Xhosa classes and gardening

This week has been focused on learning more about our local host community in South Africa. The students have been doing Xhosa language classes with Mama D in the morning and then doing service work at a local primary school in the afternoon. Xhosa has clicks and is one of 11 official languages in South Africa. Students have been enjoying learning how to pronounce new words (especially if it has a click), and learning some basic vocabulary like greetings, numbers, days of the week, and gardening tools. It has been a lot of fun practicing our new language skills in class, with Noks (our program coordinator) and in the community, and at the local school. 

In the afternoon, we have been going to a local primary school where our service project is preparing and planting a food garden. So far, we have learned background about the project, measured how many garden beds will be planted, learned about the crops that will be planted and appropriate spacing between the seedlings, and interacted with some of the children. We look forward to being able to compare the garden before and after our work is finished next week.