Better late than never

Those pieces which I wrote for the Parish magazine give an overall view of what I have been up to for the last 8 months. It is so difficult to write about the Enrichment Centre, firstly because we are unable to write specifically about individual children but more so because of how truly incredible place this is that it is too difficult to capture it into words.

Here are a couple of photos which are on my camera now but I will sort through the photos I have back at our flat for other photos which I am able to add






Helping in the Veggie Garden with Life Skills

 

In the Senior class Simon said swap a shoe with the person on your left

but some shoes were a tight fit...

Amelia in South Africa 5

Amelia in South Africa

I promised myself and others at the start of my year long adventure that I would keep my journal, write my blog regularly and write for the village magazine each month. Nearly 8 months in I can safely say that I am failing with those promises. Since I last wrote in February time has gone far too quickly, I didn’t even realise that I forgot to write in March until now.

We have been busy in the Enrichment Centre welcoming a new child into the family, a little girl with Downs Syndrome who gives the greatest hugs, making our faces out of clay with the pottery lady who donates her time to the children, going on our end of term excursions – bowling and homemade banana smoothies for Life Skills, mini golf for Seniors and a farmyard visit for Juniors, being thoroughly entertained by 1 of the Senior class boys dance to Gangman Style and having an easter egg hunt in the Enrichment Centre garden. And that was all just in the 3 weeks before the Easter holiday! The other 3 girls had family and friends visiting so this was my chance to get out of Polokwane on my own. I first went to Johannesburg and stayed with one of the teachers and his family for a few days in a very nice security estate built around a golf course! So had great fun driving around in a golf buggy with their 2 children, nothing like being taught how to drive by a 10 year old! From here I went to White River, just outside of Nelspruit where I had organised to spend some time volunteering at a HIV clinic to get experience for my uni interview for nursing. I was helping on a holiday camp which they run for teenagers where they make their own films. On this camp they were learning how to edit their films aswell. The camp was 4 days long, and after spending the first half working out which children could speak English and those which pretended to not understand you when you were giving instructions it was great seeing the end result of their films. Also helping on the course was Tori, another girl from the England who had volunteered at the clinic before and is now at uni and had come out before her family holiday. The teenagers tried to teach us how to say words in Siswati but the only one I can remember is ‘come back’ from when we taught them how to play wink murder! They also showed us guava and granadilla fruits which were growing on the grounds of the clinic. I have tried guava ice’s since getting here, and love the granadilla yoghurts but eating guavas fresh off the tree is a very different taste, having to bite through the very bitter and floury tasting skin takes away the enjoyment of the fruit. I also had a fun game of netball with 6 of the boys and another of the helpers, however every possible rule was ignored during the game, but that just made it even more fun. I also had the opportunity to sit in on some of the Doctors consultations in the mother and child unit and also spent a morning with the nurse which was a great experience. I was told by many different people that trying to travel over the Easter weekend is close to impossible here so I decided to stay longer in the accommodation at the clinic, which was a great decision. Tori was also staying until the Saturday so on the Friday Chris, the son of the lady who runs the accommodation, took us to see some amazing waterfalls and to God’s Window, a spectacular view point where you can see for miles and miles. After Tori left, Edith (the lady who ran the accommodation) and her family welcomed me into their family even more so nicely, it was lovely spending the weekend with them. On the Monday I headed back to Johannesburg where it was great to meet up with 2 of the other girls and hear all about their holidays before heading back to Polokwane where I had arranged to shadow a local GP. Another thing I love about this country is the lack of rules. The doctor let me take staples out and give a flu vaccine, only in Africa! It was a great opportunity to get more insight into nursing as well for my uni application as I spent time with the nurse too.

