Day Tweleve & Thirteen

Yesterday, we spent time decorating the library. We began painting our mural and hung up posters of the Big 5. We are expecting the book shipment to come in on Monday. The students will be ecstatic towards the library by their return from winter break. Also, we met the two subjects of our documentary on AIDS orphans "No One's Children."

Stanley, a fourteen-year-old boy with bright eyes and a brilliant smile, lost his parents when he was very young. He lives with 5 other children and his aunt in a two-room home. He shares a bed with his cousins and must watch his seventeen-year-old sister care for her twin babies. Yet, Stanley still attends school and even walks in two different tight shoes.

Helen, thirteen, is small for her age and very shy and quiet. Unlike Stanley, she suffers from HIV and is currently being treated at the local Tintswalo Clinic. She lives 1.5 miles away from the Beretta School with her grandmother, who aches from physical and mental pain from loosing her own children to AIDS. Helen lives in a small room with a make-shift cot on the floor. Her home is dirty and cold at night.


Yesterday Christian followed Helen home. Her walks are lonely and arduous. At her home, Christian captured the first bit of footage for our documentary. The disturbing conditions at Helen's home shook Christian and my mother.

Today, we woke up at 6:30 to meet the Beretta School's caretakers who watch over the school's orphans. They directed us to Stanley's busy home. Outside, dozens of chickens and roosters bobbed around the land clucking to the near-silence of the crackling of a fire cooking breakfast. Inside, Stanley's sister, sixteen-year-old brother, and his three cousins wait for his Aunt to prepare the morning's meal. Rachel and Ross got their first look into life in rural Africa. Like most poor African children, Stanley lives with many but has very little.


Pictured is Rhoda, a 5th grader at Beretta Primary, with the school's drinking water.