Official opening of our Kitchen

On Tuesday 28 February 2006, we celebrated the ‘official’ opening of our kitchen at the Riversands Primary School and therefore also the start of our feeding project. Although we already started feeding the children in November last year, we had not officially launched the project yet and waited for the feeding process to run smoothly and without hick ups. In February we felt confident enough to allow all our sponsors and friends to come and watch the feeding process in full swing and to our delight, many of them did. The continuous rain in February gave us quite a headache and we were worried that we might not be able to feed the children at the kitchen. It had already happened once in January that we had to bring all the food down to the classrooms and dish up in the classrooms, which is not ideal! But fortunately ‘Plan B’ was not necessary because the 28^th turned out to be a fine day with even a bit of sunshine to add to our festive mood.

Most of our guests arrived around 9 am and were welcomed with tea, coffee, biscuits, delicious milk tart (made by Milly!) and freshly baked scones with jam and cream. Maureen, who runs CLM’s children’s shelter in Diepsloot, woke up very early to bake the scones for us and THAT we could taste. Thanks Maureen, your scones were enjoyed by everyone! As usual, we fetched the Grade 1-5 pupils from their classrooms around 9h25 and they arrived at the kitchen in a surprisingly disciplined manner, many of them holding each other’s hands. Normally we have great difficulty to let them walk instead of run to the kitchen but apparently they wanted to show our visitors that they do know how to behave. Groups of them sang a few lovely songs while waiting in line to wash their hands and to receive a plate of food with a roll. We served rice with a stew of minced meat and lots of fresh vegetables and we could all see that it went down very well. During second break, when we fed the Grade 6 and 7 pupils, many of them even came back for a second serving. In between the two breaks, the school choir treated us on some beautiful songs, while clapping and dancing.