Another Week....

This past week has been a typically busy week! Although in another country I still feel as if I am constantly in my car picking up children, dropping children off and going to kiddo's functions! For some strange reason I assumed that life would not be as busy here-who was I fooling! On a normal week all three kids are in school, Taylor has swim practice twice a week, Hunter has tennis once a week, and cricket once a week, while Claire has horse lessons(therapy) once a week! Soccer starts this coming week and each boy will have practice for two hours per week, and golf starts next week, with one, one hour lesson! AHHHHHHHH!!!! Of course, we still have homework!
While living in the midst of all of that, I have promised myself that we would do something inclusive of Africa every week, if not every other week! I refuse to live in this beautiful country and not eat up the wealth of things to do! So this past weekend we went to Addo Elephant Park. http://www.addoelephantpark.com/ What a gorgeous place this is, this is a national park where you can stay and have guided safaris or drive through on your own for self guided safaris. We decided after church on Sunday that we would drive through on our own! It took us an hour to get there,and once there the fun began. After checking in we started our journey! We of course instantly saw Warthogs (slowly becoming a fav in the McCarty household) and then we drove and drove-this is typical sometimes you see a ton, and sometimes you do not. We came across a bunch of cars stopped and looking at something, we tried to ask what they were looking at, and after some communication gaps we discovered they had spotted a lion! I tend to have a lot of communication issues here, it is that southern accent-ohh the stares! We never saw what they saw, although Hunter said he saw a hair-that child! We then saw some Kudo, Ostrich (new fav meat), more warthogs, and tons of elephants. This is South Africa's hottest month, and we heard this is not a good time to see the animals-we knew this going in but were pleased with what we saw. Afterwards we stopped to eat lunch in the Park's restaurant and hit the gift store afterwards(one of my kid's favs)-Bought more Africa stuff to add to our growing collection. I am determined to get as much out of this country as I can!
We are headed to Cape Town http://goafrica.about.com/od/southafrica/ss/bestsa_2.htm this week, Pat is in a bike race and we are going to be gone for about 5 days! We are going to try and take in some of the sights and wonders of this part of South Africa-whale and penguin watching, beautiful scenery, and the wine country! Lets just hope we find our way there-this will be our farthest adventure yet! I will post about this afterwards! And then to Jeffery's Bay for a couple of days in early April!
A pretty surreal and humbling moment came this week, it is customary for most households to have a maid and in earlier posts I have explained how inexpensive labor is here. I have been through three maids so far, and none of them have suited our family. I was advised to go through a placement agency to find someone, and I did. I think my biggest problem with these ladies is me. I have the hardest time with someone working for me, most days I will cry after they leave because I know the sadness of their lives and I am also very easy to walk all over-some have taken advantage of that. This agency came highly recommended, but I was not prepared for what I found. For one it was in one of the townships(what they call the shack villages), so I felt a little uncomfortable driving into this place, and the other part was the utter sadness of the need for work! After talking to the placement lady she had a brief list of what we needed, and had gathered up 7 women to be interviewed. She gave me their resumes (CV's) and instructed me on what to ask, and then sent them one after the other. I felt extremely sad for these women who were almost begging to get a job, and the extent of the work they do -nanny, maid, cook. I was looking for an older lady that could run the house and cleaning with out being told how to do it-you have to remember I am in Africa and most people do not have an education and most have never seen a washing machine, dryer or dish washer. I ended up really liking this young girl from Zimbabwe, she seemed very eager to work and had experience with a family in JoBurg (Johannesburg) and one in Port Elizabeth. On her resume it said that both her parents were dead and she had left her 5 year old daughter in Zim to find work, something touched me when I talked to this girl -my heart went out to her! She has worked for us since Wednesday and my house has never been so clean, and organized. I know that you may be thinking SPOILED-yes, I am lucky but this is life here. We do pay much higher than the average employer here, and hope that this can make a differnce! This is the way the average South African lives, and this is the way the average person makes a living. Most maids are widowed and are raising their children, and usually someone else's - they rely on this work, as odd as it sounds we feel like we are providing for a family. When the maid is at our house we provide breakfast and lunch, they usually work from 8-5. My maid left today, and asked if she could live here, odd again, but a lot of maids live in-we actually have a maid's quarter. We do not want a live in and I explained this to her, we want to keep her so I am going to see what we can do. (On a side note, I am writing this info because I think it is important to let you know of everyday life-we employ to give someone an opportunity for work, not for the pure joy of a clean house, I actually do not like someone always in my house!)My heart aches for this girl, I have no idea where she lives, and sometimes you do not know if they have anything to eat. I always send food to them, and cry when she leaves-how lucky I am to have my children and a warm and dry place to rest my head! She is always talking to Claire, I wonder if this is when missing her daughter is the hardest.
Speaking of work, I know many of you are wondering about GM... We are OK , and are EXTREMELY lucky to be where we are- I say a prayer nightly that we will survive this economy crisis and GM will again sale cars. We are proud to work for this company and follow great men who worked their butts off at automotive plants-my dad, my grandfather, Pat's dad, Pat's grandfather! Please buy American and pray for the Americans that will suffer immensely if anything happens to General Motors!