Orientation Day

On Sunday 19th July 2015, we all met together at St Andrew's Church for our South Africa Orientation Day. We started the day with a yummy chicken curry cooked by the amazing chef aka Chris Parker. Before we had pudding we all wrote down our individual worries for the trip and also the things we were most excited about. Our team member DJ who has previously spent 3 years with Hands at Work in Africa was able to give us reassurance except about the Black Mambas (dangerous snakes that dance!) 

For our next task we divided into two smaller groups to tell our own stories - this was in preparation for what we will be doing within the communities which we will be visiting. We will be spending time in the communities listening to people’s stories and telling our own. This activity allowed us to learn more about each other, in particular DJ, AJ and Alice P. AJ was unable to attend the day but thanks to DJ we learnt some key things about her. Finding out things that we had in common put many of our worries to rest. It was really assuring to know that none of our worries were silly and that others shared the same concerns.

Encouragement is something that we will all need every now and again whilst in South Africa, so our next activity was one that will come in great use. We were to each write an encouraging sentence for each one of the team members. We each had a piece of paper and moved it around the circle so each new encouragement could be added. We then read the encouraging thoughts and worked out who had written them according to the pen colour.

Next it was time for strawberries and very delicious cakes that AJ had made. Whilst eating pudding we shared our thoughts and opinions on technology use whilst we are away. After much debate we came to a consensus that we would leave our phones in the compound during the day and when free time was given in the evenings we would use WhatsApp to contact home if we wanted to. This will allow us to be completely away from social media and allow us to be absorbed by the surrounding African culture. We agreed that we will be taking it in turns in pairs to blog for each day and that we would post on facebook when it was complete each evening.

Next up was the itinerary just after DJ had shown us a video of a similar trip he was on. Each day is packed full of different activities from worshipping God to playing ball with children. Each day begins with a prayer or worship session and a group briefing from the Hands staff. We will then travel out to various communities to visit all types of households, to listen to their stories, to help in daily feeding stations provided by Hands and to play with the children. When we return to the compound we have a short amount of time to rest and freshen up before dinner and debrief. The evenings will be filled with blogging, getting to know the other team and eventually going to bed and getting some well-earned sleep. 

To continue bonding the team together we played a game with jelly! We had to use our team work skills to guide a blinded person with a spoon into a bowl and to feed another person who was sitting in front of them. This put our trust and communication skills to the test, even if it was very messy and extremely funny. See the pictures below.

Our final task of the day was to pray for one another aloud. This is something that is relatively new to the group and we have been trying to do a little for the last few months, we wrote what we wanted people to pray for on a piece of paper and placed it in a bowl. Just before we prayed we each took a piece of paper out of the bowl which told us the person and what they wanted us to pray for. Adam led us in prayer and we each took it in turns to pray for our chosen person. This finished the day nicely; we all feel much more ready now and know that we can rely on everyone in the team to support us whilst we are there especially when we are finding it difficult.