Young Africa - Week 2

Our second week in Young Africa is over and all of us have well and truly gotten stuck in. Our time in the carpentry workshop is finished, with a nice few benches completed for the school nearby. Our painting of the local Munhava orphanage has come on in leaps and bounds. The refectory is now covered in colourful murals of fruit and vegetables, on top of a sky blue background which makes the room so much more bright and welcoming for the kids. We still have to paint the dorms and classroom, so hopefully by the end of next week the orphanage will be colourful and suitable for the smiling kids who welcome us so much every morning. Everybody takes the chance to spend some time playing with the children from the orphanage and adjoining crèche before we start work. They love to have new people to entertain them, and it’s impossible not to enjoy it. It’s keeping up with their energy in the heat of the morning that is difficult!

We have also made an excellent start on the hostel arts project. The three artists in the group have taken on the task of teaching the girls who live on campus the basic skills and techniques of art. The rest of us are learning as much as the girls are, as we help them with their projects and contribute some of our own too! Each girl and volunteer decorated a t-shirt with all manner of colours and sequins. Later we drew and painted on paper circles, with each person adding them to their own piece of string with additional discs outlining where they’ve come from and their hopes for the future. This is a great exercise for the girls, and is in keeping with Young Africa’s approach to development. It is great to see them writing about their aspirations of finishing their education and seeking careers. The feedback on the project so far from the girls has been very positive, and we can see their confidence in their work growing every day.

 Our own education has been an important factor in our time here too. We have been divided into groups of three to present chapters from the 80:20 development education book. There have been laughs at the methods which some of us have used to present the information, but this hasn’t taken away from the seriousness of the issues we have been discussing. Everybody appreciates the chance to learn and discuss such important issues as women’s rights, ethical consumption and HIV. The discussions don’t end when the presentations do; we are taking the knowledge and chatting and thinking about it in our day-to-day lives. Vernom, who has joined us from Zimbabwe and will be working with us for the rest of our time here, has proven to be an invaluable source of first-hand information about the developing world. His presence has really added a new dynamic to the group, as well as having an extra person to laugh with and have the craic with on our down time!

Our daily Purtuguese lessons are still going strong every morning with Monica and Fatima from the hostel. It’s only a half an hour after breakfast but it is benefitting everybody. We are finding it easier to chat with the people who live and work here, as well as helping the two girls realise that they have something important to offer us too.

We had the chance to visit Rio Savanne on our weekend off. The beach there is pristine, and at night you can see the Milky Way and the sky is full of shooting stars. It was a surreal experience, and we managed to see a field full of wild monkeys which you can imagine was quite a sight for a minibus full of SERVE volunteers. We’ve also been in to the centre of Beira to look around the town and the craft market. It’s good to get out of the Young Africa campus and see what else is happening in the area.

Having said goodbye to our esteemed leader Chris, we are all very aware that we are now halfway through our project. Next week will bring some more physical work in the form of building study huts, so we’re looking forward to seeing how that goes!

Tchau!

All the SERVE team in Young Africa.