Thursday
Woke up so refreshed after my much-needed early night, although it was so so cold it woke me up a few times. This morning it's brighter and looks like it'll be warm today. The weather really is random, one extreme to the other. The project run a clinic for the community in the morning, led by volunteer nurses from the UK, most from the Birmingham area so it was great to have some brummies to chat to!! They would weigh, check blood pressure and give out deworming tablets. Then they would see the nurse and she would prescribed any other medicines needed. then they would sit and chat (often have a laugh) with a counsellor and finally they could be prayed for by the minister. Fantastic!! Also any practical needs that arose would be noted.  Lloyd and I were thrilled to be able to give some of the money Ward End church & friends had given to help change some of their lives a little. One lady had a patch to grow food but had no seeds (no money to buy seeds) and one little boy, who had an awful life so far and was very poorly, needed some regular food for his medication to be effective.  £150 meant that a vegetable patch with fencing to keep out the animals could be made to sustain him and his family for the future. The project have come to know the families and their histories over several years so we have complete confidence that these tasks will have a real positive impact on their futures.  They had Lloyd praying for people and had me (Nurse Jip) checking blood pressures (hilarious!)

We left Swaziland around 1pm, hired a car and headed for White River, South Africa. Passed through the border crossing smoothly and headed towards Nelspruit, following directions kindly given by Pastor Kevin. However we were meant to hit a T junction and turn right at 35km but we hit one at 17km! So we decided to turn right. Argh! After about 20 minutes on this road it appeared to be getting a little sandy (but thats okay because roads in Africa do that sometimes when they run out of tarmac). We continued but another 20 mins on they were a bit rough and narrow and very sandy and bumpy. There were cows with ENORMOUS (Lloyd's comment) horns that were stood in the middle of the road. Lloyd got a little stressed at this point and it was best that I didnt speak to him, lol.  We passed a crossing with a man on a gate and checked with him that we were still in South africa - he said yes but very close to Swaziland. We appeared to be driving in and out of the mountains on pretty horendous roads in a little VW Polo. Not funny although I was still quite enjoying the adventure.  5pm and it was getting a little duskier and the further we went, the roads seemed to get worse and we wondered whether this little car would make it. A truck with 5 Swazi's on the back of it passed us in the opposite direction and yelled some foreign words at us (!) We thought it best to ignore them. Although further on wondered if they were saying 'turn back' or something like that!  It was about 6.30pm when a tarmac road appeared (what a lovely sight to see).  Arrived at HAnds at Work hub about 7.30pm to caserole, sweet potato and rice - NICE!
PS Lisa yes absolutley -don't bother texting back - that's fine xxx Love to you all xxx