Normally the deliveries are done over two days at the beginning of each month utlizing Pastor Amos and his van. But since Robin and I are here this month wanting t see all the projects in a short time and we have the use of our vehicle again, we elected to do all of the deliveries in one day. The day started at 8am by sorting the large bags and boxes of porridge into piles on the floor of the office so that each of the 13 projects will receive the needed numbr of packets for the month. Then the separated bags and boxes were loaded into Amos's van and my Subaru in the right order - first in, last out according to the delivery schedule for the day.
Porridge sorting (top)
Debbie stacking porridge in the store room (left)
By a little after 9am Amos, Onnie, Debbie, Robin and I were on the Road to Murchison community with a quick stop at Norwegian Church to pick up Marco. He is a volunteer from Holland working with the Ugu AIDS Alliance who wanted to come along to see what Two Tunics was all about. We made deliveries to our 5 creches in Murchison with the last stop being Sunnyside Creche(Nokukhanya in Zulu). This is the site of one fo the 3 creche classroom buildings provided by Two Tunics last year. It was gratifying to see the creche thriving and the faclity being so well used. It was also encouraging to see a sign posted announcing that the Department of Health was going to utilize the crech in April as a site to provide polio and measles immunizations to children in the community. It has been a vision of Two Tunics Community for Kids program from the beginning to see the creches become projects in the communities that other services could be built around. It was very rewarding to see this becoming a reality in Murchison. As we were leaving "Good by tin house" written with red pain on the door of the tin shack formerly used to house the creche.
Then it was off for deliveries to 6 more creches in Bhobhoyi, Bhomela and Gamalakhe communities. At the Lutheran Church Creche one of the facilitators from TREE was there doing a site visit to the creche.TREE is an organization that trains creche (pre-school) teachers on early childhood education. Two Tunics has sponsored several of our creche teachers to complete level one training. This includes onsite follow-up visits to see how the training is being implemented in the classroom. Again it was gratifying to see the educational material from the curriculum posted on the wall of the creche and the TREE staff person keeping the teachers accountable for using what they are learning to benefit the children.
Finishing up in Gamalakhe we said goodbye to Amos and headed down the coast about 30km and then inland to the final two delivery sites, Masakhane Community project and Khandandlovu Baptisit Church. At Khandandlovu iIt was great to see Pastor Eric's wife Bonisile and her 4 month old son (he looks just like his brothers). This is the site of another of the Two Tunics provideed classtooms. Unfortunately there had been a freak windstorm a couple weeks before that caused sever damage to a small area around the church. The portion of the roof of the church and the new creche classroom was damaged. We will have some discussions with the project next week to see how we can help with some of the repairs needed.
Having completed our deliveries it was back to the office in Port Shepstone, dropping Marco on the way. Delivery day was a full day, a good day, a blessed day.
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