Wrapping up

TIA (This is Africa)...
Only in Africa would someone tell you that they're putting up receivers for internet for 2 months and then halfway through your trip realize that he can't because one of the schools is out of range. Wow. This could have been easily addressed, oh say, a month ago. But, of course, he neglected to mention anything via email or our numerous phone calls. We'll just have to make do. We're not figuring out details on finances to see how we're going to establish internet at Mmaweshi. Unfortunately, the mountain blocks the signal from the lumber mill where the tower is. So our only option is building a tower across the way for ~10k rand (US ~$1.4k). Lesson well learned. While we could fund this (i say this w/ extreme hesitancy), the issue now becomes how to teach internet & email lessons once we're gone. So now we have to coordinate some Soweto students to return in order to do this, probably on a monthly basis until December.

Scholarship....
Joe and Aubrey are currenty in a meeting with Thabang's parents discussing the possibility of boarding school. Thabang plans to be a lawyer when he grows up, and by god he will. This is kid is a genious. Looking forward to seeing what happens as he matures.

Ceremony...
Logistical nightmare to transport some ~300 - 400 people to a rural school with no electrictiy. That's not including the chairs, tables, food, sound system (yeah, still need to find this), etc, etc. Headmasters are excited to have the HoD as the keynote speaker though. This should spark some serious awareness and committment from the community on this project. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Finally, trying to decide how we're doing the monitoring and evaluation plan. Who can we employ from the community, how do we do this, how do they report back to us, etc, etc. All this needs to be answered asap. Any ideas?

Off to Driehoek and Mmaweshi...