My work

Now for all of you who thought “Hey, he’s just doing vacation there!”- No!, I am not. All previous activities took place in the first 2-3 weeks after my arrival and happened on the weekend and/or after working time. Since my normal working day is not so fascinating and picturesque for the most of you, I have been deriving you from that part of my stay. Every Monday we have our Monday meeting with Nikki, Jan and myself. Jörg has been joining us for a short time now and with him our Monday became the Nangu Thina day, which is intended to be exclusively for needs concerning Nangu Thina e.V. For this weekend we had to copy, punch and staple and copy, punch and staple many training booklets for the introduction course, in which future scout leaders are developed. In addition we had to prepare everything for the weekend kitchen utensils, plates, cutlery, every material needed, as for example three diverse colored scarves each for a group of eight, name tags and and and. Some of those things we had to get out of the big containers (some of them still have labels form the GDR on them) that are secured with huge locks. Along the way we attended the DESD conference “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development”. The three main topics were water, waste and greening. Needless to say, that the Scouts were represented on all three topics. My main project is still street soccer and bears the beautiful name Pumelela – “we want to Succeed!” More on that as soon as I have the time. The remaining pictures are from God’s window, Blyde River Canyon and from the introduction course on the school ground in Manzini.

The Sudwala Caves

Together with the other volunteers Jan Ekkert, Jan Evers and Simon Evers, the three soccer trainers from the “Yes”-project Sascha, Silvia and Annke, and Sifiso a South African scout and good friend of Jan Evers and the other three trainers, we went into the oldest known caves of the world. On our very own Journey to the Center of the Earth we had to wade through waist-deep water with a ducked back, squeeze ourselves through small openings, endure a continual strength-exhausting climb going up and down and adopting a completely new definition of being dirty. The crystal chamber at the end of our journey was my personal highlight and our deepest achieved position that evening. For nearly half an hour we turned out any kind of light and kept our mouth shut, which gave Jan Ekkert the opportunity to take a nap in the dark depths of the Sudwala Caves. Back again at the surface of the earth both Jans and my humble self took a shower.

BP Camp

On my very first weekend, after five days of being exposed to an enormous amount of information and impressions, each of the five scout districts here in Mpumalanga had their annual BP Camp. It is basically a weekend, from Friday to Sunday, for scouts where they go camping, do activities and talk about Lord Baden-Powell the Founder of the World Scout Movement. At first Jan Evers and I went to the Nkomazi district where we spend the night in a tent. The camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and within that camping ground the bathroom facilities and a pool were surrounded by walls with broken glass on top, which is quite bizarre when you are first confronted with so many walls and fences that are there only for you to feel safe. The next day we went to the East district for a short visit and it was there, where I saw the biggest bamboo “tree” in my life. The third district on our way was Nsikazi at a place called Eco Link (www.ecolink.co.za), where I met a really interesting old Lady. Sue Hart the founder Eco Link. She lived here in Mpumalanga during the apartheid time and fought the apartheid regime from the beginning. Back in the days she gave black people a place to live and proper education and over the years she was collecting poems from students, teachers and friends and the collection of all those poems she called “Cries of the Heart”. At the end of my meeting with Sue she gave Muzi (a Rover, scouts aged between 16-25yrs), Julia and Lucy (two scout leaders) and me a copy of that book and more books on environment and planting. After that I met up with Muzi, who is going to Germany at the end of this month for a three months promoting trip and we played soccer 5 on 5 and of course the team I was on won. The last district was Iyamazane, where 300 scouts camped at a dam that was closed down just for the scouts. This whole weekend I had a whole lot of fun.

Farewell party Jan and Simon Evers

Finally, on my second Tuesday in South Africa the big farewell party of Jan Evers, who was living here as a volunteer for six months and his brother Simon Evers, who somehow became a volunteer during his vacation, was opened by a big banquet (on the right Dudley, in front the youngest son of Elvis and in the back Muzi). But before this toothsome meal I gave guitar lessons to Gracious, the daughter of Nikki who has by the way an amazing singing voice and Jan Ekkert my fellow volunteer. So now with Lucky I already have three potential guitar students to whom I can pass on my extraordinary guitar skills ;). After the meal we listened to speeches from Jörg, the assistant chairman of Nangu Thina who lived here for eight years already and started off as an volunteer as well, from Nikki, my “concerning mother” and at the same time omniscient boss and from Elvis the Provincial Chairman of SASA. At the end both were presented with an official scarf of the province Mpumalanga and a knot made of springbok, which you cannot purchase anywhere you have to earn it. (On the pictures you can see Charlie (bagpie), short blond hair Jan Evers, short brown hair + glasses Simon Evers, behind the grill Jörg)