May 15th

May 15th

There Are Rocks In My Napkin

We left Swaziland this morning and were handed over at the border to two fellows from Barberton. What an amazing beautiful part of the country. I would love a week here just to hike through the mountains. It’s a very small community – about 5,000 people and has the cutest downtown area. It’s almost a place where everyone knows everyone else.

We arrive at a Jewelry Center - which is actually a training program for students. We got a tour of the shop and walked around the store. A bunch of the girls dropped some serious rand in the store but I’m holding out for some diamonds ;)

Following the tour we all hopped intro this really old Toyota mini bus (the kind that has the third row seating on both the left and right side that face each other). We were off to see the Resource Center. Unfortunately the bus had another idea. After stopping at the ATM the little Toyota that could – couldn’t. We could get back up the hill to the Factory or the Resource Center. We thought we were going to have to push so we all did a little chant (I think I can, I think I can) and tried to rock back and forth to give the car a little encouragement up the hill. IT didn’t work. We backed the car down the hill and tried to find a alternative route. We finally made it back to the Factory and took two cars to the Resource Center.

The Resource Center is in the basement of the library and has a study/reading room and about 17 computer terminals. It just opened two years ago and serve a great need in the community. The kids pay $15 rand (just over $2) for three month of computer and Internet access. If any of the children can’t afford it they will “scholarship” them but haven’t had a need to date. It was interesting because the kids are from preschool age on up and most are there without parents. All of them were really well behaved. We then walked up the street and visited the oldest and first stock exchange in South Africa (Barbenton was the first gold mines in SA). We then went back to the Factory for host pick up. Meesh and I went with George who had the unfortunate pleasure of spending the afternoon with us (the lone guy) and we went back to his house to meet his wife a pets (2 cats, one dog). I was put in the cat free room ;)

We went to the Barbenton Rotary Meeting which prides itself on “breaking the rules”. They are a very informal club. We started the meeting outside on the patio (it’s at a golf course) however, a small hurricane (by my standards) decided to pop through and we couldn’t keep anything from blowing over. So after we stood the winds and did our presentations we moved the party inside. When I went to grab my napkin from the mug on the table – out came a whole mug full of rocks. Interesting – the rocks weren’t even heavy enough to stop the wind out side… Dinner was served a bit “late” and we then headed home for a “night cap” and some good conversation with our hosts…

Tomorrow I’m hopefully off to Kruger…