Last Program of the Year

We are holding our last interventions of the year.  Skillz Holiday is currently in progress in Uitenhage.  Mr. Mali, the principal of Phaphani High and the pastor of a church, has been extremely helpful, both in recruitment and offering us a venue.  He is such a nice man.  He is the one who told us when we first recruited his school (dedicated readers will remember) "You give us hope and direction." 

Anyways...Skillz holiday...Monday was pretty bad.  I guess the teachers at the schools forgot to remind the kids about the program so a lot of the kids we had recruited to come didn't show up.  No worries however, this just gave us an excuse to do some guerrilla recruitment.  Everyone took to the streets and we just walked around.  When a kid who looked of appropriate age was in site, the coaches pounced.  Mzee and Chika were amazing at this.

As a result, we had over 70 kids come Tuesday - rather than the 6 on Monday.  Will, Ngwenya, and I ran errands for the coaches - food, transport, etc.  We played games with the kids who were too young to do the program, and hung out with everyone.  A great way to spend a work day - especially when it's nearing 80 degrees and is sunny.

Today, however, I was robbed of another day of this.  I had to stay back in the office and re-do my finance report.  When I had my training i was told:

1. You don't have to follow the bank statement.  You can record payments as they are made rather than as the bank processes the payments.

2. Record all the payments, even if the bank hasn't yet so that headquarters doesn't think your site has money that you don't have.

So...for the past couple months this is how I have been doing it.  I got an e-mail Monday that said my end balance didn't match my report.  This was due to me having 2 more transactions in my report than the statement had.  I took them out for the woman at headquarters who wanted me to.  On Tuesday I got another e-mail.  Rather, I was CCed and the e-mail was sent to Pumeza.  I read "Pumeza, can you please assist Martha so that she can get your finance report right."  She then listed issues such as the ending balance (already taken care of), different opening balance (because some of the early transactions were on last months report) and that things were out of order (payment rather than process).   I was so annoyed by this.  She didn't ask me, but sent that condescending e-mail.  Not to mention, the different instructions from different people at headquarters. 

Anyways, I have been at the office today so that I could change this.  Being alone in the office isn't all bad though.  I was able to skype with Robert for a while which always makes me happy.