RR team Update - Tuesday & Wednesday 7/15 & 16

The last two days we have been painting the interior and exterior of Black Mbulzi preschool. It is a new preschool that was finished about 6 months ago, except that it was never painted. It is a small preschool. There are 16 children enrolled. The teacher is the most creative and best teacher of all of the Methodist preschools I have seen so far which is why we chose to paint the preschool. She is a widow, her husband died of AIDs a few years ago. Teaching these children is what gives her life purpose.

The team worked hard but as usual had a lot of fun. We had 3 people from St. Paul’s come to help us paint plus Siphiwe on Tuesday. Wednesday, two of them returned. We would not have finished without their help. The team also found a bit of time to play with the preschoolers and also with some of the kids from the primary school. On Wednesday we introduced them to our traditional PB&J sandwiches and a cookie for lunch. The only disheartening part was that no one from the community came to help us, but that’s the way it is sometimes. The church steward and head of the parent’s committee, Elijah (pictured in blue in some of the pictures), just sat most of the time, but Kelly did get a smile out of him at the end of the first day and he did tell us how grateful he was when we left the second day.

Tuesday evening we were invited to a Braai for Rev. Nyameka’s birthday. It was at a beautiful home in Manzini. It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious and quite a change from the scenery and conditions we have been seeing for the last week and a half. Wednesday night Richard made us his famous enchilada casserole (Swazi style – no tortilla chips) and Kelly whipped up some more guacamole and we invited Rev. Nyameka for dinner so he could taste some “Mexican” food. I don’t know what he really thought about our very different type of dinner, but we (especially me) loved it.

Enjoy the pics!