Surfing, Painting and Moving On.

Chris Bond


15 years ago in News

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Welcome back to Ticket to Ride’s SA trip 2 2010 blog. Well, a lot has happened since we were last in touch, for one we are now in Chinsta and have departed J-Bay but we have also been very busy surfing and helping out in the townships.

St Francis was a great day out, it is a half-hour drive from J-Bay and a very ‘chilled’ town (may as well start throwing some of the lingo in so you can get used to it). Whilst the waves weren’t the best we’ve had, they were still good and a challenge to the group. The perfect, relatively easy, waves at Kitchen Windows made everyone a little too much in their comfort zone, and St. Francis broke them out of that with shifty peaks and a better idea of what the waves will be like as we move up the coast. 

One of the most fun days so far was when we went to a school in the local township and painted the bathrooms inside. To give you an idea, this school has 140 children between the ages of four and six. Each child pays R130 (£10) per month and only about 60% pay their fees. Only one of the teachers gets a salary from the government and the other three members of staff share what is left after all the children have been fed lunch every day and the bills paid. So, the school gets about £1000 per month to feed 140 children per day, pay electricity and water, do any maintenance, purchase materials and then pay three teachers salaries! Crazy. 

Ok, well when we arrived at the school we could see immediately that the school needs a LOT of attention. The outside walls are massively warped wooden sheets and the roof is not doing a very good job at keeping it waterproof. When we arrived the children were still in school so we got to spend some time playing with the children and the whole group sang several songs to the children while Tom Hills played the guitar. The children loved it, definitely not their average day! We chose to help out a bit on the inside and paint the bathrooms, where all the paint was peeling off the walls and generally looking very shabby. There was also a room that they are turning into a library soon that we painted. The group really took on this task, working in teams so some were scraping, others sanding and finally the painters. Painting like this isn’t always as easy as it seems and as the hours moved on more and more paint seemed to be landing on the group instead of the walls. This may have been the paint fumes though getting to people’s heads!! What really made the day special to me was overhearing the parents speaking to each other in Afrikaans (one of our 11 official languages), they were really so grateful and thankful that we were there and that they were getting help at their school. That to me is when you know you are making a difference! So I must thank the group for their contribution here.

Well we are now in Chinsta, and this place is just absolutely amazing. I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful it is right where we are staying, but if you are a little patient I will give you photographic evidence on Sunday of the view from our rooms. We are now much more ‘in the bush’ and snakes, spiders and insects of all sorts are making people feel a little more like they are in Africa, and a little nervous too! As Paul Botha who we met earlier in the trip loves to say “Africa is not for sissies”. 

Sala Kakuhle,
Chris