Even after just a couple of weeks off I was missing our children so much, I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to say good bye to them at the end of this year. It is great being back at the project, we have been back just over 2 weeks now and it is so great being back. We have stopped swimming this term as we are now heading into winter so instead in Juniors and Seniors we are cooking. We have had great fun making pizza’s (imagine 8 children ages 4 to 8 and flour everywhere!) and burgers which were so tasty. This term has also seen one of the boys in Life Skills get his new wheelchair which was fundraised for by the whole school. He had moved out of his ‘buggy’ chair into a chair which we are hoping is going to enable him to become more mobile by wheeling himself.

We are heading into winter now, and I’m not sure how I am going to cope at home next winter when we moan of being cold in 15 to 20 degrees! The last few evenings we have been all sitting wrapped up in our blankets in the evening as our flat is always even colder than outside, we were grateful for this in summer but not so much now!

Time is going too quickly, 2 weeks feel like they have gone quicker than 2 days and we have a mid term break in 2 weeks so for the few days Nicola and I are going camping in Sabie, which will be a lovely change of scenery from Polokwane.

Again I can’t express how grateful I am to all the kind people who donated money towards my fundraising to get here. Working with the children I am so lucky to work with every day truly makes me realize that I couldn’t wish to spend a year in a more amazing place.

Amelia 

Amelia in South Africa 4

Amelia in South Africa

Half way through today. I’m struggling to work out in my head if it has gone quickly or not. It does not seem that long ago that I was squeezing everything into my rucksack and saying goodbye to my friends and family but at the same time South Africa truly feels like home now. The Enrichment Centre and the school are our South African family, especially our incredible host Jess, we couldn’t wish for a more incredible Mum for the year, other than our own Mum’s.

Just want to get an apology out of the way for not writing since November. December was mid holiday and I planned to tell you all about the holiday and the end of term, and the beginning of the new term in January, but I only realised I forgot to write in January at the beginning of February.

The last week of term went by incredibly quickly. The week before we had our Christmas concert which I wrote about in November, but the end of term was time for the farewell of 2 of our girls in Life Skills as they had both turned 18 that year. The Life Skills class spent the week making the desert, a very tasty cheesecake, making butterfly centrepieces from napkins, cardboard and drinking straws, and laying the tables for the meal. On the evening both the girls looked amazing in their dresses and so many people came along to say farewell. 1 of the girls is now working at the old age home a few days a week where the Life Skills class do Job Sampling for one term every year and the other girl is making her gorgeous bracelets. Father Christmas also came to visit in the last week of term and brought all the children and staff a present each. All the children loved their gifts so much and us gaps loved ours too. We each got a festive headband, I had reindeer faces on springs on mine, Kim had Christmas Trees and Nicola and Daisy had Father Christmas’ face on theirs. But the biggest gift was seeing the smiles on the children’s faces when Father Christmas started walking around the Enrichment Centre garden during play time!

At the start of the holiday, after 2 very busy days in the Enrichment Centre preparing everything for the New Year, whilst the other 3 girls headed off to the dam with some of the teachers and their children I headed to Johannesburg with our host Jess. Jess is the most incredible and caring lady I have ever met. She only started at the Enrichment Centre in the last term and then became our host around a month later. But during a chance conversation on the first day I met her I mentioned how I was applying this year for children’s nursing at university. She then said she had a friend who was the ward sister of a neonatal ICU in Johannesburg and was good friends with two of the paediatric doctors and promised then to try and set up for me to spend a day at the hospital. So I started my holiday with Jess’s family in Johannesburg, with each member of her family having as kind a heart as Jess does herself. I then spent the most indescribably incredible 14 hour day shadowing Dr Richard from 7.30am until 9.30pm, including being ‘abandoned’ for 6 hours on the neonatal ICU. I have never loved being forgotten so much before. The nurses were all incredible and spent the whole time showing me things and talking to me whilst also allowing me to witness incredible nursing. I finished that day with the biggest smile on my face and with no doubt in my mind that children’s nursing is what I want to do.

