Hello from Pretoria! I only have a few minutes before we head back to Ithemba La Bantwana, the daycare we are painting in Soshanguve, the township outside of Pretoria, but I want to put up a quick update. The painting has gone well, with us press-ganging whatever AFnet staff members, neighboring children, and bystanders we can find into helping us, but yesterday we finished the bulk of the painting. The walls of the daycare are now Shrimp Toast on top and Chili on the bottom.
Shrimp Toast is basically pink, and to be honest at first I was scared we were making a tragic mistake, but once the chili gets on there to counter it and it all dries nice and evenly, it looks pretty good. This sentiment has been echoed by the real judges too, the children, who at first answered our question of "do you like it" with solemn no's, but now have all so far said yes, they like it!
When we got there the walls were heavily scuffed with lots of chips and chunks out from wear and tear over the years, but now they are clean, even walls. Today we are going to be cleaning up and painting flowers, dragonflies, and whatever else we can manage to further brighten the place.
I have a couple pictures of the process, but the bandwidth here is not currently sufficient to load them, so sit tight!
We did two craft days, one at Ithemba (the full name means "Hope for the Children") and one at the orphanage, Tsakelani ("Celebration") where Katrien guided the kids in making felt flowers, and both were complete successes. The kids loved it, everyone participated, helped each other, smiled, laughed, got their little hands soapy, and walked away with flowers adorning labels and headbands.
Okay, time to go paint flowers and scrub floors!
Thank you one and all for your donations that made this possible!!!
More to come on what we put that money towards...
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