Mondays are the most hated day of the week, because they mark the end of the weekend, and the beginning of a new work week. This Monday, however, was a beautiful Monday. I woke up at 8am in Obz at a friend's place, only a few towns over from Rondebosch. It was warm and sunny weather so we had breakfast outside, in the garden- coffee with scrambled eggs and some toast and a glass of orange juice.
At about 9:30 I walked to the main road and caught a taxi (minibus taxi) for R6 to Mowbray bus station, where I met Nombulelo and we boarded an NY108 bus together to 108- the township called Gugulethu. We stopped by her house where her brother and his family live, and picked up some materials to take to the school. We also picked up Nombulelo's nephew, Sibusizo, who is two years old, and we were babysitting this morning. We walked up and across the street to Intshinga Primary School at around 11 am, just as the children were having their first short break. Today was hygiene day, and so I helped set up the spare classroom that we use, to look like a health center. I arranged the desks in a circle and in the center, I put out all the health and hygiene materials that we had brought, things like combs, hairbrushes, toothbrushes (to be given to students to take home), cotton swabs, nail clippers, bandages, etc. Some students that are members of the Children's Movement also helped prepare, and set aside two washbins of soap and water for the children to wash their hands in. Multiple classes of students filed in and out, and I along with some of the student members were assigned six children each. We had to check if their nails needed clipping, cleaned the dirt out from under their nails, bandaged up any cuts on their arms and legs, and brushed their hair. Nombulelo and another student member stood by the washbins and helped the children wash their hands. We were going to have a yoga session, but the students forgot to bring a change of clothes, so yoga was cancelled for this week, and postponed until next week.
After we cleaned up the materials and dropped Sibusizo back at home, Nombulelo saw me to a taxi, which cost me R10 to get back to Mowbray. The taxi was headed in a different direction, so they stopped on the side of the highway, and continued onward, and I had to walk the rest of the way home- up the exit ramp, and through Mowbray, Rosebank and then to Rondebosch. About a 15-20 minute walk, I arrived home around 4:00, and found out we had a house meeting at 6:30. I put in some laundry, made some chai, and had a sandwich. (I had forgotten to bring my lunch so I was starving!) I made a quick run to Pick 'N' Pay for ingredients to make dinner. I relaxed for a little while until about 6:00 when I had to walk over to the "big house," on Loch Road, a 30 minute walk, when you cut through Rondebosch Commons. At the house meeting, we went over things that needed to be accomplished before leaving, such as taking inventory and making sure all beds, blankets, towels, cups, plates, and spoons and forks are accounted for. It's times like these when I am so happy that I don't live in the big house, because although we need to take inventory as well, we are in a much smaller, flat with much fewer people.
The house meeting only took about 30 minutes, but because it took a while for everyone to convene in the common room of their own house in a timely fashion, I got home around 7:00. Greta drove us home, and then I made dinner for Becky and I, pizzas with green peppers and onions. Yum! Becky did the dishes, and I wrote my blog entry reflecting on the events of the past weekend. Girl talk with Greta, until it was way passed bedtime. It was a good monday.
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