Chatham Hall in South Africa 2008

The morning began for me and Bus #2 with purchasing 24 cartons of milk and 100 apples at a Shop Rite on the way to Lawrencia. The lights did not go out in the supermarket. However, our bus did get stuck in a traffic jam caused by construction that had us crawling through the countryside.

Both buses arrived late a Lawrencia, so we all had to scramble to get things done before midday. Plus, we shifted groups this morning. The eggs did not cook in time for the egg salad sandwiches for the children’s 10:00 a.m. breakfast, so our cooks had to switch to peanut butter and jelly, Wheat-a-Bix cereal (in the milk we had purchased), and the apples with which we had originally been 100 short. Half of the library team had a full day of hard scrubbing ahead of them to get those walls clean, plus help with the breakfast preparations. And Carol’s team took off to visit homes in the township.

The other half of the library crew, my group (Sherry, Rebecca Schwartz, Vickey, and Mr. Peters–plus our trusted driver, Lenny) headed off for another day of shopping–more chairs, paint so that the Lawrencia students can put the print of their hands around the windows in the library tomorrow, a bench or two, some poster materials, and a vacuum to clean the new rugs. We dragged ourselves back to the school at 2:00 p.m., having purchased everything on our list.  (Plus new grater and potato masher, added to our shopping list via an urgent phone call, to turn the hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator into egg salad.) We found the library already filled with Lawrencia students reading books and being read to by our students and adults.  (Axi seemed to be trying to organize some of the books with a few of them. Well, they were sitting in a scattering of books on the floor). The walls shown with new cleanliness, as did the floor.  The room felt taken care of. So did the children.

I took off within a few minutes to visit families in the townships with Carol. When I returned, the students, after having carried in all the new stuff, with our students and adults had set up the wooden chairs for the tables and tied the cushions to them, assembled the benches, unfolded the canvass chairs, assembled the battery-operated vacuum cleaner and plugged it in to charge, and arranged everything so that the library felt as if it had begun to expand to fill the whole room.

Tomorrow—paint the bulletin boards with a fresh coat of white, construct the posters, get the hand painting done, while the meals and other visits go on.

Still, even given all of the preparations and purchases, as always at the center of it all, a lot of holding of hands and hugging. Our girls literally promenade around the school grounds with lines of Lawrencia girls arm-in-arm. Like a Victorian painting. Parading. So much touching. The students simply cherish affection. But, then, don’t we all.

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