Our African Adventure: Sister Amelia's

Wednesday I went to Sister Amelia's creche in Vienna. It is a school and it is located about 1 1/2 hours from our house with good traffic. She is a 78 year old Franciscan nun that started building the school in 2001 and opened in 2003 I believe. They have public electricity maybe every other week but got a generator donated to them last year by Caterpillar so they run it off and on through out the day. With all the obstacles she has to face with building and running the school it amazed me how happy she and the rest of the nuns that run the school are. I don't think I ever seen them not smiling. They are truly seeing God's work. The kids loved to see us...they had huge smiles on their faces and would just run to you when you walked in the door. They sang songs for us and danced for us. One lady brought suckers for all of them and they went wild when they got them. They loved for you to take pictures of them and then they wanted to see themselves on the camera. There were gardens all over the compound and Sister said they have some guys come in and take care of them and then the girls use the vegetables and fruits to cook with. She said the older girls are taught by the sisters to cook and they always have someone helping them. I believe she said they have about 14 high school aged girls living there hopefully to becomes nuns or if not to make a positive impact on the community and then they have about 5 younger girls not in high school yet living there. For the younger kids they have from age 1 to age 5 and they have about 25 kids per class. Her goal is to start with the kids teaching them responsibility and that will carry out to the parents. She has strict guidelines the parents have to follow, like must be current on vaccinations and when to drop off and pick up. She said this makes the parents have some responsibility and makes them try a little harder. The kids are given a bath when they get there and feed breakfast and then lunch and a snack before they leave for the day...they can stay from about 7-6. They are also given a bath before they leave for the day. You could tell the kids loved it there.

They do help out the families if they have a means to. One of the older girls mom is very sick so they have her staying there and trying to get her the surgery that she needs. They always need donations of clothes, diapers, food, money, and toys. They have done a lot with donations from the big companies that are here but still need lots of help. Sister asked if we could get some people that could maybe come out once a week or so and teach the kids some English songs and work with them.

Their neighbors are the Franciscan priest and they have some land just next door. Currently they just use it to play peace ball as they call it or football or soccer as we call it in the states. They send the boys off to school....I think their goal is to have the same type of place the sisters have.

Even though this was a school and not an orphanage and it was very nice it was still a great experience and one I will never forget. I have only been here a couple of months...here we would say, we have made it a whole two months...and in that time I have seen a lot but it still amazes me that people live like this. In our mind everyone lives similar to us. They may not have as nice of a washer and dryer as ours or as nice of furniture or all the electronics but still feels like people live similar to us. It is not the case at all though. There are many people here that do not even have a shack to sleep under on the hard ground. They build fires to cook their one meal a day. You see kids running down dirty, muddy, trashy roads in underwear that probably haven't been washed in days or longer. In our mind we think oh how sad and it is, but what you don't expect is for these kids to have smiles on their faces and enjoying what they are doing. It is a different world for sure and it really makes you think about every thing you have. If someone here got an ipod they wouldn't keep it and use it they would sell it for $1,000US so they could buy flour or oil or anything to sell on the streets or feed their kids with it. Everyone here says that we went to a very nice place but we should also visit one of the orphanages here around Luanda. I think I will go there next.

I made a slide show of all the pictures but can not figure out how to put it on my blog, so I will just post a few pictures and when I can I will post the slide show.

Sister Amelia

Classrooms & Garden

Sister Amelia and one of the other Sister's

Another garden

Library

Courtyard in the middle of the building were the girls pray and have mass and the library is and extra rooms for the family members they help.

Their flag

Church

Main building were the girls live and eat and offices

The 5 year olds doing a dance for us.

Dancing....

Me and one of the little boys. He loved having his picture taken.

The kids around Sister

Getting their suckers

Saying bye (Chao)

High fives with Charlie(his wife came here to work so he is a stay at home dad)

Their bathrooms and showers.

Enjoying the suckers.

This little one loved Charlie's sunglasses.

The kids and Sisters doing a dance for us.

Helen saying good morning (Bom Dia) to the kids.

They are comparing colors of their suckers with each other.

One of the classrooms

Lisa, my neighbor, giving out hugs.

precious

They all wanted their pictures taken.

Me with a group of the kids.

Tina, swim coach at the school, and the kids and me.

The whole gang.

Sister is making them dance for a sucker. :-)

Helping to open the suckers.

YUMMMM!

The 1 year old room

The youngest only 6 months old.

This is a stage and a place where they have meetings and training for parents.

Their sand box and outside toys all donated by expats leaving the country.

The dinning room in the main building where the older girls eat.

Their kitchen

All of us that went and the sisters. From the left Sister, Lisa(neighbor), Helen(the one that does boot camp), Vicki(from Norway), Sister, Charlie(stay at home dad), Sister, Tina(swim coach), and me. My driver took the picture for me and he did a great job. :-)