Becca and Liz here coming at you live from Roma! After tasting the sweet nectar of the Gods (wifi), many of us rushed to call our parents resulting in an overloaded system. So for all of you parents out there who had spotty facetime calls that ended abruptly: this post goes out to you.
We woke up this morning excited with anticipation for the new adventure to come (Roma… refer to title) but we were also sad knowing we were going to leave our Ramabanta family behind. Luckily for us, we were going out with bang.
Once we returned to the work site and knotted off our last swing, the playground was complete (Hopefully you all are up to date with the playground saga and the other bloggers didn’t let you down). Before we allowed some of Ramabanta’s finest 2-12 year olds to swarm the playground, we prepared them a bonus meal. The bonus meals were packed by Wittenberg students through the Lesotho Nutrition Initiative. LNI was created around the mission of sending meal packets to Lesotho every four months in order to feed 50 kids 3 days a week. It was extremely rewarding to see these meals reach their final destination, as we were able to see who we were directly impacting through those packing events.
One may have assumed that the meals would have been completed before the playground was put to use. Guess again folks. These kids were climbing up ladders, bowl in hand. A particular fan favorite, 6 year old Mpho (also known by “shimmey shimmey” ) had a particularly interesting strategy when it came to pulling off this balancing act of sorts. Mpho would take two bites of his meal, hand off his bowl to Becca, run to take two turns down the slide, and return to Becca to repeat this act until his bowl was clean.
We all watched proudly as these kids continued to cycle through the playground and take turns going down the slide. It was heart warming to see how something as simple as a slide could bring so much joy and entertainment to a group of kids. Although it was hard to say goodbye, many of us found comfort looking out of the bus window and seeing those same kids, hours later, still going down that slide. We were happy to leave them with something that recognized their humanity and elated the spirit of childhood.
On our drive to Roma, we were fortunate enough to stop by the house that we had worked on earlier in our stay to see the progress that had been made. With a finished roof and painted walls, the house began to look more like a home for Mae. On the first day that we met Mae, she seemed ashamed to present us with her small house made of aluminum sheet metal. Today, however, she wore a big smile as she finally had a place to be proud of.
With the playground and the house being our last goodbyes to Ramabanta, we feel motivated to continue our work here in Roma. Now that it’s 8:30 pm, it is far past our bedtime so this post must come to an end.
Signing out,
-Liz and Becca (aka Roma Roomies)
P.S,
Hopefully I will be able to sleep through Becca’s tears as she watches videos on her phone tonight of Mpho dancing.