Day 4 – The Court is Completed

The usual routine took place this morning…woke up, breakfast, and out we went to finish the final bits of the basketball/netball court.  All of the painting had been done except for the line markings which was the technical part.  It took quite a while to get the measurements right but we managed to mark everything out ready for the final lines to be painted.  Luckily, thanks to Fleet we had a proper machine that meant we didn’t have to paint he lines by hand.   Just as we were about to start painting Martin St Quinton one of the clubs owners and Trustee of The Fold turned up to lend a hand and see how we had been getting on.  

After a couple of hours we managed to get the job done and it looked impressive even if we do say so ourselves.  Everyone took a moment to bask in the glory of what we had achieved over the last few days.  We were excited for the children to have a look and for them to play on it, but we had to wait for it to dry properly first.  While we were waiting we decided to decorate the wall next to the court with the children’s hand prints.  The kids absolutely loved doing this and it was nice for them to be able to add their lasting contribution to the project.

Day 3 – An Eye Opener at the Soup Kitchen

Another early start, we were straight out on to the court and got on with the painting.  We managed to finish the main bulk of the court and with some of the remaining paint we decided to paint around the edges of the court as well.

After lunch we were then taken to the local township, where we got to help at a soup kitchen that takes place once a week.  We helped hand out milk and peanut butter and jam sandwiches to over 300 children.  We were told that normally there can be up to 800 children that come for food, which may be the only time during the week that they get to eat a proper meal, but due to it being school holidays lots of the children go to neighboring towns to visit family.

Before the children got their food, they all sang songs and said a prayer.  Chante and Cerys took the job of giving out sandwiches, Helen and Bryony were in charge of the milk, and Cat and Owain were pouring milk into bottles that the children had brought with them whilst the others played ball games with the children.  We gave out some Gloucester Rugby balls, which they all loved and showed some good skills.

This was an experience we wont be forgetting for a while.  It made us all realise how lucky we are and were grateful for the opportunity to help out. All of the children had big smiles despite the fact that they may have been hungry and may have to wait another week before they eat properly again. 

On the way back to the orphanage we spotted some giraffes on the side of the road. 

 

Team Building Day

On Friday 20th June we arrived at Rendcomb College where we had an interesting meeting learning new facts about South Africa! We also played a series of games to get to know each other. Then we went outside to do various team building challenges such as: trying to untangle ourselves to warm ourselves up!

It was clear from our warm up activities that we divided into two main groups of boys as girls, so in our main activities the rule was that boys don’t speak to boys and girls don’t speak to girls which allowed us to bond more as a team!

In the final activity, we used all our team building skills to safely structure a bridge across a river! most of our team made it  across except Cerys! Throughout the day we each experienced being the leader of the team ! Overall it was a really fun day and we all bonded well with each other.

South Africa here we come!!