Every Color of the Rainbow: Another Day At Work :)

When Mark got back at 9:00 yesterday morning with Mama Ndika, Elaine and I hopped into the Condor, and went back in with him to the Ikhaya Levangeli for another day at work. The first job I tackled was crackfilling the walls in the room I have been working on with the painting. I mixed up the crack-filling powder with water, at a ratio of 2.5:1, powder to water, in a blue plastic cup, using a spoon. I took the flat, metal spreader thing, and filled cracks like never before. Well, the truth is, I've never crack-filled before in my life. I love doing all these new jobs, that normally, back at home, you'd never do. It's great you know, now I can add to my resume skilled trades, like painting, eves-troughing and crack-filling. I proceeded then to put the second coat of green paint on the floor, remembering this time to paint the edges first, and not working myself into a corner. This paint is oiled based, which means once its on you, the only way to get it off is the good old chemical, turpentine. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just find a way to paint in a neat, orderly, unmessy way, but unfortunately for me, I haven't been successful yet. The more I try to be cautious and careful, the more paint I end up wearing. Thankfully, out of the goodness of their hearts, Mark and Gwen have each donated painting clothing, Mark gave an old shirt, and Gwen some shorts. As I was exercising caution at one point, I stepped back, and placed my foot right square onto the upturned paint lid. Disgusted, I stepped off the lid, and absent-mindedly placed my now-green foot, on the floor, causing a wet, green footprint. It took a bit of turpentine and lots of soap, when I was finished painting to clean me up, the it was time to move on to the songwriting. I didn't actually have to compose a song, but rather copy out a bunch of kids songs into a flip chart. I've never done it before, so I was a little hesitant at first, not wanting to mess up. I soon got the hang of it though, and everything went smoothly. We ran to pick up the younger kids at 12:45, then went back to Mark and Gwen's. We got Mama Ndika, and turned around and went back in to the Ikhaya Levangeli. Mama Ndika's daughter, Busisiwe, was there, preparing the meal for the Young Men's Supper, which was to be at 4:00. I went back to work on the songs until it was time to eat at sometime after 4:00. There was a nice crowd of guys there, likely about 25 or so. We had really tasty beef, with samp, gravy, butternut, potatoes, fried cabbage and bread. It went over really well, and all the food was eaten up! when everyone was finished, and the dishes were being washed and dried, I mentioned to Mama Ndika about the time they sang for Elaine, wondering if they could sing again. She yelled to Kwanele in Xhosa, and I only caught the word "umculo" which means song or sing. Kwanele, then ran over to where all the boys were playing soccer, and shouted to them in Xhosa. Next thing I knew, a string of about 12 boys were running into the building. They all lined up, and after a bit of talking and commotion, they started to sing, in strong, African voices. I got videos as they sang, thinking how good they were! This would be the last time for a while that I'd be seeing them, so I took in every minute. They sang about 5 songs before saying that they were finished. All the guys piled into the back of the bakky for Mark to drive them home. When he got back, Gwen and I went in the Condor to Spar, while Owen and Mark stayed in the car to wait. We picked up some food and other necessities at Spar to take to a girl having a rough time, not far from where Mark and Gwen live. We then dropped it off at her house, with Mark following for the sake of safety. It was really sad to see how some people live in places like that, houses, basically a big box, only one big room, a table at one side, 2 beds on the other. Old linoleum flooring was put down on half the floor while the other half was left bare. I retired early that night, laying in bed by 9:00, that's quite a record!