A few days after I arrived in Jo’burg the girls joined me ready to start our holiday. We first travelled down to Durban from Jo’burg and spent just a night there before heading to our first proper stop. We spent 2 weeks travelling along the coast, staying in some beautiful places and at some amazing backpackers where we met people from all around the world. We had so much fun in our 2 weeks of travelling including watching the sunset from the roof of an abandoned monestry with everyone from the backpackers in Umzumbe, a 10km hike in 30 degree heat from Coffee Bay to Hole in the Wall with stunning views all along the way, having the most stressful day of my life trying to hire a car in Port Elizabeth because the BazBus had run out of seats (combination of being under 21, on a public holiday weekend and our passports being locked in the school safe, made it close to impossible but we managed it), sandboarding in Jeffries bay – seriously fun -  black water tubing in Tsitsikamma National Park, and being rescued by a police boat in Mossel Bay when we went sea kayaking with an instructor on a windy day, but ended up being blown a bit too far away from shore. After we had all been pulled into the police boat where we were all struggling to contain our laughter, the police told us we all looked like we could do with being rescued. We arrived in Cape Town on 23^rd December and it was amazing place to be for Christmas and New Year. It is a Christmas tradition that the South African volunteers meet up in Cape Town so it was so good seeing our friends again and hearing stories of all the projects and what everyone else had got up to on their holidays. We spent Christmas Day it self climbing up to a cave on the side of Table Mountain with the people from the backpackers whilst carrying the Christmas dinner, (I was carrying the turkey and stuffing, which gets quite heavy after about 40 minutes climb up a mountain) but when we got there it was amazing. We had the most spectacular view over Cape Town and when we arrived we were even looking down on clouds. But with good food, good friends, new friends, music and a view that I will never forget, it was the greatest way to spend Christmas when I couldn’t be with my family. Whilst in Cape Town we also went on a Cape Peninsula tour, where we saw the penguins on Boulders Beach and Cape Point – the most south western point of Africa, amongst other sites. We visited Robben Island, which was incredible to see, went on a red bus tour, spent many days down at the V&A Waterfront. We also went along to Table Mountain to climb it on one of the days but decided not to when they were discouraging people from climbing because of the wind.

When we arrived back at school everything was in full swing. We have 4 new children starting in the Junior class this year because 3 graduated to Seniors and 1 child had left just before we arrived as his family moved away. They stagger the starts of the children with so far 3 of the children having started with the next child starting on Monday. Already it has been amazing getting to know the children and seeing their improvements in the short time they have been at the Enrichment Centre. The dynamics of the Junior class have also changed so greatly which is having a really positive effect on the children who were already in the class. They have all loved getting to know their new friends and it is so great seeing the close friendships that the children make between themselves. Hearing a story of the new little girl, who cannot speak, getting excited as soon as her parents start dressing her in her school uniform confirms to us how much the children love coming to school, as much as we love it too. The 2 boys who have moved into the Life Skills class from Seniors have also improved greatly with the change of environment. Especially one boy, who before had a very quiet voice which he rarely used, has become so confident in speaking. It is so very difficult to summarise the work that the Enrichment Centre does for the children who attend, but it is truly an incredible centre which treats each child as the individual that they each are. So unique in their characters that we have grown to love and hold so closely in our hearts in the time that we have been here.

It is because of how much we love each of the children that on the 6^th February tragic news was even more heartbreaking. In the late afternoon we received a phone call saying that one of the children had died whilst playing in the garden at home. He didn’t smile when you asked him to smile, he would only smile if he was truly happy, and it was a magical smile when he did. I was in the class with him that week and have memories that I will always hold in my heart of Mpho’s smile. With just one being when I was in the sensory room with him crunching a plastic bag with ribbon in over his body the previous day, he had the biggest smile on his face I had seen. I will never forget him.

