Day seven:
First off I want to say that it has been a while since I have blogged. I guess that I got a bit lazy the last two days and just took a break. So here are they are. Wednesday was a short day. We ended up going to SCAS and helping with a camp. The morning started early and was fairly cold, but it was clear outside. We met William at 7:30 to get the equipment and get everything set up. The field that we use for the camp is located about a kilometer away from the office, so we had to load everything in William’s truck and mosey on down the road. We as facilitators were going to be providing four games and they would provide the rest. So we got all the games set up and waited. Drew and I talked to William about life in South Africa and all the things that he has done. He was a really cool guy and I hope that we get to interact with him again. So at around 8:30 two charter buses pull to the side of the road at the top of the hill, and kids start streaming off the buses. We headed up to the road to meet them and had them all assemble on the field below. We introduced ourselves and the teachers went about organizing the kids and taking role. We learned that they were from a more affluent neighborhood in Stellenbosch. They were on a field trip of sorts for the school. There were about 120 fids and five teachers in the group. It was interesting because it seemed to be run in more of an athletic/military way. If the kids got out of line, the teacher would have them do pushups, or run lines, or something to that extent. Drew and I got to talk to the pastor for the local church. HE was the one who told us that the kids here were the ones that their parents were pretty much nonexistent. The parents would drop them at the local mall for days at a time, leaving them to fend for themselves. The private school that they attended was another form of babysitting for most of them. He said that he was really happy to be able to get them to come on this trip. It would give them the chance to go someplace and have fun, but also structure. Once everything had been sorted out, we began the activities. The four games that SCAS provided were: the human ladder, the bungee scavenger race (for a lack of better term), the A-frame walk, and bush bowling. Bush bowling is where you take five stakes and set them up in a line at one end, and then throw another stick at them attempting to know the sticks (pins) over. The more pins, the more points. The team with the most points wins. The human ladder is basically were you have ten small logs and you have to get one person from a starting point to and ending point and then back again, without that person or a log touching the ground. The team that does it the fastest, wins. It was really funny to watch that. The next game, the bungee scavenger run thing, was what I coordinated. At the beginning I would designate how many were going to participate at a time. The guys were split into about four teams of twelve; so I might say three people, five people, or even the whole team. They would them have to all get into the bungee (it was tied in a circle) and stay in the bungee until they got back to their cone. I would have the team start behind the side line on a soccer field and run out and try to grab little plastic balls. They were the kind that you would find in a ball pit at McDonald’s. Each person would grab one ball and they trade would off with more people from their team. This would repeat until all the balls were retrieved. Once all the balls were retrieved we would count up each team’s balls, and the one with the most was the winner. We did this a few times with each rotation and it would get progressively harder. For example, I might tell each team to get a specific color, and if you got the wrong color you had to put all your balls back and start over. The last game was with the A-frames. The object of this was to have the guys walk and A-Frame with a person standing on it about twenty yards and then turn around and walk back. The only thing is that the person on the A-frame couldn’t touch the ground and no one else could touch the A-frame. There were four ropes attached to each one and so you had to work together to pull one rope and then lift the leg, so the same thing could be done with the other. It was really quite difficult because you would have guys pulling on the ropes at the same time and the frame wouldn’t be able to move. This activity was only open to like eighteen guys, so the others in the group played touch rugby off to the side. After about fifteen to thirty minutes, we would rotate stations. This was done for about two to three hours. After that, the guys hiked back to the SCAS compound for the rest of their activities. We then set about picking things up and loading the truck. Once we were back at SCAS, we put up all the equipment and headed back to Stellenbosch. While we were doing the camp, the clouds had begun to role in and threaten to rain. Drew and I decided that we wanted to drive up the valley through the mountains, and just see some stuff for the rest of the afternoon. So we headed out past SCAS and went towards the mountains. After about fifteen minutes of driving, we ran out of road. Yeah it was pretty disappointing. So we headed back to the house to plan what we were going to do. We ate lunch and started thinking. We decided that we didn’t want to get stuck in Kuyasa while it was raining, so that was out. We then contemplated taking another road and driving for a while to see what we could see. I had started a movie and about half way through that, I started pouring outside. So since the weather made out decision for us, we stayed indoors. That night we went to the Spar and picked up some stuff for dinner. Once we got back, we went through the same routine. So that was that day.
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