I have another pile of school fee receipts waiting in front for me ..... and I am dreading going through it. Here in Swaziland another school year has just started and with it came the almost unbearable demand and desperate pleas for SCHOOL FEES. It feels like a huge mountain in our way. The poor D-team is almost too afraid to go to the carepoints; they are so overwhelmed by the requests from the kids for school fees.

Let me explain a little. Most schools are government schools, but the kids still have to pay. And it's not just the school fees; they also have to pay for books, stationary and uniforms. (And some of the schools just changed their complete uniforms!) In the past the government has helped to pay for orphans and vulnerable children, but it was just announced that the government will no longer pay for the vulnerable kids; they will only help the orphans. (Not sure if they will pay the full amount though.) School fees can be anything between $50 and $600 for a year. To you and me this does not sound like a lot, but in a country where the average person lives on less than $2 a day, this is almost impossible to pay!

At this stage we are seeing less leniency from head teachers at schools as more and more kids are being chased away because they cannot pay school fees. Schools are even chasing orphans away. Their reason: the government has not paid the kids' school fees yet! Most of these kids who get chased, are too ashamed to even come to the carepoints and they would rather stay away. This breaks my heart.

It also breaks my heart to know that I am about to tell a bunch of really bright and cute kids at one of our carepoints that they can no longer go to school, because we can no longer pay for their school fees. We had a donor paying for them to go to a slightly nicer school, but now the donor can no longer pay. And I am the one having to face them and tell them this news. I don't want them to leave this school! They can speak better English than all of the other kids their age; even better than a lot of the older kids! They have potential, and they have the opportunity to become something / somebody ....... but right now I feel like their futures are in my hands .... and I am about to cut the string.