Project Limpopo: Day 1-3

Hello from South Africa!

Well its day 3 of Project Limpopo and this is the first time I’ve been able to get online to update the blog. We don’t have Internet at the hotel so these updates might be a bit more intermittent that originally thought.

Day 1: I’ll start from the beginning then…The journey over was fine. We all boarded a late night flight to Paris and then to Johannesburg landing only an hour late at 11am on Sunday morning. Only one bag went missing but luckily it has been delivered today. It got stuck in Paris! After picking up the Bakkies at the airport, we set off for Tzaneen. It was raining when we landed in Jo’berg (felt very like England) and it was one storm after another on the road trip to Tzaneen. The students were all travelling in a luxurious coach and from what I’ve heard; most of them were fast asleep. We arrived about 5hrs later after a few pit stops on route. The final part of the journey was through a stunning mountain range, twisting and turning through the valley densely laden with very very dark rain clouds…luckily they didn’t break whilst we were driving through them. 

On arriving in Tzaneen we were greeted by the excellent staff at Hotel@Tzaneen. The place is practically brand new and the rooms are great. 3 of us share a 2 bed apartment with a lounge/diner/kitchen and bathroom. I’ve even got a double bed! Once the students arrived (they got lost en route for about an hr!) and all into their apartments we settled down for the night, ready for our first visit to site the following day.

Day 2: We had a reasonably lazy start today with a 10am meet to leave for site. It was a well-needed rest after about 24hrs constant travelling! The journey to site is very interesting, its one straight road south of Tzaneen, going through industrial areas, banana and mango plantations, rural villages, many potholes, all surrounded by glorious mountains that stretch further than the eye can see. It’s a much greener place than Jouberton, partly due to the amount of rain they’ve had lately. The soil is really rich and great for growing produce so there are so many farms growing bananas, mangoes, avocados and some purple fruit which we’ve yet to discover the name of! There are many stalls littered along the side of the road selling the fruit, we haven’t plucked up the courage to stop and buy some yet, however we have tasted the mangoes and they’re soooo good! Think I’m going to become addicted to them!

The journey goes along tarmac roads, to roads with many potholes, to then dirt roads and then just dirt tracks leading to the site. It takes about 45mins in the Bakkie and so far we’ve come across cows in the middle of the road and monkeys! The monkeys usually run away very fast however the cows like to take the time and can be quite stubborn! A beep on the horn usually gets them moving though!

First impressions of site: On coming into the village of Calais (pronounced Cal- leece – a bit like the singer) you cross a bridge over a river where locals are either fishing or washing their clothes. We round a corner past the secondary school and the new village clinic; a left turning at the village graveyard brings us onto site. The site seemed a lot smaller than we imaged. However, we realised half of it was covered in maize plants so we couldn’t see the boundaries clearly. The tree in the centre seemed a lot bigger. There is also a significant slope, which we didn’t know was there when the plans were drawn up! Luckily it has been leveled now but it caused a few design changes. Two long drops have been dug to create the site toilets, at first they were just holes - we thought we’d have to become pros in swatting! But today the toilet units arrived so it’s slightly better. A shed has also been constructed next to our night watchman’s hut to store our materials and tools. It all dawned on us how much of a task we have on our hands and there is so much work to do. I just try to keep remembering that we’re ahead of Jouberton at the moment so we’ll definitely get it all done! We also got a chance to visit the children that will be using the school once it is built. They’re so cute and they really need the facility. Currently they borrow the local Catholic Church during the week that is dark, hot and there’s only enough room for about 20 of the 60 children who attend the school. They have significant amount of play equipment but its rusting and needs replacing. The kitchen is located outdoors, under a tree – literally just a pot over a fire. The school will really benefit these children and you can really see how the money everyone has donated will help. Day 2 ended with a bit of setting out of the toilet block on site, the journey home and then a bite to eat at the local steak house – their specialty is monkey gland sauce – no one would actually say if it made out of monkey glands or not, but supposedly it tastes nice!

Day 3: We had a much earlier start today at 8am, we’re trying to break the students in slowly, by next week we’ll be aiming to get on site for 7:30am – so a 6:30am start! On our journey to site we got a little lost – well not a little, quite a lot and managed to end up near some game reserves adding an extra hr onto our journey, combine that with an almost empty fuel tank,  it was a little worrying but luckily we spotted a petrol station, filled up and got some directions and eventually got to site.

Today was to be a whole PR day on site as Education Africa was coming down from Jo’berg and a special lunch was put on for the locals and us. We were officially welcomed to South Africa by EA and the locals accepted us into their community. On a quick note, for us to be allowed to work on the site in the village, our contractor had to go visit the Chief of the local tribe. To allow us to work on the site we had to pay the Chief a goat! Love it! 

 

After the speeches, we had a great lunch and got to play with the local children, it is amazing how much fun digital cameras, watercolours and paper and a ball can be. It was so much fun and a great experience for everyone. They were really sad when we said we had to go but the heat had begun to get to us all – at 37degrees today it was almost unbearable out of the shade. A quick detour to Cashbuild on our way back to Tzaneen to pick up the tools needed to start digging the toilet block tomorrow and then a chilled our evening in front of the TV.

Just to fill you in too…progress on the ground works is moving fast, today they had leveled all of the different rooms and digging commences tomorrow. The contractor is even working over the weekend to get it done. Hopefully the concrete will be laid early next week (fingers crossed it might also be free – negotiations are currently in progress) and then the rest of the build can properly begin. A lot of materials have been ordered and final quantifying and costing are happening tomorrow and Thursday.

Right I’m going to sign off now, as this is already an epic entry! Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully will update you again in a couple of days.

Helen x