This week, Rejoice and I spent a good chunk of time in the work bakkie driving back and forth between Kodumela, the drop in centers, and Ofcolaco (a small area with a dairy, butchery, store, post office, hardware store, petrol station and fruit and vegetable sellers who sell bags of big avos for 7 rand! There's also the Ofcolaco Club just down the road that serves drinks and burgers... all these things are left over from back in the day when there was an officers club for military in the area). Turns out the guy who's been providing us with wood for the drop in centers' cooking fires has been arrested.
All the drop in centers have cooking shelters where they use the traditional three legged pots (huge) to cook the porridge and beans/chicken/vegetables for the kids. The wood he was selling us at around 340 rand (about 50 US bucks with the current exchange rate) a month was from the bush and it's illegal to cut wood from the bush.
So we used a little bit of money Rejoice had left over from some funding to purchase gas cooking stoves for all the centers.... and went around picking up the gas from Ofcolaco, dropping it at the centers, and Cedric gave demonstrations on how to properly connect the gas line to the canister. Turns out the gas canister only costs a few rand more a month to buy.
And... while we were at the drop in center in Makgaung Village I made a cultural faux pas. I was so fascinated by the fact that the ZCC (Zion Christian Church) has its own coffee (although not really surprised) that I picked up this box and started reading the side. Ledile mentioned something to me about holding the box, I didn't understand, and before I could clarify, she was already out of the room. Seconds later Rejoice, giggling, told me that the church didn't allow women to handle the coffee... it may have been blessed and me holding it was canceling out any powers it may have. I quickly put it down and looked up to say "sorry, sorry, sorry" to the cookers... all of them had looks of horror on their faces. Oops. When will I learn? At least I know not to do that again!
All the drop in centers have cooking shelters where they use the traditional three legged pots (huge) to cook the porridge and beans/chicken/vegetables for the kids. The wood he was selling us at around 340 rand (about 50 US bucks with the current exchange rate) a month was from the bush and it's illegal to cut wood from the bush. 
So we used a little bit of money Rejoice had left over from some funding to purchase gas cooking stoves for all the centers.... and went around picking up the gas from Ofcolaco, dropping it at the centers, and Cedric gave demonstrations on how to properly connect the gas line to the canister. Turns out the gas canister only costs a few rand more a month to buy.
And... while we were at the drop in center in Makgaung Village I made a cultural faux pas. I was so fascinated by the fact that the ZCC (Zion Christian Church) has its own coffee (although not really surprised) that I picked up this box and started reading the side. Ledile mentioned something to me about holding the box, I didn't understand, and before I could clarify, she was already out of the room. Seconds later Rejoice, giggling, told me that the church didn't allow women to handle the coffee... it may have been blessed and me holding it was canceling out any powers it may have. I quickly put it down and looked up to say "sorry, sorry, sorry" to the cookers... all of them had looks of horror on their faces. Oops. When will I learn? At least I know not to do that again!
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