If you car breaks down, just dance in the middle of the road

This week was a very busy one at work. Monday we had an appointment at a village for our youth presentation. It was in a very small room that used to be a school. There were about 25 people there between the ages of 18-30 there. This was a larger crowd which was very good. We all sat down in colorful mini chairs, meant for 5 year olds, in a circle. I've found that for this presentation sitting in a circle establishes a better connection than standing and lecturing. I spoke to them about the character development skills to not only improve their personalities but improve their job searches. After that we spoke about job searching avenues, how to write a CV and how to conduct yourself in an interview. Like before, some people seemed to be soaking up the information. Others didn't seem to care too much. As I tell them at the end of my presentations now, I can't give them jobs. I can only give them the tools to enhance their job search. They can take what they want from it. Once we left the village, we decided to visit two high schools to set up more visits for the week.

Sifiso looking observing one of our activities

Imposing my knowledge onto these eager minds

Two gentlemen during one of our exercises 

Tuesday morning I was under the impression that we had high school visits to go to. Sifiso found out from one of the mentors that they had set up another village visit for us. The visit was supposed to be at 10 am. I found this all out at 10:30 am. Great. Already 30 mins late. To make things worse, Neville was out with the car. We didn't end up getting to the village until noon! As we were driving up, we saw people leaving. I would have left too if the leaders of the workshop were two hours late. We now had a large, impatient group that had already been waiting for two hours. We knew that our normal two hour workshop was not going to fly. I flew through the presentation, cutting out certain activities and focused on the material. It took about an hour. I felt bad because the day before we had a great session and this day it was rushed and the connection wasn't there. Oh well, hopefully some people got something out of it.

Wednesday. Ohhhhh Wednesday. What a day. Sifiso, Neville and myself had two high school appointments to go to. The area was a decent distance away from Eshowe, about 35 mins. We were on the normal back dirt roads going to the first high school when all of a sudden the car just died. The Mazda is old and pretty junky so just thought it was giving trouble. Neville started it up again and we kept on going. The car dies down again after a while. Neville and Sifiso get out to see what's wrong. I'm useless in this area. Point out a car and I can tell you the make/model and how much it costs. Pop that hood, though, and I'm lost. They weren't sure what was wrong with the car. They thought it was the motor. We did realize that we could go into reverse. Putting the car into reverse, we head forward thinking that if we could get to the main road we could hitch a ride back to town. After about 4 mins of this...the car died again. We push the car to a shaded spot and call back to the office and let them know what has happened. It's 12:30 pm. The office said that they would work on getting us a tow truck. We were hungry so we walked a mile to this very low supplied shop for coke and chips. A great lunch. Once we get back to the car we turn on the radio and wait. After 5 hours of dancing in the middle of the road, taking random pictures standing on top of the car, conversing about who knows what, we are told that a tow truck will arrive shortly. Neville spoke to his father during this time and he told him to check the fuel pipes. After some tests, we figured out the problem. There was no fuel in the car. Before you go and call us idiots for such a simple thing, the fuel gauge was reading a 1/3 of a tank of gas.

Well the tow truck came. The concept of a tow truck here is a pickup truck tying a rope to it's back bumper to your front. Our brakes weren't great as it is and since we were on a small mountain, going downhill would have had us smacking right into the truck. For the downhill part, we went in front and coasted down while the truck was behind us. Like any down hill road, it's not always at a decline and there are flat parts. At these sections, Sifiso and myself would have to hop out, run and push the car to the next decline. Since the car obviously can't stop to let you in, we'd have to hop into the car while it was picking up speed. While being dangerous it was also rather fun, though my legs were killing me afterwards. After an hour and a half we finally reached home. We did a test with a small amount of petrol to see if it was in fact the fuel and sure enough, the car started to run with 5 liters in the tank. Thankful it wasn't any other problem, I ate dinner and went to sleep. Despite the crappy situation and the complaining we did, it wasn't that bad. I had two friends to hang out with, the weather was perfect  for a car break down and I got some fun camera pics.

Neville and Sifso checking under the hood

Damn Dimples.

Future Facebook photo

Neville on top of the car

Sifiso's pic for the ladies

On Thursday, a car and driver were hired so Lwazi could take care of the car. After missing the two high schools from the day before and having booked ourselves up for Thursday and Friday, we had a lot of high schools to visit. Thursday we went to our first high school and spoke only to the seniors. They had electricity so we were able to use our projector. It worked great! I feel as if the students paid more attention with the projector being there. They still aren't used to projectors and power point presentations in this rural schools so it catches their attention. The visit went really well and again students were asking questions. Success. I thought that we had more schools to visit but the driver was only instructed to drive to one school. It was back to the office for us. So much for making up for lost ground.

Inspiring the youth of South Africa

Neville, in green, was in detention

No heads down sleeping. Always a good sign.

Friday was similar to the day before. We had a great presentation at a high school with lots of questions. Four high school visits ended up being only one. Frustrating but that's just the way it is.

Not wanting to end on a negative note, in two weeks time I'll be in Newark, DE with my lovely fiance that I miss a whole lot!