REACH! update January 2022

Dear donors, friends and families,

After landing in hair-raising crosswinds in East London, we got straight to work! The container was already delivered to our work site ready for painting, and we spent the first 36 hours getting paint and supplies and plastic sheeting in anticipation of bad weather forecast for the entire next two weeks. The day before our artists, Aude and Patrick, we due to start, we were hit with a monsoon downpour that quickly filled the streets, breached river banks, and sadly took the lives of seven people in nearby townships. There followed speculation that the roads out to Amajingqi would be washed away, and our narrow window of opportunity to deliver appeared to be closing fast, if not already closed. Fortunately, that was not the case. Fair weather held, and Aude and Patrick got to work, and through ingenuity, flexibility, perseverance and hard work they created a masterpiece in only three days. A remarkable accomplishment for which we are extremely grateful.



The day before scheduled delivery we received word that the roads were passable, barely. 

But bad news followed good. The night before leaving we received tragic news from Billy, our indispensable go-to guy, that his sister had just died on her way home from hospital after being admitted for pains in her chest, and then discharged. Despite the circumstances, Billy held true to his word and arranged for the container to go on without him. He would follow sometime in the weeks ahead to deliver and install the water catchment system and Jojo tank. We are blessed to have such a loyal, dedicated man on our team. We send him and his family our deepest condolences.

We set off early on the morning of the 13^th to find the container waiting for us as promised in Willowvale, along with Mndindi our interpreter from ITEC, and we set off in slow convoy down washed and rutted roads. Still the weather held. Green hills dotted with thatched huts rolled away in every direction. Goats and cows made slow travel even slower. From afar, as we approached the Kuyashu school site, we heard ululating, singing, and the beating of drums. Coming over the rise were greeted with a mass of bright color, bright smiles, and beautiful harmonizing that Africans do so well. What a welcome! 

After some early negotiations between teacher and headman over the exact location and orientation of the classroom, it was lifted off the truck, and set. The door was opened and the classroom filled with the excited chatter of little children! Shelley, Aude, Enya and Patrick oversaw the unloading of supplies and with the help of the teacher and her assistants set everything in its place, and spent significant time instructing them on correct usage and storage, things we take for granted. Meanwhile, Ralph addressed the gathered elders on our dedication to helping improve the community through the education of the next generation. 

Unfortunately, it was also brought to our attention that the Department of Social Services, who oversee early education in SA, had not paid the teachers for several months. It breaks our hearts to see these dedicated women, already surviving on next to nothing, still showing up day after day to teach. Shelley and I immediately began formulating a plan to get them at least a little to tide them over until the Department of Education takes over in April. Whether anything improves remains to be seen.

When all was put in place and the door closed until opening day on the 19^th, we made a quick visit to our second school, just minutes away, to deliver supplies and meet with Victor the headman, and his wife. As the sun sank lower, we were requested to accompany the Chief’s brother, the Chief being away on business, back to the Royal homestead, where we were treated to home-baked pastries and cold drinks, followed by a heartfelt speech thanking us for our benevolence. 

Tired, dusty, and fully satisfied with a good day’s work, we crawled the rugged backroads down to Kob Inn, a small fishing hotel on the coast, out of power and nearly out of water on account of the storm, but who nevertheless, in the ‘boer-maak-a-plan’ (farmer-make-a-plan) spirit of rural South Africans, still managed to serve cold drinks and a superb lamb stew for dinner. 

In a quick visit to ITEC on our last day in East London, Shelley, with input from Caroll and Barbara, drew up a blueprint for an appropriate assessment plan for our schools in which teachers will be trained to start assessing students three times a year on critical areas of development, starting this February, in order to track their progress through preschool and beyond, and give us a measure of how effective our work is, and how and where we can improve. 

It is with our deepest appreciation that we thank you all for making all this possible. We have already secured the fifth container and work will begin soon on converting it.  In the meantime, we continue to work on finding better ways to support the teachers, secure high-quality delivery of curriculum, and implement a maintenance program to upkeep the schools now that the first one is already nearly five years old, and looking a little faded from the fierce African sun.

Please follow us on Instagram (reachforsa), and visit us at www.reachforsa.org for more information, if you’d like to notify somebody else of our work, or if you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation. 

Thank you

Shelley and Ralph