Being able to work with these children every day is an opportunity I will be forever grateful for. They all touch lives in their own individual ways and in this term already we have gone through some amazing highs but also a tragic low with them and I would like to say another thank you to anyone who donated money to my fundraising. The Enrichment Centre has a number of children on bursaries with the money from them coming from fundraising and donations. If anyone would like to make a donation to the Enrichment Centre, even small amounts go along way, please contact Sue on enrichmentcentre@mitchellhouse.co.za If anyone has anything they would like to ask me about I can be contacted on amelia.sykes@yahoo.co.uk

Thank you, Amelia

Amelia in South Africa 3

Amelia in South Africa

Time is going far too fast here and it is time again to write my piece for the magazine. This is my third piece and I am now over 12 weeks into my year here, a quarter of the way through, scary! It’s Sunday 25^th November, Sunday after a very busy week and the Sunday before an even busier last week of term before the summer / Christmas holiday, still seems very strange that those two words fit together! The whether is hot now, and we have been told that now it is going to stay hot, we have had some hot weeks where people tell us the same thing but then it gets cold again. By cold I mean about 24 C but this last week it has been reaching 35 C

This school term has gone incredibly quickly but has been amazing the whole way along. The last few weeks the Enrichment Centre has been in full swing preparing for their Christmas Market and Concert on Friday which went amazing well. We were all so proud of all the children who sang their songs beautifully and mostly all behaved well. The turnout was fantastic with every seat filled plus walls all being sat on! The Enrichment Centre Garden was festively decorated with the children’s Christmas art work all ‘press-sticked’ (and they think we are strange calling it blu-tack) to the walls,  baubles hanging from the trees, which us gaps melted while hanging them up, and a Christmas tree taking pride of place. The children’s costumes were all incredible, the Junior class had an African theme, Seniors theme was under the sea and Life Skills went around the world in 10 minutes with the children dressing up as our Queen (with carriage attached to a wheelchair), Barack Obama (complete with limo attached to another child’s wheel chair), the Statue of Liberty, South African cricketers and more! Today we also went along to the school Christmas Carol service, the children in the school choir all have incredible voices so was so special to sit and listen too.

Next week is going to be an even busier week, we have Father Christmas coming to visit either Monday or Tuesday, then 2 girls leaving party on Wednesday who have graduated from the Enrichment Centre and then the end of year assembly on Friday, with the Junior and Senior classes going on their class trips on Thursday too.

It is then time for our holiday where we are going from our home here in Polokwane to Johannesburg, from Johannesburg down to Durban and then west along the coast along to Cape Town stopping off in 9 places along the way on our two week journey and hopefully visiting some other projects and then spending 11 days in Cape Town over Christmas and New Year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year, Amelia

Amelia in South Africa 2

Amelia in South Africa – Month 2

2 months ago today I left for Heathrow airport ready for the flight to South Africa, I’m now sitting in the staffroom at Mitchell House. We have been made to feel so at home here and really involved in the school, even if we don’t know half the teachers names, they all know ours and everyone here says hello, how are you, with the conversation still carrying on as you are halfway down the corridor.

In my piece for the magazine last month I mentioned how we had come at the end of term and we were heading off to Kruger National Park and Swaziland in the holiday. Kruger was incredible, we saw so many animals in just the 2 days which we spent there and enjoyed sleeping in the ‘log cabins’ at a back packers just outside of Kruger which turned out to be garden sheds with bunk beds and curtains! We then headed down to Swaziland in our hire car where we spent a week visiting girls in Big Bend at a Project Trust project there. As we were driving down through Swaziland the temperature was 38^oC and we felt like we were about to melt. Swaziland was incredible. The project is based at Sisekelo High School but the girls drive out to 3 different projects. A pre-school, with over 60 children, which they run themselves with the help of 1 local lady who acts as translator, but can only be in 1 of the 2 classes at any time. Kate and Ashley also work at another pre-school where there is more staff but we did not visit this project whilst we were there. We did also visit their soup kitchen project which they use the leftover food from the hostel which they live in to make a soup twice a week. Any and all food goes into this soup, it doesn’t taste good but for some children it is a life line. These children are a mixture of children who live in an orphanage with Aunty Velma and children who walk from other villages. I can’t put into words the emotions we all felt as we watched these children singing whilst we were setting up the soup and bread. Their appearances can be likened to the children that you see on the adverts on TV for sponsorship but their smiles and happiness is far from it. Some of the children wore ripped clothing, with others just wearing shorts but after eating soup they played like any other child in the world with some of the most amazing smiles. There were also 2 children about the age of 5 or 6 who had little siblings strapped to their backs with towels, with one child who looked about 6 months but we were told was nearly 2 crying whilst the others were singing. Aunty Velma then gave her a small piece of bread and the crying stopped instantly. The child was crying because she was hungry, but so much hungrier than the hunger we complain of as we are waiting for a meal. Driving away from the soup kitchen we all had such a different perspective on so many things and had seen a situation which we will never forget.

