Saturday was the wedding of my friend Heather, who I first met in South Africa, when we were volunteering at God’s Golden Acre in KwaZulu Natal. I was a naive idealist (what’s changed?) 18 year old, spending my days washing, ironing and distributing 50+ school outfits to the children and Heather was the mature motherly practical-but-romantic uni-graduate that I shared a room with.
Those months seem a lifetime ago but they were hugely formative for me. I grew up really fast, fell in love with a country and a people, learnt a lot about what works and doesn’t work in responding to the needs of AIDS orphans, and made some firm friends.
Heather (Hedda), Katie (Khetiwe), Ruth, Laura (Yoyo – not in the photo) and I spent endless hours together at GGA. We spent our weekends off driving around the country, to St Lucia, Cape Town, Hluhluwe, Durban. We worked hard, shared the daily challenges and frustrations as well as the joys and amusements, and laughed a lot.
In the last seven years we’ve kept in touch on and off and it was so amazingly lovely this weekend to be all together again, catching up, sharing stories, and reminiscing…
