished rebuilding the toilet blocks. They are also in the process of erecting a fence around the school for security and so that they can start a roadrunner chicken project to bring funds into the school, this is something we hope as a Trust to be able to help with. We told them about Busbridge Junior School in the UK wanting to link up with them and they are equally excited about the opportunity this could bring both schools. They arranged a special assembly 2 days later to tell the children about the link up and so that the letters written by the children of Busbridge Junior School could be handed out to all their children. The children were very excited to get the letters and all clapped together as a way of saying thank you. They will be writing back soon and we can’t wait to send the letters back to the UK. We spent a lovely couple of hours enjoying part of their culture week, all schools in Zimbabwe take part. The children showed us some traditional dancing, drumming and some local methods of using plants to produce such things as soap, soup, medicines and other surprising things.
Wozhele Primary, Sanyati Primary and St Charles Secondary are also interested in starting their own projects and we are looking at how we may be able to help them too.
Back home our goat finally gave birth to a kid, we hoped that maybe she was carrying two kids but only one emerged but it’s healthy and up to mischief already. The youth group at Godalming Baptist Church has been running a ‘name the goat’ fundraising event and we look forward to picking a winning name. A baby pigeon is also making itself known with its constant squawking.
The incubator decided to overheat one night and then we had no electricity for a few days, the back- up system helped but because of not enough sun during those days, the battery eventually went flat. These two things happening together sadly caused some loss of eggs, we will only find out over the next few weeks exactly what damage has been done as things hopefully start to hatch.
We had a few bricks left over from when our goat house was built, we have built a braai stand out of them and had our first chicken & quail braai (very nice it was too!). Will be nice to have somewhere to entertain people and to relax after a long day.