One of the most conspicuous activites of the Swaziland Relief mission is the loading of a 40 foot sea container full of medical supplies, clothing, shoes, blankets, and coats. These are distributed through the CMC churches to their congregants, and by the team in one of several remote locations. On Monday morning, July 6, the team went to Matsapha and waited for the container to be delivered.
And we waited ....
And waited ...
And waited ...
To amuse ourselves and keep our sanity, the team engaged in several activities. They played "ninja" which is a kind of tag game but that description really doesn't do it justice. One team member (my daughter) gave tumbling lessons to a teammate from South Africa, teaching her how to do a cartwheel and a round off. Some played cards. The nurses had a staff meeting. And many of us were taught a worship song in siSwati that we had heard at the wedding on Saturday and again in church on Sunday.
I made book on when the container arrived. Not for money, just for entertainment purposes only. Each person signed up for a 15 minute time slot between 9 am (when the container was scheduled to arrive) and the end of the afternoon. One person took the time slot of "tomorrow" but I told him he was being far to pessimistic. Mirta won, with the 12:15 time slot.
Once the container was delivered, we had to get it open. Last year this was a problem in and of itself. The container is sealed with a small metal band. It doesn't look like much but it is sturdy. We had a very difficult time cutting it off last year because the driver of the truck did not bring the appropriate tool and our pocket tools could not cut the band, because the wire cutters were too far back on the tool and too small to cut the width of the band.
This year, though, I came prepared. I bought a small pair of wire cutters with a wide angled cutting surface. It opened the seal in 1 second. Fool me once ...
Once the container was open, the work of actually unloading it began. The team lined up and formed a chain to pass the 750 or so boxes from the container to the sunday school room which served as our "warehouse" for the trip. I had marked some of the boxes when we loaded the container so we had an approximate halfway point. A great cheer went up when team member Q carried the final box from the container to the storage room. All of our boxes were unloaded, sorted, and stored awaiting the next day's distribution.
After the container was unloaded, it was rather late in the day, but we still had time to drive over to the orphan care point in the north end of Manzini run by our dear sister Collette. We arrived to the orphans singing "I am the Winner in Christ my Lord" to us. We visited with, sang with, and played with the children for about an hour and a half until the setting sun forced our return to the convent.
[I did not actually spend much time at the orphan care point, because we had medical supplies that had to be moved during that time, so I and two other team members rod the vans back to Matsapha and to the convent to move the supplies, and then met the others back at the orphan care point just as it was time to leave.]
One little girl really won over the hearts of the team with her exhuberance and joyful spirit. I did not learn her name, but I did get her picture, and it is currently the profile picture for the Swaziland Relief Facebook page.
I have lots of pictures of this day that I will post on my blog with captions. I'll send you a quick link to the blog when the pics are all posted.
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