A fantastic trip to Hillary's village took the edge off of our first 2 days here. She lives in a tiny, but very neat and clean room attached to her host family's house. The walls are of concrete and the roof is tin. The toilet is across the yard shared with the chickens, horses and cows, it's clean and user friendly.
We followed Hillary's normal routine of walking to her school to meet the 120 children through grade 9. Thanks to a US organization that sends hand made bears for children in Africa, we were able to participate in giving them out to the kids. We supplemented the bears with soccor balls, bats, frisbees and other athletic equipment. The children were so very polite and appreciative it was heart warming. They were very curious to meet us as many had not seen a white person before Hillary and now her parents.
Hillary has been working hard teaching the children about AIDS Prevention and writing for grants to create a community center and a girls' club. Of all continents Africa is hit the hardest by the pandemic. According to a UNICEF report if the situation is to continue this way, by 2010 there will be almost 16 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
Our room at Klifwerth was booked out for the rest of the week so we had a bit of a challenge finding somewhere to stay as we should have been off to Namibia by now. Another day of frustrating communications with the car rental folks at Just Done It, who as it turns out may not have been honest in their dealings with us, refer to the as Just Don't Do It. Tomorrow we set off one way or the other for Windhoek, Namibia.
No comments:
Post a Comment