Time With The Rural Network

We (Zodwa, Skhumbuzo, and I) have been spending a lot of time with the  Rural Network task team over the past couple of weeks.  In my last post we were meeting with them to plan the next few weeks and to see what should be talked about.  The next few pictures are from the Utrecht/New Castle area in KwaZulu Natal.

As we drove down the road I noticed a lot of the houses have tanks to catch the rain water.  I like it.

The gate... So this is a picture of a gate I had to open and close a few times to get to a farm.  It was fairly easy to open, but closing it was another story... It had a wire that hooked on the top of the T-post and a wire that the bottom went into.  Don't hook the bottom first... The first time I tried closing it I hooked the bottom first and it made it seem like the gate was ~4 cm too short!  Let's just say I struggled to stretch the gate 4 cm... haha.  A few hours later I watched a young lady close it in about 3 seconds when she hooked the top the just knocked the bottom of the post in... haha

During our first meeting some chicks came and visited us:)

The strange paw... It's actually the paw from an Anteater!

The catfish.  The house we had our second meeting at had a giant catfish head hanging by the door!  A few days back the guy that lived there speared it.  He said the body was about as long as his leg!

Here's a close up view

While we were driving we saw a few of these birds flying around (they look really cool when they fly) unfortunately I could only get a picture of one sitting on a fence.  Can anyone name the bird for me?

I had a bunch of sunset pictures from the first night we were driving back to where we were staying.  This is my favorite one:)

RN and The Team

I am still enjoying my time here in South Africa! 

I finished October with a meeting in North Coast with the Rural Network (RN) task team.  On the left is Zodwa, then Skhumbuzo (Zodwa and Skhumbuzo are from CLP), Mrs. Siphiwe Hlatshwayo, miss Busie Ngema (secretary), Mr. Shadrack Sithole, Mr. Sipho Dlamini (chair person), and Mr. Myaluza Dlamini (organizer).  We were at a B&B (bed and breakfast, +conference center) that was quite nice even though the power went out during our meeting for about an hour in the hottest part of the day.

Early this week Justin decided he wanted to clean out the garage a little bit and organize the fish tanks and birdcages.  We spend hours sweeping and moving things around (we were mostly done when I took this picture).  The garage is now organized and ready for the new garage door!

I finally decided to let Lizzy cut my hair... Half an inch and 3 hours later... I had a haircut. (yeah not much was cut off.. haha) Maybe next week I can get a little more cut off without spending all night in a chair being yelled at for moving my head.  (we were having a group meeting/conversation sorta thing at the same time and of course I was facing away from half of the group.. haha) 

So I guess I'll introduce the group now... Sorry if 2 months is a little soon...  On the left is Breanna, then Garrett, and Lizzy.  Everyone is from Kansas (Heston, Moundridge, and Newton).  I'm actually behind the tree as we were apparently making a group effort to link hands around it.

So whenever I say we went to the Suderman's house or something along those lines, this is Andrew Suderman.  I have 0 pictures of Karen.... I'll see if I can get one for my next post (and an actual picture of Andrew).  In this picture he is actually laying on the ground trying to take a picture of flowers falling off of a tree... let's just say they fell a little bit too fast.  Time to go to a Braai in Mpophomeni :)