Mandela's Birthday-Incredible Tribute & Not at Wakefield High SchoolAnymore!

Long post-if you don't have enough time to read it all, skip to the video link at the end!

We experienced Nelson Mandela's birthday in South Africa.  We started the celebration last night with a trip to the Canadian Embassy where they had a cinema under the stars showing of the documentary movie, "Music for Mandela" which showed the importance of music in the whole movement for the South Africa we are experiencing today.  I really liked the movie but did not see the end because Charlie was asleep on me, Katie was fading fast, and the girls had school in the AM. (highly recommend it for your netflix list)  It was a great prelude to today's events!

Today was Mandela's birthday and it was Google's page today, it also was on all the radio stations here and on the front page of the newspaper.  In SA all, South Africans are encouraged to do 67 minutes of volunteer work on his birthday.  I'm proud to say that the American Embassy rose to the occasion in a big way!  They had a group of about 70 people hop on a bus and ride to a township school to paint and do improvements to a high school.  A few months ago I had no idea what a township was....it is a "shadow" black town from the apartheid days where people still live in terrible conditions.  Basically in shacks, with rocks holding on their flimsy roofs, hand laundered laundry hanging out to dry and children playing in the dirt.

View of township from the bus window-those are not garages- they are HOUSES!

We drove through it all in our coach bus, and rolled into a high school where almost 3000 students attend, the school only has desks for about half that many students, and we had 3 main tasks for our group, painting walls in about 15 classrooms, building about 100 additional desks, and trying to organize the library.

These are the desks, moved out into the halls so we could paint...and they don't even have enough of those!

Charlie and I chose the painting crew, Colleen chose the library (and a grumpy Kelly and Katie were at school for the day).  I spent a great deal of last summer in Wakefield High School classrooms making sure wiring was done properly so that the students could have wireless access in the rooms, today, I painted over grafitti standing on deplorable desks and chairs so that students could come back from "winter break" and see some fresh paint in their classrooms.  Everything that we agonized over in my old life, all the technology and new library designs for a brand new middle school back home was all irrelevant here.  These kids had NONE of that and sadly our efforts were tiny compared to all that is needed at the school.

Here are some photos of our work...the rooms before we started, we had to paint the areas above bulletin boards & chalkboards, not the bricks.

Charlie and I do the low areas in many rooms.  Easy to reach without standing on the rickety desks...eventually we did that too!

Trash in the school yard, my old Superintendent would have had the head custodian on the line in no time had he seen that, however that is the least of their worries here.

96 desks rebuilt by embassy volunteers today. (symbolic number for Mandela)

Volunteers working to reorganize the library...if only I could put all of the amazing Wakefield library ladies on the next plane over...I need tickets for Kelli Parece, Trudy Conley, Anne Miller, and Kim Hartmann.  They would give that place the overhaul it really needs!

Before we departed, they gathered everyone together for a quick photo, the Principal of the school thanked us all and we sang Happy Birthday to Mandela.  I thought that was great, then the most moving thing was the crowd broke into this song for Mandela, I don't know the words or the language, I just know it was the most moving thing I have experienced.  I was lucky enough to capture a little on video, note the boy in the blue hat in front clapping along!

http://youtu.be/1-FHuOCOqmM

What a legacy for Mandela-people spending time on his birthday to honor him by doing good works for the country that he loved!!