Finally, a finished object to show.
This is item number 6 for 25 Things for Charity as always it is going to Hottentots Holland Hospital, I’ve got three items to hand over this month.
Today was another really hard day at work. I took the students to see Monkey Town. I had to pay for the staff to enter, so I sent two of them in and then sat down to knit. This was the progress
It’s a little hat to match the cardigan. This yarn is Lorna’s Laces and was donated to me to use for charity. After Monkey Town we went to a nature reserve for lunch, there were tortoises and bontebok (antelope) there. The bontebok had a baby with them and was very cute. Currently one of our students has his parents visiting and they went nuts with the video camera.
I suspect that the mother may be a knitter, she saw me with the dpns and smiled, nodded and patted her foot (she speaks zero English, just Spanish) I said no and patted my head. That was as far as we got, and her son doesn’t have enough English (yet) to translate.
Sometimes this country breaks your heart. Our campus has a farm, and we have farm workers and cleaners who live on site. I tutor one of the daughters of the farm workers in English. She started with me last year, for a variety of reasons she wasn’t in school, but wanted to continue with her education so I took her on. This year she is back at school and came to see me and asked if she could come and get some help again – well who am I to stand in the way of someone wanting an education…
We had our first session today: A month of school and she has 4 pages of work to show in her English book. I asked her if this was all the work she’d done. She indicated that it was. I then asked what they did in class, her response?
“Sometimes the teacher doesn’t come to class, so we do our homework.”
I helped her with her homework, and analysed the literature she was studying and sent her on her way, on her way out the door she turns to me and says,
“Do you have any old takkies (South African for sports shoes)?”
She wants to play netball and her shoes have split up the sides. I found out her shoe size and I’m going to see what I can do. On a campus this size we should be able to find a pair of shoes to fit a school girl…
I’m singing with a small group on Friday, so we’ve been practising pretty intensely. They are all rather talented so it should sound good. I’m going to have to cut back on the amount of performing I do this year though, I’m just getting too tired and run down.