Benin.

If you follow other Mercy Ships blogs, then you have probably seen this BBC article.

Please, please pray for Benin. Cotonou was our home for 10 months in 2009 and it holds a very special place in our hearts. We have friends who are there amidst the flooding and devastation. It breaks my heart to try and imagine what Cotonou must look like now....

Benin: UN to send thousands of tents amid major floods


Two thirds of the country is under water

The UN refugee agency is to start an emergency airlift of tents to the West African nation of Benin this week, amid the worst flooding there in decades.

Some 3,000 tents will be flown in from Denmark to provide shelter for some of the estimated 680,000 people affected.

Two-thirds of Benin has suffered from months of heavy rain, and about 800 cases of cholera have been reported.

It is the worst flooding to hit the country - one of the poorest in the world - since 1963.

Areas previously thought not to be vulnerable to flooding have been devastated and villages wiped out.

"There are huge areas that are covered in water so people are living on the tops of their houses, because people try to stay near their homes," Helen Kawkins of the Care aid agency told the BBC.

The flooding has sparked major health concerns, with drinking and bathing water contaminated by human waste which has overflowed from latrines.

The number of cases of cholera are rising daily, with more than 50 reported in the largest city, Cotonou, alone, Care says. Dozens of people have died as a result of the flooding in the past few weeks, officials say.

People who have lost their homes have sought shelter in medical facilities, putting pressure on the country's health system.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) says an appeal for funds and aid is being planned.

The rain is continuing to deluge Benin and forecasters say there is no sign yet of it abating.

Read the original BBC article here.

The Midlands.

After a rough week of being sick and lots of work to be done, we were both very excited to go away for the weekend to the Midlands. Friday afternoon, we drove off with the Farrells, Miriam, and Tim about an hour and a half into the heart of Kwazulu-Natal to our little cottage called The Dwarf Chameleon. We had a wonderful weekend of going out to dinner, being able to drive in the dark, and staying up late relaxing with friends.

The view from our cottages

On Saturday, we all split up for the day. The Farrells went to the lion park, Tim and Samuel went golfing (something they had been looking forward to for many days!!), and Miriam and I checked another African country off our lists. We traveled up the Sani Pass into the country of Lesotho, where we experienced fabulous views, bread in the local village, and SNOW!!! We ate lunch at the highest pub in Africa, the Sani Top Chalet (it was delicious - but maybe because it was very cheap and the soup warmed our extremely cold bodies!) before beginning the descent back down in the fog. It was a great trip though it did mean many hours in the car.

The Drakensberg Mountains, where we were headed!

Sunday was a very relaxed day visiting Howick Falls. Sarah and I perused the craft markets and enjoyed some scones while everyone else went mini-golfing. After a quick stop at a farm for some wine tasting for Tim, Miriam, and Sarah (I spent my time keeping the dogs away from the little boys, who were terrified of them!), we headed reluctantly back to Appelsbosch.








It was a great break from our normal lives - I am very excited for the next time we can get away!

Sharks Board.

Today the elementary school took our first South African field trip to the tide pools in Ballito and the Umhlanga Sharks Board (h's are pronounced 'sh', so Umhlanga is pronounced 'Umshlanga' and the Hluhluwe game reserve is pronounced 'Shlushluwe'. Ha!). We said we were going rain or shine, so when we woke up to cloudy skies, away we went! The trip got off to a rocky start but ended up being a nice day out. The kids enjoyed playing in the tide pools (despite the drizzling skies and the fact that all the teachers were bundled up and freezing!) and running around. After lunch and some ice cream, we headed off to Umhlanga to the Sharks Board, the organization that makes the regulations about shark nets and maintains them in the Kwazulu-Natal province. We learned all about the types of sharks in the area, why there are shark nets and saw their effectivness (though I admit I still don't quite understand how they work when the sharks can swim above, underneath, and around them....). Then we saw a dissection of a ragged tooth shark! That was quite the experience. The shark skin is smooth one direction and coarse the other direction. Now I can say I have touched a shark! Hopefully it will be the last :) The kids all handled it really well and I was quite proud of their behavior the whole day.

Recruiting.

Well, as it stands right now, at the end of the current school year 7 (possibly 9) of the teachers will be leaving. That means that, of the full time staff, only three people are already committed for the 2011/2012 school year.

If you are a teacher, are intrigued by what I do, and have thought to yourself, I wish I could do something like that, too!, then here's your chance. Why not? What's stopping you? There are 100000000000 reasons not to do something, but you only really need one good reason to do it. And trust me, as frustrated as I get working here sometimes, I am reminded of many, many good reasons to be here each and every day.

For more information about becoming an Academy teacher, see here.

Long Weekend.

Every so often (usually every 6 weeks or so), Mercy Ships gives all non-essential crew (so pretty much everyone but the galley and dining room staff, plus the engineers and ward nurses if we are in a field service phase) the day off on a Friday for a 3-day weekend. In the Academy we have a bad habit of working every ship holiday, but I was finally able to enjoy my first one of the year this past Friday. Unfortunately, Samuel was scheduled to work in the galley over the weekend, so we stayed behind in Appelsbosch while we waved goodbye to the 2/3 of our crew that went away.

