OUR AUCTION DAY
When I was at the school about three years, the parents decided that we should build a “Lapa” for the school as then we could have some functions just for the staff and the parents. This was so that we could have good relationships between parents and teachers, and this made the school more accessible to the parents.
We decided to build it in two sections. We had a tuckshop in the front apart from the rest of the building. There, we also had a kitchen and fridges as well as everything the parents needed to make food for the children.
We only cooked there and sold some cool drink and there were wonderful food the parents made for the kids. We sold this all at cost price, as there were poor children who could not really afford to buy much, but at least we knew they got a meal in a day.
There were some poor kids who could not afford to buy anything and they fetched daily money from our secretary that she kept just for those children who had no money at all. The money were donations from parents who could afford it.
During breaks they fetched money to buy themselves some food. This meant the other children were not aware that these kids had problems at home and they bought food just like everyone else.
The back side off the Lapa was totally separate from here and had a bar and bathrooms for the visitors. We were the only school who had a liquor license and we had our teachers serve the drinks and kept the money for the same reason to add to the children’s fund.
We never opened the bar with school functions because we did not want people drinking with children at school. So this was only opened when we had a function or a birthday for someone.
The open front part of the Lapa had a lot of big trees around it and we also built a wall around so that it was totally private.
Once a year we had a big occasion where we had a braai for only certain people, the ones who had big businesses and could really afford to spend money. We called this our auction day.
We had parents who were deep sea fisherman they kept fish especially for this day in there deep freezes they always brought these enormous fish for a braai with several different sauces to pick from. I can assure you this was the most wonderful fish you could ever eat.
Then we had our ( potjie )specialist who had won for the year and he made his (potjie.)
We had different people braaing and we sold tickets before the time, as this was our most prestigious fundraiser of the year. We sold only 80 tickets so that we knew who were attending. We needed to do fundraisers to pay for all the extras at school.
Schools use a lot of money when it comes to extras. They have to rent in teachers for smaller classes and many more things like office paper and you think of it we had to buy all this.
Everything everybody made to eat was donated by those parents who made the food.
Right through the year we accumulated gifts from people who knew about this day and we received the most fantastic stuff.
Rugby jerseys signed by springbok rugby players and rugby balls that were signed. Cricket bats that were signed by springboks, and many other things, that was given to us through the year.
There was a beautiful picture one year of the world cup being won by the Springboks. When parents went to certain functions they always tried to get something for us for our auction and I can assure you we never had a problem because we had lots of things to auction off.
We even got an auctioneer to do this, but only late in the day when everyone had, had a lot to drink and eat. That was the time they really did not mind spending money.
I must say that the prices we got at the auction were ridiculous as it reached at least three times more than the market value.
Some of the parents gave the items they bought back so that it could be re sold.
We usually made thousands of Rand at these auctions.
This was such a privilege for me to spend this day with all the people, and made my school worries less for the rest of the year money wise.
Thank you for reading my story and and have a wonderful day!
Greetings from the Wild-Coast!
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