July 3rd

Today was the first day of camp without Alex and Rebecca, which made us a little nervous. Compounding the problem, Vusie, one of our better translators had to miss the camp to attend a funeral. Thembe also needed the truck to visit the clinic because she wasn't feeling well. Despite all of these possible problems, the day went damn near perfectly.

The best part of the day was the condom demonstration. I feel that this is the most important thing we can teach the kids because of all the problems they can prevent with HIV and teenage pregnancy (a MASSIVE issue in the area) just by doing something so simple. They laughed a lot at first, which is to be expected, but they paid attention which is all you can ask them. After showing them how, we asked them to each show us how to do it so we know that they can do it properly. They seemed shy at first, but Thobani quickly changed that by jumping up to be the first to do it. After that, they relaxed and eagerly waited their turn to try.

Today was also the first day in which we had enough room in the car, so I didn't ride in the back of the pick-up truck. The ride was much less bumpy (and fun) but I can actually see the scenery which is stunning. The "roads" are carved into the landscape and they literally go straight up the mountains, rather than winding around. This also puts a lot of stress on the vehicles.

On the way to camp this morning we saw a house with World Cup 2010 written in stone on the wall. I am quite sure this person is not the only one excited about the World Cup being in South Africa, because soccer is HUGE here. The kids staying in the adjacent rooms at the IOC don't even have a real ball, but they play with a ball composed of plastic bags wound tighly together. Kicking that ball around with them is something I will never forget.

The kids were also a little bit more wound up than usual and we found out that they actually have no adult supervision at night. (Which is actually impressive considering how well behaved they are.) Our big mistake was assuming they had gone to bed and bringing out some chocolate. "Give me chocolate! Where is my chocolate?" was all we heard for the next 45 minutes until we finally waited them out. I wanted to give them some but there wasn't enough for all of them and that would have been much worse.