On Site - Sosebenza Primary School

We had another great morning of tourist bits carried on from yesterday, which included, the trip to see the penguins at Table Mountain National Park and a funicular ride to the top of Cape Point, which is pretty much the southern most tip of South Africa - stunning scenery.

An African Penguin - one of the few sites where this endangered bird can be observed at

Nancy (a training brickie) and me at Cape Point - thigh burn even on the descent down it was so steep

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The somewhat blurred picture is a wild baboon believe it or not.  There were about three of them.


It really is a baboon!

Today, Sunday, we were supposed to go up Table Mountain, but it had its table cloth on it today (in other words, a layer of cloud so you can go up there but you wouldn't see anything).  Change of plans, but there is so much to see we were spoilt for choice.  Instead we ventured to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which were superb - like no other gardens I have seen or smelled before.  Beautiful!!!  The tree top walk was more wobbly than the original millennium bridge, but certainly spectacular for views.

  The three students (L to R), Cameron, Nancy and Kavan with Carpenter Lecturer, Andy Martin.  The gardens were incredible, but little did we know we would enter a hut with a Button Spider, which is so deadly it can kill you if not treated.  Needless to say we did not hang about long in that hut!  Imagine a child's hand, and you would get the size of it.

 A cleverly sculpted bust of Nelson Mandela, who visited the gardens and had a golden bird of paradise named for him.  A gorgeous flower shown below.

 A pensive moment before devouring freshly caught fish with chips for a mid-morning snack.

 The fish was literally caught out back and cooked fresh as is possible - you can see it didn't last long.

 If you look closely you can see the one and only wild seal in this bay although there are 1000s on nearby little islands, that sadly the sharks like to visit.  They call one  island, the McDonalds for sharks it is so popular as a hunting ground - I'm glad we didn't see that sight.

One of the stunning coastal views. So we went from the awesome views like any resort type holiday you might encounter to then face such levels of poverty you cannot begin to convey the magnitude of the layer upon layer of shacks within Townships.  The Khayelitsha Township is one of the biggest at holding nearly 3/4 million people, and there are approximately numerous murders a day, and appalling assaults on a daily basis.  It is the highest crime rate for a South African region.  We heard first hand more about apartheid over here, and often the separation of communities stems from different tribes wanting to incite violence to one another. 

 The photographs cannot begin to capture the scale of deprivation and hardship we witnessed, and yet, these very people were waving and shouting out "thank you" with their children running alongside the coaches as the 290 volunteers passed making our way to further develop their education facilities.  The MellonEducate Charity in its 16th year is a well-known one that has created enough new homes to house 200,000 people, has created and refurbished some 15 schools, serving approximately 20,000 school children, and is now helping to further develop the teachers skills by working alongside their staff in the very schools they have helped build.  The Charity's founder, Neill Mellon, met on many occasions with Nelson Mandela himself as he had the vision to see the project develop from an initial 2 week holiday in Cape Town.

 A metal container used as a hair salon - written clearly painted on the side.  Just to put that into context, visit our own hair salons at the college and see the plush facilities we are fortunate to have for our learners.

 So this afternoon was our first day on site.  All our PPE gear on, and hard hats being issued, we were soon set to work on one of the three school sites.  We each have a job we start on, mine is Courtyard, where I think we will be doing roofing or paving, Andy is hanging doors with Kavan, and Nancy and Cameron will be doing brick work.

 This may look easy but we shifted these for about an hour non-stop, passing one to the other, to the next in along chain to shift stock from one end of the site to the other.  It will be interesting how my arms feel tomorrow.  The typing may be shorter as the week progresses. 

 We each get our very own hard hats to name and decorate.  Mark Lindop is the very generous local Kent entrepreneurial business man who has sponsored our three students, and so we thank him very much as a friend of North Kent College indefinitely.  You'll notice all the volunteers have different coloured t-shirts we are given for the week.  The colours depict the number of times a volunteer has been part of the Mellon projects.  There are 51 of the 290 that have done over 10.  Remember many of these volunteers do fundraising events for the year in order to attend one of these Build Blitzes.  They are an incredibly friendly, compassionate, hilariously funny with their bu8ilding stories, bunch of people; two thirds of whom are Irish, but the whole contingent is made up of 11 different nationalities.

 These are my fantastic building buddies from Kent, and I feel very proud to be alongside them as we start our building adventure together.  Now, it's midnight here and I have to be on a coach tomorrow morning for 7am, otherwise I will get a yellow card, and face potential sacking if it happens twice and you are sent home, so that mustn't happen, so I shall bid my blog followers good night.

PS.  If you haven't sponsored, please go to the Just Giving pages for one of us and donate - all the monies goes direct to such worthy young people and their families.  If everyone in the college donated a £1, just imagine the difference that would make.  Spread the word - £1 to help educate others.