Some Perspective

Over the past few years my mom and my sister have attended several building blitz’s arranged by our church and the Mellon Housing Initiative.

Every time they went I was unable to go cos I was either preparing for a treatment, busy with a treatment, had just found out I was pregnant, had just had a baby. There was always something that happened that stopped me from atttending.

So when the opportunity presented itself for the next build, I jumped at the chance. I arranged with Cliff to babysit Kade and my neice Kayla and my sister and I headed off to our church bright and early on Saturday morning.

We headed off to Thembisa with 68 other volunteers and arrived at the Mellon Housing Initiative site office full of energy and excitement. My sister even attended with her moon boot on – and told everyone it would take more than a taxi to stop her from attending the blitz.

We were put into our teams and off we headed to do our work for the day. Each team is headed up by a professional builder who teaches the volunteers the correct techniques depending on your area. What I love about this initiative is that they believe in skills development – the community gets involved and are taught valuable skills that they get certified for – creating job opportunities for them as well. I was on one of the painting teams and my sister was on the other painting team.

We painted these homes and got to know our “owners”. The owner of our house, was telling us that he lives in his shack with his wife and his eight children and his dog Danger. That he was SO excited and proud to finally own his own home after 25 years of living in a shack. That knowing he could give his children a solid roof over their heads, finally made him feel like a man. We painted alongside this man and his family and I was humbled.

At the end of a long HOT day we handed over one of the houses that was completely ready to a lady called Beauty and her family. She has raised her 3 kids in her shack and when we asked her son what this meant to him, he said that he is epileptic and when he next has a fit at least it will be in comfort.

I have gained some serious perspective from this experience.

We complain about our electricity being cut for a few hours and moan when our service delivery is late or cancelled due to a strike. But these people they live without all of that EVERY DAY. Their children play in the sand and in filth because they do not have the luxury of running water all day long. We tried to clean our paint brushes but couldn’t cos the municipality cuts their water supply from 09h00 till 17h00 daily.

I left the build filled with compassion for my fellow South Africans who are not as blessed as I am. I left feeling SO incredibly lucky and blessed.

What I found was that what you find in our suburbs is what you find in a township. People who are trying to provide for their family. People who are spending time with each other and enjoying a summer’s day. People who are essentially the same as you and me.

What an amazing and humbling day. I CANNOT WAIT for the next build, I hope next time I’m put on one of the construction teams so I can learn to mix dugga and how to lay bricks.

I cannot wait to see another family get their dream home. The site director said it best, it’s about South African’s providing for South Africans. And if each one of us could just do one small thing (cos it really took nothing for myself and the other 69 volunteers to donate R500 and a day of our time) we can truly make a massive difference to the lives of others.

One small act from every person can truly change the world. I want to be that kind of person always.

Frustration

One thing I know about builders and renovations is that things NEVER go to plan.  And when we first embarked on the whole process of destairing and restairing our house, we were told this would take a total of 4 – 5 days.  *Bwahahahahaha*

YEAH RIGHT!

Delay after delay has happened and yesterday we were supposed to get our new stairs installed and we were going to be re-united with our bed.  Our glorious queen size bed.  Then the ass wipes who are supposed to install our stairs called to say that the paint was not dry on the sides and they would not be arriving as expected and that our stairs will only be ready to install on MONDAY.  *sob*

You’ll have to wait a bit longer for that pictoral post dear internets, and while you do please don’t mention how nice an big and fluffy *your* queen or king size beds are, cos that?  That will just tip me right over the edge!!   As I’ve said before more than anything right now I MISS MY BED!!!

I miss my bed…

A while back I mentioned that we were re-doing our stairs at home.  Well building work started in earnest at the begining of this last week and let’s just say it’s not been pretty…

Our house went from being a home to a building site and dust now covers EVERYTHING like a veil and the worst thing about it is that it does not make any sense at all to clean it up cos well by the end of each new day there is a new layer of dust hovering in the air just waiting to settle over all our wordly goods.  Even in the places that we thought woudl be safe, the dust she is there!

At this point in time we have no stairs leading up to our bedroom either and after squatting in our own spare room, sleeping on a double bed I can safely state that “I miss my bed”.  When one has become accustomed to sleeping in a queen size bed, going back to a double bed is no mean feat.  I mean the duvet is like half the size and Cliff is a nasty duvet stealer.  His feet just about hang off the edge of the bed too which lets in the cooler air and that is no good at all.

Other than my bed, I miss the shower.  I’m one of those girls who washes her hair everday (I know the whole let your natural oils flow but I.just.cannot.have.greasy.hair.  It drives me completely batty!) and now that I have to wash my hair everyday in the BATH, Oh.My.Word!  Four words for this mission accomplished daily – Pain.In.The.Ass!!

And the cherry on the top is this – we have had to knock out some tiles to level the area where the old staircase used to be and guess what – NO tile place in the whole of bloody Joburg can supply us with the same tiles.  Lovely. Now we’ve had to be creative in our solution to this issue and are having to spend WAY more money than expected by putting in parcade wooden flooring in our lounge and dining room so that our builder can carefully pull up some tiles from this area to cover the gaping hole in our entrance.

We have been taking daily photo’s of the progress and I will do a pictorial onc the work is finally all done so that you can see the transformation from home to buidlers site to home (hopefully) again.  Work is expected to be complete and house thoroughly cleaned by next weekend.  And I *know* you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting with bated breath (this also helps combat the inhalation of dust) to see them.

Stairs to Heaven??

A while back I mentioned that we were looking into re-doing our stairs in our house.  As some of my RL friends can attest to, our stairs are WAY STEEP.  I have often nearly gone tumbling down these stairs and we have finally decided to take the plunge.  We’re making them new and much less steep.

We signed off the drawings yesterday and now our new stairs are in production!  Exciting stuff… And yet another thing that will hopefully help keep my mind off our upcoming 2ww (method to my madness dear hearts, method to my madness)

This is what they currently look like!

From our lounge seeing the whole staircase

From the top of the stairs looking down – yikes right?

From the bottom of the stairs looking up

 

We’re looking forward to the new stairs!

Dreaming…

Lately I’ve been allowing myself to dream.  To dream what it would feel like to actually be pregnant.  Dream of how I would feel, how happy we’d be.  Thrashing out baby names, fighting about how we’re going to decorate the nursery and most of all about deciding to find out the sex of the baby or not.

Sometimes the dreams that I allow myself threaten to overwhelm me and fill me with such an intense feeling of foreboding, cos why am I allowing myself to dream of something that I am not even sure is going to happen?  Surely I should dream about the staircase we’re planning on ripping out and rebuilding rather than a figment of my imagination?

But sometimes these dreams I’m allowing myself also give me a glimpse of what can be, of what will be, should we be strong enough and faithful enough to see this race through.  And that fills me with love and happiness.

So I’ll allow them for a while longer and keep on hoping that soon they’ll not just be a figment of my wildest imagination but just as tangible as that staircase we’re building.