I have to admit that I was really disappointed that we weren't going anywhere. Appelsbosch isn't the most exciting place, especially when there is no water or internet. Friday morning started off with having no water - again - and I knew I was going to have to just grin and bear it. To top things off, I had come down with a cold extremely suddenly on Thursday night, and as a result was feeling quite drained of energy and generally unwell most of the weekend.

However, it ended up being a very enjoyable weekend. Ben, Miriam, and I convinced Sam to switch around the meal schedule for the weekend, and we all went in Friday afternoon to help prepare an extensive meal for the 30 or so crew that would be around. We had a blast planning the menu and dancing around to the music in the galley. That night we feasted on baked potatoes (complete with homemade bacon bits, compliments of Ben, but none of us will ever complain about the fact we don't get things like that on a regular basis ever again! They took an incredibly long time to make!), fajita chicken, and various fruit and vegetable salads concocted by Miriam and myself.

The reason we did this was so that Samuel could join us for an outing on Saturday! Ben, Miriam, Samuel and I left bright and early Saturday morning to drive about an hour to Albert Falls, a nature reserve and campsite. We spent a few hours driving around their small game reserve. Though we did not manage to track down the giraffes, we got up close and personal with some zebras (that was my highlight!) and various types of deer and antelope, as well as spotting some buffalo and warthogs. While it wasn't the greatest of outings, the company made it more than fun.





Sunday was very relaxed, Samuel was working and I spent the day just recovering my energy and having a very lazy day, which I was very thankful for.

All in all, it was a good time. Now life is returning to normal. I am back to teaching but Samuel had a fun time at the farm yesterday with Sarah and his nephews, I'm sure he will blog about that soon :)

Yes, we are still alive despite our lack of posting. It's just that, well, nothing really exciting ever happens here, so there doesn't seem like much news to post about! Though our friend Murray has finally returned, and Tim comes back tomorrow, so I'm sure we will be having some more exciting adventures soon :)

PS

To see a lot more pictures of our campus here in Appelsbosch, please visit the Peet family blog. They have several posts of pictures of the campus, plus a post showing the inside of the ship under construction!

Our New Home!

Well, it’s certainly been a while! I apologize for the extreme delay in blog posting – our internet isn’t always very reliable, and the laptop can only be used if it is plugged in, so we can only really spend a lot of time on the internet when there is a plug available in range of the wireless.



We are officially living in South Africa! Two weeks ago, we loaded up 2 moving vans full of LOTS of personal and business items and off 150 of us went in convoy 1.5 hours north of Durban to our new home in Appelsbosch. It is such a small town that people in the bigger towns around it don’t know where it is! However, the province (Kwa-Zulu Natal) is gorgeous, and it really is a blessing to be able to watch the sun set in brilliant reds and golds between hills and to be able to see the stars shine brightly at night.



We are living in an old university campus that has been shut down for 11 years. There are communal bathrooms in each dorm, we all eat in a giant dining room, we buy treats at our little tuck shop, and the wireless is in the big communal amphitheater, so we see everyone there too! Basically, as a community we are doing everything together all the time. We live in a hallway with a few of the families (including 2 of my students!), and it is fun to be able to interact with people I don’t normally interact with on the ship, but I am getting closer than I ever imagined possible with some of my students – you can’t help it when they’re brushing their teeth next to you in the morning and see you heading to the shower at night! Living like this is a bit difficult (especially since the children go to bed earlier than we do, and everything echoes very loudly in the dorms, so we have to be quiet after 8pm or so), but it could always be worse, and we are thankful to be living next door to the Farrells – it makes borrowing things from them so much easier :)



I now have a very large classroom! The walls seem very bare even though I have put up far more things than I ever would on the ship simply because my classroom there has very little wall space. My students are loving the fact that we have different areas in the room for different things, which gives them a bit of a chance to move around and separate things in their mind a bit. All of the children are coming in with bruises and scrapes from the amount of time they spend playing outside – I swear, they are running from the moment they wake up until the minute they fall in bed! It truly is wonderful to see them enjoying themselves so much, even if they do end up with the occasional tick or two that must be removed. Though the great outdoors doesn’t excite me quite as much, I am very much enjoying having fresh milk to drink at each meal :)




At the moment the phones are still being installed (though rumor has it there will only be 6 phone lines) so the best way to get in touch with us is via our blog or email. Though we can’t check it very regularly (both of us have limited internet access at work, and the wireless just barely stretches to our dorm room so we can’t always get it there either), we will do our best to keep in contact with everyone.

This past weekend I took the opportunity to go to Durban for church and a day out. It was a really nice day getting to know a bit more about life in South Africa. It is so different than West Africa! And yet, many elements are the same. You still get bombarded by 8 or 9 people who want to sell you sunglasses if you merely glance in their direction, but they don’t really appreciate it when you try and barter with them – Ben and I learned that the hard way! Though we only explored a bit of the beach of Durban, it was nice to be out of the countryside even if just for a few hours.

Yesterday was quite an exciting day here at Appelsbosch as we celebrated the wedding of two of our crew members! Alex is from the UK and Sharon is from the US (sound familiar….?), so they decided to hold a small intimate wedding here in South Africa. Many, many hours of hard work was put in by many crew members to make a very special day for both of them. It was a lovely wedding and a great day of bonding for our community. Samuel was a groomsman and enjoyed applying his expertise from our own wedding into this one :) Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Williams!! :)




I hope everything is going well back at home – we’d love to hear from you guys! We feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the world here, so please feel free to send us a note anytime!

Amy