When we returned to Mitchell House after the holidays we quickly got into the swing of things. I felt that it was only after the holidays I have properly settled into the work in the classes, last magazine I promised more information about each of the classes but I have run out of time so next month I promise. I still haven’t sorted out getting pictures onto the computer so I promise next month I will have photos to share.

The weather is so unexpected at the moment. One day will be in the 30’s the next it will drop to low 20’s. I’m sure even low 20’s sounds hot compared to the weather in England but here it feels cold. We have also experienced some of the most amazing thunder storms with thunder incredibly loud and lightning which fills the whole sky. That’s something I was not expecting in South Arica!

Thank you again to anybody who donated to my fundraising, Amelia

Amelia in South Africa 1

Amelia in South Africa

I left home on 30^th August ready to start my year in South Africa at Mitchell House Enrichment Centre. Many people in the village supported me by coming to my events and also making donations towards my fundraising, with many people supporting me by putting money in the hat at the Jubilee celebrations in the village hall in June. These donations helped me to raise £5,100 for the charity Project Trust.

I am here with 3 other Project Trust volunteers at Mitchell House with three of us working in the Enrichment Centre which provides an education to children with mental and physical disabilities. The other volunteer is in the Grade 00 class which is 4 and 5 years olds in mainstream education.

All the children in the Enrichment Centre are amazing, they all suffer from varying disabilities but they all are so positive. In the Enrichment Centre we help the children with the things that they struggle to do themselves and give them support where they need the extra support. I have only been at Mitchell House for just over 2 weeks (we spent a few days in Johannesburg with the Project Trust South Africa rep learning last minute things) and am still getting used to how everything works but I am hoping to do a piece each month for the magazine and next month will have more information about Mitchell House once we have settled in fully.

We have arrived at the end of term with the last day of term being on Thursday 20^th September. We then get a 2 week holiday where we are going to visit the Kruger National Park and then travel down to Swaziland and spend 4 days at another Project Trust project there. We will then return to Polokwane for a few days before the start of the new term on 7^th October.

South Africa is an incredible country, all the people that we have met both in and outside of working at Mitchell House have been incredibly welcoming. The children in the main stream school have also been really welcoming and on our first few days at aftercare (the school day is 7.30 to 12.30 and then we spend from 1.30 to 5.00 at aftercare) the children drew us lots of pictures which we have stuck on the wall of our flat in a school hostel elsewhere in Polokwane. The weather has been very irregular, some days bitterly cold and others such as today incredibly hot. Today it is about 30^oC and we have been told from now on it is just going to get hotter.

Hopefully by next month I will have sorted out getting my photos onto the computer and I will be able to share some photos with you.

Thank you again to anybody who donated towards my fundraising, Amelia Sykes

So I'm not that great at blogging...

In 1 week we will be able to say that we arrived 8 months ago, and this is my first blog post from South Africa! I have been more reliable with writing for the village newsletter at home with 5 updates in 8 months, so I'll start by posting them and then fill in the blanks of what I forget to say in them...